Six years later.
Lights up on a small bare room off the side of a church chapel. There is a plain rough-wood coffin. Doré is standing, calmly looking at the coffin. Strangely, Doré looks more youthful, even taller. She is elegant, fashionably though subtly dressed in black. And black becomes her. Doré lets her hand rest lightly on the coffin. She circles it, letting her hand run down its length. She winces when she gets a splinter. Doré tries to squeeze it out, then sucks on her finger to try and draw the splinter out. She gives up and just stares at the coffin again. Liana enters, but stays near the edge. She watches Doré’s back, which is to her. Liana looks to have aged beyond her years and has a slight limp. Her hair is tied back from her face. She is not dressed in black. Though her clothes are worn, they still retain a sense of flair. Liana carries an old leather suitcase. Doré senses someone enter. At first she does not turn around.
DORÉ: Hello Liana.
(A long pause. Liana sets down the suitcase. She glances at the coffin. She doesn’t want to give it attention but she can’t help the glancing.)
Not much of a crowd, was it? Six in total, if you count the priest. And I do.
LIANA: What happened?
(Doré turns around. She looks Liana in the eye. Doré’s shyness is gone, replaced by a calm steadfastness. Most of the time, Doré no longer speaks in unbroken sentences.)
DORÉ: He died.
LIANA: Cancer?
DORÉ: How are you?
LIANA (Hopeful): Testicular? Prostate?
(Doré doesn’t reply. Liana can’t help approaching the coffin. Liana reaches to touch the wood, but doesn’t. She withdraws her hand as though burned.)
DORÉ: Not much more than a crate, is it? Rough. Simple.
LIANA: Cheap.
DORÉ: It’s as he wished.
LIANA: He wanted to be cremated.
DORÉ: It’s a woodland burial for him now. Tomorrow we’ll put him in the ground. There are some lovely woods a few miles from here, with a wide range of wildflowers. Sorrel, bluebells. Squill. We used to walk there together on Satur /
LIANA: Trees.
DORÉ: Sorry?
LIANA: To be close to the trees.
DORÉ: Oh. Well. Neither of us ever thought much about trees again after we’d— Your feet are wet.
LIANA (Looking at her feet): I stood outside during the service.
DORÉ: In the rain? (Beat) You’ve gone grey.
(Liana touches her hair briefly.)
Once quite beautiful. Elegant too. We were sorry to hear you lost your job.
LIANA: That was a good while ago.
DORÉ: You were fired.
LIANA: Wrong. I quit. I didn’t give a damn what my insufferable colleagues thought but all that excited whispering trying to pass itself off as silent indifference killed my creative urge. (Beat) I never told anyone but news travels quick. Stink even quicker. My daughter discovered it from the internet, on some obscure Chicago social network site for young artists.
DORÉ: Where do you live now?
LIANA: Live?
DORÉ: Where do you sleep?
LIANA: Sleep I find a waste of time, but in small doses, I submit.
DORÉ: I haven’t slept properly for years. With Marcus in the /
LIANA: Marcus?
DORÉ: Yes.
LIANA: But he’s Jonathan to you.
DORÉ: He was, yes, but after a while he preferred Marcus again. But when I was angry with him I’d still call him Jonathan!
LIANA: You were telling me about trees.
DORÉ: I was telling you about sleep. How he could sleep! Not a care in the world. He had this funny sound
(Liana looks away.)
when he slept. Like a—
LIANA: —whistle.
DORÉ: Perhaps more like a tune. From his chest.
LIANA: It started after he got pneumonia when he was twenty-seven.
DORÉ: He said it was from smoking.
LIANA: He never smoked.
DORÉ: On holidays we’d share a cigarette or two. Just for the taste. (Beat) Well, that little tune from his chest—as though it were stuck on one note. Precious. I couldn’t help but stay awake to listen to it. He didn’t know I often watched him sleep.
LIANA: He was fired from his teaching job.
DORÉ: Not exactly. He quit before they could fire him.
LIANA: He loved that job. He said his students renewed him, gave him conviction.
DORÉ: Oh he hated those girls. Called them his “little bitches.” He set up his own business: tutorials online, prep for university, that sort of thing. Students from all over the world. He earned more than he did at the high school and he could do the work from home. He asked me to give up my cleaning job, that way we could be at home togeth /
LIANA: So you didn’t come home from work anymore. He didn’t greet you at the door.
DORÉ: There was no need; I was already there. (Beat) I saw Dominique at the service.
LIANA: She’s hard to miss.
DORÉ: She looks like you. Once did.
LIANA: We’ve spent the morning at the Henry Moore Institute. She’s flying back to Chicago tonight. Lots of new work to make for a show in the spring, March.
DORÉ: Got her foot on the wheel!
LIANA: It’s a series, in bright colors, of old, brick chimneys.
DORÉ: I’ve always loved old chimneys.
LIANA: Chimneys in ruins, broken off midway up, collapsed on their roofs. (Beat) She’s beginning to get some notice. She’ll make her mark. (Glancing at the coffin again) Was it suicide?
DORÉ: What does your daughter think of her mum living in a bedsit? Surviving on benefits?
LIANA: These days, unless you’re eating rabbits off the road or can demonstrate, right there in the office, that you make a hot cuppa every morning with small, measured spoons of your cat’s excrement, you won’t get any benefits. I did try, though. Then I got a fork stuck in my leg.
DORÉ: How on earth did that happen?
LIANA: I gripped it like a knife and I stuck it in.
DORÉ: On purpose?
LIANA: It’s hard to do if it’s not on purpose.
DORÉ: But why?
LIANA: Why do you suppose?
DORÉ: Because you were. Anguished?
LIANA: Anguished. Your vocabulary has certainly improved. Well, that’s what comes from living with a teacher for six years. But anguish is elegant and for elegance one uses a knife; deep and smooth. However, when your insides have rearranged themselves and are now hanging on your outside, I recommend a fork. There’s no pretense with a fork. (Beat) A more practical reason was to apply for sympathy.
DORÉ: Did you get it?
LIANA: No. Just a damnable infection and a limp.
DORÉ: I’m sorr /
LIANA: I knew it would happen: suicide. To either of you, or both. In the first couple of years, I would see you hanging by the neck from that broken tree in your yard, that he would find you there, your tongue thick and gray, your legs dripping with shit from your convulsions. I like that detail. Then I would imagine him slitting his wrists, sinking to the bedroom floor. Your face when you find him there. I imagined the day, the time, what socks he’d be wearing. The silver clips in your hair. Hours of it. It was my job and I excelled. It was far more exciting than advertising. Arousing even. Then one day my head got bored with the same old routine and began to taunt me. The blood would turn to orange; it wouldn’t stay red. Or the blade he’d use to cut his wrists would turn to wool. (Beat) Tell me how he killed himself.
DORÉ: You came here alone. Is there no one special in your life?
(Liana just looks away.)
You’re not old yet, Liana. If you made a little effort, if you spruced, you might surely have a date now and then?
LIANA: I don’t like dates. But give me a bag of apricots and they’ll be down the hatch in two.
DORÉ: My dear, I meant /
LIANA (Flatly): I know what you meant and stay the fuck out of my life.
(Doré glances at the suitcase.)
DORÉ: You’re going away?
LIANA: Yes. In a manner: I’m moving house.
DORÉ: Ah. Adventure. I’ve lived in my flat for forty-one years. Perhaps I should have wanted for something else, somewhere else but I never did. I know every groan and squeak of the stairs, the soft click of the cupboards, the snap of each light switch. With the flat so quiet again, their chatterings have come back to me like comfortable old friends.
LIANA: Do you like to travel?
DORÉ: I like to be in my home. I’ve enough good memories now.
LIANA: I’m going to give you something.
DORÉ: Oh. There’s no need.
LIANA: Yes there is.
DORÉ: Well. What are you going to give me?
LIANA: Twenty-four hours.
DORÉ: Twenty-four hours? What for?
LIANA: To get out of my flat.
DORÉ: Your flat?
LIANA: No. I’ll give you until tomorrow morning. Say nine A.M.?
(Doré laughs.)
Marcus left your home to me.
DORÉ: What?
LIANA: I too was surprised but I’ve been notified.
DORÉ: That’s not possible.
LIANA: You put the flat in his name.
DORÉ: When I stopped working, yes, naturally I couldn’t pay the mortgage any longer . . .
LIANA: And naturally he expected you to die first so the house you gave to him he left, in his will, to Dom and me. Do you think it was his way of telling Dominique he was sorry?
DORÉ: Jonathan was never sorry.
LIANA: Let’s say that by seven A.M. you’ve skedaddled from the flat. If not, I will hire a couple of tired, angry, sour-smelling men with big idle hands, from my building, for just a few bottles of cheap cider, and they will come over and toss you out. You’ll have to start work again. Without skills, you’ll soon be back to sticking your face in some sloppy teenager’s toilet bowl. I’m looking forward to lighting a fire on cold nights.
DORÉ: We filled the fireplace with bricks.
LIANA: Is the flat still crammed with that ’70s junk?
DORÉ: My father sang to me every day when I was a child, old French nursery rhymes. I was nineteen when he settled me into the flat and set up my mortgage for me. Then he and my mother moved South, as far away as they could get without crossing the water /
LIANA: I’m going to ask these same men to collect every stick of furniture you leave behind; they can sell it on or dump it in a skip. Then I’m going to repaint the rooms, myself. All the crockery out too. Every cup and mug and spoon your mouth touched. His touched. Out. I’ll start again. You’ll have to start again.
DORÉ: There’s no such thing.
LIANA: It’s cold and brutal to be without a roof. Enjoy.
DORÉ: I loved Marcus completely. You can’t touch that.
LIANA: Completely. That’s a tall order. He once spoke of needing that. I admit I don’t know what it means; to love someone completely. I once cared for Marcus as well. And I say “cared,” because care is the wayward cousin of love, dogged, in need of redecorating, but a little less shrill around the edges. Did I care for him completely? No. Because I never cared for his feet.
(Liana gives a small shiver. Silence some moments.)
DORÉ: Neither did I.
LIANA: He gave his feet too much attention.
DORÉ: Yes he did, as though they were . . . pets. (Beat) We shouldn’t talk like this.
LIANA: And why not? To love someone absolutely is a disrespect. Always hold something back: a little piece of aversion keeps one inquisitive, cognizant.
DORÉ: I didn’t have an aversion to his feet. I just couldn’t feel friendly towards them. They were too clean.
LIANA: Clean the way feet shouldn’t be, and pink and moist.
DORÉ: The nails trimmed straight across, no curve!
LIANA: And his particularity with socks!
DORÉ: No synthetics.
LIANA AND DORÉ: All cotton only.
DORÉ: So his feet could breathe.
LIANA: Permissible was a mix of cashmere and cotton in winter. Preferably organic material.
DORÉ: And socks turned inside out in the wash so they’d be perfectly clean.
LIANA: To love one’s own feet with such diligence, such zeal.
DORÉ: It’s suspect.
LIANA: Always glancing down to make sure they were still there—
DORÉ: As though they were two holy relics. Sometimes it seemed they actually glowed in the dark!
(The two women burst out laughing together for some moments, almost giggling, forgetting themselves. Then suddenly Liana’s hands are tight around Doré’s throat. Doré does not resist, just looks Liana in the eye.)
I didn’t fancy his favorite oldie either. You must know his favorite song?
(Doré begins to sing “Sittin’ On the Dock of the Bay.” She does the whistle as well. Liana grips tighter, but slowly, and Doré begins to have trouble singing the song. Doré does not try to stop Liana. The choking goes on for some time and the song is slowly choked out of Doré, until only a few small noises, like ugly notes, escape her. Doré begins to sink to her knees. At the end, Doré naturally fights for her life. Then Doré slumps, seemingly unconscious, on the floor and Liana releases her and steps away. She just stares at Doré’s crumpled body for some moments. Then she glances around her: What has she done?)
LIANA: Doré.
(Liana prods Doré’s body with her shoe. No response.)
Doré? (Beat) Fucking hell, Liana.
(Liana grabs her suitcase to leave. Doré does not move or open her eyes when she speaks.)
DORÉ: Am I. Dead?
(Liana starts.)
LIANA: My God. What have I done to be so, so—
DORÉ: I think I’m all right.
LIANA: —disappointed at every turn.
(Doré opens her eyes, though still not moving a muscle.)
DORÉ: You tried to kill me.
(Liana answers as though she were saying: “Of course I didn’t.”)
LIANA: Of course I did. (Beat) Get off the floor.
DORÉ: I like it down here. It’s warm.
(Dore wipes some tears from her eyes, though we haven’t seen her cry.)
LIANA: Someone will come. You’ll embarrass both of us. Get up.
DORÉ: Oh, oh. That’s why it felt so warm. I’ve pissed myself.
(Liana does not move to help her. Doré slowly gets to her feet, and not easily. Liana makes a sound of disgust.)
LIANA: I cannot bear you.
DORÉ: Well I was being strangled after all. I do hope you got that out of your system.
(Doré finds some tissues in her pocket and dries the floor.)
Did you know that Marcus wrote to his daughter for years?
(Liana moves further away from the small puddle on the floor.)
LIANA: She told me.
DORÉ: Did she read the letters?
LIANA: She would call me from Chicago each time she got one and ask me to stay on the phone while she ground it in the garbage disposal.
DORÉ: He longed for Dominique. Like there was no tomorrow.
LIANA: And now there isn’t, for him.
DORÉ: I approached Dom after the /
LIANA: Dominique. Only family says “Dom.”
DORÉ: I said to her, “He always hoped to see you again.” She smiled at me. Just a little quick smile but it was something.
(Liana nods, but she doesn’t believe her. Doré feels uncomfortable in her wet skirt.)
Ugh. Do you have an extra tissue so I can dry myself?
(As Liana says the following, she almost unconsciously takes the cotton scarf from around her neck and gives it to Doré.)
LIANA: No. And if I did I wouldn’t give it to you.
(Doré takes the scarf and, quickly and modestly as she can, wipes herself dry, then finishes up the floor.)
DORÉ: I haven’t pissed myself in years, always had a bladder tight as a jar. (Beat) I’ll be out of the flat in three days. Give me that much time, please. There’s a lot to pack up.
(Doré doesn’t know what to do with the scarf after she’s used it.)
LIANA: Forty-eight hours and no more.
DORÉ: Thank you.
(Finally Doré drapes the scarf on the end of the coffin.)
I’ll just leave it there to dry.
(Doré moves to leave.)
LIANA: Wait. A minute. I—
(Liana opens her suitcase. Inside are a few pieces of clothing, books, photos. She frantically searches and then finds some underwear.)
You should change. Before you go.
(Doré is unsure. Liana dangles the underwear from her finger. A moment of silence.)
DORÉ: Those are not very attractive.
LIANA: They’re clean.
(Doré takes the panties and quickly but discreetly changes into the clean ones behind the coffin.)
DORÉ: He won’t mind my changing here. He’d just laugh.
LIANA: I remember his voice, and the sound of him moving in the next room. But not his laugh.
DORÉ: It was a very low laugh, sort of gutty.
LIANA: You mean “guttural.”
(Doré comes out from behind the coffin.)
DORÉ: Yes, that’s what I mean. A bit like . . .
(Doré tries Marcus’s laugh. She doesn’t do a very good job.)
LIANA: When I first met you, you tried a snort. It wasn’t a very good snort either. And that is not Marcus’s laugh.
DORÉ: This is the first time I’ve tried it.
(Doré tries to make Marcus’s laugh again. And fails again. Liana shakes her head no. Then Doré adjusts her body, her legs, her arms, taking her time, to make herself into Marcus’s body. This time the laugh is Marcus’s. She laughs and laughs Marcus’s laugh. Liana does not join in. Doré quits.)
He missed you, Liana.
LIANA: Don’t. Don’t you dare.
(For the first time here we see Liana’s pent-up anguish.)
Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up!
(Silence. The women just look at one another. Even Liana is surprised by her own outburst. Then Liana speaks calmly, directly:)
How do you know he missed me?
DORÉ: He said, “I miss her.”
LIANA: You lying bitch. You scum! (Beat) How do you know he meant me? He could have meant Dom. Did he say my name?
DORÉ: No. But the only her to him, to us, was you. He said
LIANA: “I miss her?”
DORÉ: And I said: “If you ever say that again . . . ” And I gave him a look.
LIANA: And he never said it again?
DORÉ: Once was enough. We both knew that.
LIANA: So you weren’t always happy together.
DORÉ: Happy. Does loving Dominique make you happy?
(Liana thinks about the question a moment.)
LIANA: Every minute, especially when it’s going well, I’m terrified for her.
DORÉ: So you see.
LIANA: No I don’t.
DORÉ: We were so finely etched he and I so finely carved that’s the word he used from the same stone.
LIANA: Carved.
DORÉ: From a single block and when we first came together we were one thing again whole but the desire it was so bright /
LIANA: Please, don’t.
DORÉ: We had to close our eyes when we made love /
LIANA: Stop. Not that, no.
DORÉ: But, Liana, I want you to know. With that kind of heat, well, it began to corrode us that’s the word Marcus used corrode my arm that was his arm became mine again his thigh that was my thigh became his again our shapes began to reappear, untangling, and our single block became two bodies again we lost the strength of our grappling and could only lay side by side.
(Liana takes this in.)
LIANA: So in a nutshell, as time passed he no longer wanted to fuck you? Excellent. Blue-chip. And how did that feel?
DORÉ: I was fifteen when he was pulled from my arms.
LIANA: I was forty-three.
DORÉ: It’s not the same thing. I was a child. Just a girl when I got pregna /
LIANA: Of course. Marvelous. Just let it all out why don’t you? Don’t tell me: a mean old uncle with a mouth full of pork pie and brandy, groped you. But wait. Maybe it was your father. Of course. Therefore the furniture; you were abused by your dear old daddio.
(Doré just stares at Liana, then shakes her head no.)
To be perfectly honest, Doré, I don’t care if Santa Claus gave you a brand new pink teddy with one hand while he fingered you to the tune of “Jingle Bells” with the other. Before, of course, giving you a good shagging inside a fake igloo, surrounded by plastic reindeer.
DORÉ (Facts): Marcus’s father was an exquisite boy of seventeen. His family were travelers and they were passing through town. I kissed him first. We made love with such tenderness I thought it was a dream. The next day his family moved on, and he was gone. (Beat) My mother and father never forgave me for giving myself to a traveler. (Beat) Most of my life it seemed anyone could look right through me. Transparent, the only mark I could make was a finger ’cross a frosty window pane.
LIANA: What a charming way to put it.
DORÉ: Rain fell through me not on me.
LIANA: Don’t forget to mention the snow.
DORÉ: When my name was called it hardly made a sound but you, look at you Liana. You were like a stallion when I first met you sparks at your heels as you walked always moving orchestrating as you called it, bursting with the world you carried with you /
LIANA: That’s right, and you were just a body washed up on shore until Marcus gave you the kiss of life.
DORÉ: I too believed his love made me formidable. But then came the disappointment.
LIANA: So you got what you wanted and you’re still an ungrateful whore.
DORÉ: Look at you. I who couldn’t do a thing with my life but slump down inside it. You’ve been torn apart you’ve been pulled inside out like an old gray sock and then folded the wrong way who did this? Who did this? Not Marcus. I did this to you. I changed you. Without even touching the pigments I created a work of art /
LIANA: You’ve been practicing that little ditty for years, haven’t you?
(Doré is silent. She looks away. A little of her old shyness returns.)
DORÉ: A few days before he died he came to my bed again /
LIANA: Christ.
DORÉ: We no longer slept in the same room. It had been almost two years. That night /
LIANA: I no longer have any curiosity about these details. I’ve made peace with the fact—
DORÉ: But I want to tell you.
LIANA: —that each of us is born with the smear of our mother’s cunt across our faces and we carry it with us all our lives. A very, very few of us go back for more, that’s all.
DORÉ (Shouts for the first time): Shut up, Liana. For God’s sake shut up and listen that’s the one thing you’ve never learned how to do or get the hell out. You came here this is my world!
(Liana is taken aback by Doré’s outburst and is silenced. Doré continues, composed again.)
We no longer slept in the same room. It had been almost two years. That night we lay together our bodies touching but not using our hands. There was no arousal. Our skin was between us like cool water. He lay his head on my chest and for the first time he was truly my son again. And I his mother. We lay like that all night, our skin circulating back and forth between us like liquid. Three days later he was dead. His death was not a suicide. He died of an aneurysm.
LIANA: An aneurysm?!
DORÉ: Yes.
LIANA: No.
DORÉ: Yes.
LIANA: You mean he didn’t even know he died?
DORÉ: That quick.
LIANA: He didn’t suffer?
DORÉ: Not a minute.
LIANA: He didn’t call out?
DORÉ: Not a sound. He was buttering a crumpet, then he collapsed.
LIANA (Fact): A crumpet.
DORÉ: One could not ask for a more gentle way to go.
LIANA: The bastard.
(A silence.)
DORÉ: The way things happened between Marcus and I was not the way it was supposed to happen but how they ended up was where we had to be. I don’t think we could have got there any other way. What I’m trying to say, Liana, is: I am sor /
LIANA: No. This is all . . . It just can’t be that . . . I don’t believe you . . .
(Liana stares at the coffin.)
Anyone. There could be anyone in that coffin. You could be making this all up.
DORÉ: What? (Beat) Oh. No, Liana. Marcus is dead.
LIANA: Is he? Is he truly dead and gone? I think I should have a look, just to be sure.
DORÉ: The viewing was a few hours ago. The lid’s been sealed.
LIANA: Then I’ll unseal it.
(Liana approaches the coffin. She reaches to unlatch the upper part of the box. It’s sealed. Liana takes off her shoe. She uses it to bash open the hinges. Liana’s hands are shaking. We see now that Liana is suddenly so afraid that she’s having trouble breathing. She lifts the lid an inch, then sets it back down again: she can’t do it. She moves away from the coffin. She doesn’t cry but rather moans, as though in physical pain, sick. Like a child she crouches into herself. Doré just watches her for some time, then:)
DORÉ: Would you like me to open the coffin for you?
(Liana shakes her head no.)
Yes. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll open it up for you so you can see that /
LIANA: No. No! Don’t open it! Don’t. Please. It’s empty. Don’t you see? It will be empty!
DORÉ: But it’s not empty /
(Liana now releases the anger and sorrow she’s been holding back.)
LIANA: Even though he’s lying in there it will be empty and I still need to say “it was him” “it was you” “it was him” who thrashed my life to pieces. But it wasn’t him.
(Liana and Doré seem to prompt each other’s words, even if reluctantly.)
DORÉ: It was never just him.
LIANA: I had the reins, in my hands. I had the. Faith in my capacity to forge my life, but then in a minute, a flash, I veered off the road. Nothing—nothing was ever really mine to do as I liked—
DORÉ: And the worst of it is—
LIANA: —the worst of it is I was sure I’d been emptied out, that I’d become a hole in the wall.
(Liana recovers herself now.)
But for quite some time now, after all that snot and sorrow, I no longer mind so much. That he left. I no longer—
DORÉ: —mind so terribly much that they took him all those years ago. I should still mind but I was dead tired of it.
LIANA: Dead tired of losing someone who was everything.
DORÉ: Only to find that even a child is not enough when that child returns.
LIANA: Only to realize that no one is everything, not even him. And the facts are that for months now—
DORÉ: —years even—
LIANA: —in the mornings when I wake, I no longer feel discarded. I no longer think of him first thing, I no longer think of. You.
DORÉ (Agreeing): No.
LIANA: I think instead of the little things, the silly things, like the sheer, simple delight of starting my day with the choice of slathering my toast with apple spread or thick-cut marmalade.
DORÉ: Yes. The pleasure I feel when the nuthatch comes to my window to eat the seeds I’ve tossed on the sill, or when I sweep the leaves from my porch, all that crackle.
LIANA: Yes.
(Doré makes a move toward Liana. Liana shrinks, warning.)
If you touch me. If you touch. Stay away. Stay the fuck away!
(Doré hesitates. Then slowly she crouches down. At first we’re not sure if Doré is collapsing or lowering herself. Then we see it’s purposeful: Doré gets to her hands and knees. But it’s not low enough. Doré lays down on her stomach. Liana watches her, curious and frightened. Then, slowly, very slowly, Doré begins to crawl toward Liana, intentionally, purposefully. In some wordless manner Doré is apologizing to Liana, acknowledging her pain. This crawling toward Liana is ugly, pathetic, and at moments even comical—and yet strangely moving. When Doré is close enough to touch Liana, she puts out her hand and touches Liana’s hair, cheek, hesitantly, lightly. And Liana lets herself be touched. After a moment, Doré removes her hand and sits up. The two women remain seated in silence for some moments. Then Liana is suddenly cold and shivers. She buttons up her coat.)
DORÉ: You’re cold.
LIANA: So cold I’m quite sure I’ll never warm up again.
DORÉ: You need a hot cup of soup. Steaming. And a lie-down. (Beat) I’ve got a spare room.
(Liana lets out a bark of laughter. Then she’s quiet.)
LIANA: When can you, reasonably, be out of the flat?
DORÉ: Whenever you want me to.
(Liana thinks about this.)
LIANA: Did Dom really give you a smile?
DORÉ: Just a little one. Then she spat at my feet.
LIANA: My Dom knows how to spit.
DORÉ: I thought, “Well, she’s noticed me; it’s a start.” (Beat) My flat’s just up the road. A ten-minute walk.
(Liana considers some moments.)
LIANA: The facts are: I don’t like crumpets. I never have . . . If you try and get into bed with me.
DORÉ: Don’t be silly. You’re not my type.
(Liana laughs easily for the first time.)
Do you hear that? Tiny me and tiny you. And we’ve just been given a good shake.
(Liana takes up her suitcase.)
LIANA: You and I were never bells.
DORÉ: Aren’t we lucky then: our sounds are ugly. But we’re alive.
LIANA (Nods): Yes. That we are.
(Liana goes to stand in the corner now, giving Doré privacy. Doré looks at the coffin. She straightens the scarf, but leaves it where it is. Then she lightly touches the coffin with one hand.)
DORÉ: Well, my son. Good-bye. We’ll see you in the trees.
(The two women move to leave the room. Blackout.)
END OF PLAY