A beach
Roland tampers with a shop-bought, for-one-use barbecue pack.
Hilary enters.
Hilary Have you lit a fire before?
Roland I must have, I’m a man. I think with these it’s just a matter of – firelighters. I can do that. A woman could do that. This was such a great idea. Inspirational. Thank you. Why is Frances so desperate?
Hilary She’s not.
Roland She directs everything she says straight at me. Like bad acting.
Hilary She’s good at connecting with new people.
Roland She wants me.
Hilary You should be so lucky. She’s good at sex. She takes charge. She has toys.
Roland Are you trying to shunt me sideways on to your friend? Because it’s you I like, not her.
Hilary Yes, but we’re not going to happen. I’m married to Mark.
Roland But you told me –
Hilary What I told you …
Roland You didn’t love him in that way.
Hilary We’re outside.
Roland You said you were just going through the motions. For Tilly’s sake.
Hilary You’re very needy. Your marriage is over and you’re grasping at me. My marriage is held together by habit, but that’s OK.
Roland When you came to see me and Bea, I thought there’s a woman that has passionate convictions.
Hilary Stop talking like this. You’re making me anxious.
Roland Are you scared to leave Mark – because your job’s on the line?
Hilary His job is on the line too. Nobody’s job is safe nowadays.
Roland Mine is. Sometimes I turn work down.
Hilary I’m trying to remember why it is I like you.
Mark walks in with a cool bag. He has on shorts and a T-shirt.
Mark I’m fatter than I was last year. Look.
He grabs his tummy.
Roland You should sort yourself out with a longer T-shirt, mate.
Hilary Too short. Doesn’t cover the top of –
Roland Then your spare tyre wouldn’t –
Mark This is my favourite T-shirt. Darts. 1979. World tour. Winchester.
I’m not eating more – some fats cells moved in and thought, this is good, this is permanent – we must tell our friends. And this process of accumulation is taking place independently of any responsibility on my part.
Roland Is Frances after me?
Hilary Don’t assume she’s out to get you because she’s single and over forty.
Frances enters in a bikini, sunglasses.
Mark That’s brave for Norfolk in September.
Frances Any chance to get my clothes off. I’ve only got five years left in this body.
Mark Then where do you go?
Frances It’s hard to attribute mortality to me, I know I’m a goddess, but the decline of musculature is relentless.
Hilary Stop it.
Frances Then the ears lengthen, noses grow longer and the jawbone loses material.
Our faces collapse.
Hilary Think Meryl Streep. We need a new attitude. Our lives are written on our bodies and our faces. Our experience. Who’d want to be a blank? Think of all the stories we have to tell each other?
Pause.
We have so many stories.
Roland Is it too early for alcohol?
Frances I thought you’d never ask.
Mark opens up the cool box, takes out beer bottles, distributes them.
I’m stunned with inertia when people tell me stories. And there’s only one thing worse than hearing a boring story once and that’s hearing it twice. There’s an old girl at the home I do shifts in – she’s always asking ‘What’s that called outside?’ ‘It’s the corridor, Win.’ I get so desperate to get back to people in basic working order I have to will myself not to run away screaming.
(To Roland, who has a towel round his waist.) Don’t keep us guessing. What have you got on under that?
Roland Trunks.
Frances Can’t wait. Did you buy them yourself?
Roland My ex-wife bought them.
Frances You see this is my theory: only an older man would buy a young woman swimwear. (To Hilary.) I bet Mark never bought you yours, did he?
Hilary No.
Frances What’s under your jumper then?
Hilary God, just an old costume.
Frances Let’s see.
Hilary I’m not that warm actually.
Frances Not shy, are you?
Hilary We don’t all get time to go to the gym like you do.
I’ve been helping Mark out in the shop every spare moment.
Frances How is the world of blinds?
Mark Slow. As it happens.
Frances Blinds was an odd turn for you to take, wasn’t it? I was just thinking. For an art student.
Mark Needs must.
Pause.
Frances Are we going to catch the fish?
Mark I caught them earlier from Sainsbury’s.
Frances Excellent. I don’t want to see things die. (To Roland.) So, how is detoxing after decades of marriage?
Roland You’re not one of those mad women who don’t respect boundaries, are you?
Frances Yes.
Roland I thought so. It’s pretty shit, actually. I was levelled. I was the shit on your shoe. There was no time of day I looked forward to.
Frances I’ve been there. It lasts about two months.
Roland Four in my case. Then I progressed to the taking-it-out-on-my-liver phase. Occasionally I’d have a few hours when I felt normal. Then it kicked in all over again. When I found out Bea was seeing someone else, I felt as though a knife was plunging into my groin …
Hilary The local lifeboat crew are singing a cappella tonight in the Grapes.
Roland I thought emotional pain was a metaphor till then.
Mark Where are the kids?
Hilary I woke them up. They should be here now.
Frances Did you get it checked out?
Roland What?
Frances Your prostate?
Hilary I shouted at them through a closed door – I think they heard.
Roland It was a metaphor.
Mark They’ll still be sleeping.
Hilary I didn’t go in – obviously.
Roland My balls were in perfect working condition, which was part of the problem.
Mark Pity for them to miss so much of the day.
Roland Getting sexual favours out of my ex-wife was akin to chipping at a glacier with a toothpick. I’m honest about that. Most people lie. Then it makes it harder for people like me to come out. You put up with abstinence because you think it’s just you. You don’t know it’s practically every married couple in the Western hemisphere.
Hilary Are we going to swim?
Mark Swimming, in England. That’s novel.
Hilary Who wants to be sluggish?
Frances I applaud you, Roland, for your honesty.
Hilary Let’s go in. Come on.
She takes off her jumper. She is wearing a light-coloured costume – a bit risqué.
The teenagers, Tilly and Josh, enter. They look like gods.
Roland Hello, you two.
Tilly Oh my God, Mum, that’s disgusting. You’re practically naked. Put something on.
Mark Mum looks fine.
Roland Very good. Morning, Josh.
Josh makes an inaudible reply.
Frances That’s not an old costume. You’ve gone out and bought that, you sex bomb. It’s a flesh tone. That’s why it looks so undressed.
Hilary puts her jumper back on.
Hilary Bit cold for swimming.
Tilly You can look now, Josh. It’s safe.
She looks at package of fish.
Roland Don’t you, Josh?
Hilary There’s salad.
Tilly That’s not food.
Hilary begins to get out the food.
Hilary I don’t want you going funny about eating.
Roland Josh will eat anything.
Hilary Wonderful.
Tilly No, he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t eat a rat. He wouldn’t eat another man’s penis. Like that bloke near us who ate his friend’s. They cooked it first.
Roland Obviously.
Frances God, it all happens in Walthamstow.
Hilary Why don’t you try it? At least try some fish.
Tilly I’ve tried it. It’s rank.
Hilary It’s dieting that makes you fat.
Tilly You’re always going on about your fat arse.
Mark and Roland She hasn’t got a –
Hilary Anorexia is a mug’s game.
Tilly Oh my God. We’re going for a walk.
She exits. Josh follows her.
Frances Oops.
Hilary Mark. I was about to get her to eat fish.
Mark That was never gonna happen. Let her walk it off.
Frances Is she always like that?
I don’t know how you put up with it.
Hilary Well, that’s the thing, with children you can’t take them back and exchange them.
Roland They have a lot of stuff we never did but they don’t seem to like us more for giving it to them.
Frances My niece has a mobile, an iPod, driving lessons, a laptop. We had record players and people shouting at us to get off the phone.
Mark I used to play with a stick.
Roland Josh has six hundred and sixty Facebook friends. How many have you got?
Hilary Ninety-eight.
Frances Tragic.
Roland They don’t need us.
Mark They may be angry with us. We’re responsible for them being here.
It’s dawning on them, as they look at us, it’s not going to be a fairy tale.
Hilary You never stand up to her, Mark. I look like the bitch.
I’m going in.
She exits.
Frances That’s why I never had children.
Mark I’ll start the fish.
Roland They sleep the sleep of angels, you know.
No two a.m. horrors. Sometimes I lie there –
Wondering which is the next bit of me that’s going to fall apart – I’m morphing into an old geezer. A hairy back, balding legs. Like an ostrich.
(Looking in direction of Tilly and Josh.) I wonder where they’ve gone.