ACT 2, SCENE 4

LOCATIONS SIGNAGE: THE COVERED MARKET

MABEL is in a very bad way.

MABEL: You survived, then?

ESME: I survived. Lizzie says you have a word for me.

MABEL: Got more than one. (brings out a fistful of paper slips) Her over there (gestures to the flower stall) ’elped. I told ’er if she did, I’d shut me gob whenever there was ladies sniffin’ around her flowers.

ESME: A compelling incentive.

MABEL: (laughs) Got your funnybone back too.

ESME: Sort of.

MABEL: That’s good. Yer goin’ to be a full ’uman again one day, then. In the meantime, I thought you’d need cheerin’ up when you got back from bein’ away. So I got you more words.

ESME: Now you are making me want to cry.

MABEL: I’m a powerful woman, a’n’t I?

ESME: There’s no doubting that.

MABEL: Got you this, too. Last one I managed before me ’ands gave up along wiv everythin’ else.

Hands her a wooden carving.

ESME: It’s – beautiful! Mabel … (gets her purse)

MABEL: Ah, she’s struck dumb! Nah, nah, nah. You give me somethin’, lassie. I give you somethin’ back.

ESME: I am more than happy to pay.

MABEL: An’ I am more ’n’ ’appy for you not to, so!

ESME: So. (puts purse away)

MABEL: ’Eard you got the morbs, actual.

ESME: The morbs?

MABEL: Whoops. ’Ere she comes, your churchy mate.

Enter LIZZIE, who, seeing her upset, comes to ESME.

LIZZIE: Mabel will be all right, Esme. Don’t worry.

MABEL: We wasn’t talking about me, churchmouse, we was talkin’ about ’er. And no, I won’t be ‘all right’. I’ll shuffle off soon and there’ll be nothin’ left of me. Except for. The words in ’er book.

ESME: Book?

MABEL: Yer book. When I get the morbs, lassie, well, I think of yer book – an’ it cheers me up.

ESME: The ‘morbs’. Tell me, please.

WORDS SIGNAGE: MORBS

MABEL: It’s a sadness that comes and goes. I get the morbs, you get the morbs, even churchmouse ’ere gets the morbs. It’s a woman’s lot, I reckon.

ESME: Mabel O’Shaughnessy, 1908.

MABEL: Yeh. That’s it. Me. Mabel O’Shaughnessy, 19– whatever y’ like.

ESME: It must derive from ‘morbid’.

MABEL: I reckon it ‘derives’ from grief. From what we’ve lost and what we never ’ad and never will. As I said, a woman’s lot. It should be in y’ dictionary.

ESME: (beat) My dictionary?

MABEL: Yeah. Yer Dictionary of Women’s Words.

ESME: (beat) My … Dictionary. Of Women’s …? Words. (beat)

LIZZIE: Esme?

ESME: Thank you, Mabel, for this and all. I’ll see you next time?

MABEL: You might have to be luckier than you usually manage to be for that, lass.

ESME: Hush. No ‘morbs’.

MABEL laughs, and coughs.

ESME and LIZZIE continue through the market.

LIZZIE: You’ll stop collecting words, Esme? Really?

ESME: The collecting was just … pretend treasure. A little girl’s magic.

LIZZIE: You’re sure?

ESME: For heaven’s sake, you never approved of my collecting anyway!

LIZZIE: I helped you, didn’t I?

ESME: I had to bend your arm.

LIZZIE: Well. Maybe I changed my mind. These last months. Maybe.

ESME: Lizzie, those words that Mabel and all those other women gave me – all I’ve done with them is keep them locked in a trunk – for years! Like a … secret code, a little protest that no one could see, and especially no one could take away. But to what end?

LIZZIE: Made you happy?

ESME: But those words didn’t belong to me! And they shouldn’t be hidden away like that. They need to be read. Shared. Understood. Rejected, maybe, but given a chance.

LIZZIE: Essymay. You really is thinking of making a dictionary of your own.

ESME: (beat) Am I?

LIZZIE stares back at her. She might even shrug.

ESME: (beat) Yes, I am. Of words that won’t make it into Dr Murray’s dictionary. But words that exist!

LIZZIE: But what’s the point? Half the people who say those words will never be able to read any book, let alone a ‘dictionary’!

ESME: Maybe not. But their words are as important, Lizzie, as any eminent man’s … literary construction … because the people who used them lived and died and struggled … like Mabel, like you, like me, too. Well, I refuse to let them – us! – be blanks. Gaps. Invisible. I refuse.

LIZZIE: (beat) I’ll lend you me pincushion, shall I, to pin together the slips?

ESME: Lizzie Lester. My bostin mairt.

Enter HARRY.

ESME: Da. What are you doing here?

HARRY: Just passing through.

ESME: Something for you.

She hands him the wooden carving.

HARRY looks, smiles, kisses her.

ESME and LIZZIE move on.

HARRY buys some flowers from the FLOWER SELLER.