ACT 2, SCENE 3

LOCATIONS SIGNAGE: AT THE COVERED MARKET

At MABEL'S stall.

MABEL: (stage whisper) Yer showin’. In yer face. And if yer took that coat off, I reckon I’d see it in more’n yer face. (beat) Ain’t heard of no weddin’ …

LIZZIE: Hush, Mabel.

MABEL: Don’t worry, churchmouse. She’s got a few weeks yet. Most people don’t notice what they don’t expect to see.

ESME: But if you can tell, Mabel …

MABEL: Most people don’t have my expertise.

ESME: You have children?

MABEL: No, cunt-rymouse, I don’t.

MABEL and ESME lock eyes. MABEL waves a carving.

MABEL: Why’n’t you sit there while churchmouse gets her fish for Friday and me carving here’ll be done by the time she gets back?

ESME: (beat) Yes. All right, Mabel. Yes. Lizzie. I wouldn’t mind to sit.

LIZZIE: You can sit in the tearoom.

ESME: But I want this carving for my da. He’d really like it.

LIZZIE: Yes. He would. (beat) All right. I’ll be back.

Exit LIZZIE.

MABEL: That Lizzie won’t approve of what yer plannin’ to do.

ESME: It’s not for Lizzie to approve or disapprove.

MABEL: Lawks. Breathe normal, lass! Can’t have you fainting on me, can I? Where’s yer paper slips and pencil?

ESME: What?

MABEL: Yer pencil and yer slips!

ESME gets the slip and pencil out.

MABEL: Trade. ‘I reckon Mrs Smythe might still be in the trade’. Uh. Mabel O’Shaughnessy, 1907.

WORDS SIGNAGE: TRADE

ESME: (writes) ‘The Trade’. (beat) Thank you. What an interesting word.

MABEL: You feeling better now?

ESME: Yes. A bit. I won’t faint.

MABEL: Fear hates the ordinary. When yer feared, yer need to think ordinary thoughts, do ordinary things. Yer hear me? The fear’ll back off, for a time at least.

ESME: Where did you say Mrs Smythe lived?

LOCATIONS SIGNAGE: 15 WILLIAM CRESCENT, OXFORD

ESME rings the bell. The door opens.

MRS SMYTHE: Lovely to see you, dear, and how is your mother? (pulls ESME inside)

Don’t look so shocked. There’s always someone watching. Better not to take the chance. Come in. Sit down. We can talk. Now. I don’t always ask this, but … Could you marry the man?

ESME: I don’t want to marry.

MRS SMYTHE: Why not? Is he shiftless? Or a bully?

ESME: It’s … none of your business, Mrs Smythe.

MRS SMYTHE: I get two types of women here. Those who get around too much. And those who get around too little. You belong in the latter category. Those women are often better married. To almost anyone. So I’m asking.

ESME: I don’t want to marry. I want to work. I want to be a – (lexicographer) Never mind that. I want to decide my life. For me.

MRS SMYTHE: Who recommended me to you?

ESME: Mabel O’Shaughnessy.

MRS SMYTHE: You keep odd company for an innocent. I didn’t think she’d survive the game.

ESME: The game?

MRS SMYTHE: What do you think?

ESME: The game is –

MRS SMYTHE: – is whoring. Stay still. (touches ESME’S belly) ‘Mrs Warren’s Profession’ some call it because of the play by Bernard Shaw. Do you like the theatre?

ESME: I’m not an …

MRS SMYTHE: I can see you are neither an actress nor a whore. You’re something sadder, but not unusual either. Now. Stand up, please. Hold still. Don’t flinch. I need to feel your belly. Hold this. (ESME’S skirts) Wait. (presses ESME’S belly all around) A moment more. Very still, please. (beat) Ah. I thought so. I’m sorry, young lady, I can’t help you.

ESME: But why not?

MRS SMYTHE: It’s quickening.

ESME: ‘Quickening’?

MRS SMYTHE: Quickening is the fluttering in your belly that means the baby has decided to stay.

WORDS SIGNAGE: QUICKENING

ESME: Mrs Smythe, 1907.

MRS SMYTHE: What did you say?

ESME: Nothing. (beat) ‘Decided to stay’?

MRS SMYTHE: Yes. You’ve come to me too late. (beat) Look at you. You don’t want the child. But you are relieved.

TRANSITION

LOCATIONS SIGNAGE: LANSDOWNE CRESCENT, BATH, 1907

ESME is quite pregnant.

ESME: How can you live like this, Ditte? This … dignified house. The … civility of it. And … your friends. These are not – good circumstances – but I have so loved meeting them all! Your Sarah, who has been so good to me. What a tornado of kindness and cleverness she is! And Phillip. Who is. So proud of her. And her work. He cares about her work! You will miss them when they go.

DITTE: I will miss them very much. And yes. I am more than aware how fortunate I am. Financial independence. What a gift!

ESME: Ditte, I want my work.

DITTE: Which is why I have employed you as my researcher until the child comes. Which is all Dr Murray, and anyone at Oxford, need know until you make up your mind what to do after that. In the meantime. Here. You should wear this. (Takes ring from her pinky finger and puts it on ESME’s ring finger.)

ESME: A ring on my finger and hoopla I am respectable at the British Museum?

DITTE: Exactly. Sarah mentioned –

ESME: (beat) Ditte. How much does she know? Sarah?

DITTE: Esme?

ESME: Ditte?

DITTE: Dear girl. It is not time to talk about this yet. But. There is a solution. A choice. As it happens. A home for this child. With someone other than you, which avoids one set of consequences – the social ones – for both you and the child. Of course, there is another consequence that it does not avoid. Namely – grief.

TRANSITION TO …

FX: FRANTIC KNOCKING ON THE DOOR

DITTE: Sarah. Thank heavens you’re here.

SARAH: I’m here. Water, Edith, boiled. You have the clean sheets?

DITTE: Yes.

SARAH: Good. You are my assistant. (beat) Esme? This may take a while, sweet girl. Edith – your Ditte – and I will help.

ESME: (calls out, a long moan of pain, then beat) Sarah.

SARAH: Yes?

ESME: If.

SARAH: Yes?

DITTE: Not now, Esme.

ESME: Sarah, if you have had no children.

SARAH: Yes. Breathe, dear one.

ESME: Yes. (breathes) If …

SARAH: Yes. If –

ESME: How can you know how to help me now?

SARAH: I have had two children, Esme. And I lost both. My body’s not built for it.

ESME: I see.

SARAH: And Edith’s right. Not now, my dear. Right now. Breathe.

The labour continues.

SARAH: Bear down, darling. Hold my hand.

ESME: ‘Travail’. Definition: Of a woman; to suffer the pangs of childbirth.

SARAH: Come, love, yell and scream, it’s all right. Deep breath. Yes. Down. Yes. Wait. Yes. Now! Yes!

ESME: ‘Delivered’. Definition: Set free, disburdened, released, given forth of offspring.

Moment. A cry?

ESME: ‘Squall’. Definition: A small or insignificant person; a sudden and violent gust, a blast or short storm; to scream loudly or discordantly.

SARAH: There, there. There, there. Shhhhhhh. All ten toes. All ten fingers. A darling girl. All perfect. A perfect birth. Well done. All’s well.

ESME: She is in your arms.

SARAH: She is in my arms.

A moment.

ESME: I should nurse her.

SARAH: Yes, you should nurse her. Here, darling, here she is.

The baby suckles as we hear …

FX: SOUNDS OF ‘LOCH LOMOND’.

LOCATIONS SIGNAGE: OXFORD, 1908

HARRY: My dear Ditte,

Yesterday I walked the path by the canal. Walton Well Bridge, as ever. It’s where I always walk and talk to Lily. It must look ridiculous. This ageing, shabby gentleman, in energetic conversation with the unseen. Much as I strongly doubt that even Lily will be interested to know that we at the Dictionary are now working on the letters O and P. But I feel her with me! I still mourn her loss. And now there is another loss. The granddaughter I had hoped would be named for her. Who has now left for Australia with her new parents, Sarah and Philip. Like so much else, I must thank you for that.

And I must thank you also for the loan of the cottage of your other friend in Shropshire. When Esme first returned to Oxford, I thought we had lost her to her dreadful grief. A shadow. A wraith. But the time away in the countryside with just her and Lizzie, and, oddly, the friends Lizzie, not Esme, made there, has helped, too. She has returned to … something like herself again. Older – twenty-six now, my little girl! – and wiser. Sadder, of course, but … I am less worried than I was, and that will have to be enough for now.

Lights down on HARRY.

ESME in LIZZIE’S room with the trunk and some slips. Enter LIZZIE.

LIZZIE: What you doing here, Essymay?

ESME: Just looking. Remembering. It’s quite a collection now, isn’t it? I wanted to put in the term your friend Natasha used in Shropshire when she said goodbye to you.

LIZZIE: Ah. ‘Fare thee well, my bostin mairt’.

ESME: ‘My lovely friend’.

LIZZIE: Yes. My lovely friend. Me little cabbage and me bostin mairt.

ESME: I thought it was a good one to end on.

LIZZIE: End? Esme?

(beat)

ESME: You have taken such good care of me, Lizzie.

LIZZIE: Ah, I’m your bondmaid, aren’t I?

ESME: Lizzie … you know I don’t like that word … what you are is … what you have been over these last weeks … is my comfort and restoration.

LIZZIE: You think too much, Essymay.

ESME: Maybe.

LIZZIE: I think you need to come to the Covered Market first chance you can.

ESME: There’s no reason to, Lizzie. I told you. I’m not collecting those words anymore. What’s the point after all? They just sit here in the trunk. And all the memories of all the people that I suppose I thought I was saving along with them.

LIZZIE: It’s not the words you want to get. It’s the words someone wants to give you.