ACT 2, SCENE 2

LOCATIONS SIGNAGE: JANUARY 1907

In the kitchen at Sunnyside. LIZZIE is a one-woman surge of pent-up energy. Something is worrying her.

Enter ESME.

LIZZIE: You’re late.

ESME: Only a bit.

LIZZIE: Sit.

ESME: (sits) Bossy.

LIZZIE: Tired, Essymay?

ESME: A bit.

LIZZIE: Well, eat up.

ESME: I don’t feel like it. Mucky tummy.

LIZZIE: Missing your friends from the theatre?

ESME: Well. Tilda mostly.

LIZZIE: Oh, her!

ESME: I know. ‘What an influence.’ But Lizzie. Sometimes someone who has ideas you don’t understand, or who says things you’d never give yourself permission to can be –

LIZZIE: Dangerous.

ESME: Oh. Maybe? Exhilarating?

LIZZIE: They changed you!

ESME: Maybe I wanted to be changed! Tilda makes me feel bigger than myself, and the world bigger than Oxford and that is … so … thrilling. So of course I miss them. But it would not be my choice to live their life! I have my own life and my own work – copyediting now, even! –

LIZZIE: – Never mind that –

ESME: – and my own people. And this is what I want. I want this, Lizzie. So … I think right now I am as happy a woman as I have ever been.

LIZZIE: Eat the digestives. They’ll settle your stomach.

LIZZIE gets ferociously busy as ESME nibbles then discards the biscuit.

ESME: There is something wrong.

More ferocious scrubbing.

ESME: Lizzie. Please. What’s the matter?

LIZZIE: Essymay. I’m going to ask you to sit down.

ESME: I am sitting down. I’ve been sitting since I got here. You wouldn’t let me stand!

LIZZIE: Answer me straight now, Esme.

ESME: Why wouldn’t I?

LIZZIE: Do you know how far gone you are?

ESME: What did you say?

LIZZIE: Esme. How long. Have you been? Expecting?

ESME: Expecting what?

LIZZIE: Oh, Esme! Surely you know how it happens?!

ESME: Know how what happens? (beat) Oh.

LIZZIE: ‘Oh.’

ESME: No!

LIZZIE: No?

ESME: Surely not!

LIZZIE: You didn’t know. With all your questions and your women’s words. And your research and your checking, you still didn’t know?! Surely someone has told you.

ESME: You, perhaps?

LIZZIE: Your father didn’t ask me to so I … Surely you have worked it out yourself!

ESME: No.

LIZZIE: Why not? (beat) Or. Ah. I have it. Essymay, how can I look after you, if you won’t look after yourself?

ESME: Lizzie?

LIZZIE: Someone has told you! Your ‘Ditte’? Or – ah – someone at that school? But you have then ‘forgot’?

ESME: What do you mean?

LIZZIE: Like you did with the Curse. Maybe it happens but not to you?

ESME: Lizzie … I …

LIZZIE: That’s what you’ve done. Esme Nicoll, you’re almost dangerous.

ESME: It can’t be.

LIZZIE: It certainly can.

ESME: But how can you know? You’ve never …

LIZZIE: My ma was always in the family way. Never saw me da but he’d come and go and then there’d be a baby until he finally went and didn’t come back. Another baby was all I knew before I come here.

ESME: This wretched belly?

LIZZIE: Yes.

ESME: And no monthlies?

LIZZIE: Yes.

ESME: You can tell just by looking at me?

LIZZIE: I wasn’t sure until yesterday. But then I was.

ESME: Can other people tell?

LIZZIE: No one in the Scrippy or the press. Not their area of knowing.

ESME: No. It’s not. Da?

LIZZIE: Oh, Esme. Please! Does your da notice anything apart from the words?

ESME: No. Not really. He tries so hard. And he’s very good at the words. And he so loves me.

LIZZIE: The sickness of it should be over soon.

ESME: I can’t have a baby, Lizzie.

LIZZIE: Reckon you must be … fourteen, fifteen weeks gone. Which means. That Tilda’s brother, yes? It’d be about that time since they got on the train to wherever they was taking their racket next!

ESME: I don’t know what to do. I can’t have a baby. I don’t know what to do.

LIZZIE: First things first. You must tell your father, Essymay.

ESME: But Lizzie, he’s not well!

LIZZIE: And second – that Bill should be made to do the right thing.

ESME: If I know anything at all it’s that I won’t be telling Bill!

LIZZIE: Essymay Nicoll, you must!

ESME: Lizzie Lester, I must not! (seeing LIZZIE'S reaction) Oh, I know! I know! But. You listen. Please? I was … curious. I wanted to know … the feeling. Of … my body … with his. When … my … body … wanted … his body. So I thought, why not?

LIZZIE: Essymay!

ESME: Ohhhhh! Shut up!

LIZZIE: Esme Nicoll!

ESME: Just! Listen! All that’s … true. But. I don’t love … Bill. Not like Da loved Mama or even … Dr Murray loves Ada – Mrs Murray – that prodigious man calls her his ‘lovey’. ‘My lovey, my lovey, where is my lovey?!’ he cries each time he comes through the door at Sunnyside. We’ve all heard it. That’s love. I like Bill very much. I felt … dizzy with him. And there’s also that thing … Both he – and Tilda – see me. And most people don’t. But I don’t want to marry him. And I won’t.

LIZZIE: I don’t understand.

ESME: Well, neither do I, really.

LIZZIE: At least write to Miss Thompson, your Ditte. If you can’t tell your father, she’ll tell him for you. And she’ll know what to do after that.

ESME: I can’t have a baby.

LIZZIE: I got to go to the Covered Market now, Essymay. Will you have a lie-down in my room?

ESME: I can’t have a baby.

LIZZIE: A lie-down? Now? Esme?

ESME: No. (beat) No, I’m coming with you.

LIZZIE: Essymay!

ESME: I’m not sick, Lizzie. I’ve been working with this nausea for weeks now. I can manage an outing to the market.

LIZZIE: Then stay away from Mabel.