The Retreat from Moscow Page 2

  ALICE: That’s nothing. They have astronauts older than that.

  EDWARD: I’ll make us some tea, then.

  (He goes to make tea. ALICE rises, and takes up Edward’s book. She leafs through it without reading it.)

  ALICE: Have you done anything about Thursday?

  EDWARD: What about Thursday?

  ALICE: You’ve forgotten, haven’t you?

  EDWARD: Forgotten what?

  ALICE: It’s our anniversary.

  EDWARD: Oh. Right. No, I hadn’t forgotten.

  ALICE: You haven’t said anything.

  EDWARD: Well, it isn’t Thursday yet. It’s only Saturday. Don’t lose my place.

  ALICE: So you have something in mind?

  EDWARD: What do you mean?

  ALICE: Will we go out for dinner?

  EDWARD: If that’s what you want.

  ALICE: It isn’t.

  EDWARD: It isn’t?

  ALICE: No.

  EDWARD: Alright, then. We won’t go out.

  (ALICE opens the book at the bookmark, tilts the book so the bookmark slides to the floor, and closes it again.)

  ALICE: Oh, look. I’ve lost your place.

  EDWARD: Never mind.

  ALICE: No. Mind.

  EDWARD: It’s not important.

  ALICE: What is?

  EDWARD: Is something the matter?

  ALICE: What do you think?

  EDWARD: Well, something seems to be bothering you.

  ALICE: You just don’t get it, do you?

  EDWARD: No. I don’t think I do.

  ALICE: I say, “Will we go out for dinner on our anniversary?” You say, “If that’s what you want.” I say, “It isn’t.” You say, “Then we won’t.” But I do want to go out for dinner on our anniversary. Why else do you think I suggested it?

  EDWARD: Then why say you don’t?

  ALICE: Because I don’t want to do it because I want to do it. I want to do it because you want to do it.

  EDWARD: Oh. Right.

  ALICE: So do you want to do it?

  EDWARD: Yes. Why not?

  ALICE: Then I’d like that.

  EDWARD: We’ll do that, then.

  (ALICE closes her eyes and bows her head.)

  How was your day?

  ALICE: I wish you wouldn’t talk to me like that.

  EDWARD: Like what?

  ALICE: Like that.

  EDWARD: I was only asking.

  ALICE: What were you only asking?

  EDWARD: Your day. How’s it gone?

  ALICE: How am I supposed to answer?

  EDWARD: I think that rather depends.

  ALICE: Fine. I’m supposed to say, “Fine.” It’s not a real question. It’s not about me. I want you to ask about me.

  (Lights come up on JAMIE.)

  JAMIE: I’m having a bit of trouble with the bath. The water came out brown at first. I’ve been trying to empty it, but the water won’t go away.

  ALICE: (To EDWARD) You said you’d deal with that drain.

  EDWARD: I will. I’ll do it in the morning.

  ALICE: If you’re not going to do something you tell me you’re going to do, could you please tell me you’re not going to do it, so I know I have to do it myself?

  EDWARD: I’ll do it first thing.

  JAMIE: Actually, it’s not a problem, because the brownness is kind of sinking to the bottom.

  ALICE: I don’t know why I even bother asking you.

  EDWARD: I’ve said I’ll do it.

  ALICE: But you don’t, do you? What you actually do is the crossword. “Just half an hour,” you say. Do you realise that’s three and a half hours a week? That’s one whole waking day a month. Twelve days a year. On Thursday we’ll have been married thirty-three years, and you’ll have spent—what is it? Three hundred and something?

  EDWARD: Three hundred and ninety-six.

  ALICE: Three hundred and ninety-six days, more than a whole year of our marriage, doing the crossword.

  EDWARD: I haven’t done the crossword every day.

  ALICE: No, but you’ve wanted to. Will you be coming to mass in the morning, Jamie?

  JAMIE: I don’t think so, no.

  ALICE: We can go to the eleven o’clock. You can sleep in.

  JAMIE: You know I haven’t been to mass for years now.

  ALICE: Yes, but it’s just a phase, isn’t it?

  JAMIE: It’s not just a phase.

  ALICE: You always had such a strong faith. These things don’t go away.

  JAMIE: I was a child. People change. The things you need when you’re a child change.

  ALICE: What rot you talk, Jamie. Where do you get it from?

  I’m not a child, and I still go to mass. And anyway, it’s got nothing to do with what anyone needs. It’s to do with what’s true.

  JAMIE: I don’t want to have this argument.

  ALICE: You can say you don’t believe in God till you’re blue in the face. He’s still there.

  JAMIE: Yes, alright. For you, but not for me, okay? Let’s leave it at that.

  ALICE: But why not? Just give me one reason. Are you angry at him?

  JAMIE: If I thought God existed I’d be angry, alright. I mean, take a look at the world he’s supposed to have made.

  ALICE: It’s a beautiful world.

  JAMIE: Full of miserable, starving, tortured, crippled people.

  ALICE: But that’s exactly why it has to be true. If this world was all there is, how could we bear it? Edward, you explain.

  EDWARD: I think the general idea is that the misery in the world comes from man’s inhumanity to man.

  JAMIE: I’d better not let my bath get cold.

  ALICE: Go on, Edward. Explain why God lets the misery happen.

  EDWARD: Well, the fundamental premise in the argument is that God created us as free beings. He gave us free will. So he can’t really stop us doing terrible things to each other without taking away our free will and turning us into puppets.

  ALICE: There, you see. It’s not God’s fault. So you don’t have to be angry at him. And you can come to mass with us in the morning.

  JAMIE: I’m not angry with God. That’s your idea, not mine. Since you insist on having this pointless argument, I’ll try to explain the way I see it. I think the world is a frightening place, where things happen that aren’t fair, and there isn’t really any meaning to any of it, and at the end we get wiped out. We can’t bear that, so we invent God and heaven to reassure ourselves that it’ll all work out in the end. I don’t think that’s a bad thing to do. I happen to think it’s not true. But maybe I’m wrong.

  ALICE: Oh, you are, darling. You’re as wrong as wrong can be. What a terrible way to think. Why on earth do you do it? It must make you so unhappy.

  JAMIE: No, not really. And anyway, look at it the other way round. Why do you think what you think? Just so you can be happy?

  ALICE: Well, yes, of course. Nobody wants to be unhappy.

  JAMIE: Even if you’re just making it all up?

  ALICE: But I’m not. I promise you, darling, I’m right about this. Do you remember how you always hated it when I made you put out your light at eight-thirty, and then you went to stay with David Mallinson—we were living in Maidstone—and neither of you went to sleep till midnight, and you came home half-dead with exhaustion and said I’d been right all along? Well, this is like that.

  JAMIE: It isn’t like that at all. And anyway, I was nine years old.

  ALICE: You tell him, Edward.

  EDWARD: Tell him what?

  ALICE: That God exists.

  EDWARD: You can’t tell people a thing like that. It doesn’t work.

  ALICE: Then what’s the point of theology? What do you tell your boys at school?

  EDWARD: I’m a history teacher. I do one class a week in Religious Studies. I don’t claim to be an expert.

  ALICE: Well, I won’t argue with you, Jamie, it’ll only make me cross. But let me tell you, you’re not the first to think such rot, and find o
ut in the end you’re wrong.

  But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild

  At every word,

  Methoughts I heard one calling, ‘Child!’

  And I replied, ‘My Lord’.

  JAMIE: George Herbert?

  ALICE: Well done.

  JAMIE: Yes. Well, I’ll go and have this bath.

  (Lights go down on JAMIE.)

  (EDWARD brings over two mugs of tea, and gives one to ALICE. He settles down in his armchair.)

  ALICE: I hate it when Jamie talks like that.

  EDWARD: He has to think for himself

  ALICE: Of course he has to think for himself. But why does he have to think such horrible things? It makes me feel we’ve done something wrong.

  EDWARD: I don’t think I’ll make it to mass tomorrow morning.

  ALICE: Why not?

  EDWARD: I have too much to do. All the Fifth Form papers to mark. I’d rather get it done while I’m fresh. I can go to the six o’clock.

  ALICE: Oh, well. Suit yourself.

  (EDWARD reaches for the newspaper, and takes out a pencil to do the crossword.)

  Do you have to do that?

  EDWARD: No. Not if there’s something more important.

  ALICE: What about those papers you have to mark?

  EDWARD: As I said, I prefer to do them in the morning. I’m quite tired now.

  ALICE: Well, we could just talk. People do, you know.

  EDWARD: Alright.

  (He puts the newspaper away. They drink their mugs of tea in silence.)

  ALICE: Well?

  EDWARD: What?

  ALICE: I’m waiting.

  EDWARD: For what?

  ALICE: For you to start. Talking doesn’t just happen. You have to say something.

  EDWARD: What do you want me to say?

  ALICE: Edward, sometimes you make me want to scream. I really don’t think I can stand this much longer.

  EDWARD: I’m sorry. You don’t make it easy, you know.

  ALICE: Why should I make it easy? You’re not a baby.

  EDWARD: I just know that whatever I start to talk about will turn out to be wrong.

  ALICE: I don’t see why. Anyway, don’t be so gutless. Talk about something you want to talk about.

  EDWARD: Well…I’ve become fascinated by the eye-witness accounts of the—

  ALICE: Not the retreat from Moscow. I’m sorry, I can’t stand it.

  (He looks up at her for a brief moment, and then away.)

  I can’t stand any of it.

  EDWARD: I don’t know what you want me to say.

  ALICE: Can you stand it? Is this what you want?

  EDWARD: No …

  ALICE: So why don’t you do something about it?

  EDWARD: I don’t know what to do.

  ALICE: If this isn’t what you want, then what is?

  EDWARD: I want you to be happier.

  ALICE: What about you?

  EDWARD: And me, yes.

  ALICE: You want to be happier?

  EDWARD: Yes.

  ALICE: So what would make you happier?

  EDWARD: If you were happier.

  ALICE: No. Talk about you.

  EDWARD: I don’t want anything special.

  ALICE: But you do want something? There’s something that two people can have that we haven’t got, that you wish we had.

  EDWARD: Yes …

  ALICE: What is it? Describe to me how you’d like us to be.

  EDWARD: I don’t know how to explain.

  ALICE: Think of a word. Any word. The first word that comes into your head.

  EDWARD: Sunny.

  ALICE: Sunny?

  EDWARD: That’s what came into my head.

  ALICE: Sunny? The most you can ask for after thirty-three years of marriage is sunny?

  EDWARD: It’s only one word. There’s others.

  ALICE: Give me other words.

  EDWARD: I don’t want to do this.

  ALICE: Please.

  EDWARD: I’ll only make things worse.

  ALICE: I’m trying to understand what’s happening to us, Edward. How will that make things worse?

  EDWARD: Because whatever I say will be wrong.

  ALICE: It can’t be wrong if it’s true.

  EDWARD: Or not enough.

  ALICE: What do you mean, not enough?

  EDWARD: I don’t know. Maybe it’s all your poetry. Maybe I feel I can’t compete.

  ALICE: You’re not supposed to compete with poems. You’re supposed to say what you feel.

  EDWARD: I do. But it’s not enough.

  ALICE: You don’t say what you really feel. What you feel passionately about.

  EDWARD: I’m nearly sixty, Alice. What do you want me to tell you?

  ALICE: What’s your age got to do with it?

  EDWARD: You get tired …

  ALICE: So you stop feeling?

  EDWARD: No, of course not.

  ALICE: You don’t have passions any more?

  EDWARD: I didn’t say that.

  ALICE: Well, do you? I don’t see any evidence of it. What’s happening, Edward?

  EDWARD: I think … maybe … you want something I haven’t got.

  ALICE: What?

  EDWARD: I always feel that somehow I’m in the wrong.

  ALICE: I don’t care about who’s right or wrong. I just want you to be there. Here.

  EDWARD: I am here.

  ALICE: No. You’re not. It’s like somehow you’ve sneaked away while I wasn’t looking. I don’t know how else to explain it. It’s as if you’ve taken the easy way out.

  EDWARD: You think the easy way is wrong?

  ALICE: Yes. Always. I don’t want a sunny marriage. I want a real marriage. That’s not easy. It takes hard work.

  (EDWARD rises and heads towards the cupboard.)

  Where are you going?

  EDWARD: To put out the breakfast things.

  (He takes bowls and spoons from the cupboard.)

  ALICE: You’re walking away from me. That’s what you’re doing. You’re sneaking away.

  EDWARD: Alice, it’s getting late. I’m tired.

  ALICE: I’m tired, too. But we can’t go on like this. This isn’t the life I want. Is this the life you want?

  EDWARD: Not exactly.

  ALICE: Then do something about it.

  (EDWARD starts to lay out the breakfast things on the table.)

  Why lay for breakfast? Nothing will have changed in the morning. Edward, I can’t bear it. I want you to stop. Put those things down. Come over here.

  (He does as she asks. She rises, and takes both his hands in hers.)

  Look at me.

  (He looks at her.)

  You see, I just can’t bear what’s happening to us any longer.

  (He looks back at her, very uncomfortable.)

  Say something.

  EDWARD: I don’t understand where all this has come from.

  ALICE: It’s come from me. I want a real marriage.

  EDWARD: I don’t know what you mean by that. I’m sorry, but half the time I don’t know what you’re talking about.

  ALICE: Yes, you do. That’s just sneaking-away talk.

  EDWARD: That’s not true.

  ALICE: Alright. I’ll say something even you can understand. I love you.

  EDWARD: Right.

  ALICE: Do you love me?

  EDWARD: You don’t need to ask that.

  ALICE: When did you last say it?

  EDWARD: It’s just assumed. It’s just there.

  ALICE: I want you to say it.

  EDWARD: I can’t now. It wouldn’t mean anything.

  ALICE: Why not?

  EDWARD: I’d just be saying it because you asked me to say it.

  ALICE: I don’t mind.

  EDWARD: This is childish, Alice.

  ALICE: Just say it.

  EDWARD: Why are you doing this? Why are you making everything into a problem? This isn’t anything to do with me. This is all your problem.


  (WHACK! ALICE slaps him across the face)

  ALICE: Don’t ever say that again! You’re part of this. You’re involved, whether you like it or not.

  (EDWARD turns and walks away)

  Do something. Say something. If you hate me, say you hate me. Say you want to leave me. Say you want to kill me. Tell me something real.

  EDWARD: I’m tired. I want to go to bed. We’ll talk about it in the morning.

  (Lights go down on EDWARD.)

  (ALICE moves up close to the half-laid kitchen table, trembling all over. She grips the edge of the table. Suddenly she gives a sharp cry of frustration and anguish, and lifts up one side of the table, so that everything on it goes clattering to the floor.)

  (Lights come up on JAMIE.)

  JAMIE: What happened?

  ALICE: He’s such a coward. Such a rotten sneaking coward.

  JAMIE: You shouldn’t go for him so much.

  (He starts to pick up the breakfast things.)

  ALICE: He should fight back. He’s supposed to be the man. Why doesn’t he fight back?

  JAMIE: Is that what you want? A fight?

  ALICE: I want a reaction. I want a real marriage. I’ve lived with him for more than half my life. He’s so deep in me it’s like he’s part of me. We’re all plaited and intertwined together. Nothing can undo that. So what is it he’s so afraid of? Why does he walk away from me?

  JAMIE: Because you go for him.

  ALICE: I don’t go for him. Well, I did hit him just now.

  JAMIE: Oh, Ma.

  ALICE: What else am I to do? How else can I get through to him? I feel that if I can only give him a big enough shock, he’ll wake up.

  JAMIE: Hitting him won’t help.

  ALICE: Well, what do you think I should do?

  JAMIE: I think you should be nicer to him.

  ALICE: Nicer? You sound like Edward.

  JAMIE: I think you should stop going for him.

  ALICE: You said that already.

  JAMIE: But you don’t listen, do you?

  ALICE: Yes, well, we’ve all seen what a great success you’ve made of your love life.

  (JAMIE goes on clearing up in silence.)

  I’m sorry, darling. I didn’t mean that.

  JAMIE: Actually, you don’t know anything about my love life.

  ALICE: Don’t I? Have you got a secret wife somewhere, and secret children?

  JAMIE: You don’t have to have a family to have a love life.

  ALICE: Oh, that’s just sex. You’ll grow out of that.

  JAMIE: Like I’ll grow out of not believing in God.

  ALICE: Yes.

  JAMIE: Seems to be taking a long time.