Lights up on Doré and Liana. They are standing in the back garden of a small working-class ground-floor flat. A couple of simple vintage 1970s indoor chairs have been brought outside as lawn chairs. The grass is sparse. There is a small pile of stones for a project abandoned. There is a tray for tea set on a chair. The tea has not yet been poured. Liana is elegantly but subtly dressed, having just come from her office. She has a courier bag with her. Doré has put on her better clothes for the occasion, which also have a 1970s feel. Doré is shy and subdued, which almost hides her quick intelligence. She will rarely look directly at Liana during the scene, and unless indicated, Doré will gaze intently elsewhere, though her gaze is neither vacant nor passive.
LIANA: I’ve brought balloons. We’ve a choice of colors.
(Liana begins to take small bags of balloons out of her courier bag. Doré watches with fascination.)
Red? Green? Blue? You must have a favorite color. How about orange?
(Doré just looks on, still stunned by Liana’s presence.)
Ah, these are fancy! One color inside another. A two-layer balloon. Red inside yellow. Blue inside green. And even a few with tiny bells inside so when you blow them up and flick them, you hear bells. (Beat) Shall I blow one up?
(Doré nods. Liana blows up a balloon, first stretching it to loosen it up. It gets bigger. And bigger. Liana examines it. Decides it needs to be a bit bigger and blows some more. Then she ties it off.)
For you.
(Liana hands it to Doré, who takes it hesitantly, almost as though it were alive. She gazes inside it at the tiny bell.)
See the tiny bell inside?
(Doré nods.)
Shake it.
(Doré looks doubtful.)
It won’t bite. Go on.
(Doré shakes the balloon weakly. The tiny bell sounds. Doré smiles for the first time. Liana laughs. Doré shakes it harder, the bell sounds louder.)
Such a cheerful sound!
(Doré shakes it again. Harder. The balloon pops. Both women freeze.)
Never mind. I’ve lots more.
(Doré, with her eyes, searches for the bell that fell out of the balloon. She can’t see it. Then she meets Liana’s eyes briefly. It’s awkward.)
We’ll have some tea then?
(Liana fills the cups, though Doré doesn’t touch hers.)
You’re not an easy woman to find. It took me quite a few weeks of searching. Intense searching, to find you. And a pretty penny.
DORÉ: You paid to find me?
LIANA: I certainly couldn’t do it on my own.
DORÉ: How much?
LIANA: Well.
DORÉ: To find me?
LIANA: It’s just money.
(Doré waits to hear the amount. Intent.)
Two thousand pounds.
(Doré gasps.)
Yes. Two thousand.
DORÉ: I wasn’t hiding.
LIANA: Of course not.
DORÉ: I didn’t know you were looking.
LIANA: It’s worth every penny.
(Liana relaxes.)
I’d like to know something about you. Doré. You don’t mind. (Beat) Whatever you choose to tell me.
(Doré is quiet.)
Anything. I’m sure there’s nothing you can tell me that I won’t find fascinating.
(Liana waits. After a moment Doré speaks. She does not rush her words. Her words flow without typical breaks. At other times her speech is more conventional.)
DORÉ: When I go to the market on the weekends I wear my slippers no one notices they almost look like outdoor shoes and much warmer.
LIANA: Oh. I see.
DORÉ: I’m wearing them now.
LIANA (Looking at Doré’s feet): They look toasty. I wouldn’t have guessed—
DORÉ: These have lasted seventeen years.
LIANA: —if I saw your feet in the market. Saw you at the market.
(Doré is uncertain again. Liana notices the chairs.)
These are beautiful. Vintage 1970s, I believe?
DORÉ: My house is full of the stuff it was new back then modern made to last my father bought the furniture for me in Paris and had it shipped.
LIANA: Your father has good taste.
DORÉ: Yes he did.
(Another silence. But Liana pushes on.)
LIANA: So. What do you enjoy? In your spare time?
DORÉ: I like to do Sudoku at the back of the newspaper those little squares all waiting for me imagine someone thinks it up everyday maybe a computer I don’t know but there they are for me I’ve always been good at numbers I skip the news it’s gossip mostly grubby isn’t it?
(Liana is not really listening but rather eyeing up the surroundings, though it seems she might be also replying to Doré.)
LIANA (Almost to herself): Depressing.
DORÉ: I don’t like paying for it.
LIANA: Gloomy.
DORÉ: TV is worse.
LIANA: Almost sinister, definitely ominous.
DORÉ: Never any good news.
LIANA: One would be hard-pressed to make anything of it.
DORÉ: Right. So I turn straight to the back seems a waste of paper I’ve been thinking of buying one of those books but I’d almost feel guilty like I was indulging myself.
LIANA (To herself): Though I could get decorators in—
(Doré claps her hands together, and this catches Liana’s attention.)
DORÉ: The lottery numbers each week I like to add them up then divide them by the day of the week as fast as I can and then times them by the month I can look at a number any long number and break it down quicker than you can crack an egg do you like eggs?
LIANA: Oh. Yes. I like them scrambled.
DORÉ: I don’t like eggs but I like the sound when they break do you?
LIANA: I’m not sure. Let me think. (Beat) I do seem to remember a satisfying crack.
DORÉ: Yes. A good “crack.”
LIANA: I assume you’ve. Worked all these years?
DORÉ: Still do.
(Silence between them. Liana waits.)
LIANA: Ah. Then please tell me what jobs you’ve held. Hold.
DORÉ: Well really I don’t hold them the jobs hold me or rather they grip me around the neck and begin to squeeze so slow you think it’s sleep coming on but it’s suffocation.
LIANA: I’m sorry.
DORÉ: I’ve a thick neck and good lungs and suffocation you know does have its rewards.
LIANA: It does. It does?
(Doré glances for the lost bell again.)
Your life’s been hard.
DORÉ: My life?
LIANA: Perhaps we could be of help.
DORÉ: We.
LIANA: I mean myself and /
DORÉ: Please. Blow up another balloon?
(Liana blows up another balloon.)
It looks so tiny in all that space. Why only one bell?
(Liana shrugs. Doré shakes the balloon and the bell sounds.)
DORÉ: It’s cruel.
LIANA: It’s a balloon.
DORÉ: It’s a bell a bell in a balloon imagine if we were inside there a giant balloon tiny me tiny you and someone gave us a good shake what sound would we make?
LIANA: Perhaps not like bells.
DORÉ: Perhaps not what a shame I work in other people’s homes perhaps I worked in your home once.
LIANA: No. I’d remember you.
DORÉ: You think so?
LIANA: I’m certain.
DORÉ: It’s hard to remember our faces because we’re mostly turned to the floor do you clean?
LIANA: Oh. In between.
DORÉ: In between.
LIANA: In between the day our. Cleaner comes to our home.
DORÉ: What does she look like?
LIANA: She’s twenty-nine. She’s tall! From Poland. She snorts when she laughs.
DORÉ: Snorts when she laughs?
LIANA: Yes. It’s a funny little sound.
DORÉ: Show me please.
LIANA: I. I don’t know how to snort.
DORÉ: Of course you do.
LIANA: Well. I could try.
DORÉ: Please try.
(Liana tries to snort, but she’s restrained.)
That’s not really a snort.
LIANA: It’s hard to replicate. It’s quite original, the sound our Kasia makes.
DORÉ: Our Kasia.
LIANA: Yes, I mean myself and my /
DORÉ: Let me give it a try.
(Doré makes herself laugh. She begins small, then gets more involved in it. She laughs and laughs, then begins to snort as she laughs. It’s a good snort. Then she is suddenly silent.)
What color are Kasia’s eyes?
(Liana doesn’t know the answer. She looks at her watch.)
LIANA: We were talking about you.
(Liana waits, then lets it go.)
Well, as for myself, I’m a senior account director.
DORÉ (Impressed): Oh. (Beat) What’s that?
LIANA: It’s the senior point of contact for an ad agency’s customers, the liaison between clients and the agency. I manage pitches, make sure the account is running profitably. Usually I handle four to five noncompeting accounts at a time. I make sure everyone and everything is working in unison, that the same message is getting across in all mediums. (Laughs) I’m a bit like the conductor of an orchestra really, only without the harp or violins. Though now and then I /
DORÉ: There’s the bell. Watch out!
(Doré lunges for the tiny bell. Liana is startled and takes a wrong step, twisting the heel off her shoe.)
LIANA: Ow. Damn it.
(She examines her shoe.)
The heel’s come off.
DORÉ (Disappointed): Oh. It’s not the bell. Just a bit of glass.
These stupid old stones.
(Doré gives the stones a swift kick, as though they were a bad dog.)
I’ve been meaning to build a garden wall I should just have them cleared away are you all right?
(Liana puts her shoe back on again. Now she walks with a slight limp.)
LIANA: I don’t much like these shoes anyway.
DORÉ: That’s lucky then.
(Doré gazes at the broken heel.)
I hope you can get it fixed?
LIANA: Leave it. It’s not worth the trouble.
DORÉ: I recommend slippers there’s no heel to lose.
(For the first time Liana holds Doré’s gaze.)
LIANA: He’ll be forty on Friday.
DORÉ (Quickly, simply): I know.
LIANA: Of course you do. Now, Marcus works only a half day on Friday. I was thinking that we could /
DORÉ: Is that his name?
(For the first time Doré sits down.)
Marcus.
LIANA: Marcus, yes.
DORÉ: Jonathan. (Beat) I always thought of him as Jonathan.
LIANA: Well, you’ll want to know a bit about Marcus, of course. Before. About us.
(Doré gazes into her hands.)
Well. Let’s see then. (Beat) He’s handsome! Oh yes he is. The first time I saw Marcus was in Roundhay Park. He was leaning with his back against a tree.
(At the mention of the tree, Doré startles.)
DORÉ: A tree?
LIANA: Yes. A tall tree with a gigantic trunk. His eyes were closed. My first thought was, “He’s ill.” My second thought was, “Perhaps he’s mad.” He looked so. Peaceful. As though the trunk were holding him up. As though he were a part of it. I watched him for a while. I don’t know for how long. His quiet made me feel quiet, too. Then he suddenly opened his eyes and looked straight into mine. I had to catch my breath for it felt as though he’d reached down inside me and squeezed the air from my lungs. Then we both laughed. Two strangers laughing together before we even spoke. It all seemed so /
DORÉ: What kind of tree was it?
LIANA: What?
DORÉ: That he was leaning against. What kind of tree?
LIANA: I don’t know.
DORÉ: It must have been a maple.
LIANA: It could have been. Any tree, I suppose.
DORÉ: A maple what color are his eyes?
LIANA: Green. Dark green. We’ve been married for twenty-one years.
(Doré picks up the broken heel and holds it out to Liana.)
DORÉ: You should take this just in case I’m sorry.
LIANA: Please, just throw it away. No worries.
(At some point as they speak, Doré will, almost unconsciously, put the broken heel in her pocket.)
Marcus is assistant head of Skipton Girls’ High School. A bit of a commute for him from Leeds, but he relishes the work, says it keeps him young. The girls adore him. Some of them have taken to calling him The Knight because he once arrived for his nine A.M. on the Middle Ages dressed in full armor. He knows how to spark even the most taciturn of students.
(Doré doesn’t respond. Silence between them.)
Marcus’s adoptive parents are now both dead. They were an older couple when they adopted.
DORÉ: He misses them?
LIANA: They were very good to him.
DORÉ: I don’t know if I can.
LIANA: Of course you can.
DORÉ (Shaking her head): So many years.
LIANA: It’s just time.
(Doré looks straight at Liana, wondering.)
DORÉ: He doesn’t suspect anything?
LIANA: Has no idea. It will be his birthday gift. (Beat) Actually, I’ve thought about doing this for years but I always had a hunch that his fortieth would be just the right year. For the two of you. To meet.
DORÉ: He won’t agree.
LIANA: I’ll say it’s a surprise. I’ll tell him that he must come to this address at four P.M. on Friday. And not to be a minute late. He’ll do it. He’ll think it’s just a surprise party of friends from work. And then you and I will be here to welcome him. I can’t wait to see his face. I expect he’ll jump out of his shoes.
DORÉ: He’ll be upset.
LIANA: But that will only be the first stage and it will pass. I have a colleague at work, Emma, who met her biological father for the first time when she was forty-five. It was a shock, even though she set it up. But she said that in the end it was a gift, that her tiny, frightened, child-within was able to /
DORÉ: She was pregnant at the time?
LIANA: What? No, Emma was—Oh! No, no, I mean “child-within” as a way of speaking about the experiences we’ve had as children, that we carry those same experiences inside us, as one would a child.
DORÉ: Carrying a child is not the same as carrying an experience.
LIANA: Of course not. But what I mean to say is that Emma said that after meeting her father, she was finally able to grow up and embrace the world. That she felt . . . freed and able to live life more fully. (Beat) I want to give that to my husband. I love him very much.
(Doré thinks some moments. She nods. It seems she’s going to say “yes.”)
DORÉ: No.
LIANA: Please don’t say that.
DORÉ: It’s not a good idea.
LIANA: But it is. It will be, for both of you, after the initial . . . There will be tears, yes. Emotional turbulence, anger even, followed by various stages of grief and loss, but then the release. Catharsis. Shocking but deeply satisfying, painful but terribly necessary. But most of all, joy. Joy for Marcus. And joy for you.
(Liana uses her last card.)
And then perhaps one day soon. You can meet. Your granddaughter.
(Doré makes a small sound, as though to catch her breath.)
Her name is Dominique.
(Doré turns her head away, as though burned. Liana continues carefully.)
We call her Dom. She’s just finished university, at Warwick, and now she’s in Chicago, at the Art Institute. Though she lives in a frightening place called Little Village. On . . . South Marshall Boulevard.
(Doré moves away from Liana, to get some air.)
I’ve told her to get a better flat, that we’ll help with the rent. You can’t be too safe in Chicago. But she’s an independent one, Dom is. She loves it there, says she’s never been so cold in her life. (Beat) It’s perfectly normal that you’re apprehensive. But I promise you. Doré.
(At the sound of her name, Doré looks at Liana.)
After all these years, to finally confront, to acknowledge and embrace /
(Doré looks away and her eyes fall on the lost bell.)
DORÉ: There’s the bell!
(She picks it up.)
Oh. It’s been stepped on flattened.
(Doré tries to make the bell ring but it’s silent.)
LIANA: It’s just junk.
(Doré tries again.)
DORÉ: It made a lovely sound. (Beat) Is my. Son. Has he . . . ?
(Doré falters.)
LIANA: Ask me anything.
DORÉ: Has he been faithful to you?
LIANA: Christ. (Laughs) What a question. Something so. Intimate. It’s rude, really.
(Doré just waits.)
Yes. He has.
DORÉ (Fact): You’re lying.
LIANA: Of course I’m lying. It’s none of my business. Your business.
DORÉ: I’m sorry.
LIANA: In the beginning there were a few slips.
DORÉ: Slips.
LIANA: That’s what we call them. Marcus and I. We were walking along together in our marriage, side by side, and we slipped.
DORÉ: Both of you at the same time? Why was it so icy?
LIANA: We weren’t taking the time to be friends, to confide in one another. But there have been no more slips since our early years. Marriages are imploding all around us but we’re still together. Faithfully and happily. We count ourselves extremely lucky.
DORÉ: Did you have a slip?
LIANA: Once.
DORÉ: For how long?
LIANA: Not long. And I confessed.
DORÉ: Was he upset?
LIANA: He wept like a child for weeks. I have to say I had little patience for it. He’d had a handful of slips and I never wallowed. I’d shout, have a good cry, break something. Then I’d have a shower and be done with it. You see, I’ve never doubted Marcus’s love for me. I think he just needed to disappear on occasion.
DORÉ: Slip.
LIANA: Yes, until he found his footing. We all make mistakes.
DORÉ: Yes we do. You’re very beautiful.
LIANA: Thank you. Do you have someone special?
DORÉ: Oh no. No . . .
LIANA: You never married?
DORÉ: For a few years but I don’t remember them he was bald I remember that I don’t recall his voice or anything he ever said to me where do they go all those words filling the air filling a room so many of them ’til there’s no more space for either of you any longer you get crowded out. (Beat) I’ll do it. For his birthday.
LIANA: Yes! Thank you, Doré. Thank you.
DORÉ: But on one condition.
LIANA: Anything.
DORÉ: I’d like for you not to be here.
LIANA: Oh.
DORÉ: Just not this very first time you understand.
LIANA: I could wait outside, then. Or upstairs. You could call me when you’re /
DORÉ: Just him. No one else.
LIANA: Well.
DORÉ: It’s not personal you understand.
LIANA: I think I do. Yes. This first meeting will naturally be. Unexpected. Perhaps even a shock. A real challenge for the both of you. (Beat) All right. As you wish. And I should be going. Four P.M. then? Friday.
DORÉ: Yes.
LIANA: Even if at first it’s distressing, what follows will be a celebration. Try and enjoy the occasion. I’ll have ginger cake sent over as well. He loves ginger.
(Liana gathers up her things to leave.)
So I’ll leave the balloons. There’s enough here. Will you have a problem inflating them?
(Doré shakes her head.)
Excellent. (Beat) One day you’ll thank me for. Arranging this reunion.
DORÉ (Looks up at Liana): Orchestrating?
LIANA: Exactly. (Beat) You don’t have to be without your son any longer.
(Doré is quiet. Liana nods, confident, and begins to leave.)
DORÉ: Liana.
(The women meet each other’s eyes. Liana is pleased to hear her name used.)
LIANA: Yes, Doré?
DORÉ: I’ve never been without my son.