WHEN GOD WANTED A SON

For Nuria Espert dear friend, great actress, rising metteuse-en-scene du monde, in whose house by the sea I finished this play.

Characters

MARTHA
aged fifty-two

JOSHUA
aged fifty-five, her estranged husband

CONNIE
aged twenty-seven, their daughter

Time: the present

When God Wanted a Son, completed in October 1986, received its first airing as a reading to raise funds for the Jackson’s Lane Community Theatre on 19 February 1989. The actors were

MARTHA, Elizabeth Spriggs

JOSHUA, John Savident

CONNIE, Nichola McAuliffe

It was narrated and directed by the author.

World premiere 6th February to 9 March 1997 at The New End Theatre, Hampstead, London, with

CONNIE, Julie Clare

MARTHA, Jacqueline Pearce

JOSHUA, Lawrence Weber

Director Spencer Butler

Designer Andy Wilson

	Act One
	SCENE 1
	A rough cabaret club.
	CONNIE, ‘apprentice’ comedienne, stands before her audience fearing the worst. Her material seems to amuse only her. Prominently hanging round her neck is a gold chain from which hangs a Star of David. Her ‘audience’ is not us but a gathering slightly offstage.
CONNIE	Poland, 1875. Moshe Ben Levy. The richest Jew in his village. Comes the Cossack pogroms. Moshe’s store – no chance. Burned to the ground. Stock looted, son murdered, daughter abducted, wife dead from a broken heart. Poor Moshe Ben Levy. Down to his last crust of bread, his last pat of butter, the last leaves of tea, the sugar gone. You couldn’t get lower than Moshe was in that year of 1875, in the heart of Poland, the heart of winter, heart’ broken and cold. Surely this was the end.
	He places the last of his logs on the fire, fills the kettle for the last leaves of tea, toasts his last crust of bread, butters it with the last pat of butter – then, as though God hasn’t punished him enough for sins he can’t remember committing – the last of his calamities.
	The water boils. He reaches for the kettle. He’s shivering from the cold. He’s clumsy. Brushes against the last piece of toast buttered with the last pat of butter – plop! To the floor! The filthy floor!
	Now, everyone knows that toast falls butter side down. Always. Without fail. But not this day. This day – a miracle! Moshe’s toast, which should have fallen butter side down, falls butter side up!
	Is this an omen? A sign that his luck is about to change? He rushes off to the Rabbi.
	‘Rabbi, Rabbi. You know me, Moshe Ben Levy, once rich now poor, my son murdered, my daughter abducted, my wife dead from broken heart. But, Rabbi, this morning, this morning I knocked my toast to the floor and it landed butter side up! A miracle! Everyone knows that toast falls butter side down, always, without fail. Tell me, is it an omen? Is my luck about to change?’
	The Rabbi thinks and thinks and says: ‘I have not wisdom enough to interpret this sign alone. I must confer with the other Rabbis. Return tomorrow morning. You will have our answer.’
	Moshe falls asleep only for one hour before the sun rises. All night his imagination is on fire with visions of a new life. Without washing or changing his shirt, pausing only to gabble his morning prayers, Moshe Ben Levy hurries to the Rabbi’s house. The Rabbi emerges tired from a room full of tired Rabbis, grey and numb with the meaning of life.
	‘Rabbi, Rabbi,’ cries the eager, demented Moshe. ‘Tell me, the miracle, what does it mean? My toast landed butter side up – is it an omen? Is my luck about to change?’
	His language is Yiddish, of course.
	The Rabbi replies. Also in Yiddish of course. ‘We have stayed awake all night. Seven of us. The wisest in the district. We have prayed, we have argued, we have referred to the holy books. One of us even dipped into the Cabbala to search for the meaning of your toast which landed butter side up. And we have concluded – (despair and sadness) – you must have buttered your toast on the wrong side.’
	CONNIE cups her mouth and yells as though she were one of the audience.
	(Yelling to right.) Gerroff! Women shouldn’t tell jokes! You’ve never told a good joke and you never will tell a good joke! (No longer audience.) Thank you, thank you. I thought you’d like that one.
	She smiles ingratiatingly, a smile of gratitude which turns into contempt.
	SCENE 2
	The ‘office’ of MARTHA.
	A room in her house. She speculates in stocks and shares. On the wall are three huge sheets. On each sheet is a graph. They are graphs of the daily movements in value of the stocks of three different public companies. They are named: CENTRAL CEMENT PLC, VIENNESE RESTAURANTS PLC, NATIONAL GARDENS PLC.
	MARTHA is scanning the pages of the Financial Times. Round her neck, very prominently, hangs a gold chain with a heavy cross.
MARTHA	(Reading.) ‘Argyl Construction… Bounty and Buildings… B, H, C, Carlyle Construction… ah! Central Cement: 575 to 577, up two points.
	She marks the graph up two points. Returns to the paper.
	Now, catering… A… B… C… S… T… U… V… Vacations International, Various Holidays… Viennese Restaurants: 353 to 350. Down three? Mmm. Is it the coffee they’re not drinking or the cakes they’re not eating?
	She marks the graph down three points. Returns to the paper.
	Now National Gardens… Leisure, leisure, leisure… Ah! Leisure…
	SCENE 3
	Cabaret club.
CONNIE	All right! All right! So I’m not funny. I’m funny but not very funny. You don’t like my jokes so let’s play a game instead. Let’s divide the world. I believe the world’s divided into those who are clever and massacred, and those who are stupid and do the massacring. (Pause.) Come on now, you tell me how you think the world is divided. (Beat.) I believe the world’s divided into those who are clever and massacred, and those who are stupid and do the massacring. How do you think it’s divided?
	Silence.
	You want another example? Right. Here’s another example. I believe the world’s divided into those who applaud achievement and those who begrudge it – pah pom!
	Silence.
	Thank you, thank you. I thought you’d like that one.
	SCENE 4
	A young girl’s room.
	Unchanged. The signs of toddlerhood through to young womanhood are there. It’s CONNIE’s room.
	MARTHA opens the door to let in her daughter. CONNIE regards her past.
MARTHA	I didn’t want to change it, then I did, then I didn’t, then I did… Finally, well, you can see. I didn’t.
CONNIE	Except for my montage.
MARTHA	I tried, but you glued, it. (Beat.) Didn’t you ever think it would have to come down?
	No response.
	‘His’ room I dismantled. Utterly! Call me if you want anything.
CONNIE	Thanks, Mum.
MARTHA	And don’t start crying as soon as my back is turned.
	She leaves. CONNIE moves around her old room picking up this and that. On the walls are pinned scraps of paper, some of which are written upon, some typed.
CONNIE	(Reading.) ‘Don’t you think men overrate the necessity of humouring everybody’s nonsense till they get despised by the very fools they humour?’ George Eliot.
	That was when Dad thought I was going to be an MP.
	(Reading.) ‘A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts.’ George Orwell.
	That was when Dad thought I was going to become a philologist.
	(Beat.) Or a dipsomaniac!
	(Reading) ‘Are you saying what you mean? Is what you mean worth saying? Are you saying it with poetry, imagination and style?’
	And that was when he thought I was going to be a writer.
	She finds her old toy telephone. Should she? Hesitant, sheepish, she dials.
	Hello? God? Is that you? Wasn’t sure you’d still be there. It’s Connie. Didn’t recognize the voice?
	She hops, arms akimbo in the one-liner joke routine.
	Once a con always a Connie! Pah pom! No? Well, perhaps my voice is changed. Got a moment? To talk?
	Long pause.
	Tell me, why wasn’t I any of those things? (She weeps.)
	SCENE 5
	MARTHA’s office.
	MARTHA alone.
MARTHA	All money is worth twice its value. (Thinks about that.) I know that means something. (Beat.) But what? I have a hundred pounds. I spend twenty. Not only do I no longer have a hundred pounds but in addition I’m left with only eighty pounds. (Thinks about that.) Stupid! That’s merely describing the same state in a different way. (Beat.) And you now possess twenty pounds’ worth of goods. (Pause.) And yet – all money is worth twice its value. I feel it. You have both got it and haven’t not got it. To be aware of that is the secret of wealth; I’m convinced of it.
	(She picks up the Financial Times. Scans it. It’s another day.) Central Cement: 577 to 578. Up one point. Interesting… (She marks the graph up one point.)
	Viennese Restaurants…
	SCENE 6
	CONNIE’s room.
	MARTHA enters with a tray on which are a pot of tea, a jug of milk, a sugar bowl, ornate silver tongs, a plate with two kinds of thinly sliced triple-decker sandwiches – the crusts cut away, sliced into triangles.
MARTHA	I thought when you came through the door: this girl needs looking after but I’m not going to spoil her. And here I am –
CONNIE	– spoiling me.
MARTHA	You don’t know what it’s like when your children leave home.
CONNIE	I know what it’s like for the child!
MARTHA	It’s not simply the empty house, or that your usefulness is over. It’s not that their company is missed – though God knows it is missed. It’s imagining them lonely. I cried for days when you left.
CONNIE	So did I!
MARTHA	And felt helpless.
CONNIE	So did I!
MARTHA	That’s a special pain – to feel helpless about your child.
CONNIE	Cried, couldn’t sleep, heard every noise, feared every movement.
MARTHA	Children don’t leave, parents are abandoned.
CONNIE	(Reading a note on the wall.) ‘It grows dark, boys, you may go.’
MARTHA	Who said that?
CONNIE	The last words of the Great Master of the High School of Edinburgh.
MARTHA	Not sure I always approved of your fa – (Beat.) ‘his’ little notes to you.
CONNIE	Yes, you were sure. You never approved.
MARTHA	I suspect advice offered through other people’s words. Especially if it’s pinned on walls.
CONNIE	Oh, you’re so English about things.
MARTHA	I don’t know any other way to be about things. (Changing the subject.) You going to guess the fillings?
CONNIE	How many kinds?
MARTHA	Two.
	CONNIE picks one triangle. Eats. Considers.
CONNIE	Sardines, for sure.
MARTHA	No mistaking that.
CONNIE	Not Spanish onions. Spring onions.
MARTHA	Clever.
CONNIE	Do I detect garlic vinegar rather than malt?
MARTHA	You do.
CONNIE	No salt, I’m glad to say, there’s enough in the brine – but – you’ve peppered it.
MARTHA	Yes.
CONNIE	And there’s something else, something – unusual. It’s, it’s – must have another bite. (Bites.) It’s – good God! It’s alcoholic. Sherry! You’ve soaked your onions in dry sherry. That’s crazy!
MARTHA	But is it tasty?
CONNIE	Well – it’s – a surprise.
MARTHA	Which is what I always wanted to be, surprising.
CONNIE	I’ve learned a new game. ‘Dividing the world.’ Example. I believe the world is divided into those who surprise you and those who don’t. Your turn.
MARTHA	I need another example.
CONNIE	You can be humorous about it, too. I believe the world is divided into those who squeeze their toothpaste from the bottom up, and those who squeeze their toothpaste from the middle.
MARTHA	I don’t see the point of that.
CONNIE	The point is to make the most important perception ever about the human condition. There are only those who squeeze their toothpaste from the bottom up, and those who squeeze their toothpaste from the middle. All other divisions between people are trivial, irrelevant. (Pause.) You can be serious about it if you like: I believe the world is divided into those who are sick and those who are healthy.
MARTHA	You haven’t guessed the other filling. CONNIE You never liked the games I brought home. MARTHA They were too clever by half.
CONNIE	Only the English use ‘clever’ as an insult.
MARTHA	(Edgy.) Why do you keep talking about ‘the English’ as though you were something else?
CONNIE	(Herself curious.) Not sure.
MARTHA	‘His’ is not the only ancient tribe.
CONNIE	It’s just that –
MARTHA	My family also go back centuries, you know.
CONNIE	I didn’t mean…
MARTHA	Centuries! (Beat.) And half of you is me, remember.
CONNIE	(To change the subject.) I believe the world is divided into those who are grateful the bottle’s half full and those who complain the bottle’s half empty.
MARTHA	Monopoly and Scrabble, those are my games.
CONNIE	That’s because you know how to spell and you love money.
MARTHA	(Too violently.) I hate money.
CONNIE	Ha!
MARTHA	I loathe any talk about money.
CONNIE	Ha!
MARTHA	Loathe it!
CONNIE	(Diverting her.) I believe the world is divided into those who are fat and those who are thin.
MARTHA	(As a way of taking control of herself.) I believe the world is divided into those who are tall and those who are short.
CONNIE	Good! I believe the world is divided into those who listen and those who talk.
MARTHA	You haven’t guessed the other filling.
CONNIE	(Biting into second pile of sandwiches.) Oh well, easy – very crispy bacon.
MARTHA	Obviously.
CONNIE	And obviously cabbage in mayonnaise.
MARTHA	But what kind of mayonnaise?
CONNIE	You mean it’s not from a bottle?
	(MARTHA is disdainful. Preens herself.) Ah! You made it.
	MARTHA nods. Happy.
	With egg yolk and oil and – er – (Amazed.) lemon juice?
	Happy MARTHA nods.
	Without curdling it?
	Beaming MARTHA nods.
	Clever old you. (Beat.) Red peppers and – er – chicken!
MARTHA	(Triumphant.) Turkey!
CONNIE	Shit!
MARTHA	I believe the world is divided into those who curse life and those who caress it.
CONNIE	Very good. But is it true? MARTHA It also has to be true?
CONNIE	Mother! Did you notice how you sang that line? (Imitates her going up on ‘true’.) ‘It also has to be true?’ Like Dad would have sung it.
MARTHA	Nonsense. How else can you ‘sing’ it?
CONNIE	‘Does it have to be true?’ ‘Has it got to be true?’ MARTHA What’s the difference?
CONNIE	Think about it.
MARTHA	You and him! You and him and your theories! CONNIE Very interesting theories they are, too.
MARTHA	(Viciously mocking.) ‘You don’t really mean what you’re saying,’ he’d tell people. ‘The sound you’re making doesn’t match your words.’ To their face! Insult them! Thought he knew what they didn’t about themselves.
CONNIE	The best people are uncomfortable to have around. MARTHA You and him! Insufferable pair!
CONNIE	How do you think Dad divided the world?
MARTHA	I try not to think anything about your fa – about ‘him’
CONNIE	Not succeeding, are you? MARTHA If you’re going to talk about… CONNIE I think about him all the time.
	MARTHA rises to go.
	No, stay. Oh, Mother, why am I making such a mess of my life?
MARTHA	(Contempt for her chosen vocation.) Comedienne!
CONNIE	I always made them laugh at school.
MARTHA	What makes children laugh embarrasses adults.
CONNIE	Where I tell jokes they’re not adults.
MARTHA	But they think they are.
CONNIE	(Yelling.) Gerrout! Gerrup! Gerroff! (Beat.) It’s my father’s humour, that’s the problem.
MARTHA	His humour, his values, his arrogance were always the problems.
CONNIE	For God’s sake, name him. Father. He’s my father.
MARTHA	Analysing, probing, taking me apart. He was good at taking things apart, but could he put them together again?
CONNIE	Ah! You believe the world is divided into those who destroy and those who build.
MARTHA	And he never mixed with my family. Had no patience for them. Too dull for him.
CONNIE	I believe the world is divided into those who surrender and those who survive.
MARTHA	I believe the world is divided into those who are Jer – into those who are ‘them’ and those who are ‘us’.
	She abruptly gathers the tea things and storms off. CONNIE picks up the toy phone. Dials.
CONNIE	Hello, God? We have a problem.
	SCENE 7
	CONNIE’s room.
	Through the darkness comes a man’s voice on a tape recorder. Lights up to reveal CONNIE listening to a tape of her father JOSHUA, speaking. CONNIE’s lips move to JOSHUA’s voice. She pretends she’s him giving a lecture. She has played the tape to herself many, many times.
	MARTHA in the background in shadow.
VOICE OF JOSHUA It seems to me we reveal our true meaning through the musicality of what we say rather than through the words we use.
	Each word is carried on a note. The words add up to meaning.
	The notes add up to meaning.
	Sometimes the meaning of a word coincides with the meaning of a note. Sometimes they’re different. Sometimes they’re at variance with each other.
	Example: Take a simple fact which one person wants to communicate to another: one and one is two.
	If you say: ‘One and one is two’ you are doing more than communicating a mathematical verity. You are also saying, ‘You were wrong before.’
	Listen: ‘One and one is two.’ The music is the same as: ‘You were wrong.’ ‘You were not right.’ There is even an element of scolding in the music.
	Or, again, it may be that we are sensitive, and other people’s slow wit embarrasses us. And so we sing ‘apology’ into our voice.
	Listen: ‘One and one is too-oo.’ Meaning, ‘I feel terrible telling you this but – one and one is too-oo.’ The ‘two’ is delivered in two syllables: ‘too-oo’ and the second syllable goes up. ‘One and one is too-oo.’ The music of apology.
	Now, take the ‘two’ down and what do we have? ‘One and one is two.’ The music of impatience. ‘One and one is two.’
	Emphasize the word ‘two’ in yet another way and you can make the melody say, ‘You’re a fool as well.’ Listen: ‘One and one is two.’ Meaning, ‘Not three, you fool.’
	You can even add a further layer on to those five words. You not only think the person is a fool, but you also show contempt. Listen ‘One and one is two.’ Meaning, ‘Will this stupid person never get it right? One and one is two.’ Sigh! The music of contempt.
	I will now rephrase my first sentence. It seems to me we reveal not simply our true meaning through the musicality of what we say rather than through the words we use but also our true personality.
	CONNIE switches off the tape.
	SCENE 8
	CONNIE’s room.
	She plays with her old teddy bear. It sits in a chair facing her, a bib round its neck. A plate of the sandwiches has been left behind. She sits waiting for it to eat. And sits.
	Picks up and offers a sandwich. No response. She feels his forehead. Is concerned. Takes his pulse. More concern. Finds doctor’s outfit. Applies stethoscope. An ailing teddy. She sighs sadly at the pain of it all.
	MARTHA in shadow in the background.
	SCENE 9
	MARTHA’s office.
MARTHA	All money is worth twice its value.
	Turns it over and over, willing it to make sense.
	All money is worth twice its value.
	She marks her charts from the Financial Times.
	All money is worth twice its value.
	All money is…
	SCENE 10
	CONNIE’s room.
	Through the darkness comes JOSHUA’s voice repeating the end of the recording.
	Lights up on CONNIE who has been listening to it again. MARTHA in shadow in the background.
	VOICE OF JOSHUA … I will rephrase my first sentence. It seems to me we reveal not simply our true meaning through the musicality of what we say rather than through the words we use but also our true personality.
	CONNIE switches off the tape.
	CONNIE Dogs sniff one another out. Humans listen to each other’s musicality. (Thinks about it.) But what about those of us who are tone-deaf, Dad? Will we always fuck up our relationships? (Beat.) Unless we can interpret eyes. (Beat.) Or facial muscles. (Beat.) Or body movements. (Thinks about it.) Pity those deaf and blind.
	She repeats the mathematical fact again and again, imbuing it with: anger, incredulity, delighted discovery, sadness, defiance, simple fact.
	One and one is two!
	One and one is two?
	And so on…
	SCENE 11
	MARTHA’s office.
	MARTHA What I have I am also not without. I am twice blessed: for possessing and for not having been dispossessed.
	Every state is two states. I know I’m right, It is important to understand: all money is worth twice its value.
	All money is…
	SCENE 12
	CONNIE’s room.
	She stands with a packet of old cigarette cards in her hand. She is spinning them down in a game where one card must rain down and cover another. She is an expert
	MARTHAin shadow in the background.
	Abruptly CONNIE stops her play.
CONNIE	Give up your toys, Connie. Give them up.
	SCENE 13
	CONNIE’s room.
	CONNIE on the toy phone. MARTHA in shadow in the background.
CONNIE	You should have trusted me, Billy Boy. There was evidence enough. I’d hit days of chaos, that’s all. Couldn’t you tell? Every gal hits her days of chaos. Most have it every three years. The menstrual cycle of despair.
	Let me tell you about the ages of women. Age the first: little girl.
	Little girl in awe of loud-mouthed male intimidation. Sometimes little girl in competition with loud-mouthed male intimidation. Sometimes little girl turns intimidator and leads squad of mocking girls to diminish male pride.
	Age the second: breasts! Little girl with big breasts. A new confidence or a new intimidation? Should she be afraid to be stared at or should she use them to command attention? I used them to command attention. Breasts turned me into woman. Nothing turned boy into man. I was ahead.
	But not for long. Age the third: young woman! and – pah pom!
	Male expectations! Which were either crude or unfathomable. He groped you or demanded you appear in a certain way. From which followed – chaos. And so the menstrual cycle of despair began, Billy Boy. One day I was busy trying to be what I thought you wanted me to be. Next day I was as unfeminine as possible. If he wants me he’ll have to take me for who I am not what I look like.
	Stupid woman! I hadn’t understood that what I look like reveals who I am. As everything does. The way I walk, talk, gesticulate, think about the world. Stupid woman! Stupid theories! I bristled with them. You must have felt you were making love to a porcupine, Billy Boy. Bit of a pain in the arse, was I?
	Here, I have a Norfolk joke for you. An old, old widow called on her parson with a problem. ‘Parson,’ she say, ‘Parson, I see my dead husband today, sitting in his ole chair next to the fire. What do it mean d’yer think?’ ‘Could mean many things,’ say the Parson. ‘What do you think it means?’ ‘Well,’ say the ole dear, ‘they do say it could mean rain.’ Oh, Billy. Boy, you should’ve persevered. I’m not arrogant. It’s just that half of me is my father’s child.
	(She puts down the phone. Drifts to another note on the wall. Reading.) ‘If you think education is expensive you should try ignorance!’
	SCENE 14
	CONNIE’s room.
	MARTHA and CONNIE. Evening. Drinks.
	MARTHA My favourite game is inventing haikus.
	CONNIE What exactly is a haiku?
MARTHA	A Japanese three-lined poem in which the first and third lines have five syllables and the middle one has seven.
CONNIE	Example?
MARTHA	Well, (Coyly.) one of my best was:
	I buy you flowers
	Letters return on the scent
	Where will it all end?
	She repeats it tapping out the syllables with her finger.
	I buy you flowers. Five.
	Letters return on the scent. Seven.
	Where will it all end? Five.
	That last line. Gave me a shiver when I first wrote it. ‘Where will it all end?’ Very mysterious. Could mean great happiness or great – sadness.
CONNIE	That’s not a game it’s an – art form!
MARTHA	It’s a game if you play it with someone else and see whose comes out best.
CONNIE	Who’s to judge?
MARTHA	Well, honest couples usually agree on what’s self-evident.
CONNIE	And were you and Dad an honest couple?
MARTHA	Who said anything about playing with your fa – with ‘him’?
CONNIE	Oh, Mother! You didn’t compose haikus with your local priest.
MARTHA	It might have been a lover.
CONNIE	Before or during?
MARTHA	Either.
CONNIE	Some women are temperamentally suited to adultery, for others it’s as inconceivable as a flying hippopotamus.
MARTHA	And you’re saying I’m a hippopotamus that can’t fly?
CONNIE	Well, you confessed: ‘I always wanted to be unpredictable,’ you said. Meaning you never were.
MARTHA	(Harshly.) I said ‘surprising’. ‘Surprising’ I said, not ‘un predictable’. I said, ‘I always wanted to be surprising.’ (Beat.) And who says I never were? Was.
CONNIE	Soaking spring onions in dry sherry?
MARTHA	(Caught.) I was frightened of where it would all end.
	CONNIE doesn’t want to press her point. Struggles with a haiku instead.
CONNIE	Drink wine with me discuss art.
MARTHA	More than five syllables there.
CONNIE	Drink wine discuss art.
MARTHA	Five. Good.
CONNIE	Drink wine discuss art Illuminate life for me ‘Where will it all end?’
MARTHA	Bit heavy.
CONNIE	Heavy?
MARTHA	‘Discussing art and illuminating life.’ Heavy. Try again.
CONNIE	(Struggling.) Er – ‘Wine loosens up my limbs.’ No. Six there.
	Wine loosens my limbs.
	A button falls from off my blouse.
	No. Eight there.
	A button falls from my blouse.
	Better.
	Where will it all end?
	There! Lighter for you?
	Wine loosens my limbs
	A button falls from my blouse
	Where will it all end?
MARTHA	Sex, sex! That’s all the young think about is sex!
CONNIE	Can’t talk about art, can’t talk about sex!
MARTHA	You think it’s so smart being frank and open about everything.
CONNIE	(Repartee. To annoy.) Two old men, two old men on a park bench. Says one to the other, ‘What do you like best, sex or Christmas?’ ‘Christmas,’ says the other old man. ‘Happens more often!’ –
MARTHA	Can we agree not to talk about sex, please?
CONNIE	Two old men, two old men on a park bench. Before them runs a young man chasing a young woman. Says one to the other: ‘Can you remember the days when we used to do that?’ ‘Very well,’ says the other old man. ‘Only I can’t remember why.’
MARTHA	Please, please! I’ve asked you! If you want me to keep you company can we agree not to talk about sex?
CONNIE	(Cod German, but not too heavy.) You vant about sex vee talk shouldn’t. You vant about life and literature vee talk shouldn’t. You vant about mine farter vee talk shouldn’t. I sink vee somesing verrrrry significant here hef.
MARTHA	On second thoughts, ‘Where will it all end?’ is not a good last line. The last line of a haiku should be linked to the image created by the other two.
CONNIE	Example.
MARTHA	Oh, I don’t know. I can’t make them up that quickly.
CONNIE	I’ll give you an image. The sea. Loneliness.
MARTHA	Ah. The sea, the sea! Er – swimming. The last swim. ‘We took our last swim.’
CONNIE	(Tapping and counting.) Five. Good. MARTHA Don’t stand over me.
CONNIE	Come on! Don’t stop to complain. You’re inspired. ‘We took our last swim.’
MARTHA	We took our last swim The sea was big enough –
CONNIE	Only six syllables in that middle line.
MARTHA	The ocean was big enough.
CONNIE	Better.
MARTHA	We took our last swim
	The ocean was big enough…
	The ocean was big enough… Er…
	We took our last swim
	The ocean was big enough
	Long pause.
	But salt tastes linger.
CONNIE	(That was sad.) Oh, Mother.
MARTHA	Well they do, they do. (Beat.) Remember, half of you is me.
	SCENE 15
	CONNIE’s room.
	Although in CONNIE’s room, it is MARTHA’s scene. She’s in light. CONNIE in shadow. A listening figure.
MARTHA	(Talking over her shoulder.) Most women are married to men who bore them. Have you noticed that? They sit around in pubs, restaurants, social gatherings, with faces announcing to the world that they deserve more from life.
	Men confuse that bored look with female mystery. It challenges them. Up they trot. ‘I understand,’ they say. But they don’t. Within five minutes of their conversation it’s painfully obvious they don’t. They bore.
	But ‘he’ understood. ‘Women have the power to give or deny happiness,’ he once said, ‘and through that power we are manipu lated.’ He hated being at anybody’s mercy.
	1 couldn’t bear him.
	And he was full of opinions. He knew who was a great writer, a great painter, a great composer. He could actually say Bach was boring. Passionately say it. It mattered to him. Me – I was exhilarated by them all, Bach, Mozart, Mahler. Well, perhaps not Mahler so much. Too solemn. Still, that’s just my taste. When you’re that great, dismissive opinion seems irrelevant. Presumptious! Absurd! But he insisted: opinions made you a person. ‘It’s a guarantee of your freedom,’ he’d yell at me. Always impatient. Him and his circle.
	Frightening lot they were. Non-stop talkers. Opinions on this, opinions on that. How can people have so many opinions about the world? You’d think it was such a vast and complex place they’d be confused most of the time. Not that lot. Solutions for and opinions about everything and anything.
	Not me. Nothing much changes about human beings I always think. And the world we live in seems to be shaped by scientists and inventors not by people with opinions. You take the opinion that everyone should work. Work dignifies people! The work ethic! Along comes the silicon chip and suddenly we have – the leisure ethic! The opinion changes! Everyone’s demanding more leisure for all.
	What was it about him that I hated? What really was it? Even now as I think about him my teeth clench. He had an air. He had – an air.
	SCENE 16
	Cabaret club.
	CONNIE performing. MARTHA in shadows in the background.
CONNIE	Two old men, two old men on a park bench. Says one old man to the other: ‘A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.’
	(Yelling back as though one of the audience.) ‘Yeah! But who needs a stationary haddock?’
	Or was it two old women talking about a man without a woman?
	Depends who’s telling the joke, dunnit? (Curious about the word ‘Dunnit’?)
	Dunnit! Dinnit! Innit! Wannit! Gissit! Gerroff!
	(Yelling as though one of the audience.) Gerroff the stage, yer stupid wench. We’re ’ere to be amused not edumicated.
	Beautiful to be alive is it not?
	Don’t go away, ladies and gentlemen. Stay with it. Hang on to your pints because this evening is an evening packed and planned, picked and plotted, designed and divined especially for you with the most brilliant joke-churners, story-mourners and warning-brakers ever to weather this bar-pub’s weather-beaten boards where they will suckle fools and chronicle small beer as lago said. You all know who Iago was, don’t you? He was de one who made a fool of de black man.
	No, seriously, folks, let’s not be intellectual about humour. Let’s not be intellectual about anything if it comes to that. As the man says – we’re here to be amused not edumicated.
	I believe the world’s divided into those who know and those who don’t know, with those who think they know coming a close second and really fucking things up. So drink deep and pass out because, here to open our show is –
	SCENE 17
	CONNIE’s room.
	CONNIE and MARTHA.
MARTHA	If I said to you, ‘All money is worth twice its value’, what would you think I meant?
CONNIE	I thought you loathed talk of money.
MARTHA	Not as much as I loathe poverty.
CONNIE	You’re not poor. All those stocks and shares.
MARTHA	What ‘all those’? I wish they were ‘all those’. I’m trying to make them ‘all those’.
CONNIE	(Turning it over.) ‘All money is worth twice its value.’
MARTHA	Poverty says: FAILED!
CONNIE	(Still turning it over.) ‘All money is worth twice its value.’
MARTHA	A constant reminder. Poverty – failure.
CONNIE	It’s meaningless.
MARTHA	It’s meaningless because you don’t understand its meaning.
CONNIE	Help me understand.
MARTHA	The condition of poverty is also the condition of not being rich. You’re not only a failure, you’re also not a success. Unhappiness is more than unhappiness, it’s also not being happy. Each state is two states. Thus – the state of affairs in which you only have £10,000 in the bank earning you £1,000 a year interest is at the same time the state of affairs in which you don’t have £100,000 in the bank earning you £10,000 a year interest.
CONNIE	She has gone mad. Mother has gone mad. It is sad about Mother, she was once happy, she was once content, she –
MARTHA	The Big Bang has exploded. The system for dealing in stocks, shares and currencies has changed.
CONNIE	She does not even make sense any longer.
MARTHA	I mean to survive.
CONNIE	I am worried about her.
MARTHA	You don’t want a lecture, do you? CONNIE Yes. Lecture me. I love lectures. MARTHA Lectures are oppressive.
CONNIE	The only lecture that’s oppressive is an oppressive lecture. When it’s not oppressive it’s informative, stimulating and full of other people’s enthusiasms. I love other people’s enthusiasms.
MARTHA	Oh, you’re so confident. Nothing threatens you.
CONNIE	Everything threatens. I just try not to let it overwhelm. Lecture me
MARTHA	The Big Bang – a mini-lecture by Martha Mankowitz.
CONNIE	Did you marry him because you thought Mankowitz sat prettily with Martha?
MARTHA	Are you serious or not?
CONNIE	The Big Bang – a mini-lecture by Martha Mankowitz.
	But MARTHA is now hesitant. In the silence a thought occurs to CONNIE. She giggles. Tries to suppress the giggle. Silence.
MARTHA	Well?
CONNIE	To have a name like Mankowitz when you hate Je –
MARTHA	(Determinedly interrupting.) The Big Bang – a mini-lecture.
	In the money streets of London known as the City, the mode of buying and selling shares used to be as follows: there was a purchaser, a stockbroker, and a jobber; I asked my stockbroker to purchase shares for me. He sent his dealers running among the jobbers in the Stock Exchange looking for the cheapest price. The jobber quoted to the dealer, the dealer phoned the broker, the broker advised me. When the Big Bang came the stockbroker became the jobber as well, and carried his own selection of shares.
CONNIE	Bang!
MARTHA	But – problem: whereas before my stockbroker could shop around for me he now becomes the shop. I have to buy the shares he’s already bought at the price which will give him profit. If I want choice then I will have to do the shopping around. How will I judge?
	Pause. MARTHA is obviously waiting for something.
CONNIE	(Understanding.) How will you judge?
MARTHA	I’m training myself to be a Chartist.
	Pause. MARTHA again waits.
CONNIE	(Obliging.) What is a Chartist?
MARTHA	I’m glad you asked. Come with me.
	They move to MARTHA’s office and the charts.)
	To buy shares which will go up in value and provide me with a profit I have to be able to interpret a company’s performance. There are – roughly speaking, you understand – two ways to do this. I can study company reports, accounts and balance sheets, and try to know the personalities involved. That’s the conventional approach and those who pursue it are called Fundamentalists.
CONNIE	Now Fundamentalists threaten me.
MARTHA	Or I can read charts – the graphs of the price movements of shares. The readers of charts are called Chartists.
CONNIE	Not too happy with people who make charts either.
MARTHA	See here? The charts of three new companies in which I’m interested: Central Cement, Viennese Restaurants, and National Gardens. The world is building and entering a period of increased leisure. Cement, food, gardens.
CONNIE	Shouldn’t they be called ‘opportunists’?
MARTHA	To read a chart you must understand four main rules about patterns, trends, resistance and support levels. Is the trend up, down or sideways? Cement is generally up. Food and gardens are stable. They have support levels. That is to say their low points, bottom peaks, haven’t broken down below a certain level. Some one has confidence enough to keep buying them to prevent them dropping too low. When they drop below a consistent level, you sell. Conversely, if a row of peaks at the same level is penetrated on the upside it means there are more buyers than sellers, the buyers have taken over and then you buy.
CONNIE	And did you?
MARTHA	I’ve watched these charts for a year and made imaginary purchases and sales. If they hadn’t been imaginary I could have made…who knows what I could have made! But even to have read them right has been thrilling.
CONNIE	You amaze me.
MARTHA	(Intoxicated.) The City is in upheaval. Mergers! Head-hunting! The poaching of expertise! Giants merging to become monoliths. Middle-sized firms merging to become giants. Small ones shiver and cross their fingers, hoping that somehow the world won’t change –
CONNIE	– not too much anyhow.
MARTHA	But it will! The finger-crossers will go to the wall. Nothing will be the same again.
CONNIE	And if you make a lot of money – what?
MARTHA	‘What’? ‘What’ you ask?
CONNIE	I ask.
MARTHA	I will be the defiant possessor of a ‘fuck-you’ fund. CONNIE A what?
MARTHA	A ‘fuck-you’ fund. Independence! Books, travel, voluntary work, good deeds. No more atrophying afternoons and early nights. Good deeds and independence.
CONNIE	You astound me.
MARTHA	I can’t wait.
CONNIE	You astonish me.
MARTHA	I mean to survive.
CONNIE	I am thunder-clapped.
MARTHA	And the key to survival is understanding the nature of money.
CONNIE	Which is worth twice its value.
MARTHA	Just so.
CONNIE	It is sad about mother, she was once happy, she was once content, a simple soul –
MARTHA	That’s it! Simple! You both thought me simple. You and him. Well, let me remind you, Jesus Christ was a simple soul.
CONNIE	(Incredulous.) But Jesus Christ wanted us to give our money away, not bank it at ten per cent.
MARTHA	You will never, never, never understand!
	SCENE 18
	CONNIE’s room.
	CONNIE facing her toys.
CONNIE	She’s right. I will never understand.
	No. Not true. I understand. I just – don’t know what to do. Give up your toys, Connie, give them up.
	SCENE 19
	CONNIE’s room.
	CONNIE and MARTHA shelling peas.
CONNIE	What would you do if he walked in here right now?
MARTHA	He couldn’t. I made him give up the key.
CONNIE	If he knocked, rang the bell?
MARTHA	I wouldn’t hear it.
CONNIE	If he banged, thumped, begged?
MARTHA	He wouldn’t come near me.
CONNIE	Suppose.
MARTHA	Why should he? He despised me. What would he expect?
CONNIE	Never mind him. You. What would you do, feel, say? MARTHA I’d say nothing, feel nothing, do nothing.
CONNIE	That’s not true.
MARTHA	Why ask if you’re not going to believe me?
CONNIE	It can’t be true. You may say or do nothing but you’d feel something;
	Pause.
MARTHA	Rage. I’d feel rage.
	Pause.
CONNIE	(About to ask for something.) Mother?
MARTHA	Worried about the tone of that.
CONNIE	I need to borrow some money.
MARTHA	See! Money! I heard money in that tone of voice.
CONNIE	Perceptive.
MARTHA	‘He’ never thought so.
CONNIE	(Returning to original request.) About a hundred and fifty pounds.
MARTHA	Don’t be absurd. You know perfectly well I don’t have that kind of money. I can manage twenty-five.
CONNIE	I always pay you back.
MARTHA	I wish you wouldn’t ask.
CONNIE	Make it a hundred and twenty-five then.
MARTHA	You know how I hate discussion about money.
CONNIE	You could have fooled me.
MARTHA	I can go up to fifty.
CONNIE	I’ve got two important dates coming up.
MARTHA	I know your dates.
CONNIE	A hundred?
MARTHA	Cancelled at the last minute on a whim. Sixty is all I can manage.
CONNIE	These are dead certs, What about eighty-five?
MARTHA	Dead certs! Ha! (Beat.) Seventy!
CONNIE	Eighty?
MARTHA	Seventy-five and that’s my final.
CONNIE	You’re my saviour.
MARTHA	Where will you find the other seventy-five?
CONNIE	(All innocence.) What other seventy-five?
MARTHA	(Slowly understands.) You’re a real scheming little Je –
	She holds back in time.
CONNIE	Little what?
MARTHA	You’re like your fa – like ‘him’.
CONNIE	Like my father was what?
MARTHA	He would never come out with what he wanted.
CONNIE	Was he a real scheming little Je –?
MARTHA	Never direct. Always circuitous.
CONNIE	(Feeding her.) Devious?
MARTHA	Devious!
CONNIE	Dissembling?
MARTHA	Dissembling!
CONNIE	Sly, treacherous, blood-sucking?
MARTHA	Nothing threatened him either. He had an air…
CONNIE	Ridiculous, depraved, greedy?
MARTHA	– an air. He had – an air…
CONNIE	Presumptuous, audacious, arrogant?
MARTHA	Yes! Yes yes yes! Arrogant! Audacious! Presumptuous! All that! And more…an air, an air…
	She can’t define it.
CONNIE	I believe the world is divided into those who think and those who hate thinkers.
MARTHA	The world is divided into them and us and that’s the only division that counts. The only damn and bloodying division that counts.
	Long pause.
CONNIE	Mother, talk to me about when I was a little girl.
	Pause. MARTHA doesn’t want to talk about anything. CONNIE feels contrite about goading her mother. Wants to make her feel more comfortable with her thoughts.
	Artists are a bit like Jews. They not only behave as though they’re in possession of the truth they actually feel the need to impart it. (Beat.) And nobody much likes them either.
MARTHA	It’s ‘him’ I hate, not the Je –.
CONNIE	(Gently.) Say it. Say the word. You’ll feel better.
MARTHA	makes a huge effort to collect herself.
MARTHA	You were spoilt. You were adorable and he spoilt you. As soon as you were born you couldn’t take your eyes off one another. No matter what you were doing – eating, crying, waking from sleep, as soon as you saw him you stopped, stared and smiled. It was uncanny. And he talked to you non-stop. I fed you, changed you, made sure you had pretty clothes but he talked to you like an adult. No baby noises or words for his daughter. Real words and long sentences. And stories you couldn’t possibly have understood. He wouldn’t ever allow you to be a little girl. He made you stand before your time and walk before you could crawl. You could say ‘claustrophobic’ before you could say ‘sweetie’. ‘Sceptical’ before ‘Mummy’. It was all wrong. We have our stages. Growing up must go through stages. ‘Allow her to be childish,’ I warned him. ‘Let her play with dolls.’ He wouldn’t. No fantasy. He deprived you of fantasy and fear.
CONNIE	That’s not true. I developed a strong sense of fantasy…
	SCENE 20
	CONNIE’s room.
	CONNIE in light. MARTHA in the background, a shadow.
	CONNIE …and all I have is fear.
	Fear of time passing, of loss, of you dying, ‘him’ dying without me ever seeing him again. Of growing old, ending alone. I fear that no one will laugh, that no one ever laughed, that there’s nothing to laugh at.
	Do I have to start again, Mother? Could I? Look at my face. The skin is hardening. I see lines. I feel lumps. I see blotches. I feel terror. Oooo…
	…hold me, comfort me. It goes. I feel it going. No anchor, me.
	No anchor. Anchor me, Mother.
	I promised talent, once. Once I was a force. Anchor me. It goes.
	O God, who art in heaven and promised meaning, don’t let me go. Don’t let me splinter and shatter. Hold me. Comfort me. Anchor me anchor me oh how it goes.
	Pause.
	There were these two women on a beach listening to a concert on their transistor radio. One grey, the other greyer. Early morning. Hardly crowded. Quite hot. The sea dotted with sailing boats. Said the grey to the greyer: ‘Yes, I think it’s very much one of those modern concertos. Strindberg or someone.’
	Pause.
	Definition of Jewish genius: a boy with average intelligence and two parents.
	Pause.
	Georg Lichtenberg said: ‘It’s impossible to carry the torch of truth through a crowd without singeing someone’s beard.’
	Pause.
	Who was Georg Lichtenberg?
	SCENE 21
	CONNIE’s room.
	CONNIE and MARTHA. Sounds off.· CONNIE What’s that?
MARTHA	What’s what?
CONNIE	Sounded like a key in the front door.
MARTHA	No one has a key to the front door.
CONNIE	Daddy?
MARTHA	I made him give it back to me.
CONNIE	That was distinctly a key in the front door. (Knock on the door. The women are terrified.) Who is it?
	The door ú flung open. JOSHUA stands before them, a man of enormous spirit, intelligence, gaiety.
JOSHUA	The prodigal son returns! The war is over! Let us turn our swords into ploughshares. For remember: when God wanted a son he crawled up the skirts of a Jewish girl!
	MARTHA enters a hysterical outburst which begins, continues and ends at the same high, intense level as though she has become possessed. JOSHUA is incredulous. CONNIE is distressed. But it’s an outpouring that cannot be stemmed and must run its course.
MARTHA	(Screaming.) Ahhh! No! Tell him to go! Do you hear how he comes with offence? Look at him. He walks into everyone’s room that way, as though he were born there, as though he can say anything anywhere anytime. We agreed. You promised. My home, my decisions, my privacy. Not everybody wants you around. Not everybody thinks God chose you to be their neighbour. Tell him to go. Tell him I can’t bear anything about him – his arrogance, his opinions, his irreverence. No reverence for anything, only what he thinks, what he wants, what he believes. Him! Him! Him! Don’t laugh at me. Do you hear his laughter? Do you hear his superior laughter? So superior, so confident, so happy, so eager, so interested, so talkative, so fucking full of his own fucking self. Listen to me. He makes me curse. He’s made me decadent. He’s never respected me. Destroyer of innocence, lecher, devil! Tell him to go. Tell him the world wasn’t made for him. Tell him people want to be left alone. He disturbs everyone. Everyone feels unsafe, threatened. Look at him looking at me. His eyes mocking me. He always mocked me. Some of us have our own beliefs, some of us don’t care what you believe. We care about our own little thoughts. Yes! Little to you, precious to us. Look at him! Full of contempt and derision. One day someone will gouge his cockiness from his eyes. Tell him that. Tell him to go. Before it’s too late. Tell him he’s an old man who’s been in the world too long. Tell him he doesn’t belong in this house. Tell him I can’t breathe when he’s in the room. I never know what I feel when he’s in the room; I don’t know what to do with my hands, where to look, what to say: Listen to me, my words are all jumbled. I’m screaming. He makes me scream. As soon as I see him I go into shock, I become unnatural, I hate myself. Tell him to go. Tell him to go. Tell him to go go go. I can’t stop screaming. Tell him to go.
	Blackout.

	Act Two
	SCENE 1
	CONNIE’s room.
	CONNIE and JOSHUA. MARTHA in her office.
CONNIE	She says she’s not coming out till you leave.
JOSHUA	I’ll cook her a meal.
CONNIE	‘And tell him I don’t want one of his smelly tasting meals,’ she said.
JOSHUA	I bought her favourite wine.
CONNIE	‘And if he’s bought my favourite wine tell him to drown in it,’ she said.
JOSHUA	Irrational as always.
CONNIE	‘And tell him I’m not being irrational.’
JOSHUA	She’ll come.
CONNIE	Irresistible, are you?
JOSHUA	She’s a woman of second thoughts. Third, fourth and fifth thoughts to be precise, if one can be precise about your mother.
CONNIE	There was nothing imprecise about that outburst.
JOSHUA	Distressed you?
CONNIE	I’ve never heard her like that before.
JOSHUA	I’ve had it since the day we married.
CONNIE	Why did you stay?
JOSHUA	I have ‘an air’ about me, ‘an air…an air…’
CONNIE	Which she can’t name.
JOSHUA	Why do you keep coming back?
CONNIE	Elgar, Turner, George Eliot, the Lakes, fair play… ‘One half of you is me,’ she keeps saying. ‘Remember! One half-of you is me.’ (Pause.)
JOSHUA	My grandmother was the largest lady in her Polish village.
CONNIE	(Music-hall.) The largest lady in her Polish village?
JOSHUA	The Jewish community had never produced such a large lady. She could lift a man in each hand by the scruff of the neck.
CONNIE	And frequently did?
JOSHUA	And frequently did! They say, the story came down to me, that she insisted upon two husbands.
CONNIE	And got them?
JOSHUA	And got them! And when the pogroms came every village in the district suffered except hers.
CONNIE	The Cossacks were terrified of being raped! (They are convulsed by laughter.)
MARTHA	(From her room.) Judas!
	The laughter dies down.
JOSHUA	‘The first truth’, says Buddha, ‘is that all life is suffering.’
MARTHA	(From her room.) Judas!
	Pause.
CONNIE	I believe the world is divided into those who were born when God was around and the rest of us who were born when he was on holiday. –
JOSHUA	I believe the world is divided into those who manage to get discounts on everything and the rest of us who have to pay the full price.
CONNIE	Dad, can you lend me a hundred and fifty pounds?
	Special burst of laughter from JOSHUA.
	A hundred then?
	They both laugh.
	Tell you what, I’ll go easy on you. Make it seventy-five.
	JOSHUA takes out his wallet and carefully lays out seven five-pound notes, two one-pound notes, some loose change.
JOSHUA	Thirty-seven pounds fifty-three pence. All the money I have in the world.
CONNIE	Ah!
JOSHUA	(Trying to suppress laughter.) Sad, isn’t it?
CONNIE	(Trying to suppress laughter.) Yes.
JOSHUA	But it’s even worse than that.
CONNIE	Worse?
JOSHUA	I’ve been forced to resign my post.
CONNIE	Forced to? I thought that couldn’t happen unless you seduced a student.
JOSHUA	I did.
CONNIE	It’s not true.
JOSHUA	She was brilliant. You know how I find brilliance irresistible. Nineteen years old. She knew everything. I had nothing to teach her. Except one thing.
CONNIE	Dad, is this true?
JOSHUA	No. She seduced me. (They continue laughing.)
CONNIE	Dad. We do not make jokes about seducing nineteen-year-old girls when we’re fifty-six.
JOSHUA	Fifty-five.
CONNIE	(Warning.) Dad!
JOSHUA	Nothing happened. I couldn’t make it. She tried everything. She sang to it, tickled it, honeyed it, oiled it, got down on her knees and prayed to it. Nothing.
	She played music to it, stripped to it, danced to it, whistled, even told hair-raising stories. Nothing!
	She whacked it, she shook it, she cursed it, she blew it, she threatened, chanted mantras, salt-and-peppered it – wept. Nothing!
	CONNIE is convulsed.
	Imagine! We were caught not doing it! In my rooms at college. Among all that medieval oak panelling. The most uncomfortable rooms in Cambridge. (Beat.) Thirty seven pounds fifty-three pence, and a £25,000 overdraft secured by a job I no longer have.
	(Through his laughter.) Ah well, as the philosophers have observed: we’re all dying one way or another.
CONNIE	That’s life, innit? (Beat.) Innit? Dinnit? Wannit! Gissit! Gotcha! Gerroff!
	MARTHA enters.
MARTHA	(To CONNIE.) Judas! (Referring to JOSHUA.) And him! Why is he here?
CONNIE	Oh, Mother, stop this.
MARTHA	You don’t know what it’s costing to be in the same room with him. Ask him. Why is he here?
CONNIE	Why are you here?
JOSHUA	(To MARTHA.) I want you to invest in my project.
CONNIE	(To MARTHA.) He wants you to invest in his project.
	MARTHA can’t believe such audacity.
MARTHA	He must be mad.
CONNIE	You must be mad.
	SCENE 2
	MARTHA’s office.
	MARTHA and JOSHUA. CONNIE in her room.
MARTHA	He must be mad.
JOSHUA	Not mad, romantic.
MARTHA	He doesn’t respect me, why is he asking me for help?
JOSHUA	We need each other.
MARTHA	Why should I need someone who doesn’t respect me?
JOSHUA	Come, sit with me, be friends.
MARTHA	He’s pretended to respect me. Only ever pretended.
	JOSHUA makes the effort he has always had to make to control his exasperation with her.
JOSHUA	What are these charts?
	MARTHA, despite herself, is pleased he’s asked.
MARTHA	I’m studying the market.
JOSHUA	With charts?
MARTHA	Doesn’t he know about them? Isn’t he supposed to know everything?
JOSHUA	I thought one studied the stock market by looking at personalities and balance sheets.
MARTHA	There are other ways, you study the performance of the shares themselves.
JOSHUA	And you worked out how to do all this?
MARTHA	And then make predictions. What am I talking to him for?
JOSHUA	And you key in information every day?
	She nods.
	And you make a mark every day?
MARTHA	From the Financial Times. JOSHUA Have you done today’s?
	She reaches for the pink sheets. Scans. Marks. Stops halfway.
MARTHA	It’s me who’s mad, talking to him again.
JOSHUA	Martha! I’m not a ‘him’.
MARTHA	Showing him, explaining –
JOSHUA	I’m in the same room.
MARTHA	– tolerating his presence, his existence –
JOSHUA	Aren’t you at least interested to know what my project is?
MARTHA	I don’t care about his projects. JOSHUA We could make a fortune.
MARTHA	He’s always had hare-brained projects for making a fortune.
JOSHUA	Martha, you have to acknowledge me.
MARTHA	I just want him to go. Please, God, make him go away. (CONNIE enters.)
CONNIE	Two Jews, two Jews. About to be executed. The Nazi captain, a civilized man, sensitive, a lover of Wagner virtue heroes children dogs and the Alps, not being without pity, and mindful of tradition, asked the Jews if they had a last request before being shot. The first Jew asked for a cigarette and was given one. The second Jew thought a second and then – spat in the captain’s face. At which the first Jew spluttered, choked on his cigarette, went pale and whispered, ‘Hymie, Hymie, do me a favour, don’t – make trouble!’ –
JOSHUA	In my version the second Jew asked if he could learn to play the violin.
MARTHA	Jews! Jews! Always jokes about Jews.
CONNIE	(In an Irish dialect.) Two Irishmen, two Irishmen. About to be executed. The British captain, a civilized gent, sensitive, a lover of brass bands horses Darjeeling tea Sunday mornings and his mother, not being without pity, and a stickler for tradition, asked the Irishmen if they had a last request before being shot. The first Irishman asked for a pint of Guinness. The second Irishman thought a moment and then – spat in the captain’s face. At which the first Irishman coughed, spluttered, choked on his Guinness and went red in the face crying out, ‘Jasus! Seamus! Do me a favour, don’t make trouble!’
	Pause. Silence. Nothing.
	‘Jasus! Seamus! Isn’t it trouble enough we have?’ (Still nothing.)
	Jasus! Seamus! Haven’t yers got me into enough trouble?’ (Pause.)
	Not the same, is it?
MARTHA	And why is it, I wonder, that when a Jew tells a Jewish joke it’s called Jewish humour but when anyone else tells it it’s anti-Semitic?
JOSHUA	Because when a Jew tells a Jewish joke it’s Jewish humour but when anyone else tells it it’s anti-Semitic.
MARTHA	There! He looks for trouble. JOSHUA (Ironically) Can’t get enough of it!
MARTHA	And because he looks for it he attracts it.
JOSHUA	That’s really what you wanted, that I shouldn’t ever make trouble.
MARTHA	I wanted respect.
JOSHUA	That I should be invisible.
MARTHA	His air, his air…he has an air…
JOSHUA	An air of what? What air? What, what, what, you foolish woman, what?
MARTHA	Fear! He has no fear!
JOSHUA	(Incredulous.) Fear? Why should I have fear?
MARTHA	People without fear have no respect.
JOSHUA	Interesting.
MARTHA	He’s mocking me again.
JOSHUA	People without fear have no respect. It is interesting.
MARTHA	He mocks me, and my thoughts jumble.
CONNIE	(Warning.) Dad!
MARTHA	He always mocked me.
JOSHUA	You speak to your mother.
MARTHA	He was contemptuous
JOSHUA	I don’t understand the woman.
MARTHA	His voice was loud –
JOSHUA	And I have tried.
MARTHA	– he spent money before he earned it.
JOSHUA	How have I not tried!
MARTHA	He quarrelled with friends, wrote letters to the press, the Prime Minister –
JOSHUA	I called the fraudulent frauds, the faint-hearted cowards, the lickers of arses arse-lickers.
MARTHA	– and to the Pope.
CONNIE	The Pope?
MARTHA	Yes! The Pope, the Pope! He wrote to the Pope! CONNIE You actually wrote to the Pope?
MARTHA	At last Rome held an ecumenical council agreeing to forgive the Jews for the Crucifixion, and your father, your wise, witty father wrote announcing the creation of a Jewish ecumenical council to decide whether to forgive the Christians.
JOSHUA	It’s called irony.
MARTHA	It’s called irreverence.
JOSHUA	I screamed at the pompous, the complacent, the tyrannical, the opportunistic – I screamed and I stirred and 1 made trouble because sometimes trouble had to be made.
MARTHA	Like seducing the innocent?
JOSHUA	I have my weaknesses.
MARTHA	Is it any wonder he’s thrown out of everywhere? JOSHUA I think it’s time to tell a funny story.
MARTHA	I have a background. I have a heritage. It must be respected. Tell him it must be respected.
JOSHUA	There were these thick Irishmen…
CONNIE	Jonathan Swift.
JOSHUA	Oliver Goldsmith.
CONNIE	Oscar Wilde.
JOSHUA	Yeats, Synge.
CONNIE	Bernard Shaw, Sean O’Casey, Brendan Behan…
	Beat.
JOSHUA	Did anyone ever laugh at that joke?
CONNIE	Not in the clubs where I played, they didn’t.
MARTHA	Neither of you. No respect. None at all.
	SCENE 3
	CONNIE’s room.
	CONNIE and JOSHUA. MARTHA in her office.
JOSHUA	You at least will ask about my project.
CONNIE	A book on the difference between what people say and the way they say it?
JOSHUA	More than that. More, more than that. A book about the national characteristics revealed by language.
CONNIE	Worrying.
JOSHUA	Hopefully.
CONNIE	What will you call it?
JOSHUA	Suggest a title.
CONNIE	Hidden Meanings?
JOSHUA	Excellent! Splendid! But my book is only the beginning. I want to construct a machine.
CONNIE	God help us. Science fiction?
JOSHUA	Mock not my future. Let me explain. Just as there are only a handful of basic plots in literature, so there are only a handful of basic emotions in literature and personas in life. And each basic emotion and each persona has its own identifiable melody which the voice sings: love, hate, happiness, sadness, yes? The sanctimonious, the arrogant, the demagogue and so on. And because sometimes people utter words which are modest but in the melody of arrogance; or they utter words of love but in the melody of hate; or they offer words of respect but in the melody of contempt, and most people can’t hear the melody so they’re fooled and misled by the words.
CONNIE	So?
JOSHUA	So, my machine will be sensitive to the melodies and will show up as a colour on a screen. The melody of sanctimony – green. The melody of demagogy – red. The melody of arrogance – blue.
CONNIE	The melody of seduction – pink.
JOSHUA	The melody of mockery – yellow.
CONNIE	The melody of false modesty – brown.
JOSHUA	The melody of intimidation –
CONNIE	– grey, grey, grey!
JOSHUA	Everyone will have my machine attached to the TV set. No politician, journalist, diplomat, actor, prize-winning novelist or born-again priest would be safe.
CONNIE	A lie detector!
JOSHUA	No! A ‘distinguisher’! To make distinctions. Very important to make distinctions. A lie detector tries to detect what you feel. Feelings are not to be trusted. My machine will distinguish between what’s honestly intended and what’s dishonestly intended. Not by registering feelings but by identifying melodies. (Beat.) You ask your mother to invest.
CONNIE	Me?
JOSHUA	Appeal on my behalf.
CONNIE	When I can’t even appeal on my own behalf?
JOSHUA	One half of you is her, she said.
CONNIE	But the other half is you, dammit!
JOSHUA	She was left a great deal of money, your mother. Began after the steam engine was invented. The age of empire: philanthropy, long novels, a new sense of who belonged where in what place. I need her.
CONNIE	If you need her, be good to her.
JOSHUA	I trusted her, I advised her, I tried to love her but I am who I am what I am that I am. She couldn’t suffer it.
CONNIE	And how am I expected to help her suffer who you are what you are that you are?
JOSHUA	It would help her feel benign.
CONNIE	I’m hearing a melody.
JOSHUA	It would help her set up the relationship she really believes is right and proper.
CONNIE	I’m hearing a melody louder than words.
JOSHUA	She believes the world is divided into those who need to be conferring favours and those who have no alternative but to beg them.
CONNIE	And the melody is of self-pity.
JOSHUA	Self-pity?
CONNIE	You thought you were identifying a fact about human behaviour. But the way you sang it revealed you were sorry for yourself. Powerless.
JOSHUA	Powerless? What are we talking about power for? The knowledge that my neighbour is a fool gives me power.
CONNIE	Wrong! That gives you superiority. There’s a distinction
JOSHUA	Your father’s daughter.
CONNIE	Superiority is the knowledge you have over the fool. Power is when you can prevent the fool from murdering you.
	Pause.
JOSHUA	They planted a bomb outside a Jewish old people’s home in Copenhagen.
CONNIE	How brave. (Beat.) Anybody killed?
JOSHUA	Injured merely. Nothing much: A leg here, an arm there. (Beat.) The Danish government protested, ‘But we have been critics of Israel…’
CONNIE	And the Jewish community?
JOSHUA	Those who never attend synagogue want to fill it. Those who attend regularly say, ‘Hush… be invisible.’
	Pause.
CONNIE	God’s already invented a distinguisher. It’s called ‘woman’.
JOSHUA	Woman?
CONNIE	Men only listen to words, women listen to the melody of words. There’s millions of us about.
JOSHUA	But flawed! Inaccurate! Unreliable! Like everything God invented.
CONNIE	Still, it was his first go.
JOSHUA	No excuse! You’re not sure how to do something? Leave it to somebody else.
CONNIE	(Sadly.) Who else was there, Josh?
	Pause.
JOSHUA	It must be possible to get at the truth of human intention.
CONNIE	Technology won’t lead you to the truth.
JOSHUA	I need to try. I need her help, I need your help to get her help. Ask her…
	Pause.
CONNIE	I believe the world is divided into those who know the world is divided and those who don’t know the world is divided.
JOSHUA	Or don’t care, dammit, don’t care!
	SCENE 4
	MARTHA’s office.
	MARTHA and CONNIE.
MARTHA	Tell him to ask me himself.
CONNIE	You just want him to beg.
MARTHA	I want him to face me.
CONNIE	His face angers you.
MARTHA	If he wants my help he must learn the art of normal social intercourse.
CONNIE	The art of social hypocrisy you mean.
MARTHA	We are talking about large sums of money.
CONNIE	The truth is expensive.
MARTHA	I have to hear from him the detail of his plans.
CONNIE	You know he won’t have detailed plans. A man like Dad has a track record. His books, his honours, his standing in the world. The big foundations fund people not blueprints.
MARTHA	I am not a big foundation.
CONNIE	He’s on to something important, Mother, possibly even lucrative.
MARTHA	I’m a small investor. I need facts and figures.
CONNIE	Think of the glory you’ll reap.
MARTHA	I’m a pragmatist.
CONNIE	Think of your epitaph.
MARTHA	I’m Protestant and pragmatic.
CONNIE	‘Mammon helps Truth.’
MARTHA	‘Innocence exploited by Cunning’ more like.
CONNIE	At least declare you’re prepared to help in principle.
MARTHA	I will declare nothing. Tell him to ask me himself.
	SCENE 5
	MARTHA’s office.
	MARTHA and JOSHUA. The middle of a conversation. CONNIE in her room.
JOSHUA	Will you or will you not help me?
MARTHA	Nor did he ever like my father.
JOSHUA	I didn’t ever like the image you had of your father. Otherwise I liked him. After my fashion.
MARTHA	I’ll never forgive him the time he carne for dinner and remained silent a whole evening. Deliberately. Rudely. Embarrassingly.
JOSHUA	Your father was a kind man, an intelligent man but he never talked with you, only at you. He asserted his ideas, didn’t offer them. Disagreement was unthinkable. Even small contributions. You had to exist in his space, his world, at his speed, with his laws, his references, his choice of subject, his beginnings, his ends, for his was the kingdom, the power and the glory. It was not that he was angry if you introduced other values, other perspectives. He was bewildered. Hurt. One day I decided to stop hurting him.
MARTHA	He insulted him instead. With silence.
JOSHUA	You mean I should’ve said ‘amen’ now and then?
MARTHA	And he expects me to keep him while he writes his absurd book and assembles his absurd machine?
	This man without respect, with his sarcasm, his mockery…?
JOSHUA	I do not mock. Mock is one thing I do not ever do. It’s an English habit. I just have difficulty being reverential about some things.
MARTHA	Some things? Everything!
JOSHUA	No. Some things. You never listened to me carefully enough.
MARTHA	And did he ever love me?
JOSHUA	I’m at your mercy. Stronger than love.
MARTHA	Did he imagine I wanted him to crawl to me? That I married him for that?
JOSHUA	I think you married me to be your guest. I think you married me as one opens the front door to a visitor one wants to impress with one’s interiors, one’s culture, one’s good manners, one’s magnanimity. I think you married me that way. That’s the way I think you married me.
MARTHA	And he expects me to keep him knowing he thinks that about me?
JOSHUA	You can afford it. It’s your responsibility.
MARTHA	Afford or not afford, I will decide my responsibilities.
JOSHUA	You have an inheritance you don’t know how to use.
MARTHA	My inheritance is my inheritance.
JOSHUA	One I contributed to.
MARTHA	Ha!
JOSHUA	But you were too grudging to acknowledge it.
MARTHA	He nags for attention.
JOSHUA	It embarrassed you.
MARTHA	He whines for praise.
JOSHUA	Talk about money was bad taste. Expressions of passion were bad taste.
MARTHA	Listen to his shrill self-serving.
JOSHUA	Enthusiasm, appetite, energy, ideas, touch, loud laughter, generosity, second helpings – all, all bad taste.
MARTHA	Guttural, strident, ostentatious.
JOSHUA	You, mean, thin-lipped, tight-arsed, unimaginative, sanctimonious, hypocritical, gold-plated bitch, will you or will you not help me?
MARTHA	I will not. I will not. Oh, will I will I not! (Tense silence.)
JOSHUA	One day I found myself peeing in the loo during the interval of a production of King Lear. And I looked up as is the wont of loitering urinists and read the following graffiti: ‘God is love – as all bunglers are!’
	MARTHA screams and screams and screams as though the intolerable incomprehensibility of this man is driving her mad.
	SCENE 6
	CONNIE’s room.
	CONNIE, toy telephone in hand. MARTHA and JOSHUA in MARTHA’s office.
CONNIE	You still there, God? I have this father and mother and one is and one isn’t and one does and one doesn’t so I don’t know if I am or am not, do or do not. Know what I mean?
	She positions herself regally in order to play God. Looks around, slowly.
	(Booms out.) Not only do I not know what she means, I never know what anybody means!
	She returns to the phone.
	Sorry, God. I keep being blasphemous I know but – can’t resist it. You understand, don’t you? I’m my father’s daughter and it’s my profession to joke and my nature to be irreverent and – oh, I don’t know.
	It – was – all – simple – once.
	Long, long pause.
	Not true. It was never simple.
	SCENE 7
	CONNIE’s room.
	CONNIE and JOSHUA. MARTHA in her office.
JOSHUA	Do you think she finds me indigestible? CONNIE I think she finds you incomprehensible.
JOSHUA	I think she’s like the second child who one day realizes her father was someone else’s father first.
CONNIE	Pity the third child.
JOSHUA	Poor Jesus.
CONNIE	Poor Ishmael. (Pause.)
JOSHUA	And yet how often the third child is the most beloved.
	Pause.
CONNIE	I think you should have been a rabbi.
JOSHUA	My belief in God cannot be relied upon.
CONNIE	Rabbis don’t believe in God, they just use him to control unmanageable Jews.
JOSHUA	What would you know! Only half of you is Jewish. And the wrong half at that.
CONNIE	Doesn’t stop me feeling unmanageable. You’re indigestible, I’m unmanageable.
JOSHUA	My father wanted me to be a rabbi. He said, ‘Son,’ he said, ‘the world respects a scholar. You will never want for bread if you become a scholar.’ The Enlightenment had passed him by so for him there was only one kind of scholar – a Talmudic one! I – wanted to study language. ‘Language? Language is something you use, not study.’ ‘But, Daddy,’ I said…
CONNIE	You called him ‘Daddy’?
JOSHUA	I called him ‘Daddy’ and my mother ‘Mummy’ right up until they died. I was nearly fifty years old.
CONNIE	‘But, Daddy’, I said…’
JOSHUA	‘But, Daddy,’ I said, ‘the history of nations is in their language and how it was formed and how it evolved.’ He was amazed.
	Pause.
CONNIE	Josh, talk to me about when I was a little girl.
JOSHUA	There was the time you tried to milk a bull. CONNIE I never did!
JOSHUA	We used to go on holiday each year, for about four years running, to a little farm sublet by one of your mother’s brothers from his 2,000 acre estate – for a not inconsiderable rent, I might add. You were ten years old and you’d seen the farmer’s wife sitting on a stool with a pail between her legs pulling at something hanging, so you got a stool and put a pail between your legs and you found something hanging and you pulled!
CONNIE	And he kicked.
JOSHUA	He kicked! You pull a bull’s ding-dong he gets confused. He say – ‘Who dat dere? Who dat dere pulling my ding-dong when I ain’t ready to have my ding-dong pulled?’
	CONNIE in fits of laughter.
	Fortunately the pail was in the way. (Pause.)
	(Quiet.) I remember we took you to concerts and theatre and on long journeys to foreign parts. You liked puddles, I remember. (Pause.)
	‘The first truth,’ says Buddha, ‘is that all life is suffering.’ (Sad smiles.)
	Do we really accept that? Really, really accept that? (Pause. The question hangs in the air.)
CONNIE	Daddy, I’m sorry I was none of the things you wanted me to be.
JOSHUA	Wanted you to be? Wanted? Only one thing I wanted you to be – free. Independent. Dependent upon no one. Not a husband for your keep, not a country for your identity, not a group for your cause, nor an ideology for your fulfilment. I wanted you to learn your way out of prisons. To be nobody’s slave, nobody’s guest. You make people laugh. I’m not complaining.
CONNIE	Only they don’t laugh and I am.
JOSHUA	You want to know about laughter? Let me tell you about laughter. Laughter comes from the Jews. Why the Jews? Because we’re a nervous people. When you invent God you make people uneasy. When you then say he’s chosen you to bear witness to the beauty of his creation and to guard justice you make people feel indignant. ‘We have our own Gods, we have our own justice.’ But does the Jew listen? He can’t! When you’ve invented God no other authority can really be taken seriously. And so the Jew questions all authority. People don’t like that. They burn you for it. Isn’t that enough to make you nervous? Nervous people laugh. And that doesn’t help either.
	(Looking up.) You there? I’m talking to you. We’ve got problems down here. You sure you put the parts together in the right order? (To CONNIE.) He even questions the authority he claimed was unquestionable. What can you do with such a people? And they write funny books about it all.
	Look at the Bible, the largest collection of jokes in the world.
	The Book of Job. To prove Satan wrong God lets him play dice with Job’s fortunes. A man who had everything – beautiful wife, lovely children, wealth, a house in the country on the West Bank, and then, all of a sudden, wham! He loses everything. His wife dies, his children all die, his car, his hi-fi, his washing machine – everything repossessed! And he’s struck down with herpes. It’s enough to make you nervous. So what does Job do? If he were a Christian, faith would be enough. But for a Jew nothing is enough. He has to go to the top.
	(Looking up.) You there? I’m talking to you. I’ve got problems down here. I’m an upright man, I take a little here give a little there. Is this just? Look at me. I’m a mess.
	And what does God do? He laughs back. He shows Job a big fish, a leviathan he calls it. ‘Can you hook it?’ God asks. ‘It’s a big fish;’ says Job. ‘How can I hook it?’ ‘Right!’ says God. ‘How much more difficult to hook me!’ ‘He’s doing a Hamlet on me,’ says Job. ‘Very funny!’ What could be funnier? And he’s right.
	The Jew can’t help it, he questions authority with laughter. It’s a nervous tick.
	Take Einstein. Einstein questioned authority with laughter. You know how it is. You meet a Jew on the stairs and you ask him if he’s going up or he’s going down and he says, ‘Well, it depends. Everything’s relative!’
	Take Freud. Freud questioned authority with laughter. ‘Ernest,’ he said to his biographer, Ernest Jones – another Jewish habit, talking to your biographer – ‘Ernest, I’m half convinced by socialism.’
	‘How come, Herr Doktor?’ Ernest knows the Herr Doktor is a thorough conservative. ‘Well,’ says Freud, ‘I’ve been reading Trotsky on socialism’ – Trotsky, another funny man who ques tioned authority – ‘I’ve been reading Trotsky and he says that in the first phase of the transition to socialism there will be big problems: upheavals, misery, large-scale disaster. But in the second phase the promised land for us all, paradise on earth, utopia! Well, Ernest, I am convinced about the first half.’
	No, don’t laugh. This Jewish humour, this laughing at authority, it causes such irritation. You’re not supposed to laugh at the misery they bestow on you. It’s unnatural. It causes a great deal of misunderstanding, better known as anti-Semitism. And what is anti-Semitism? It’s hating Jews more than is necessary. It’s enough to make you nervous. Especially when you’re never certain whether you’ve got an audience out there or a lynch mob.
CONNIE	A lynch mob, a lynch mob! That’s my problem, I’m telling jokes to a lynch mob.
	SCENE 8
	Between Cabaret club and MARTHA’s office.
	JOSHUA in CONNIE’s room. Fade in first on CONNIE in the Cabaret Club.
CONNIE	Kafka! Kafka! You take Kafka. Kafka questioned authority with laughter. He was talking to his biographer, Max Brod – they all have biographers these funny men – and Kafka as usual was being gloomy and pessimistic. Dark, he was a dark, dark man. And Brod says, ‘Frank,’ he says, ‘you’re being more depressing than usual. The way you talk. Is there no hope?’ And Kafka says, ‘Who says there’s no hope? Of course there’s hope, Max. An infinite amount of hope…but not for us!’
	(As one of her audience.) Bloody hell!
	All right then. There was an Englishman, Irishman, Scotsman and this Jew. No. There was a Norwegian, Dane, Swede and this Finn. No. There was a Russian, Hungarian, Czech and this Pole.
	(Yelling as one of the audience.) Make up yer mind, yer silly cow.
	How about – there was this Finn, this Pole and this Jew?
	(Yelling.) They shouldn’t ’ave bloody women telling bloody jokes.
	Women never was funny. (Fade in on MARTHA.)
MARTHA	I don’t mean to be what I am, say what I say. He drives me to it. Draws it from me. And when it comes I don’t know where it comes from.
CONNIE	So God finally found this bloke called Moses on top of a mountain tearing his hair out ’cos his family down below were dancing naked round a golden calf and doing all sorts of rude and wicked things and he said to Moses, ‘I’m giving them away’ and Moses said, ‘Good! I’ll have ten!’ (Beat.) Pity! Thought you’d like that one.
MARTHA	(Getting to her knees.) Dear Lord Jesus, pray for me. Send me a sign. Teach me what to think, how to behave. Explain it to me. We suffered too, didn’t we?
CONNIE	I had a Jewish grandmother – yes, you heard! We’ve all got our crosses to bear. And this Jewish grandmother used to say to me, ‘You can live a long time, learn a lot and still die a fool.’
MARTHA	Why does he want to destroy me? I didn’t want to hate him. Hate is not my nature.
CONNIE	There’s a certain kind of English mentality which turns very nasty if you don’t take its flippancy seriously. Know what I mean?
MARTHA	I wanted to love him.
CONNIE	The kind of mentality that buys two-seater cars so they can’t give friends lifts home.
MARTHA	But I loathe him. With a passion.
CONNIE	So, she nudges her neighbour across the wall and says, ‘My old man, my old man, ’e’s the only man I know ’oo’s risen to the depths!’
MARTHA	No one to talk with.
CONNIE	(Yelling as though one of the audience.) Gerroff! You’ve never told a good joke and never will tell a good joke.
MARTHA	If there’s no one to talk with, you talk to yourself.
CONNIE	Gerrout! Gerrup! Gerroff!
MARTHA	Cigarette. Need a cigarette. Tried to give up; Can’t. (She finds one. Lights it. The pleasure of inhaling is immense.)
	What I feel is not what I want to feel, know what I mean, angel? Focus, focus! I can’t focus while he’s around.
CONNIE	All right then, try this.
MARTHA	Who is angel?
	(A sound grows. Of protesting jeering voices.)
CONNIE	I believe the world’s divided into the conscious and the unconscious.
MARTHA	I’m angel.
CONNIE	The givers and the takers.
MARTHA	My father called me ‘angel’. CONNIE The winners and the losers.
MARTHA	‘Angel,’ he said, ‘beware of everything beyond these shores.’
CONNIE	The submissive and the domineering.
MARTHA	‘Beyond these shores nothing is predictable.’
CONNIE	The sick and the healthy.
MARTHA	‘There has to be predictability.’
CONNIE	Those who need God and those who don’t.
MARTHA	My father knew. My father warned – ‘he will be unpredictable’.
	Crescendo of voices ends abruptly.
CONNIE	‘I must remember,’ said Florence Nightingale, ‘that God is not my secretary!’ (Beat.) She couldn’t have been Jewish then! (Fade out on CONNIE. MARTHA reaches for her phone.)
MARTHA	Connie? Connie? Please come back. If I shout a bit it’s because I hurt a bit, I’m confused a bit. You’ve nothing to be afraid of from me. Remember – half of you is me. (Puts down phone. Pauses. Dials again.) Hello, God? Is it true that you are a Je – that you’re Je – Je – Je –
	The word sticks in her throat. She gags on it.
	SCENE 9
	CONNIE’s room.
	CONNIE and JOSHUA.
JOSHUA	Did you speak to her again?
CONNIE	I did.
JOSHUA	And?
CONNIE	She doesn’t like being called a gold-plated bitch.
JOSHUA	Did I call her that?
CONNIE	‘Mean, thin-lipped, tight-arsed, unimaginative, sanctimonious, hypocritical, gold-plated bitch.’
JOSHUA	I couldn’t have said all that.
CONNIE	In one breath. She wrote it down. JOSHUA No hope then.
CONNIE	But she is a woman of second thoughts. JOSHUA There is hope then?
CONNIE	Do you know what it’s like having the two of you knock around inside me?
JOSHUA	Take what’s best, my darling, the rest reject. What makes you think she may have second thoughts?
CONNIE	I’m talking about me! JOSHUA Talk.
CONNIE	I’m a mess.
JOSHUA	So was Job.
CONNIE	I tell Jewish jokes for a living.
JOSHUA	But God adored him and I adore you. CONNIE Adoring me doesn’t help.
	Knock on the door. CONNIE opens it. MARTHA enters with a birthday cake and six lighted candles in one hand, a bottle of champagne and three glasses in the other. CONNIE and JOSHUA are astounded.
MARTHA	Cakes and champagne for the family.
JOSHUA	I exist for her! There is hope.
MARTHA	(To JOSHUA.) Couldn’t let your birthday go by without a little celebration.
JOSHUA	But it’s not my birthday.
MARTHA	It was on at least one day this year.
JOSHUA	And I’m not six years old.
MARTHA	Six is for sixty, silly.
JOSHUA	I’m not sixty, either. I’m fifty-five.
MARTHA	We’re all ancient members of an ancient race. We’re celebrating that, then.
JOSHUA	It’s poisoned!
MARTHA	If you stop to think about any day you’ll always find a reason to celebrate it. The day you met your husband. The day you moved into the house. The Lord’s Day. The first rose is out. Midsummer’s Eve. Your monthlies are finished. A hostage is released. The Lord’s Day – oh! I’ve already said that, haven’t I? Anyway, it could be cakes and champagne every day. If one could afford it.
JOSHUA	All lunacy has logic.
MARTHA	Of course I can’t really afford it.
CONNIE	I’m glad we’re a family, mother.
MARTHA	I know your father has these fantasies of my vast wealth hidden in banks around the world but for all the wealth I know about they might as well be hidden in banks. Now Joshua, blow.
JOSHUA	It’ll explode. As I blow it’ll explode and she’ll have solved all her problems. In one blow!
MARTHA	Come. I want you both to taste the cake and tell me what it’s made of.
JOSHUA	Martha, I’m not understanding.
MARTHA	Oh well, you can’t expect to understand everything in this life.
JOSHUA	You’re showing one face and hiding another, Martha.
MARTHA	That’s the trouble with you people – JOSHUA ‘You people’?
MARTHA	You educated ones. Don’t be so sensitive. You always want to understand everything, explain everything. You’re all scientists, linguists, professors – of psychology or biochemistry or genetics. Genetics! There! You’ll end up filling the world with monsters. Leave it alone. Mystery. Let there be mystery –
JOSHUA	– and darkness. How about some medieval darkness around the place while we’re about it?
MARTHA	(Peeling free the champagne foil.) And opinions! You’ve always got to have opinions. Stop tampering with the world. Eat cakes and drink champagne. Celebrate the days. Blow!
	He hesitates. Closes his eyes. Crosses himself. Clasps his hands in prayer. Mumbles a little, then blows. The cork pops.
	(Pouring.) Had no faith in your Adonai? (To CONNIE.) Did you know I can recite the prayer for wine. In the days when we trusted and loved one another he taught me.
	She raises her glass. Recites.
	Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu melech haolam Boreh pri hagofen.
	They clink glasses. She drinks. The others follow, though JOSHUA waits for CONNIE to drink first.
	Do you know why we clink our glasses? All over the world people clink their glasses before they drink – why?
	Pause.
	Don’t we know? My clever darlings don’t know? Or do we think it’s useless information? Ah, well, it’s been Martha’s role in life to be a fund of useless information.
	The ancients had for years loved wine. Every sense was gratified but one. No one talked about it. It became a taboo subject – like not mentioning that one’s beautiful, intelligent, happy child had an arm missing. Until one day glass was invented and like the silicon chip it changed all living thereafter.
	It was the court jester during the reign of Rameses III – no! That can’t be so. The Egyptians hadn’t learned that laughter at oneself could heal. Or had they?
JOSHUA	(Admiringly.) Keep going, Martha, keep going.
MARTHA	Do you think every civilization had Jesters to help them through life? I digress. Wherever, whenever, whoever, said: ‘How good it is that we have wine to gratify so many senses. We can look at it, we can smell it, we can taste it, and to make it we must touch it. But how sad that we cannot hear it.’ At which the court jester, inspired as only court jesters can be, clinked the glass of the pharaoh or the emperor or the duke, and said, (Clinks JOSHUA’s glass.) ‘Health to all your senses, Lord!’
	She drinks.
CONNIE	That was a very beautiful story, Mother.
MARTHA	Martha not so useless after all? Good. Now. (Cuts the cake.) It’s a new recipe and I shall be very disappointed if you guess all the main ingredients.
	She hands each a slice. Neither eats.
	I suppose I should be used to your humour by now.
CONNIE	(Eating.) Well, half of me is her. I’m safe.
JOSHUA	Don’t bank on it.
	CONNIE chokes. Staggers around. Falls.
MARTHA	Come now, dear. The death of children is not game for ridicule.
CONNIE	(From her prone position.) Butter, eggs, flour, for sure. Then – er – honey?
MARTHA	Couldn’t miss that.
	MARTHA drinks quickly. She will become drunk soon.
CONNIE	Now there’s an interesting question. What’s not game for ridicule?
MARTHA	You haven’t finished guessing the ingredients of my cake.
CONNIE	Who, if anyone, or what, if anything, is too sacred to be ridiculed?
MARTHA	Joshua?
JOSHUA	Oh – er – walnuts. I taste walnuts. (To CONNIE.) Everything must be game for ridicule.
MARTHA	Connie, he says walnuts. What do you say?
	A subtle conflict ensues. JOSHUA becomes excited by the topic. MARTHA fights for CONNIE’s attention.
CONNIE	Oh – er – almonds. Honey and almonds. (To JOSHUA.) Everything?
MARTHA	What else?
CONNIE	Is the martyr game for ridicule?
MARTHA	I mean, there is one very special spice which sets it off.
CONNIE	The freedom fighter? The missionary? The educator? Those in pain?
MARTHA	I did take the trouble to bake a cake…
CONNIE	(Biting.) Cinnamon.
MARTHA	(Giggling.) Nothing so ordinary.
JOSHUA	Yes! All of them are game for ridicule if they can be seen to be in love with or intoxicated by: the martyr her sacrifice, the freedom fighter his anger, the missionary his zeal, the educator her cleverness, and those in pain their suffering.
MARTHA	I’ll give you a clue. It comes from –
JOSHUA	I’m a puritan. I believe everything has to be earned, and all those who engage in altruism and agony should do so with reluctance. Anyone caught enjoying it should be punished with ridicule.
MARTHA	I really am surprised you didn’t get it at once, Connie.
	CONNIE walks to a note on her wall.
CONNIE	(Reading.) ‘Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for who shall bring him to see what shall be after him?’ Ecclesiastes, chapter 3, verse 22.
MARTHA	It’s a spice often referred to in the Bible.
JOSHUA	In my opinion all opinions are provisional! Even Eccles– (MARTHA snaps.)
MARTHA	Opinions! He has to have opinions about everything! Puritan? Huh! I’d say he was. Not an ounce of fun in him. Takes himself so bloody seriously. Too clever by half! He’ll have a fall one day which will break his bloody neck, and serves him right.
CONNIE	Mother!
MARTHA	Serves them all right. I’m sick of being nice and tolerant and baking cakes.
CONNIE	Mother!
MARTHA	It’s happening again. He didn’t go and it’s happening again.
CONNIE	Please, Mother.
MARTHA	His air…
JOSHUA	I feared it wouldn’t last long.
MARTHA	…he has this air…
JOSHUA	I’m having an intelligent conversation with my daughter.
MARTHA	His daughter, his conversation, his intelligence. It suffocates me.
JOSHUA	What suffocates you?
MARTHA	(Struggling to name it.) His air…
JOSHUA	Air! Air! What air, you foolish woman, you? What air?
MARTHA	(At last.) He has no fear of God.
JOSHUA	Fear of God? Why should I fear God? I invented him!
MARTHA	There! That! That’s it! Did you hear him?
CONNIE	Mother, I am going mad with all of this. Mother –
	MARTHA once more goes out of control into hysteria.
MARTHA	Mother! Mother! Don’t ‘mother’ me. I’m not your mother.
	He’s your father, though. And can’t you tell it! The way you stick together. You. You and him. All of you. Keeping to yourselves. Cosy. Exclusive. Private. Private jokes, private conversations, private plots for this and that. You’d like to take over this house, wouldn’t you? Find some way of getting me out of the place I was born in, grew up in, welcomed him into. Eh? I bet that’s what you’re plotting to do. Take over. I bet you arranged – Oh, my God!
	Why didn’t I see it before? Of course! Fool! Trusting bloody fool. You arranged to come together, didn’t you, at the same time? You’ve been scheming behind my back. Why? Why?
CONNIE	Cardamom. You’ve put cardamom in the cake. What a clever idea.
MARTHA	It’s happening again. He didn’t go and it’s happening again. I can’t breathe, I don’t know where to put myself, I don’t know what to do with my hands, I don’t know what to say, I’m not making sense, I’m screaming again, I’m screaming, I can’t stop screaming.
	MARTHA is drunkenly weeping. Inconsolable. She lays her head in CONNIE’s lap.
	Why didn’t he go? I’ve never understood. He’s got his own little flat now, hasn’t he? I’ve never understood any of it, any of it, never understood…
	They watch her simmer down. She moans softly, as though trying to comfort herself. It is a long pause.
JOSHUA	(Realizing it, as though for the first time.) She will never have any peace.
	Slow fade.

By the Same Author

Plays

THE WESKER TRILOGY: Chicken Soup with Barley; Roots; I’m Talking About Jerusalem

The Kitchen

The Four Seasons (included in Love Plays published by Oberon Books ISBN 978-1-84002-791-4)

Their Very Own and Golden City

Chips with Everything

The Friends

The Old Ones

Love Letters on Blue Paper (included in Love Plays published by Oberon Books ISBN 978-1-84002-791-4)

The Journalists

The Wedding Feast

Shylock

One More Ride on the Merry-Go-Round

Caritas

When God Wanted a Son

Lady Othello (included in Love Plays published by Oberon Books ISBN 978-1-84002-791-4)

Bluey

Badenheim 1939

Shoeshine and Little Old Lady (Plays for young people)

Beorhtel’s Hill

Men Die Women Survive

Blood Libel

Wild Spring

Break My Heart

Barabbas (15 minute play for TV/stage)

Denial

Groupie

Longitude

Letter to Myself (For a 13 year old actress)

Amazed & Surprised (15 minute radio/stage play)

Phoenix Phoenix Burning Bright

The Rocking Horse Kid (For radio)

Short Stories

Six Sundays in January

Love Letters on Blue Paper

Said the Old Man to the Young Man

The King’s Daughters

Essays and Non-fiction

Fears of Fragmentation

Distinctions

Say Goodbye, You May Never See Them Again (Wesker text, primitive paintings by John Allin)

Journey Into Journalism

As Much As I Dare (autobiography)

The Birth of Shylock and the Death of Zero

Mostel (Diary)

For Children

Voices on the Wind

When I Was Your Age

Novels

Honey

Opera Librettos

Caritas

Grief

Poetry

All Things Tire Of Themselves – a collection of 45 poems.