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ARNOLD WESKER’S 

ROOTS 

Introduced by Glenda Leeming 


























Arnold Wesker 
Roots 


Arnold Wesker is one of Britain’s seminal post-war playwrights. His varied 
writings include essays, short stories, poetry, journalism and forty-nine plays, 
which have been translated into eighteen languages. His plays include The 
Kitchen (1957), Roots (1959), Chips with Everything (1962) and Shylock (1976). 
He holds honorary doctorates from the University of East Anglia, Queen Mary 
and Westfield College, London, Denison University, Ohio, and the Royal Central 
School of Speech and Drama, London. He was knighted in the 2006 New Year’s 
Honours list. 



Arnold Wesker 


Roots 


BLOOM 


BURY 


LONDON • NEW DELHI • NEW YORK • SYDNEY 



Contents 

Introduction 

Cast 

Characters 

Act One 

Act Two 
Scene One 

Scene Two 
Act Three 










Introduction 


It was Roots that was voted on to the National Theatre’s list of the hundred most 
important twentieth-century English-language plays, and which represents 
Arnold Wesker’s work there, rather than the equally well-known The Kitchen or 
Chips with Everything. As well as being a favourite among Wesker’s works, 
Roots (1959) is a seminal play in the British new wave of realist, socially aware 
drama of the fifties and sixties. At that time, the themes and settings of these 
plays - social division, youthful challenges to apathy, distinctive regional 
lifestyles and speech patterns, the foregrounding of ordinary routine - made a 
strong impact on audiences. Roots itself is a many-layered play. The second play 
of a trilogy, it moves away from the political idealists and activists of the other 
two plays, Chicken Soup with Barley and I’m Talking about Jerusalem, to focus 
on the low-paid agricultural workers of Norfolk. It not only shows us the life 
problems and humour of struggling farm labourers, it also penetrates to the 
underlying social unfairness that paralyses them, just as John Osborne’s Look 
Back in Anger attacked the immovability of the Establishment and John Arden’s 
Serjeant Musgrave’s Dance dramatised the destructiveness of violent protest. 

But in spite of some outrage and bewilderment among traditionalists, audiences 
were intrigued by these plays, and although Wesker has become known for his 
confrontations with reviewers, from the first Roots gained critical recognition, as 
in Bernard Levin’s claim that ‘I have now seen this great and shining play three 
times and it seems to have grown visibly in stature each time’ ( Daily Express, 20 
June 1959). 

Of course, this does not mean that the elements of the new wave were totally 
unfamiliar, in spite of the mythology that London theatres had previously 
produced only light comedies and thrillers. Most decades of the twentieth 
century probably could show a regional or socially rebellious play or two, either 
by British writers such as Galsworthy or by European or American dramatists 
from Gorky to Odets. Yet somehow the context in the late fifties and early sixties 
seemed to be different. Post-war Britain was changing, and rather than plays 
addressing single issues in isolation there was a feeling that more change was 
needed, everywhere, faster. Similarly, there had always been working-class, 
regional activists who identified with their local culture and did not wish to be 
absorbed into the Establishment, but now there were far more and they could 



recognise themselves in plays which addressed their concerns. 

Roots, then, was central to a movement in theatre that partly stemmed from new 
social pressures in the fifties and was partly fostered by specific theatrical 
cultures, such as that of the Royal Court Theatre, where Wesker among other 
young playwrights took part in workshops and discussions. Clearly Roots 
expresses the common concerns of the fifties and sixties younger generation - 
awareness of class divisions, economic exploitation, anti-colonialism, 
inadequacy of educational and health provisions, apathy among the exploited, 
censoriousness, anti-nuclear and anti-militaristic activism. Most of the issues 
associated with this period of great change can be detected either overtly or, 
often, gently slipped between the lines or behind a joke. Like his 
contemporaries, Wesker smacks at a range of abuses, then probes beneath to the 
basic cause of them - their roots, we might say - namely, the disconnection of 
the majority of the people from control of their own society. 

So it is actually the characters’ connections, or lack of them, to the society they 
live in which are the ‘roots’ of the title. This is not terribly obvious at first 
glance, and was not what audiences expected of a play set in rural Norfolk. Early 
critics found the implications of the title counterintuitive, and tried to wring a 
different kind of sense out of it. Reviewers wondered if the play meant that our 
roots needed to be grubbed up at once, or that a country girl can only escape her 
roots by staying in town. Yet the key idea of the play is the opposite of this: 
rootlessness applies to town and country alike, as the main character, Beatie 
Bryant, spells out in her climactic closing speech: ‘Something’s cut us off from 
the beginning. I’m telling you we’ve got no roots’ (Act Three). The great 
majority have no roots in their own society, and are merely passengers, partly 
from ignorance, partly from apathy, partly from a feeling of disempowerment. 

It is through the much-mentioned realism - or, as one critic noted, ‘old-fashioned 
naturalism’, in the sense of strong emphasis on the material conditions of daily 
life - that the dislocation theme is developed. Beatie Bryant arrives back from 
London to stay first with her married sister Jenny, then with her mother and 
father. Jenny’s primitive cottage, without electricity or any other modern 
conveniences, is the background to Beatie’s confidences about her rocky 
relationship with her London boyfriend Ronnie, and these confidences are 
interspersed among scenes of eating and tidying up, often lapsing into silence. 

As a stage direction in Act One explains: ‘this is a silence that needs organising. 
Throughout the play there is no sign of intense living from any of the characters 
- Beatie’s bursts are the exception ... The silences are important - as important 



as the way they speak, if we are to know them.’ Beatie makes it clear to Jenny 
and to the audience that Ronnie’s lifestyle, as a political and social radical, 
deeply involved in cultural activities, is profoundly alien to the taciturn, slow- 
moving though affectionate existence of Jenny’s family. 

The second act, set in Beatie’s parents’ cottage, which does have electricity but 
has no bathroom, shows this again. Her mother’s slow ferrying in the water for 
the hip bath, Beatie’s making a cake, putting away the lunch things, emphasise 
for us the texture of daily living. Mrs Bryant’s repetitive dialogue parallels the 
routine as she narrates well-worn exchanges with neighbours - Beatie comments 
‘it’s nearly always me listening to you telling who’s dead’, and ‘Do you know 
I’ve heard that story a dozen times. A dozen times’ (Act Two). Beatie explicitly 
blames her mother for her limitations in this act, yet the weight of Mrs Bryant’s 
monotonous isolation surely arouses our sympathy for her too. It is not usually 
noticed that she maintains her resentful relationship with her husband not for 
traditional or religious reasons, but because of economics: she snaps, ‘If I had a 
chance to be away working somewhere the whole lot of you’s could go to hell’ 
(Act Three). The economic strains on mean Mr Bryant are clear enough too - he 
stints his wife of housekeeping money (in the traditional way she doesn’t even 
know how much he earns), but he in turn is kept under tight pressure by his boss, 
the farm manager, who comes round to check on his claim to be ill, and, as 
Beatie notes, under his smooth manner is issuing a threat. 

So by the time the Bryant family assemble in the third act to await Ronnie’s 
arrival, tension has built up in expectation of how this articulate and perhaps 
opinionated Londoner is going to interact with the defensive Norfolk folk. The 
afternoon begins badly with Mr Bryant revealing that he has been put on ‘casual 
labour’ by his manager, at half wages. The family’s grim, defeated acceptance of 
this blow rejects Beatie’s outrage: they won’t discuss it; they never protest. This 
mirrors their reaction to the second and climactic blow of this act, when a letter 
arrives to tell Beatie that Ronnie has abruptly ended their relationship. Her 
hysterical despair is played against a background of resigned sympathy - it is 
assumed again that nothing can be done, in emotional as much as social terms. 
The exception is Mrs Bryant, who shocks her family and the audience by 
slapping Beatie’s face in response to her daughter’s accusations: complex 
emotions coexist with acquiescence. Beatie’s key speech, which ends the play, 
repeats the theme - that she and her family are unable to interact with the world 
outside their narrow limits, because of their own unwillingness to even try to 
interact. Her own sudden realisation that she has in fact started to reason for 
herself is the fascinating dramatic reversal which enables the play to end on a 



fragile note of hope. 

At this point, a question may arise in the audience’s or reader’s mind: is a girl in 
Beatie’s situation, with all her problems, really likely to make a breakthrough to 
articulacy and perceptiveness about herself and the culture she is part of? Yet in 
spite of her self-criticism, the play shows her as open to new ideas. She parrots 
Ronnie’s words, but she seems already to be making a start on applying them to 
Jimmy’s territorials, to her father’s work situation and to other incidents. She is 
intelligent and lively, and Ronnie’s influence has given her the incentive to see 
connections and make parallels which are analytic. The fresh gaze she brings to 
her old home prompts new thoughts, and finally experience of rejection and hurt 
makes her look for answers beyond the immediate and personal. 

This relates to a recurrent theme in Wesker’s plays: self-discovery, in the form of 
the emergence of a new side of a character’s personality. Beatie repeats Ronnie’s 
mantra, initially formulated by his father in the earlier Chicken Soup, that ‘you 
can’t change people . . . you can only give them some love and hope they’ll take 
it’ (Act Two). Yet if people do take this love - or if they undergo some more 
unpleasant learning experience - it is possible for them to change themselves. 
Wesker’s characters do this through self-discovery - finding hidden resources 
within themselves - and Beatie discovers that she has strengths she had 
previously ignored. 

Both the style and the message of Roots have retained their importance into the 
new century. After Roots, the smell of onions or bacon floated over many 
auditoriums as other playwrights put real cooking on stage, and the naturalistic 
depiction of a slice of regional working-class life, for instance in the plays of 
David Storey, became a genre which was accepted without further critical 
indignation. Roots itself was not only successful in London, it was successful 
wherever it was put on. The central role was a desirable one for any actress, and 
reviews praise the leading ladies of provincial reps across the country for their 
triumphs as Beatie Bryant. In 1979 the play was revived at the National Theatre, 
and although the clothes and set were anchored in the fifties, it was noted that 
the attack on divisions in society were still valid. Today, after some delusional 
decades in which it was claimed that ‘everybody’s middle class now’, it is clear 
that social division has increased rather than reduced, and the distance between 
those in power and those at the bottom is greater than ever. There may be wider 
provision of electricity and indoor plumbing, but the Bryant family’s feeling of 
powerlessness is recognisable enough in the twenty-first century. 



The value of Wesker’s work relates in part to his perceptiveness about this 
situation. He is the longest surviving member of the new-wave dramatists of the 
fifties and sixties, and his best known plays of that period - The Kitchen, 

Chicken Soup with Barley, Roots, Chips with Everything - are not mere realistic 
vignettes of different mid-century lifestyles: all of them pinpoint the 
uncomfortable conflicts, the complicity, the lethargy, that enmesh the struggling 
lives of Wesker’s marginalised fellow-citizens. Amongst other themes, Roots is a 
forerunner of some of Wesker’s later, lesser known plays, such as The Friends 
and Annie Wobbler, in depicting the experiences of women characters. 
Conversely, the Jewish identity of offstage Ronnie and his family, central to the 
other parts of the trilogy, is hardly mentioned in Roots (Jimmy remarks ‘a strong 
socialist. . . and a Jew boy? . . . Well, that’s a queer mixture then’ (Act Three)), 
but this identity is important to Wesker, whose reworking in his Shylock of 
Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice has been and still is enormously popular 
with audiences and scholars across the world. Unlike his contemporaries 
Osborne and Arden, who wrote less as they grew older and met with persistent 
discouragement, Wesker has always continued to write, including for radio, 
television and local commissions. When he was awarded a knighthood in 2006, 
it was for services to drama, which particularly included his work in making 
London’s Roundhouse into a theatrical venue, work which strongly influenced 
the development of arts centres opening up in cities across the country. Other 
contemporaries are known to have declined honours for ideological reasons, but 
Wesker considered the recognition was deserved. And he did deserve it. 

Glenda Leeming, 2013 



Roots 

For Dusty 



Note to actors and producers 

My people are not caricatures. They are real (though fiction), and if they are 
portrayed as caricatures the point of all these plays will be lost. The picture I 
have drawn is a harsh one, yet my tone is not one of disgust - nor should it be in 
the presentation of the plays. I am at one with these people: it is only that I am 
annoyed, with them and myself. 

Notes on pronunciation 

This is a play about Norfolk people; it could be a play about any country people 
and the moral could certainly extend to the metropolis. But as it is about Norfolk 
people it is important that some attempt is made to find out how they talk. A very 
definite accent and intonation exists and personal experience suggests that this 
is not difficult to know. The following may be of great help: 

When the word ‘won’t’ is used, the ‘w’ is left out. It sounds the same but the ‘w’ 
is lost. 

Double ‘ee’ is pronounced ‘i’ as in ‘it’ - so that ‘been’ becomes ‘bin’, ‘seen’ 
becomes ‘sin’, etc. 

‘Have’ and ‘had’ become ‘hev’ and ‘hed’ as in ‘head’. 

‘Ing’ loses the ‘g’ so that it becomes ‘in’. 

‘Bor’ is a common handle and is a contraction of neighbour. 

Instead of the word ‘of’ they say ‘on’, e.g. ‘I’ve hed enough on it’ or ‘What do 
you think on it?’ 

Their ‘yes’ is used all the time and sounds like ‘year’ with a ‘p’ - ‘yearp’. 

‘Blast’ is also common usage and is pronounced ‘blust’, a short sharp sound as in 
‘gust’. 

The cockney ‘ain’t’ becomes ‘ent’ - also short and sharp. 

The ‘t’ in ‘that’ and ‘what’ is left out to give ‘thaas’ and ‘whaas’, e.g. ‘Whaas 
matter then?’ 



Other idiosyncrasies are indicated in the play itself. 



Roots was first presented at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, on 25 May 1959, with the following cast: 

Jenny Beales 

Patsy Byrne 

Jimmy Beales 

Charles Kay 

Beatie Bryant 

Joan Plowright 

Stan Mann 

Patrick O’Connell 

Mrs Bryant 

Gwen Nelson 

Mr Bryant 

Jack Rodney 

Mr Healey 

Richard Martin 

Frankie Bryant 

Alan Howard 

Pearl Bryant 

Brenda Peters 

Directed by John Dexter 

Designed by Jocelyn Herbert 


The play transferred to the Royal Court Theatre, London, on 30 June 1959, and subsequently to the Duke of 
York’s Theatre on 30 July 1959. At the Duke of York’s the part of Mr Healey was played by Barry Wilsher. 

Roots was revived at the Donmar Warehouse, London, on 3 October 2013, and featured the following cast 
and creatives. 

Jenny 

Lisa Ellis 

Jimmy 

Michael Jibson 

Beatie 

Jessica Raine 

Stan Mann 

David Burke 

Mrs Bryant 

Linda Bassett 

Mr Bryant 

Ian Gelder 

Mr Healey 

Nic Jackman 

Frank Bryant 

Carl Prekopp 

Pearl 

Emma Stansfield 

Director James Macdonald 

Designer Hildegard Bechtler 

Lighting Designer Guy Hoare 

Sound Designer Ian Dickinson for Autograph 

Video Designer Dick Straker 

Casting Director Alastair Coomer CDG 



Characters 


Beatie Bryant, a young woman aged twenty-two, a friend of Ronnie Kahn 

Jenny Beales, her sister 

Jimmy Beales, her brother-in-law 

Mrs Bryant, her mother 

Mr Bryant, her father 

Frankie Bryant, her brother 

Pearl Bryant, her sister-in-law 

Stan Mann, a neighbour of the Beales 

Mr Healey, a manager at the farm 

Act One An isolated cottage in Norfolk, the house of the Beales 

Act Two, Scene One Two days later at the cottage of Mr and Mrs Bryant, 
the kitchen 

Act Two, Scene Two The same a couple of hours later 
Act Three Two weeks later in the front room of the Bryants 


Time: 1958 



Act One 


A rather ramshackle house in Norfolk where there is no water laid on, nor 
electricity, nor gas. Everything rambles and the furniture is cheap and old. If it is 
untidy it is because there is a child in the house and there are few amenities, so 
that the mother is too overworked to take much care. 

An assortment of clobber lies around: papers and washing, coats and basins, a 
tin wash-tub with shirts and underwear to be cleaned, Tilley lamps and Primus 
stoves. Washing hangs on a line in the room. It is September. 

Jenny Beales is by the sink washing up. She is singing a recent pop song. She is 
short, fat and friendly, and wears glasses. A child’s voice is heard from the 
bedroom crying ‘Sweet, Mamma, sweet. ’ 

Jenny ( good-naturedly ) Shut you up Daphne and get you to sleep now. (Moves 
to get a dishcloth .) 

Child’s voice Daphy wan’ sweet, sweet, sweet. 

Jenny (going to cupboard to get sweet ) My word child, Father come home and 
find you awake he’ll be after you. (Disappears to bedroom with sweet.) There - 
now sleep, gal, don’t wan’ you grumpy wi’ me in the mornin’. 

Enter Jimmy Beales. Also short, chubby, blond though hardly any hair left, 
ruddy complexion. He is a garage mechanic. Wears blue dungarees and an army 
pack slung over his shoulder. He wheels his bike in and lays it by the wall. Seems 
to be in some sort of pain - around his back. Jenny returns. 

Waas matter wi’ you then? 

Jimmy I don’ know gal. There’s a pain in my guts and one a’tween my 
shoulder blades I can hardly stand up. 

Jenny Sit you down then an’ I’ll git you your supper on the table. 

Jimmy Blust gal! I can’t eat yit. 

Jimmy picks up a pillow from somewhere and lies down on the sofa holding 



pillow to stomach. Jenny watches him a while. 

Jenny Don’t you know what ’tis yit? 

Jimmy Well, how should I know what ’tis. 

Jenny I told Mother about the pain and she says it’s indigestion. 

Jimmy What the hell’s indigestion doin’ a’tween my shoulder blades then? 

Jenny She say some people get indigestion so bad it go right through their 
stomach to the back. 

Jimmy Don’t be daft. 

Jenny That’s what I say. Blust Mother, I say, you don’t git indigestion in the 
back. Don’t you tell me, she say, I hed it! 

Jimmy What hevn’t she hed. 

Jenny returns to washing up while Jimmy struggles a while on the sofa. Jenny 
hums. No word. Then - 

Jenny Who d’you see today? 

Jimmy Only Doctor Gallagher. 

Jenny ( wheeling round ) You see who? 

Jimmy Gallagher. His wife driv him up in the ole Armstrong. 

Jenny Well I go t’hell if that ent a rum thing. 

Jimmy ( rising and going to table; pain has eased) What’s that then? 

Jenny ( moving to get him supper from oven) We was down at the whist drive 
in the village and that Judy Maitland say he were dead. ’Cos you know he’ve 
hed a cancer this last year and they don’t give him no longer’n three weeks don’t 
you? 

Jimmy Ole crows. They don’ wan’ nothin’ less than a death to wake them up. 
Jenny No. No longer’n three weeks. 

Girl’s voice ( off) Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo! 

Jimmy There’s your sister. 



Jenny That’s her. 

Girl’s voice ( off) Yoo-hoo! Anyone home? 

Jenny ( calling ) Come you on in gal, don’t you worry about yoo-hoo. 

Enter Beatie Bryant, an ample, blonde, healthy-faced young woman of twenty- 
two years. She is carrying a case. 

Jimmy Here she is. 

Jenny ( with reserve, but pleased ) Hello, Beatrice - how are you? 

Beatie (with reserve, but pleased ) Hello, Jenny - how are you? What’s that 
lovely smell I smell? 

Jenny Onions for supper and bread for the harvest festival. 

Beatie Watcha Jimmy Beales, how you doin’ bor? 

Jimmy Not so bad gal, how’s yourself? 

Beatie All right you know. When you cornin’ to London again for a football 
match? 

Jimmy O blust gal, I don’ wanna go to any more o’ those things. Ole father 
Bryant was there in the middle of that crowd and he turn around an’ he say 
(imitating), ‘Stop you apushin’ there,’ he say, ‘stop you a-pushin’.’ 

Jenny Where’s Ronnie? 

Beatie He’s cornin’ down at the end of two weeks. 

Jimmy Ent you married yit? 

Beatie No. 

Jimmy You wanna hurry then gal, a long engagement don’t do the ole legs any 
good. 

Jenny Now shut you up Jimmy Beales and get that food down you. Every time 
you talk, look, you miss a mouthful! That’s why you complain of pain in your 
shoulder blades. 

Beatie You bin hevin’ pains then Jimmy? 

Jimmy Blust yes! Right a’tween my shoulder blades. 



Jenny Mother says it’s indigestion. 

Beatie What the hell’s indigestion doin’ a’tween his shoulder blades? 

Jenny Mother reckon some people get indigestion so bad it go right through 
their stomach to the back. 

Beatie Don’t talk daft! 

Jenny That’s what I say. Blust Mother, I say, you don’t git indigestion in the 
back. Don’t you tell me, she say, I hed it! 

Beatie What hevn’t she hed. How is she? 

Jenny Still the same you know. How long you staying this time? 

Beatie Two days here - two weeks at home. 

Jenny Hungry gal? 

Beatie Watcha got? 

Jenny Watcha see. 

Beatie Liver? I’ll hev it! 

Beatie makes herself at home. Nearby is a pile of comics. She picks one up and 
reads. 

Jenny We got some ice cream after. 

Beatie ( absorbed ) Yearp. 

Jenny Look at her. No sooner she’s in than she’s at them ole comics. You still 
read them ole things? 

Jimmy She don’t change much do she? 

Beatie Funny that! Soon ever I’m home again I’m like I always was - it don’ 
even seem I bin away. I do the same lazy things an’ I talk the same. Funny that! 

Jenny What do Ronnie say to it? 

Beatie He ent never bin here, not in the three years I know him so he don’t 
even know. But I’ll tell you. (She jumps up and moves around as she talks.) I 
used to read the comics he bought for his nephews and he used to get riled - 



Now Beatie begins to quote Ronnie, and when she does she imitates him so well 
in both manner and intonation that in fact as the play progresses we see a 
picture of him through her. 

‘Christ, woman, what can they give you that you can be so absorbed?’ So you 
know what I used to do? I used to get a copy of the Manchester Guardian and sit 
with that wide open - and a comic behind! 

Jimmy Manchester Guardian ? Blimey Joe - he don’ believe in hevin’ much 
fun then? 

Beatie That’s what I used to tell him. ‘Fun?’ he say. ‘Fun? Playing an 
instrument is fun, painting is fun, reading a book is fun, talking with friends is 
fun - but a comic? A comic? for a young woman of twenty-two?’ 

Jenny (handing out meal and sitting down herself) He sound a queer bor to 
me. Sit you down and eat gal. 

Beatie ( enthusiastically ) He’s alive though. 

Jimmy Alive? Alive you say? What’s alive about someone who can’t read a 
comic? What’s alive about a person that reads books and looks at paintings and 
listens to classical music? 

There is a silence at this, as though the question answers itself - reluctantly. 
Well, it’s all right for some I suppose. 

Beatie And then he’d sneak the comic away from me and read it his-self! 
Jenny Oh, he didn’t really mind then? 

Beatie No - ’cos sometimes I read books as well. ‘There’s nothing wrong with 
comics,’ he’d cry - he stand up on a chair when he want to preach but don’t 
wanna sound too dramatic. 

Jimmy Eh? 

Beatie Like this, look. ( Stands on a chair.) ‘There’s nothing wrong with 
comics only there’s something wrong with comics all the time. There’s nothing 
wrong with football, only there’s something wrong with only football. There’s 
nothing wrong with rock ’n’ rolling, only God preserve me from the girl that can 
do nothing else!’ ( She sits down and then stands up again, remembering 
something else.) Oh yes, ‘and there’s nothing wrong with talking about the 



weather, only don’t talk to me about it!’ ( Sits down.) 

Jimmy and Jenny look at each other as though she, and no doubt Ronnie, is a 
little barmy. Jimmy rises and begins to strap on boots and gaiters ready for 
going out to an allotment. 

Jenny He never really row with you then? 

Beatie We used to. There was a time when he handled all official things for me 
you know. Once I was in between jobs and I didn’t think to ask for my 
unemployment benefit. He told me to. But when I asked they told me I was short 
on stamps and so I wasn’t entitled to benefit. I didn’t know what to say but he 
did. He went up and argued for me - he’s just like his mother, she argues with 
everyone - and I got it. I didn’t know how to talk see, it was all foreign to me. 
Think of it! An English girl born and bred and I couldn’t talk the language - 
except for to buy food and clothes. And so sometimes when he were in a black 
mood he’d start on me. ‘What can you talk of?’ he’d ask. ‘Go on, pick a subject. 
Talk. Use the language. Do you know what language is?’ Well, I’d never thought 
before - hev you? - it’s automatic to you isn’t it, like walking? ‘Well, language 
is words,’ he’d say, as though he were telling me a secret. ‘It’s bridges, so that 
you can get safely from one place to another. And the more bridges you know 
about the more places you can see!’ (To Jimmy.) And do you know what 
happens when you can see a place but you don’t know where the bridge is? 

Jimmy ( angrily ) Blust gal, what the hell are you on about. 

Beatie Exactly! You see, you hev a row! Still, rows is all right. I like a row. So 
then he’d say: ‘Bridges! bridges! bridges! Use your bridges woman. It took 
thousands of years to build them, use them!’ And that riled me. ‘Blust your 
bridges,’ I’d say. ‘Blust you and your bridges - I want a row.’ Then he’d grin at 
me. ‘You want a row?’ he’d ask. ‘No bridges this time?’ ‘No bridges,’ I’d say - 
and we’d row. Sometimes he hurt me but then, slowly, he’d build the bridge up 
for me - and then we’d make love! (Innocently continues her meal.) 

Jenny You’d what, did you say? 

Beatie Make love. Love in the afternoon gal. Ever had it? It’s the only time for 
it. Go out or entertain in the evenings; sleep at night, study, work and chores in 
the mornings; but love - alert and fresh, when you got most energy - love in the 
afternoon. 


Jimmy I suppose you take time off from work every afternoon to do it? 



Beatie I’m talking about weekends and holidays - daft. 

Jenny Oh, Beatie, go on wi’ you! 

Beatie Well, go t’hell Jenny Beales, you’re blushin’. Ent you never had love in 
the afternoon? Ask Jimmy then. 

Jenny ( rising to get sweet ) Shut you up gal and get on wi’ your ice cream. It’s 
strawberry flavour. Want some more James? 

Jimmy ( taking it in the middle of lacing up boots ) Yes please, vanilla please. 
(Eating.) Good cream ent it? Made from the white milk of a Jersey cow. 

Beatie This is good too - made from pink milk ent it? 

Pause. 

Jimmy Yearp! (Pause.) Come from a pink cow! 

Pause. They are all enjoying the cream. 

Jenny (eating) You remember Dickie Smart, Beatie? 

Beatie (eating) Who? 

Jenny (eating) We had a drink wi’ him in the Storks when you was down last. 
Beatie (eating) Yearp. 

Jenny (eating) Well, he got gored by a bull last Thursday. His left ear was 
nearly off, his knee were gored, his ribs bruised, and the ligaments of his legs 
torn. 

Pause as they finish eating. 

Beatie (euphemistically) He had a rough time then! 

Jenny Yearp. (To Jimmy.) You off now? 

Jimmy Mm. 

Jenny collects dishes. 

Beatie Still got your allotment Jimmy? 

Jimmy Yearp. 

Beatie Bit heavy-going this weather. 



Jimmy That ent too bad just yit - few more weeks an’ the old mowldTl cling. 
Beatie Watcha got this year? 

Jimmy Had spuds, carrots, cabbages, you know. Beetroot, lettuces, onions, 
and peas. But me runners let me down this year though. 

Jenny I don’t go much on them old things. 

Beatie You got a fair owle turn then? 

Jimmy Yearp. 

Jimmy starts to sharpen a reap hook. 

Beatie (jumping up) I’ll help you wash. 

Jenny That’s all right gal. 

Beatie Where’s the cloth? 

Jenny Here ’tis. 

Beatie helps collect dishes from table and proceeds to help wash up. This is a 
silence that needs organising. Throughout the play there is no sign of intense 
living from any of the characters - Beatie’s bursts are the exception. They 
continue in a routine rural manner. The day comes, one sleeps at night, there is 
always the winter, the spring, the autumn, and the summer - little amazes them. 
They talk in fits and starts mainly as a sort of gossip, and they talk quickly too, 
enacting as though for an audience what they say. Their sense of humour is keen 
and dry. They show no affection for each other - though this does not mean they 
would not be upset were one of them to die. The silences are important - as 
important as the way they speak, if we are to know them. 

Jenny What about that strike in London? Waas London like wi’out the buses? 

Beatie Lovely! No noise - and the streets, you should see the streets, flowing 
with people - the city looks human. 

Jimmy They wanna call us Territorials out - we’d soon break the strike. 

Beatie That’s a soft thing for a worker to say for his mates. 

Jimmy Soft be buggered, soft you say? What they earnin’ those busmen, what 
they earnin’? And what’s the farm worker’s wage? Do you know it gal? 



Beatie Well, let the farm workers go on strike too then! It don’t help a farm 
labourer if a busman don’t go on strike do it now? 

Jenny You know they’ve got a rise though. Father Bryant’s go up by six and 
six a week as a pigman, and Frank goes up seven ’n’ six a week for driving a 
tractor. 

Jimmy But you watch the Hall sack some on ’em. 

Jenny Thaas true Beatie. They’re such sods, honest to God they are. Every 
time there’s bin a rise someone gets sacked. Without fail. You watch it - you ask 
father Bryant when you get home, ask him who’s bin sacked since the rise. 

Beatie One person they ’ont sack is him though. They ’ont find many men’d 
tend to pigs seven days a week and stay up the hours he do. 

Jenny Bloody fool! (Pause.) Did Jimmy tell you he’ve bin chosen for the 
Territorials’ Jubilee in London this year? 

Beatie What’s this then? What’ll you do there? 

Jimmy Demonstrate and parade wi’ arms and such like. 

Beatie Won’t do you any good. 

Jimmy Don’t you reckon? Gotta show we can defend the country you know. 
Demonstrate arms and you prevent war. 

Beatie (she has finished wiping up) Won’t demonstrate anything bor. (Goes to 
undo her case.) Present for the house! Have a hydrogen bomb fall on you and 
you’ll find them things silly in your hands. (Searches for other parcels.) 

Jimmy So you say gal? So you say? That’ll frighten them other buggers 
though. 

Beatie Frighten yourself y’mean. (Finds parcels.) Presents for the kid. 

Jimmy And what do you know about this all of a sudden? 

Jenny (revealing a tablecloth) Thank you very much Beatie. Just what I need. 

Beatie You’re not interested in defending your country Jimmy, you just enjoy 
playing soldiers. 

Jimmy What did I do in the last war then - sing in the trenches? 



Beatie ( explaining - not trying to get one over on him ) Ever heard of Chaucer, 
Jimmy? 

Jimmy No. 

Beatie Do you know the MP for this constituency? 

Jimmy What you drivin’ at gal - don’t give me no riddles. 

Beatie Do you know how the British Trade Union Movement started? And do 
you believe in strike action? 

Jimmy No to both those. 

Beatie What you goin’ to war to defend then? 

Jimmy (he is annoyed now ) Beatie - you bin away from us a long time now - 
you got a boy who’s educated an’ that and he’s taught you a lot maybe. But don’t 
you come pushin’ ideas across at us - we’re all right as we are. You can come 
when you like an’ welcome but don’t bring no discussion of politics in the house 
wi’ you ’cos that’ll only cause trouble. I’m telling you. (He goes off.) 

Jenny Blust gal, if you hevn’t touched him on a sore spot. He live for them 
Territorials he do - that’s half his life. 

Beatie (she is upset now) What’s he afraid of talking for? 

Jenny He ent afraid of talking Beatie - blust he can do that, gal. 

Beatie But not talk, not really talk, not use bridges. I sit with Ronnie and his 
friends sometimes and I listen to them talk about things and you know I’ve never 
heard half of the words before. 

Jenny Don’t he tell you what they mean? 

Beatie I get annoyed when he keep tellin’ me - and he want me to ask. 
(Imitates him half-heartedly now.) ‘Always ask, people love to tell you what 
they know, always ask and people will respect you.’ 

Jenny And do you? 

Beatie No! I don’t! An’ you know why? Because I’m stubborn, I’m like 
Mother, I’m stubborn. Somehow I just can’t bring myself to ask, and you know 
what? I go mad when I listen to them. As soon as they start to talk about things I 
don’t know about or I can’t understand I get mad. They sit there, casually 



talking, and suddenly they turn on you, abrupt. ‘Don’t you think?’ they say. Like 
at school, pick on you and ask a question you ent ready for. Sometimes I don’t 
say anything, sometimes I go to bed or leave the room. Like Jimmy - just like 
Jimmy. 

Jenny And what do Ronnie say to that then? 

Beatie He get mad too. ‘Why don’t you ask me woman, for God’s sake why 
don’t you ask me? Aren’t I dying to tell you about things? Only ask!’ 

Jenny And he’s goin’ to marry you? 

Beatie Why not? 

Jenny Well I’m sorry gal, you mustn’t mind me saying this, but it don’t seem 
to me like you two got much in common. 

Beatie ( loudly ) It’s not true! We’re in love! 

Jenny Well, you know. 

Beatie ( softly ) No, I don’t know. I won’t know till he come here. From the first 
day I went to work as waitress in the Dell Hotel and saw him working in the 
kitchen I fell in love - and I thought it was easy. I thought everything was easy. I 
chased him for three months with compliments and presents until I finally give 
myself to him. He never said he love me nor I didn’t care but once he’d taken me 
he seemed to think he was responsible for me and I told him no different. I’d 
make him love me I thought. I didn’t know much about him except he was 
different and used to write most of the time. And then he went back to London 
and I followed him there. I’ve never moved far from home but I did for him and 
he felt all the time he couldn’t leave me and I didn’t tell him no different. And 
then I got to know more about him. He was interested in all the things I never 
even thought about. About politics and art and all that, and he tried to teach me. 
He’s a socialist and he used to say you couldn’t bring socialism to a country by 
making speeches, but perhaps you could pass it on to someone who was near 
you. So I pretended I was interested - but I didn’t understand much. All the time 
he’s trying to teach me but I can’t take it Jenny. And yet, at the same time, I want 
to show I’m willing. I’m not used to learning. Learning was at school and that’s 
finished with. 


Jenny Blust gal, you don’t seem like you’re going to be happy then. Like I 
said. 



Beatie But I love him. 

Jenny Then you’re not right in the head then. 

Beatie I couldn’t have any other life now. 

Jenny Well, I don’t know and that’s a fact. 

Beatie (playfully mocking her ) Well I don’t know and that’s a fact! (Suddenly.) 
Come on gal, I’ll teach you how to bake some pastries. 

Jenny Pastries? 

Beatie Ronnie taught me. 

Jenny Oh, you learnt that much then? 

Beatie But he don’t know. I always got annoyed when he tried to teach me to 
cook as well - Christ! I had to know something - but it sank in all the same. 

By this time it has become quite dark and Jenny proceeds to light a Tilley lamp. 

Jenny You didn’t make it easy then? 

Beatie Oh don’t you worry, gal, it’ll be all right once we’re married. Once 
we’re married and I got babies I won’t need to be interested in half the things I 
got to be interested in now. 

Jenny No you won’t will you! Don’t need no education for babies. 

Beatie Nope. Babies is babies - you just have ’em. 

Jenny Little sods! 

Beatie You gonna hev another Jenny? 

Jenny Well, course I am. What you on about? Think Jimmy don’t want none 
of his own? 

Beatie He’s a good man Jenny. 

Jenny Yearp. 

Beatie Not many men’d marry you after you had a baby. 

Jenny No. 

Beatie He didn’t ask you any questions? Who was the father? Nor nothing? 



Jenny No. 

Beatie You hevn’t told no one hev you Jenny? 

Jenny No, that I hevn’t. 

Beatie Well, that’s it gal, don’t you tell me then! 

By this time the methylated spirit torch has burned out and Jenny has finished 
pumping the Tilley lamp and we are in brightness. 

Jenny ( severely ) Now Beatie, stop it. Every time you come home you ask me 
that question and I hed enough. It’s finished with and over. No one don’t say 
nothing and no one know. You hear me? 

Beatie Are you in love with Jimmy? 

Jenny Love? I don’t believe in any of that squit - we just got married, an’ 
that’s that. 

Beatie ( suddenly looking around the room at the general chaos ) Jenny Beales, 
just look at this house. Look at it! 

Jenny I’m looking. What’s wrong? 

Beatie Let’s clean it up. 

Jenny Clean what up? 

Beatie Are you going to live in this house all your life? 

Jenny You gonna buy us another? 

Beatie Stuck out here in the wilds with only ole Stan Mann and his missus as a 
neighbour and sand pits all around. Every time it rain look you’re stranded. 

Jenny Jimmy don’t earn enough for much more ’n we got. 

Beatie But it’s so untidy. 

Jenny You don’ wan’ me bein’ like sister Susan do you? ’Cos you know how 
clean she is don’ you - she’s so bloody fussy she’s gotten to polishing the brass 
overflow pipe what leads out from the lavatory. 

Beatie Come on gal, let’s make some order anyway - I love tidying up. 

Jenny What about the pastries? Pastries? Oh my sainted aunt, the bread! 



(Dashes to the oven and brings out a most beautiful-looking plaited loaf of 
bread. Admiring it.) Well, no one wanna complain after that. Isn’t that beautiful 
Beatie? 

Beatie I could eat it now. 

Jenny You hungry again? 

Beatie ( making an attack upon the clothes that are lying around) I’m always 
hungry again. Ronnie say I eat more’n I need. ‘If you get fat woman I’ll leave 
you - without even a discussion! ’ 

Jenny (placing bread on large oval plate to put away) Well, there ent nothin’ 
wrong in bein’ fat. 

Beatie You ent got no choice gal. (Seeing bike.) A bike! What’s a bike doin’ in 
a livin’ room - I’m putting it outside. 

Jenny Jimmy ’ont know where it is. 

Beatie Don’t be daft, you can’t miss a bike. (Wheels it outside and calls from 
there.) Jenny! Start puttin’ the clothes away. 

Jenny Blust gal, I ent got nowhere to put them. 

Beatie (from outside) You got drawers - you got cupboards. 

Jenny They’re full already. 

Beatie (entering - energy sparks from her) Come here - let’s look. (Looks.) 
Oh, go away - you got enough room for ten families. You just bung it all in with 
no order, that’s why. Here - help me. 

They drag out all manner of clothes from the cupboard and begin to fold them 
up. 

How’s my Frankie and Pearl? 

Jenny They’re all right. You know she and Mother don’t talk to each other? 
Beatie What, again? Who’s fault is it this time? 

Jenny Well, Mother she say it’s Pearl’s fault and Pearl she say it’s Mother. 

Beatie Well, they wanna get together quick and find whose fault ’tis ’cos I’m 
going to call the whole family together for tea to meet Ronnie. 



Jenny Well, Susan and Mother don’t talk neither so you got a lot of peace¬ 
making to do. 

Beatie Well go t’hell, what’s broken them two up? 

Jenny Susan hev never bin stuck on her mother, you know that don’t you - 
well, it seems that Susan bought something off the club from Pearl and Pearl 
give it to Mother and Mother sent it to Susan through the fishmonger what live 
next door her in the council houses. And of course Susan were riled ’cos she 
didn’t want her neighbours to know that she bought anything off the club. So 
they don’t speak. 

Beatie Kids! It makes me mad. 

Jenny And you know what ’tis with Pearl don’t you - it’s ’cos Mother hev 
never thought she was good enough for her son Frankie. 

Beatie No more she wasn’t neither! 

Jenny What’s wrong wi’ her then? I get on all right. 

Beatie Nothing’s wrong wi’ her, she just wasn’t good enough for our Frankie, 
that’s all. 

Jenny Who’s being small-minded now? 

Beatie Always wantin’ more’n he can give her. 

Jenny An’ I know someone else who always wanted more’n she got. 

Beatie ( sulkily ) It’s not the same thing. 

Jenny Oh yes ’tis. 

Beatie ’Tent. 

Jenny ’Tis my gal. (Mimicking the child Beatie.) I wan’ a ’nana, a ’nana, a 
’nana. Frankie’s got my ’nana, ’nana, ’nana. 

Beatie Well, I liked bananas. 

Jenny You liked anything you could get your hands on and Mother used to 
give in to you ’cos you were the youngest. Me and Susan and Frankie never got 
nothing ’cos o’ you - ’cept a clout round the ear. 

Beatie ’Tent so likely. You got everything and I got nothing. 



Jenny All we got was what we pinched out the larder and then you used to go 
and tell tales to Mother. 

Beatie I never did. 

Jenny Oh, didn’t you my gal? Many’s the time I’d’ve willingly strangled you 
- with no prayers - there you are, no prayers whatsoever. Strangled you till you 
was dead. 

Beatie Oh go on wi’ you Jenny Beales. 

By now they have finished folding the clothes and have put away most of the 
laundry and garments that have till this moment cluttered up the room. Beatie 
says ‘There’, stands up and looks around, finds some coats sprawled helter- 
skelter, and hangs them up behind the door. 

I’ll buy you some coat-hangers. 

Jenny You get me a couple o’ coats to hang on ’em first please. 

Beatie ( looking around ) What next. Bottles, jars, nicknacks, saucepans, cups, 
papers - everything anywhere. Look at it! Come on! 

Beatie attempts to get these things either into their proper places or out of sight. 

Jenny You hit this place like a bloody whirlwind you do, like a bloody 
whirlwind. Jimmy’ll think he’ve come into the wrong house and I shan’t be able 
to find a thing. 

Beatie Here, grab a broom. ( She is now gurgling with sort of animal noises 
signifying excitement. Her joy is childlike .) How’s Poppy? 

Jenny Tight as ever. 

Beatie What won’t he give you now? 

Jenny ’Tent nothing wi’ me gal. Nothing he do don’t affect me. It’s Mother 
I’m referring to. 

Beatie Don’t he still give her much money? 

Jenny Money? She hev to struggle and skint all the time - all the time. Well it 
ent never bin no different from when we was kids hev it? 


Beatie No. 



Jenny I tell you what. It wouldn’t surprise me if Mother were in debt all the 
time, that it wouldn’t. No. It wouldn’t surprise me at all. 

Beatie Oh, never. 

Jenny Well, what do you say that for Beatie - do you know how much he 
allow her a week look? 

Beatie Six pounds? 

Jenny Six pound be buggered. Four pounds ten! An’ she hev to keep house an’ 
buy her own clothes out of that. 

Beatie Still, there’s only two on ’em. 

Jenny You try keepin’ two people in food for four pound ten. She pay seven 
an’ six a week into Pearl’s club for clothes, two and six she hev on the pools, and 
a shilling a week on the Labour Tote. (Suddenly.) Blust! I forgot to say. Pearl 
won the Tote last week. 

Beatie A hundred pounds? 

Jenny A hundred pounds! 

Beatie Well no one wrote me about it. 

Jenny ’Cos you never wrote no one else. 

Beatie What she gonna do wi’ it - buy a TV? 

Jenny TV? Blust no. You know she hevn’t got electricity in that house. No, 
she say she’s gonna get some clothes for the kids. 

There is a sound now of a drunk old man approaching, and alongside of it the 
voice of Jimmy. The drunk is singing: ‘I come from Bungay Town, I calls I 
Bungay Johnnie. ’ 

Well I go t’hell if that ent Stan Mann drunk again. And is that Jimmy wi’ him? 
(Listens.) 

Beatie But I thought Stan Mann was paralysed. 

Jenny That don’t stop him getting paralytic drunk. (Listens again.) That’s 
Jimmy taking him into the house I bet. A fortune that man hev drunk away - a 
whole bleedin’ fortune. Remember the fleet of cars he used to run and all that 
land he owned, and all them cattle he had and them fowl? Well, he’ve only got a 



few acres left and a few ole chickens. He drink it all away. Two strokes he’ve 
had from drinking and now he’s paralysed down one side. But that don’t stop 
him getting drunk - no it don’t. 

Jimmy enters and throws his jacket on the couch, takes off his boots and gaiters, 
and smiles meanwhile. 

Jimmy Silly ole bugger. 

Jenny I was just telling Beatie how he’ve drunk a fortune away hevn’t he? 

Jimmy He wanna drink a little more often and he’ll be finished for good. 

Jenny Didn’t he hev all them cows and cars and land Jimmy? And didn’t he 
drink it all away bit by bit? 

Jimmy Silly ole sod don’t know when to stop. 

Jenny I wished I had half the money he drink. 

Jimmy He messed his pants. 

Jenny He what? Well where was this then? 

Jimmy By the allotment. 

Jenny Well, what did you do then? 

Jimmy He come up to me - ’course I knowed he were drunk the way he walk 
- he come up to me an’ he say, '’Evenin’ Jimmy Beales, thaas a fine turnover 
you got there.’ An’ I say, ‘Yearp ’tis.’ An’ then he bend down to pick a carrot 
from the ground an’ then he cry, 'Oops, I done it again!’ An’ ’course, soon ever 
he say 'done it again’ I knowed what’d happened. So I took his trousers down 
an’ ran the ole hose over him. 

Beatie Oh, Jimmy, you never did. 

Jimmy I did gal. I put the ole hose over him an’ brought him home along the 
fields with an ole sack around his waist. 

Beatie He’ll catch his death. 

Jimmy Never - he’s strong as an ox. 

Jenny What’d you do with his trousers and things? 



Jimmy Put it on the compost heap - good for the land! 

Now Stan Mann enters. He’s not all that drunk. The cold water has sobered him 
a little. He is old - about seventy-five - and despite his slight stoop one can see 
he was a very strong upright man. He probably looks like every man’s idea of a 
farmer - except that he wears no socks or boots at this moment and he hobbles 
on a stick. 

Stan Sorry about that ole son. 

Jimmy Don’t you go worrying about that my manny - get you along to bed. 

Jenny Get some shoes on you too Stan, or you’ll die of cold and booze. 

Stan ( screwing up his eyes across the room ) Is that you Jenny? Hello ole gal. 
How are you? 

Jenny It’s you you wanna worry about now ole matey. I’m well enough. 

Stan ( screwing his eyes still more ) Who’s that next to you? 

Jenny Don’t you recognise her? It’s our Beatie, Stan. 

Stan Is that you Beatie? Well blust gal, you gotten fatter since I seen you last. 
You gonna be fat as Jenny here? Come on over an’ let’s look at you. 

Beatie ( approaching ) Hello Stan Mann, how are you? 

Stan ( looking her up and down ) Well enough gal, well enough. You married 
yit? 

Beatie No. 

Stan You bin courtin’ three years. Why ent you married yit? 

Beatie ( slightly embarrassed ) We ent sure yit. 

Stan You ent sure you say? What ent you sure of? You know how to do it 
don’t you? 

Jenny Go on wi’ you to bed Stan Mann. 

Stan Tell your boy he don’t wanna waste too much time or I’ll be hevin’ yer 
myself for breakfast - on a plate. 

Jenny Stan Mann, I’m sendin’ you to your bed - go on now, off wi’ you, you 



can see Beatie in the mornin’. 

Stan (as he is ushered out - to Beatie) She’s fat ent she? I’m not sayin’ she 
won’t do mind, but she’s fat. (As he goes out.) All right ole sweetheart, I’m 
goin’. I’m just right for bed. Did you see the new bridge they’re building? It’s 
rum ole thing isn’t it. . . ( Out of sound.) 

Jenny makes up bed on couch for Beatie. 

Jimmy Well, I’m ready for bed. 

Beatie I can’t bear sick men. They smell. 

Jimmy Ole Stan’s all right - do anythin’ for you. 

Beatie I couldn’t look after one you know. 

Jimmy Case of hevin’ to sometimes. 

Beatie Ronnie’s father’s paralysed like that. I can’t touch him. 

Jimmy Who see to him then? 

Beatie His mother. She wash him, change him, feed him. Ronnie help 
sometimes. I couldn’t though. Ronnie say, ‘Christ, woman, I hope you aren’t 
around when I’m ill.’ (Shudders.) Ole age terrify me. 

Jimmy You sleepin’ on that ole couch tonight? 

Beatie Suppose so. 

Jimmy You comfortable sleepin’ on that ole thing? You wanna sleep with 
Jenny while you’re here? 

Beatie No thanks, Jimmy. (She is quite subdued now.) I’m all right on there. 

Jimmy Right, then I’m off. (Looking around.) Where’s the Evening News I 
brought in? 

Jenny (entering) You off to bed? 

Jimmy Yearp. Reckon I’ve had ’nough of this ole day. Where’s my News ? 
Jenny Where d’you put it Beatie? 

Jimmy (suddenly seeing the room) Blust, you movin’ out? 



Beatie Here you are Jimmy Beales. (Hands him paper.) It’s all tidy now. 
Jimmy So I see. Won’t last long though will it? ’Night. ( Goes to bed.) 
Jenny Well I’m ready for my bed too - how about you Beatie? 

Beatie Yearp. 

Jenny (taking a candle in a stick and lighting it) Here, keep this with you. 
Your bed’s made. Want a drink before you turn in? 

Beatie No thanks gal. 

Jenny (picking up Tilley lamp. Leaving) Right then. Sleep well gal. 

Beatie Good night Jenny. (Pause. Loud whispers from now on.) Hey Jenny. 
Jenny What is it? 

Beatie I’ll bake you some pastries when I get to Mother’s. 

Jenny Father won’t let you use his electricity for me, don’t talk daft. 

Beatie I’ll get Mother on him. It’ll be all right. Your ole ovens weren’t big 
’nough anyways. Good night. 

Moves to door. 

Jenny Good night. 

Beatie (an afterthought) Hey Jenny. 

Jenny (returning) What now? 

Beatie Did I tell you I took up painting? 

Jenny Painting? 

Beatie Yes - on cardboard and canvases with brushes. 

Jenny What kind of painting? 

Beatie Abstract painting - designs and patterns and such like. I can’t do 
nothing else. I sent two on ’em home. Show you when you come round - if 
Mother hevn’t thrown them out. 


Jenny You’re an artist then? 



Pause. Such a thought had not occurred to her before. It pleases, even thrills, 
her. 

Beatie Yes. Good night. 

Jenny Good night. 

Beatie is left alone. Looks out of window. Blows out candle. We see only the faint 
glow of moonlight from outside and then - 

The curtain falls. 



Act Two 


Scene One 

Two days have passed. Beatie will arrive at her own home, the home of her 
parents. This is a tied cottage on a main road between two large villages. It is 
neat and ordinary inside. We can see a large kitchen - where most of the living is 
done - and attached to it is a large larder; also part of the front room and a 
piece of the garden where some washing is hanging. 

Mrs Bryant is a short, stout woman of fifty. She spends most of the day on her 
own, and consequently when she has a chance to speak to anybody she says as 
much as she can as fast as she can. The only people she sees are the tradesmen, 
her husband, the family when they pop in occasionally. She speaks very loudly 
all the time so that her friendliest tone sounds aggressive, and she manages to 
dramatise the smallest piece of gossip into something significant. Each piece of 
gossip is a little act done with little looking at the person to whom it is 
addressed. At the moment she is at the door leading to the garden, looking for 
the cat. 

Mrs Bryant Cossie, Cossie, Cossie, Cossie, Cossie, Cossie! Here Cossie! 

Food Cossie! Cossie, Cossie, Cossie! Blust you cat, where the hell are you. Oh 
hell on you then, I ent wastin’ my time wi’ you now. 

She returns to the kitchen and thence the larder, from which she emerges with 
some potatoes. These she starts peeling. Stan Mann appears round the back 
door. He has a handkerchief to his nose and is blowing vigorously, as vigorously 
as his paralysis will allow. Mrs Bryant looks up, but continues her peeling. 

Stan Rum thing to git a cold in summer, what you say Daphne? 

Mrs Bryant What’d you have me say my manny. Sit you down bor and rest a 
bit. Shouldn’t wear such daf ’ clothes. 

Stan Daf’ clothes? Blust woman! I got on half a cow’s hide, what you sayin’! 
Where’s the gal? 

Mrs Bryant Beatie? She ent come yit. Didn’t you see her? 




Stan Hell, I was up too early for her. She always stay the weekend wi’ Jenny 
’fore cornin’ home? 

Mrs Bryant Most times. 

Stan sneezes. 

Mrs Bryant What you doin’ up this way wi’ a cold like that then? Get you 
home to bed. 

Stan Just come this way to look at the vicarage. Stuff’s cornin’ up for sale 
soon. 

Mrs Bryant You still visit them things then? 

Stan Yearp. Pass the ole time away. Pass the ole time. 

Mrs Bryant Time drag heavy then? 

Stan Yearp. Time drag heavy. She do that. Time drag so slow, I get to thinkin’ 
it’s Monday when it’s still Sunday. Still, I had my day gal I say. Yearp. I had that 
all right. 

Mrs Bryant Yearp. You had that an’ a bit more ole son. I shan’t grumble if I 
last as long as you. 

Stan Yearp. I hed my day. An’ I’d do it all the same again, you know that? Do 
it all the same I would. 

Mrs Bryant Blust! All your drinkin’ an’ that? 

Stan Hell! Thaas what kep’ me goin’ look. Almost anyways. None o’ them 
young ’uns’ll do it, hell if they will. There ent much life in the young ’uns. 
Bunch o’ weak-kneed ruffians. None on ’em like livin’ look, none on ’em! You 
read in them ole papers what go on look, an’ you wonder if they can see. You do! 
Wonder if they got eyes to look around them. Think they know where they live? 
’Course they don’t, they don’t you know, not one. Blust! the winter go an’ the 
spring come on after an’ they don’t see buds an’ they don’t smell no breeze an’ 
they don’t see gals, an’ when they see gals they don’t know whatta do wi’ ’em. 
They don’t! 

Mrs Bryant Oh hell, they know that all right. 

Stan Gimme my young days an’ I’d show ’em. Public demonstrations I’d give! 



Mrs Bryant Oh shut you up Stan Mann. 

Stan Just gimme young days again Daphne Bryant an’ I’d mount you. (Pause.) 
But they ’ont come again will they gal? 

Mrs Bryant That they ’ont. My ole days working in the fields with them other 
gals, thems ’ont come again, either. 

Stan No, they ’ont that! Rum ole things the years ent they? (Pause.) Them 
young ’uns is all right though. Long as they don’t let no one fool them, long as 
they think it out theirselves. (Sneezes and coughs.) 

Mrs Bryant (moving to help him up) Now get you back home Stan Mann. 
(Good-naturedly.) Blust, I aren’t hevin’ no dead ’uns on me look. Take a rum 
bor, take a rum an’ a drop o’ hot milk and get to bed. What’s Mrs Mann thinking 
of lettin’ you out like this. 

She pulls the coat round the old man and pushes him off. He goes off mumbling 
and she returns, also mumbling, to her peeling. 

Stan She’s a good gal, she’s right ’nough, she don’t think I got it this bad. I’ll 
pull this ole scarf round me. Hed this scarf a long time, hed it since I started wi’ 
me cars. She bought it me. Lasted a long time. Shouldn’t need it this weather 
though . . . (Exits.) 

Mrs Bryant (mumbling same time as Stan) Go on, off you go. Silly ole bugger, 
runnin’ round with a cold like that. Don’t know what ’e’s doin’ half the time. 
Poor ole man. Cossie? Cossie? That you Cossie? (Looks through door into front 
room and out of window at Stan.) Poor ole man. 

After peeling for some seconds she turns the radio on, turning the dial knob 
through all manner of stations and back again until she finds some very loud 
dance music which she leaves blaring on. Audible to us, but not to Mrs Bryant, 
is the call of ‘Yoo-hoo Mother, yoo-hoo. ’ Beatie appears round the garden and 
peers into the kitchen. Mrs Bryant jumps. 

Mrs Bryant Blust, you made me jump. 

Beatie (toning radio down) Can’t you hear it? Hello, Mother. (Kisses her.) 

Mrs Bryant Well, you’ve arrived then. 

Beatie Didn’t you get my card? 



Mrs Bryant Came this morning. 

Beatie Then you knew I’d arrive. 

Mrs Bryant ’Course I did. 

Beatie My things come? 

Mrs Bryant One suitcase, one parcel in brown paper - 
Beatie My paintings. 

Mrs Bryant And one other case. 

Beatie My pick-up. D’you see it? 

Mrs Bryant I hevn’t touched a thing. 

Beatie Bought myself a pick-up on the HP. 

Mrs Bryant Don’t you go telling that to Pearl. 

Beatie Why not? 

Mrs Bryant She’ll wanna know why you didn’t buy off her on the club. 

Beatie Well, hell, Mother, I weren’t gonna hev an ole pick-up sent me from up 
north somewhere when we lived next door to a gramophone shop. 

Mrs Bryant No. Well, what bus you come on - the half-past-ten one? 

Beatie Yearp. Picked it up on the ole bridge near Jenny’s. 

Mrs Bryant Well I looked for you on the half-past-nine bus and you weren’t 
on that so I thought to myself I bet she come on the half-past-ten and you did. 
You see ole Stan Mann? 

Beatie Was that him just going up the road? 

Mrs Bryant Wearin’ an ole brown scarf, that was him. 

Beatie I see him! Just as I were cornin’ off the bus. Blust! Jimmy Beales give 
him a real dowsin’ down on his allotment ’cos he had an accident. 

Mrs Bryant What, another? 

Beatie Yearp. 



Mrs Bryant Poor ole man. Thaas what give him that cold then. He come in 
here sneezin’ fit to knock hisself down. 

Beatie Poor ole bugger. Got any tea Ma? I’m gonna unpack. 

Beatie goes into front room with case. We see her take out frocks, which she puts 
on hangers, and underwear and blouses, which she puts on couch. 

Mrs Bryant Did you see my flowers as you come in? Got some of my 
hollyhocks still flowering. Creeping up the wall they are - did you catch a 
glimpse on ’em? And my asters and geraniums? Poor ole Joe Simonds gimme 
those afore he died. Lovely geraniums they are. 

Beatie Yearp. 

Mrs Bryant When’s Ronnie coming? 

Beatie Saturday week - an’ Mother, I’m heving all the family along to meet 
him when he arrive so you patch your rows wi’ them. 

Mrs Bryant What you on about gal? What rows wi’ them? 

Beatie You know full well what rows I mean - them ones you hev wi’ Pearl 
and Susan. 

Mrs Bryant ’Tent so likely. They hev a row wi’ me gal but I give ’em no heed, 
that I don’t. ( Hears van pass on road.) There go Sam Martin’s fish van. He’ll be 
calling along here in an hour. 

Beatie ( entering with very smart dress) Like it Mother? 

Mrs Bryant Blust gal, that’s a good ’un ent it! Where d’you buy that then? 
Beatie Swan and Edgar’s. 

Mrs Bryant Did Ronnie choose it? 

Beatie Yearp. 

Mrs Bryant He’ve got good taste then. 

Beatie Yearp. Now listen Mother, I don’t want any on you to let me down. 
When Ronnie come I want him to see we’re proper. I’ll buy you another bowl 
so’s you don’t wash up in the same one as you wash your hands in and I’ll get 
some more tea cloths so’s you ’ont use the towels. And no swearin’. 



Mrs Bryant Don’t he swear then? 

Beatie He swear all right, only I don’t want him to hear you swear. 

Mrs Bryant Hev you given it up then? 

Beatie Mother, I’ve never swore. 

Mrs Bryant Go to hell, listen to her! 

Beatie I never did, now! Mother, I’m telling you, listen to me. Ronnie’s the 
best thing I’ve ever had and I’ve tried hard for three years to keep hold of him. I 
don’t care what you do when he’s gone but don’t show me up when he’s here. 

Mrs Bryant Speak to your father gal. 

Beatie Father too. I don’t want Ronnie to think I come from a small-minded 
family. ‘I can’t bear mean people,’ he say. ‘I don’t care about their education, I 
don’t care about their past as long as their minds are large and inquisitive, as 
long as they’re generous.’ 

Mrs Bryant Who say that? 

Beatie Ronnie. 

Mrs Bryant He talk like that? 

Beatie Yearp. 

Mrs Bryant Sounds like a preacher. 

Beatie ( standing on a chair ) ‘I don’t care if you call me a preacher, I’ve got 
something to say and I’m going to say it. I don’t care if you don’t like being told 
things - we’ve come to a time when you’ve got to say this is right and this is 
wrong. God in heaven, have we got to be wet all the time? Well, have we?’ 
Christ, Mother, you’ve got them ole wasps still flying around. ( She waves her 
arms in the air flaying the wasps.) September and you’ve still got wasps. Owee! 
shoo-shoo! (In the voice of her childhood.) Mammy, Mammy, take them ole 
things away. I doesn’t like them - ohh! Nasty things. 

Beatie jumps off chair and picks up a coat-hanger. Now both she and her mother 
move stealthily around the room ‘hunting’wasps. Occasionally Mrs Bryant 
strikes one dead or Beatie spears one against the wall. Mrs Bryant conducts 
herself matter-of-fact-like but Beatie makes a fiendish game of it. 



Mrs Bryant They’re after them apples on that tree outside. Go on! Off wi’ 
you! Outside now! There - that’s got ’em out, but I bet the buggers’ll be back in 
a jiffy look. 

Beatie Oh yes, an’ I want to have a bath. 

Mrs Bryant When d’you want that then? 

Beatie This morning. 

Mrs Bryant You can’t hev no bath this morning, that copper won’t heat up till 
after lunch. 

Beatie Then I’ll bake the pastries for Jenny this morning and you can put me 
water on now. (She returns to sort her clothes.) 

Mrs Bryant I’ll do that now then. I’ll get you the soft water from the tank. 

Mrs Bryant now proceeds to collect bucket and move back and forth between 
the garden out of view and the copper in the kitchen. She fills the copper with 
about three buckets of water and then lights the fire underneath. In between 
buckets she chats. 

(Off - as she hears lorry go by.) There go Danny Oakley to market. (She returns 
with first bucket.) 

Beatie Mother! I dreamt I died last night and heaven were at the bottom of a 
pond. You had to jump in and sink and you know how afeared I am of water. It 
was full of film stars and soldiers and there were two rooms. In one room they 
was playing skiffle and - and - I can’t remember what were goin’ on in the 
other. Now who was God? I can’t remember. It was someone we knew, a she. 
(Returns to unpacking.) 

Mrs Bryant (entering with second bucket; automatically) Yearp. (Pause.) You 
hear what happened to the headache doctor’s patient? You know what they say 
about him - if you’ve got a headache you’re all right but if you’ve got something 
more you’ve had it! Well he told a woman not to worry about a lump she 
complained of under her breast and you know what that were? That turned out to 
be thrombosis! There! Thrombosis! She had that breast off. Yes, she did. Had to 
hev it cut off. (Goes for next bucket.) 

Beatie (automatically) Yearp. 

She appears from front room with two framed paintings. She sets them up and 



admires them. They are primitive designs in bold masses, rather well-balanced 
shapes and bright poster colours - red, black, and yellow - see Dusty Wesker’s 
work. 

Mother! Did I write and tell you I’ve took up painting? I started five months ago. 
Working in gouache. Ronnie says I’m good. Says I should carry on and maybe I 
can sell them for curtain designs. Taint girl,’ he say. Taint! The world is full of 
people who don’t do the things they want so you paint and give us all hope!’ 

Mrs Bryant enters. 

Beatie Like ’em? 

Mrs Bryant ( looks at them a second ) Good colours ent they. ( She is unmoved 
and continues to empty a third bucket while Beatie returns paintings to other 
room.) Yes gal, I ent got no row wi’ Pearl but I ask her to change my Labour 
Tote man ’cos I wanted to give the commission to Charlie Gorleston and she 
didn’t do it. 

Well, if she can be like that I can be like that too. You gonna do some baking you 
say? 

Beatie (enters from front room putting on a pinafore and carrying a 
parcel ) Right now. Here y’are Daphne Bryant, present for you. I want eggs, 
flour, sugar, and marg. I’m gonna bake a sponge and give it frilling. (Goes to 
larder to collect things.) 

Mrs Bryant ( unpacking parcel; it is a pinafore) We both got one now. 

Mrs Bryant continues to peel potatoes as Beatie proceeds to separate four 
eggs, the yolks of which she starts whipping with sugar. She sings meanwhile a 
ringing folk song. 

Beatie 

Oh a dialogue I’ll sing you as true as me life. 

Between a coal owner and a poor pitman’s wife 
As she was a-walking along the highway 
She met a coal owner and to him did say 
Derry down, down, down Derry down. 

‘Whip the eggs till they’re light yellow,’ he say. 

Mrs Bryant Who say? 



Beatie Ronnie. 

Good morning Lord Firedamp the good woman said 
I’ll do you no harm sir so don’t be afraid 
If you’d been where I’d been for most of my life 
You wouldn’t turn pale at a poor pitman’s wife 
Singing down, down, down Derry down. 

Mrs Bryant What song’s that? 

Beatie A coalmining song. 

Mrs Bryant I tell you what I reckon’s a good song, that ‘I’ll wait for you in 
the heavens blue’. I reckon that’s a lovely song I do. Jimmy Samson he sing that. 

Beatie It’s like twenty other songs, it don’t mean anything and it’s sloshy and 
sickly. 

Mrs Bryant Yes, I reckon that’s a good song that. 

Beatie ( suddenly ) Listen Mother, let me see if I can explain something to you. 
Ronnie always say that’s the point of knowing people. ‘It’s no good having 
friends who scratch each other’s back,’ he say. The excitement in knowing 
people is to hand on what you know and to learn what you don’t know. Learn 
from me,’ he say, ‘I don’t know much but learn what I know.’ So let me try and 
explain to you what he explain to me. 

Mrs Bryant (on hearing a bus ) There go the half-past-eleven bus to Diss - 
blust that’s early. (Puts spuds in saucepan on oven and goes to collect runner 
beans, which she prepares.) 

Beatie Mother, I’m talking to you. Blust woman it’s not often we get together 
and really talk, it’s nearly always me listening to you telling who’s dead. Just 
listen a second. 

Mrs Bryant Well go on gal, but you always take so long to say it. 

Beatie What are the words of that song? 

Mrs Bryant I don’t know all the words. 

Beatie I’ll tell you. (Recites them.) 

I’ll wait for you in the heavens blue 
As my arms are waiting now. 



Please come to me and I’ll be true 
My love shall not turn sour. 

I hunger, I hunger, I cannot wait longer, 

My love shall not turn sour. 

There! Now what do that mean? 

Mrs Bryant ( surprised ) Well, don’t you know what that mean? 

Beatie I mean what do they do to you? How do the words affect you? Are you 
moved? Do you find them beautiful? 

Mrs Bryant Them’s as good words as any. 

Beatie But do they make you feel better? 

Mrs Bryant Blust gal! That ent meant to be a laxative! 

Beatie I must be mad to talk with you. 

Mrs Bryant Besides it’s the tune I like. Words never mean anything. 

Beatie All right, the tune then! What does that do to you? Make your belly go 
gooey, your heart throb, make your head spin with passion? Yes, passion, 

Mother, know what it is? Because you won’t find passion in that third-rate song, 
no you won’t! 

Mrs Bryant Well all right gal, so it’s third-rate you say. Can you say why? 
What make that third-rate and them frilly bits of opera and concert first-rate? 
’Sides, did I write that song? Beatie Bryant, you do go up and down in your 
spirits, and I don’t know what’s gotten into you gal, no I don’t. 

Beatie I don’t know either, Mother. I’m worried about Ronnie I suppose. I 
have that same row with him. I ask him exactly the same questions - what make 
a pop song third-rate. And he answer and I don’t know what he talk about. 
Something about registers, something about commercial world blunting our 
responses. 'Give yourself time woman,’ he say. 'Time! You can’t learn how to 
live overnight. I don’t even know,’ he say, ‘and half the world don’t know but we 
got to try. Try,’ he says, '’cos we’re still suffering from the shock of two world 
wars and we don’t know it. Talk,’ he say, ‘and look and listen and think and ask 
questions.’ But Jesus! I don’t know what questions to ask or how to talk. And he 
gets so riled - and yet sometimes so nice. ‘It’s all going up in flames,’ he say, 

‘but I’m going to make bloody sure I save someone from the fire.’ 



Mrs Bryant Well I’m sure / don’t know what he’s on about. Turn to your 
baking gal look and get you done, Father’ll be home for his lunch in an hour. 

A faint sound of an ambulance is heard. Mrs Bryant looks up but says nothing. 
Beatie turns to whipping the eggs again and Mrs Bryant to cleaning up the 
runner beans. Out of this pause Mrs Bryant begins to sing ‘I’ll wait for you in 
the heavens blue’, but on the second line she hums the tune incorrectly. 

Beatie ( laughs ) No, no, hell Mother, it don’t go like that. It’s - 

Beatie corrects her and in helping her mother she ends by singing the song, with 
some enthusiasm, to the end. 

Mrs Bryant Thank God you come home sometimes gal - you do bring a little 
life with you anyway. 

Beatie Mother, I ent never heard you express a feeling like that. 

Mrs Bryant ( she is embarrassed ) The world don’t want no feelings gal. 
(Footsteps are heard.) Is that your father home already? 

Mr Bryant appears at the back door and lays a bicycle against the wall. He is a 
small shrivelled man wearing denims, a peaked cap, boots, and gaiters. He 
appears to be in some pain. 

Beatie Hello poppy Bryant. 

Mr Bryant Hello Beatie. You’re here then. 

Mrs Bryant What are you home so early for? 

Mr Bryant The ole guts ache again. (Sits in armchair and grimaces.) 

Mrs Bryant Well, what is it? 

Mr Bryant Blust woman, I don’t know what ’tis n’more’n you, do I? 

Mrs Bryant Go to the doctor man I keep telling you. 

Beatie What is it father Bryant? 

Mrs Bryant He got guts ache. 

Beatie But what’s it from? 

Mr Bryant I’ve just said I don’t know. 



Mrs Bryant Get you to a doctor man, don’t be so soft. You don’t want to be 
kept from work do you? 

Mr Bryant That I don’t, no I don’t. Hell, I just see ole Stan Mann picked up 
an’ thaas upset me enough. 

Mrs Bryant Picked up you say? 

Mr Bryant Well, didn’t you hear the ambulance? 

Mrs Bryant There! I hear it but I didn’t say narthin’. Was that for Stan Mann 
then? 

Mr Bryant I was cycling along wi’ Jack Stones and we see this here figure on 
the side o’ the road there an’ I say, thaas a rum shape in the road Jack, and he say, 
blust, that’s ole Stan Mann from Heybrid, an’ ’twere. ’Course soon ever he see 
what ’twere, he rushed off for ’n ambulance and I waited alongside Stan. 

Beatie But he just left here. 

Mrs Bryant I see it cornin’. He come in here an’ I shoved him off home. Get 
you to bed and take some rum an’ a drop o’ hot milk, I tell him. 

Beatie Is he gonna die? 

Mr Bryant Wouldn’t surprise me that it wouldn’t. Blust, he look done in. 

Mrs Bryant Poor ole fellah. Shame though ent it? 

Mr Bryant When d’you arrive Beatie? 

Mrs Bryant She come on the half-past-ten bus. I looked for her on the nine- 
thirty bus and she weren’t on that, so I thought to myself I bet she come on the 
half-past-ten. She did. 

Mr Bryant Yearp. 

Mrs Bryant You gonna stay away all day? 

Mr Bryant No I aren’t. I gotta go back ’cos one of the ole sows is piggin’. 
’Spect she’ll be hevin’ them in a couple of hours. (To Beatie.) Got a sow had a 
litter o’ twenty-two. (Picks up paper to read.) 

Beatie Twenty-two? Oh Pop, can I come see this afternoon? 

Mr Bryant Yearp. 



Mrs Bryant Thought you was hevin’ a bath. 

Beatie Oh yes, I forgot. I’ll come tomorrow then. 

Mr Bryant They’ll be there. What you doin’ gal? 

Mrs Bryant She’s baking a sponge, now leave her be. 

Mr Bryant Oh, you learnt something in London then. 

Beatie Ronnie taught me. 

Mr Bryant Well where is Ronnie then? 

Mrs Bryant He’s cornin’ on Saturday a week an’ the family’s goin’ to be here 
to greet him. 

Mr Bryant All on ’em? 

Mrs Bryant and Beatie All on ’em! 

Mr Bryant Well that’ll be a rum gatherin’ then. 

Mrs Bryant And we’ve to be on our best behaviour. 

Mr Bryant No cussin’and swearin’? 

Mrs Bryant and Beatie No. 

Mr Bryant Blust, I shan’t talk then. 

A young man, Mr Healey, appears round the garden - he is the farmer’s son, 
and manager of the estate Bryant works for. 

Mrs Bryant ( seeing him first ) Oh, Mr Healey, yes. Jack! It’s Mr Healey. 

Mr Bryant rises and goes to the door. Healey speaks in a firm, not unkind, but 
business-is-business voice. There is that apologetic threat even in his politeness. 

Mr Healey You were taken ill. 

Mr Bryant It’s all right, sir, only guts ache, won’t be long goin’. The pigs is 
all seen to, just waiting for the ole sow to start. 

Mr Healey What time you expecting it? 

Mr Bryant Oh, she ’ont come afore two this afternoon, no she ’ont be much 
afore that. 



Mr Healey You’re sure you’re well, Jack? I’ve been thinking that it’s too 
much for you carting those pails round the yard. 

Mr Bryant No, that ent too heavy, sir, ’course ’tent. You don’t wanna worry, 
I’ll be along after lunch. Just an ole guts ache that’s all - seein’ the doctor tonight 
- eat too fast probably. 

Mr Healey If you’re sure you’re all right, then I’ll put young Daniels off. You 
can manage without him now we’ve fixed the new pump in. 

Mr Bryant I can manage, sir - ’course I can. 

Mr Healey ( moving off outside) All right then, Jack, I’ll be with you around 
two o’clock. I want to take the old one out of number three and stick her with the 
others in seventeen. The little ones won’t need her, will they? Then we’ll have 
them sorted out tomorrow. 

Mr Bryant That’s right, sir, they can go on their own now, they can. I’ll see to 
it tomorrow. 

Mr Healey Right then, Jack. Oh - you hear Stan Mann died? 

Mr Bryant He died already? But I saw him off in the ambulance no more’n 
half-hour ago. 

Mr Healey Died on the way to hospital. Jack Stones told me. Lived in 
Heybrid, didn’t he? 

Mr Bryant Alongside my daughter. 

Mr Healey ( calling ) Well, good morning, Mrs Bryant. 

Mrs Bryant ( calling ) Good morning, Mr Healey. 

The two men nod to each other, Mr Healey goes off. Mr Bryant lingers a 
second. 

Mrs Bryant (to Beatie) That was Mr Healey, the new young manager. 

Beatie I know it Mother. 

Mr Bryant (returning slowly) He’s dead then. 

Mrs Bryant Who? Not Stan Mann! 

Mr Bryant Young Healey just tell me. 



Mrs Bryant Well I go t’hell. An’ he were just here look, just here alongside o’ 
me not more’n hour past. 

Mr Bryant Rum ent it? 

Beatie ( weakly ) Oh hell, I hate dying. 

Mrs Bryant He were a good ole bor though. Yes he was. A good ole stick. 
There! 

Beatie Used to ride me round on his horse, always full o’ life an’ jokes. Tell 
your boy he wanna hurry up and marry you,’ he say to me, 'or I’ll hev you 
meself on a plate.’ 

Mrs Bryant He were a one for smut though. 

Beatie I was talkin’ with him last night. Only last night he was tellin’ me how 
he caught me pinchin’ some gooseberries off his patch an’ how he gimme a 
whole apron full and I went into one o’ his fields near by an’ ate the lot. ‘Blust,’ 
he say, 'you had the ole guts ache,’ an’ he laugh, sat there laughin’ away to 
hisself. 

Mrs Bryant I can remember that. Hell, Jenny’ll miss him - used always to 
pop in an’ out o’ theirs. 

Beatie Seem like the whole world gone suddenly dead don’ it? 

Mr Bryant Rum ent it? 

Silence. 

Mrs Bryant He’s a nice man Mr Healey is, yes he is, a good sort, I like him. 

Beatie Don’t know about being nice. Sounds to me like he were threatening to 
sack Father. 

Mr Bryant That’s what I say see, get a rise and they start cutting down the 
men or the overtime. 

Mrs Bryant The Union magazine’s come. 

Mr Bryant I don’t want that ole thing. 

Beatie Why can’t you do something to stop the sackings? 

Mr Bryant You can’t, you can’t - that’s what I say, you can’t. Sharp as a pig’s 



scream they are - you just can X do nothin’. 

Beatie Mother, where’s the bakin’ tin? 

Mr Bryant When we gonna eat that? 

Beatie You ent! It’s for Jenny Beales. 

Mr Bryant You aren’t making that for Jenny are you? 

Beatie I promised her. 

Mr Bryant Not with my electricity you aren’t. 

Beatie But I promised, Poppy. 

Mr Bryant That’s no matters. I aren’t spendin’ money on electricity bills so’s 
you can make every Tom, Dick ’n’ Harry a sponge cake, that I aren’t. 

Mrs Bryant Well, don’t be so soft man, it won’t take more’n half-hour’s 
bakin’. 

Mr Bryant I don’t care what it’ll take I say. I aren’t lettin’ her. Jenny wants 
cakes, she can make ’em herself. So put that away Beatie and use it for 
something else. 

Mrs Bryant You wanna watch what you’re sayin’ of ’cos I live here too. 

Mr Bryant I know all about that but I pay the electricity bill and I says she 
isn’t bakin’. 

Beatie But Poppy, one cake. 

Mr Bryant No I say. 

Beatie Well, Mummy, do something - how can he be so mean. 

Mrs Bryant Blust me if you ent the meanest ole sod that walks this earth. 
Your own daughter and you won’t let her use your oven. You bloody ole 
hypercrite. 

Mr Bryant You pay the bills and then you call names. 

Mrs Bryant What I ever seen in you God only knows. Yes! an’ he never warn 
me. Bloody ole hypercrite! 

Mr Bryant You pay the bills and then you call names I say. 



Mrs Bryant On four pounds ten a week? You want me to keep you and pay 
bills? Four pound ten he give me. God knows what he do wi’ the rest. I don’t 
know how much he’ve got. I don’t, no I don’t. Bloody ole hypercrite. 

Mr Bryant Let’s hev grub and not so much o’ the lip woman. 

Beatie begins to put the things away. She is on the verge of the tears she will 
soon let fall. 

Mrs Bryant That’s how he talk to me - when he do talk. ’Cos you know he 
don’t ever talk more’n he hev to, and when he do say something it’s either ‘how 
much this cost’ or ‘lend us couple o’ bob’. He’ve got the money but sooner than 
break into that he borrow off me. Bloody old miser. (To Beatie.) What you 
wanna cry for gal? ’Tent worth it. Blust, you don’t wanna let an ole hypercrite 
like him upset you, no you don’t. I’ll get my back on you my manny, see if I 
don’t. You won’t get away with no tricks on me. 

Beatie has gone into the other room and returned with a small packet. 

Beatie ( throwing parcel in father’s lap ) Present for you. 

Mrs Bryant I’d give him presents that I would! I’d walk out and disown him! 
Beatie, now stop you a-cryin’ gal - blust, he ent worth cryin’ for, that he ent. 
Stop it I say and we’ll have lunch. Or you lost your appetite gal? 

Beatie sniffs a few tears back, pauses, and - 

Beatie No-no, that I ent. Hell, I can eat all right! 

Curtain. 


Scene Two 

Lunch has been eaten. Mr Bryant is sitting at the table rolling himself a 
cigarette. Mrs Bryant is collecting the dishes and taking them to a sink to wash 
up. Beatie is taking things off the table and putting them into the larder - jars of 
sauce, plates of sliced bread and cakes, butter, sugar, condiments, and bowl of 
tinned fruit. 

Mrs Bryant (to Beatie) Ask him what he want for his tea. 

Mr Bryant She don’t ever ask me before, what she wanna ask me now for? 
Mrs Bryant Tell him it’s his stomach I’m thinking about - I don’t want him 



complaining to me about the food I cook. 

Mr Bryant Tell her it’s no matters to me - I ent got no pain now besides. 
Beatie Mother, is that water ready for my bath? 

Mrs Bryant Where you hevin’ it? 

Beatie In the kitchen of course. 

Mrs Bryant Blust gal, you can’t bath in this kitchen during the day, what if 
someone call at the door? 

Beatie Put up the curtain then, I shan’t be no more’n ten minutes. 

Mr Bryant ’ Sides, who wants to see her in her dickey suit. 

Beatie I know men as ’ould pay to see me in my dickey suit. ( Posing her 
plump outline .) Don’t you think I got a nice dickey suit? 

Mr Bryant makes a dive and pinches her bottom. 

Beatie Ow! Stoppit Bryants, stoppit! 

He persists. 

Daddy, stop it now! 

Mrs Bryant Tell him he can go as soon as he like, I want your bath over and 
done with. 

Beatie Oh Mother, stop this nonsense do. If you want to tell him something tell 
him - not me. 

Mrs Bryant / don’t want to speak to him, hell if I do. 

Beatie Father, get the bath in for me please. Mother, where’s them curtains. 

Mr Bryant goes off to fetch a long tin bath - wide at one end, narrow at the 
other - while Mrs Bryant leaves washing-up to fish out some curtains which 
she hangs from one wall to another concealing thus a corner of the kitchen. 
Anything that is in the way is removed. Beatie meanwhile brings out a change of 
underwear, her dressing-gown, the new frock, some soap, powder, and towel. 
These she lays within easy reach of the curtain. 

Beatie I’m gonna wear my new dress and go across the fields to see Frankie 



and Pearl. 


Mrs Bryant Frankie won’t be there, what you on about? He’ll be gettin’ the 
harvest in. 

Beatie You makin’ anything for the harvest festival? 

Mr Bryant ( entering with bath, places it behind curtain ) Your mother don’t 
ever do anything for the harvest festival - don’t you know that by now. 

Beatie Get you to work father Bryant, I’m gonna plunge in water and I’ll make 
a splash. 

Mrs Bryant Tell him we’ve got kippers for tea and if he don’ want none let 
him say now. 

Beatie She says it’s kippers for tea. 

Mr Bryant Tell her I’ll eat kippers. ( Goes off, collecting bike on the way.) 

Beatie He says he’ll eat kippers. Right now, Mother, you get cold water an’ I’ll 
pour the hot. 

Each now picks up a bucket. Mrs Bryant goes off out to collect the cold water 
and Beatie plunges bucket into boiler to retrieve hot water. The bath is prepared 
with much childlike glee. Beatie loves her creature comforts and does with 
unabashed, almost animal, enthusiasm that which she enjoys. When the bath is 
prepared, Beatie slips behind the curtain to undress and enter. 

Mrs Bryant You hear about Jimmy Skelton? They say he’ve bin arrested for 
accosting some man in the village. 

Beatie Jimmy Skelton what own the pub? 

Mrs Bryant That’s him. I know all about Jimmy Skelton though. He were a 
young boy when I were a young girl. I always partner him at whist drives. He’s 
been to law before you know. Yes! An’ he won the day too! Won the day he did. 

I don’t take notice though, him and me gets on all right. What do Ronnie’s 
mother do with her time? 

Beatie She’ve got a sick husband to look after. 

Mrs Bryant She an educated woman? 

Beatie Educated? No. She’s a foreigner. Nor ent Ronnie educated neither. He’s 



an intellectual, failed all his exams. They read and things. 

Mrs Bryant Oh, they don’t do nothing then? 

Beatie Do nothing? I’ll tell you what Ronnie do, he work till all hours in a hot 
ole kitchen. An’ he teach kids in a club to act and jive and such. And he don’t 
stop at weekends either ’cos then there’s political meetings and such and I get 
breathless trying to keep up wi’ him. Oooh, Mother it’s hot. . . 

Mrs Bryant I’ll get you some cold then. 

Beatie No - ooh - it’s lovely. The water’s so soft Mother. 

Mrs Bryant Yearp. 

Beatie It’s so soft and smooth. I’m in. 

Mrs Bryant Don’t you stay in too long gal. There go the twenty-minutes-past- 
one bus. 

Beatie Oh Mother, me bath cubes. I forgot me bath cubes. In the little case by 
me pick-up. 

Mrs Bryant finds bath cubes and hands them to Beatie. 

Mrs Bryant (continuing her work ) I shall never forget when I furse heard on 
it. I was in the village and I was talking to Reggie Fowler. I say to him, there’ve 
bin a lot o’ talk about Jimmy ent there? Disgustin’, I say. Still, there’s somebody 
wanna make some easy money, you’d expect that in a village wouldn’t you? Yes, 
I say to him, a lot of talk. An’ he stood there, an’ he were a-lookin’ at me an’ a- 
lookin’ as I were atalkin’ and then he say, missus, he say, I were one o’ the 
victims! Well, you could’ve hit me over the head wi’ a hammer. I was one o’ the 
victims, he say. 

Beatie Mother, these bath cubes smell beautiful. I could stay here all day. 

Mrs Bryant Still, Jimmy’s a good fellow with it all - do anything for you. I 
partner him at whist drives; he bin had up scores o’ times though. 

Beatie Mother, what we gonna make Ronnie when he come? 

Mrs Bryant Well, what do he like? 

Beatie He like trifle and he like steak and kidney pie. 

Mrs Bryant We’ll make that then. So long as he don’t complain o’ the guts 



ache. Frankie hev it too you know. 

Beatie Know why? You all eat too much. The Londoners think we live a 
healthy life but they don’t know we stuff ourselves silly till our guts ache. 

Mrs Bryant But you know what’s wrong wi’ Jimmy Beales? It’s indigestion. 
He eat too fast. 

Beatie What the hell’s indigestion doin’ a’tween his shoulder-blades? 

Mrs Bryant ’Cos some people get it so bad it go right through their stomach 
to the back. 

Beatie You don’t get indigestion in the back, Mother, what you on about? 

Mrs Bryant Don’t you tell me gal, I hed it! 

Beatie Owee! The soap’s in me eyes - Mother, towel, the towel, quickly the 
towel! 

Mrs Bryant hands in towel to Beatie. The washing-up is probably done by now, 
so Mrs Bryant sits in a chair, legs apart and arms folded, thinking what else to 
say. 

Mrs Bryant You heard that Ma Buckley hev been taken to mental hospital in 
Norwich? Poor ole dear. If there’s one thing I can’t abide that’s mental cases. 
They frighten me - they do. Can’t face ’em. I’d sooner follow a man to a 
churchyard than the mental hospital. That’s a terrible thing to see a person lose 
their reason - that ’tis. Well, I tell you what, down where I used to live, down the 
other side of the Hall, years ago we moved in next to an old woman. I only had 
Jenny and Frank then - an’ this woman she were the sweetest of people. We used 
to talk and do errands for each other - Oh she was a sweet ole dear. And then 
one afternoon I was going out to get my washin’ in and I saw her. She was 
standin’ in a tub o’ water up to her neck. She was! Up to her neck. An’ her eyes 
had that glazed, wonderin’ look and she stared straight at me she did. Straight at 
me. Well, do you know what? I was struck dumb. I was struck dumb wi’ shock. 
What wi’ her bein’ so nice all this while, the sudden cornin’ on her like that in the 
tub fair upset me. It did! And people tell me afterwards that she’s bin goin’ in an’ 
out o’ hospital for years. Blust, that scare me. That scare me so much she nearly 
took me round the bend wi’ her. 

Beatie appears from behind the curtain in her dressing-gown, a towel round her 
head. 



Beatie There! I’m gonna hev a bath every day when I’m married. 

Beatie starts rubbing her hair with towel and fiddles with radio. She finds a 
programme playing Mendelssohn ’s Fourth Symphony, the slow movement, and 
stands before the mirror, listening and rubbing. 

(Looking at her reflection.) Isn’t your nose a funny thing, and your ears. And 
your arms and your legs, aren’t they funny things - sticking out of a lump. 

Mrs Bryant (switching off radio) Turn that squit off! 

Beatie (turning on her mother violently) Mother! I could kill you when you do 
that. No wonder I don’t know anything about anything. I never heard nothing but 
dance music because you always turned off the classics. I never knowed 
anything about the news because you always switched off after the headlines. I 
never read any good books ’cos there was never any in the house. 

Mrs Bryant What’s gotten into you now gal? 

Beatie God in heaven Mother, you live in the country but you got no-no - no 
majesty. You spend your time among green fields, you grow flowers and you 
breathe fresh air and you got no majesty. Your mind’s cluttered up with nothing 
and you shut out the world. What kind of a life did you give me? 

Mrs Bryant Blust gal, I weren’t no teacher. 

Beatie But you hindered. You didn’t open one door for me. Even his mother 
cared more for me than what you did. Beatie, she say, Beatie, why don’t you take 
up evening classes and learn something other than waitressing. Yes, she say, you 
won’t ever regret learnin’ things. But did you care what job I took up or whether 
I learned things? You didn’t even think it was necessary. 

Mrs Bryant I fed you. I clothed you. I took you out to the sea. What more 
d’you want. We’re only country folk you know. We ent got no big things here 
you know. 

Beatie Squit! Squit! It makes no difference country or town. All the town girls 
I ever worked with were just like me. It makes no difference country or town - 
that’s squit. Do you know when I used to work at the holiday camp and I sat 
down with the other girls to write a letter we used to sit and discuss what we 
wrote about. An’ we all agreed, all on us, that we started: Dust a few lines to let 
you know’, and then we get on to the weather and then we get stuck so we write 
about each other and after a page an’ half of big scrawl end up: ‘Hoping this 



finds you as well as it leaves me.’ There! We couldn’t say any more. Thousands 
of things happening at this holiday camp and we couldn’t find words for them. 
All of us the same. Hundreds of girls and one day we’re gonna be mothers, and 
you still talk to me of Jimmy Skelton and the ole woman in the tub. Do you 
know I’ve heard that story a dozen times. A dozen times. Can’t you hear yourself 
Mother? Jesus, how can I bring Ronnie to this house. 

Mrs Bryant Blust gal, if Ronnie don’t like us then he - 

Beatie Oh, he’ll like you all right. He like people. He’d’ve loved ole Stan 
Mann. Ole Stan Mann would’ve understood everything Ronnie talk about. Blust! 
That man liked livin’. Besides, Ronnie say it’s too late for the old ’uns to learn. 
But he says it’s up to us young ’uns. And them of us that know hev got to teach 
them of us as don’t know. 

Mrs Bryant I bet he hev a hard time trying to change you gal! 

Beatie He’s not trying to change me Mother. You can’t change people, he say, 
you can only give them some love and hope they’ll take it. And he’s tryin’ to 
teach me and I’m tryin’ to understand - do you see that Mother? 

Mrs Bryant I don’t see what that’s got to do with music though. 

Beatie Oh my God! (Suddenly.) I’ll show you. (Goes off to front room to 
collect pick-up and a record .) Now sit you down gal and I’ll show you. Don’t 
start ironing or reading or nothing, just sit there and be prepared to learn 
something. (Appears with pick-up and switches on.) You aren’t too old, just you 
sit and listen. That’s the trouble you see, we ent ever prepared to learn anything, 
we close our minds the minute anything unfamiliar appear. I could never listen to 
music. I used to like some on it but then I’d lose patience, I’d go to bed in the 
middle of a symphony, or my mind would wander ’cos the music didn’t mean 
anything to me so I’d go to bed or start talking. ‘Sit back woman,’ he’d say, 
‘listen to it. Let it happen to you and you’ll grow as big as the music itself.’ 

Mrs Bryant Blust he talk like a book. 

Beatie An’ sometimes he talk as though you didn’t know where the moon or 
the stars was. 

Beatie puts on record of Bizet’s L’Arlesienne Suite. 

Now listen. This is a simple piece of music, it’s not highbrow, but it’s full of 
living. And that’s what he say socialism is. ‘Christ,’ he say. ‘Socialism isn’t 



talking all the time, it’s living, it’s singing, it’s dancing, it’s being interested in 
what go on around you, it’s being concerned about people and the world.’ Listen 
Mother. ( She becomes breathless and excited.) Listen to it. It’s simple isn’t it? 
Can you call that squit? 

Mrs Bryant I don’t say it’s all squit. 

Beatie You don’t have to frown because it’s alive. 

Mrs Bryant No, not all on it’s squit. 

Beatie See the way the other tune comes in? Hear it? Two simple tunes, one 
after the other. 

Mrs Bryant I aren’t saying it’s all squit. 

Beatie And now listen, listen, it goes together, the two tunes together, they 
knit, they’re perfect. Don’t it make you want to dance? ( She begins to dance a 
mixture of a cossack dance and a sailor’s hornpipe.) 

The music becomes fast and her spirits are young and high. 

Listen to that Mother. Is it difficult? Is it squit? It’s light. It make me feel light 
and confident and happy. God, Mother, we could all be so much more happy and 
alive. Wheeeee . . . 

Beatie claps her hands and dances on and her mother smiles and claps her 
hands and - 


The curtain falls. 



Act Three 


Two weeks have passed. It is Saturday, the day Ronnie is to arrive. One of the 
walls of the kitchen is now pushed aside and the front room is revealed. It is low- 
ceilinged, and has dark-brown wooden beams. The furniture is not typical 
country-farmhouse type. There may be one or two Windsor-type straight-back 
chairs, but for the rest it is cheap utility stuff. Two armchairs, a table, a small 
bamboo table, wooden chairs, a small sofa, and a swivel bookcase. There are a 
lot of flowers around - in pots on the window ledge and in vases on the bamboo 
table and swivel case. 

It is three in the afternoon, the weather is cloudy - it has been raining and is 
likely to start again. On the table is a spread of food (none of this will be eaten). 
There are cakes and biscuits on plates and glass stands. Bread and butter, butter 
in a dish, tomatoes, cheese, jars of pickled onions, sausage rolls, dishes of tinned 
fruit - it is a spread! Round the table are eight chairs. Beatie’s paintings are 
hanging on the wall. The room is empty because Beatie is upstairs changing and 
Mrs Bryant is in the kitchen. Beatie - until she descends - conducts all her 
conversation from upstairs. 

Beatie Mother! What you on at now? 

Mrs Bryant (from kitchen) I’m just puttin’ these glass cherries on the trifle. 
Beatie Well come on look, he’ll be here at four thirty. 

Mrs Bryant (from kitchen) Don’t you fret gal, it’s another hour ’n’ half yet, the 
postman hevn’t gone by. (Enters with an enormous bowl of trifle.) There! He like 
trifle you say? 

Beatie He love it. 

Mrs Bryant Well he need to ’cos there’s plenty on it. (To herself, surveying 
the table.) Yes, there is, there’s plenty on it. (It starts to rain.) Blust, listen to that 
weather. 


Beatie Rainin’ again! 



Mrs Bryant ( looking out of window) Raining? It’s rainin’ fit to drowned you. 
(Sound of bus.) There go the three-o’clock. 

Beatie Mother get you changed, come on, I want us ready in time. 

Mrs Bryant Blust you’d think it were the bloody Prince of Egypt cornin’. 
(Goes upstairs.) 

The stage is empty again for a few seconds. People are heard taking off their 
macs and exclaiming at the weather from the kitchen. Enter Frank and Pearl 
Bryant. He is pleasant and dressed in a blue pin-striped suit, is ruddy-faced and 
blond-haired. An odd sort of shyness makes him treat everything as a joke. His 
wife is a pretty brunette, young, and ordinarily dressed in plain, flowered frock. 

Frank (calling) Well, where are you all? Come on - I’m hungry. 

Pearl Shut you up bor, you only just had lunch. 

Frank Well I’m hungry again. (Calling.) Well, where is this article we come to 
see? 

Beatie He ent arrived. 

Frank Well, he want to hurry, ’cos I’m hungry. 

Beatie You’re always hungry. 

Frank What do you say he is - a strong socialist? 

Beatie Yes. 

Frank And a Jew boy? 

Beatie Yes. 

Frank (to himself) Well, that’s a queer mixture then. 

Pearl (calling) I hope he don’t talk politics all the time. 

Frank Have you had a letter from him yet? 

Pearl Stop it Frank, you know she hevn’t heard. 

Frank Well that’s a rum boy friend what don’t write. (Looks at paintings, 
pauses before one of them and growls.) 

Pearl Watch out or it’ll bite you back. 



Beatie comes down from upstairs. She is dressed in her new frock and looks 
happy, healthy, and radiant. 

Frank Hail there, sister! I was then contemplating your masterpiece. 

Beatie Well don’t contemplate too long ’cos you aren’t hevin’ it. 

Frank Blust! I’d set my ole heart on it. 

Pearl That’s a nice frock Beatie. 

Frank Where’s the rest of our mighty clan? 

Beatie Jenny and Jimmy should be here soon and Susie and Stan mightn’t 
come. 

Frank What’s wrong wi’ them? 

Beatie Don’t talk to me about it ’cos I hed enough! Susie won’t talk to Mother. 

Pearl That make nearly eighteen months she hevn’t spoke. 

Beatie Why ever did you and Mother fall out Pearl? 

Frank ’Cos Mother’s so bloody stubborn that’s why. 

Pearl Because one day she said she wanted to change her Labour Tote man, 
that’s why, and she asked me to do it for her. So I said all right, but it’ll take a 
couple of weeks; and then she get riled because she said I didn’t want to change 
it for her. And then I ask her why didn’t she change him herself and she say 
because she was too ill to go all the way to see John Clayton to tell him, and then 
she say to me, why, don’t you think I’m ill? And I say - I know this were tactless 
o’ me - but I say, no Mother, you don’t look ill to me. And she didn’t speak to 
me since. I only hope she don’t snub me this afternoon. 

Beatie Well, she tell me a different story. 

Frank Mother’s always quarrelling. 

Pearl Well I reckon there ent much else she can do stuck in this ole house on 
her own all day. And father Bryant he don’t say too much when he’s home you 
know. 

Frank Well blust, she hevn’t spoke to her own mother for three years, not 
since Granny Dykes took Jenny in when she had that illegitimate gal Daphne. 



Beatie Hell! What a bloody family! 

Frank A mighty clan I say. 

Jimmy and Jenny Beales now enter. 

Jenny Hello Frankie, hello Pearl, hello Beatie. 

Frank And more of the mighty clan. 

Jenny Mighty clan you say? Mighty bloody daft you mean. Well, where is he? 

Frank The mysterious stranger has not yet come - we await. 

Jenny Well, I aren’t waitin’ long ’cos I’m hungry. 

Pearl That’s all this family of Bryants ever do is think o’ their guts. 

Frank (to Jimmy) Have you formed your association yit? 

Jenny What association is this? 

Frank What! Hevn’t he told you? 

Jimmy Shut you up Frank Bryant or you’ll get me hung. 

Frank Oh, a mighty association - a mighty one! I’ll tell ye. One day you see 
we was all sittin’ round in the pub - Jimmy, me, Starkie, Johnny Oats, and 
Bonky Dawson - we’d hed a few drinks and Jimmy was feelin’ - well, he was 
feelin’ - you know what, the itch! He hed the itch! He started complaining about 
ham, ham, ham all the time. So then Bonky Dawson say, blust, he say, there must 
be women about who feel the same. And Starkie he say, well ’course they are, 
only how do you tell? And then we was all quiet a while thinkin’ on it when 
suddenly Jimmy says, we ought to start an association of them as need a bit now 
and then and we all ought to wear a badge he say, and when you see a woman 
wearin’ a badge you know she need a bit too. 

Jimmy Now that’s enough Frank or I’ll hit you over the skull. 

Frank Now, not content wi’ just that, ole Jimmy then say, and we ought to 
have a password to indicate how bad off you are. So listen what he suggest. He 
suggest you go up to any one o’ these women what’s wearin’ a badge and you 
say, how many lumps of sugar do you take in your tea? And if she say ‘two’ then 
you know she ent too badly off, but she’s willin’. But if she say Tour’ then you 
know she’s in a bad a state as what you are, see? 



Long pause. 

Jenny He’d hev a fit if she said she took sixteen lumps though wouldn’t he? 
Pause. 

Pearl Where’s mother Bryant? 

Beatie Uptairs changin ’. 

Pearl Where’s father Bryant? 

Beatie Tendin’ the pigs. 

Frank You’re lucky to hev my presence you know. 

Beatie Oh? 

Frank A little more sun and I’d’ve bin gettin’ in the harvest. 

Pearl Well, what did you think of that storm last night? All that thunder ’n’ 
lightnin’ and it didn’t stop once. 

Beatie Ronnie love it you know. He sit and watch it for bloody hours. 

Frank He’s a queer article then. 

Jenny He do sound a rum ’un don’t he? 

Beatie Well you’ll soon see. 

Jimmy Hev he got any sisters? 

Beatie One married and she live not far from here. 

Pearl She live in the country? A town girl? Whatever for? 

Beatie Her husband make furniture by hand. 

Pearl Can’t he do that in London? 

Beatie Ronnie say they think London’s an inhuman place. 

Jimmy So ’tis, so ’tis. 

Beatie Here come father Bryant. 

Mr Bryant enters. He is in denims and raincoat, tired, and stooped slightly. 



Frank And this be the male head of the mighty Bryant clan! 

Mr Bryant Blust, you’re all here soon then. 

Beatie Get you changed quick Father - he’ll be along any minute look. 

Mr Bryant Shut you up gal, I’ll go when I’m ready, I don’t want you pushin’ 
me. 

Mrs Bryant comes from upstairs. She looks neat and also wears a flowered 
frock. 

Frank And this be the female head o’ the mighty Bryant clan! 

Mrs Bryant Come on Bryant, get you changed - we’re all ready look. 

Mr Bryant Blust, there go the other one. Who is he this boy, that’s what I 
wanna know. 

Mrs Bryant He’s upset! I can see it! I can tell it in his voice. Come on 
Bryants, what’s the matters. 

Mr Bryant There ent much up wi’ me, what you on about woman. ( Makes to 
go.) Now leave me be, you want me changed look. 

Mrs Bryant If there ent much up wi’ you, I’ll marry some other. 

Frank Healey bin at you Pop? 

Beatie The pigs dyin’? 

Mrs Bryant It’s something serious or he wouldn’t be so happy lookin’. 

Mr Bryant I bin put on casual labour. 

Jenny Well isn’t that a sod now. 

Mrs Bryant Your guts I suppose. 

Mr Bryant I tell him it’s no odds, that there’s no pain. That don’t matters Jack, 
he says, I aren’t hevin’ you break up completely on me. You go on casual, he 
say, and if you gets better you can come on to the pigs again. 

Mrs Bryant That’s half pay then? 

Beatie Can’t you get another job? 



Frank He’ve bin wi’ them for eighteen years. 

Beatie But you must be able to do something else - what about cowman 
again? 

Mr Bryant Bill Waddington do that see. He’ve bin at it this last six ’n’ half 
years. 

Jenny It’s no good upsettin’ yourself Beatie. It happen all the time gal. 

Jimmy Well, we told her when she was at ours didn’t we. 

Mrs Bryant (to Mr Bryant) All right, get you on up, there ent nothin’ we can 
do. We’ll worry on it later. We always manage. It’s gettin’ late look. 

Mr Bryant Can he swim? ’Cos he bloody need to. It’s rainin’ fit to drowned 
you. (Goes off upstairs.) 

Mrs Bryant Well, shall we have a little cup o’ tea while we’re waitin’? I’ll go 
put the kettle on. (Goes to kitchen.) 

Everyone sits around now. Jenny takes out some knitting and Jimmy picks up a 
paper to read. There is a silence. It is not an awkward silence, just a 
conversationless room. 

Pearl (to Jenny) Who’s lookin’ after your Daphne? 

Jenny Ole mother Mann next door. 

Pearl Poor ole dear. How’s she feelin’ now? 

Jenny She took it bad. ( Nodding at Jimmy.) Him too. He think he were to 
blame. 

Pearl Blust that weren’t his fault. Don’t be so daft Jimmy Beales. Don’t you 
go fretting yourself or you’ll make us all feel queer look. You done nothin’ 
wrong bor - he weren’t far off dying ’sides. 

Frank They weren’t even married were they? 

Jenny No, they never were - she started lookin’ after him when he had that 
first stroke and she just stayed. 

Jimmy Lost her job ’cos of it too. 

Frank Well, yes, she would, wouldn’t she - she was a State Registered Nurse 



or something weren’t she? (To Beatie.) Soon ever the authorities got to hear o’ 
that they told her to pack up livin’ wi’ him or quit her job, see? 

Jenny Bloody daft I reckon. What difference it make whether she married him 
or not. 

Pearl I reckon you miss him Jenny? 

Jenny Hell yes - that I do. He were a good ole bor - always joking and buying 
the gal sweets. Well, do you know I cry when I heard it? I did. Blust, that fair 
shook me - that it did, there! 

Jimmy Who’s lookin’ after your kid then, Pearl? 

Pearl Father. 

Pause. 

Jimmy (to Frank) Who do you think’ll win today? 

Frank Well Norwich won’t. 

Jimmy No. 

Pause. Mrs Bryant enters and sits down. 

Mrs Bryant Well the kettle’s on. 

Pearl (to Beatie) Hev his sister got any children? 

Beatie Two boys. 

Jimmy She wanna get on top one night then they’ll hev girls. 

Jenny Oh shut you up Jimmy Beales. 

Mrs Bryant Hed another little win last night. 

Jenny When was this? 

Mrs Bryant The fireman’s whist drive. Won seven ’n’ six in the knockout. 
Jenny Yearp. 

Frank (reading the paper ) I see that boy what assaulted the ole woman in 
London got six years. 

Mrs Bryant Blust! He need to! I’d’ve given him six years and a bit more. 



Bloody ole hooligans. Do you give me a chance to pass sentence and I’d soon 
clear the streets of crime, that I would. Yes, that I would. 

Beatie ( springing into activity ) All right Mother - we’ll give you a chance. 
(Grabs Jimmy’s hat and umbrella. Places hat on mother’s head and umbrella in 
her arms.) There you are, you’re a judge. Now sum up and pass judgment. 

Mrs Bryant I’d put him in prison for life. 

Frank You gotta sum up though. Blust, you just can’t stick a man in prison 
and say nothing. 

Mrs Bryant Goodbye, I’d say. 

Beatie Come on Mother, speak up. Anybody can say ‘go to prison’, but you 
want to be a judge. Well, you show a judge’s understanding. Talk! Come on 
Mother, talk! 

Everyone leans forward eagerly to hear mother talk. She looks startled and 
speechless. 

Mrs Bryant Well I - I - yes I - well I - Oh, don’t be so soft. 

Frank The mighty head is silent. 

Beatie Well yes, she would be wouldn’t she. 

Mrs Bryant What do you mean, I would be? You don’t expect me to know 
what they say in courts do you? I aren’t no judge. 

Beatie Then why do you sit and pass judgment on people? If someone do 
something wrong you don’t stop and think why. No discussin’, no questions, just 
- (Snap of fingers.) Off with his head. I mean look at Father getting less money. I 
don’t see the family sittin’ together and discussin’ it. It’s a problem! But which 
of you said it concerns you? 

Mrs Bryant Nor don’t it concern them. I aren’t hevin’ people mix in my 
matters. 

Beatie But they aren’t just people - they’re your family for hell’s sake! 

Mrs Bryant No matters, I aren’t hevin’ it! 

Beatie But Mother I - 

Mrs Bryant Now shut you up Beatie Bryant and leave it alone. I shall talk 



when I hev to and I never shall do, so there! 

Beatie You’re so stubborn. 

Mrs Bryant So you keep saying. 

Mr Bryant enters, he is clean and dressed in blue pin-striped suit. 

Mr Bryant You brewed up yit? 

Mrs Bryant (jumping up and going to kitchen ) Oh hell, yes - I forgot the tea 
look. 

Mr Bryant Well, now we’re all waitin’ on him. 

Jenny Don’t look as if Susie’s cornin’. 

Beatie Stubborn cow! 

Silence. 

Jenny Hev you seen Susie’s television set yit? 

Beatie I seen it. 

Frank Did you know also that when they fist hed it they took it up to bed wi’ 
them and lay in bed wi’ a dish of chocolate biscuits? 

Pearl But now they don’t bother - they say they’ve had it a year now and all 
the old programmes they saw in the beginning they’re seein’ again. 

Mrs Bryant (entering with tea ) Brew’s up! 

Beatie Oh, for Christ’s sake let’s stop gossiping. 

Pearl I aren’t gossiping. I’m making an intelligent observation about the state 
of television, now then. 

Mr Bryant What’s up wi’ you now? 

Beatie You weren’t doin’ nothin’ o’ the sort - you was gossiping. 

Pearl Well that’s a heap sight better’n quotin’ all the time. 

Beatie I don’t quote all the time, I just tell you what Ronnie say. 

Frank Take it easy gal - he’s cornin’ soon - don’t need to go all jumpin’ an’ 
frantic. 



Beatie Listen! Let me set you a problem. 

Jimmy Here we go. 

Beatie While we’re waitin’ for him I’ll set you a moral problem. You know 
what a moral problem is? It’s a problem about right and wrong. I’ll get you 
buggers thinking if it’s the last thing I do. Now listen. There are four huts - 

Frank What? 

Beatie Huts. You know - them little things you live in. Now there are two huts 
on one side of a stream and two huts on the other side. On one side live a girl in 
one hut and a wise man in the other. On the other side live Tom in one hut and 
Archie in the other. Also there’s a ferryman what run a boat across the river. 

Now - listen, concentrate - the girl loves Archie but Archie don’t love the girl. 
And Tom love the girl but the girl don’t go much on Tom. 

Jimmy Poor bugger. 

Beatie One day the girl hears that Archie - who don’t love her, remember - is 
going to America, so she decides to try once more to persuade him to take her 
with him. So listen what she do. She go to the ferryman and ask him to take her 
across. The ferryman say, I will, but you must take off all your clothes. 

Mrs Bryant Well, whatever do he wanna ask that for? 

Beatie It don’t matters why - he do! Now the girl doesn’t know what to do so 
she ask the wise man for advice, and he say, you must do what you think best. 

Frank Well that weren’t much advice was it! 

Beatie No matters - he give it. So the girl thinks about it and being so in love 
she decides to strip. 

Pearl Oh I say! 

Mr Bryant Well, this is a rum ole story ent it? 

Beatie Shut up Father and listen. Now, er - where was I? 

Mr Bryant She was strippin’. 

Beatie Oh yes! So, the girl strips and the ferryman takes her over - he don’t 
touch her or nothing - just takes her over and she rushes to Archie’s hut to 
implore him to take her with him and to declare her love again. Now Archie 



promises to take her with him and so she sleeps with him the night. But when 
she wake up in the morning he’ve gone. She’s left alone. So she go across to 
Tom and explain her plight and ask for help. But soon ever he knowed what 
she’ve done, he chuck her out see? So there she is. Poor little gal. Left alone 
with no clothes and no friends and no hope of staying alive. Now - this is the 
question, think about it, don’t answer quick - who is the person most responsible 
for her plight? 

Jimmy Well, can’t she get back? 

Beatie No, she can’t do anything. She’s finished. She’ve hed it! Now, who’s to 
blame? 

There is a general air of thought for a moment and Beatie looks triumphant and 
pleased with herself. 

Mrs Bryant Be you a-drinkin’ on your tea look. Don’t you worry about no 
naked gals. The gal won’t get cold but the tea will. 

Pearl Well I say the girl’s most responsible. 

Beatie Why? 

Pearl Well, she made the choice didn’t she? 

Frank Yes, but the old ferryman made her take off her clothes. 

Pearl But she didn’t hev to. 

Frank Blust woman, she were in love! 

Beatie Good ole Frank. 

Jenny Hell if I know. 

Beatie Jimmy? 

Jimmy Don’t ask me gal - I follow decisions, I aren’t makin’ none. 

Beatie Father? 

Mr Bryant I don’t know what you’re on about. 

Beatie Mother? 

Mrs Bryant Drink you your tea gal - never you mind what I think. 



This is what they’re waiting for. 

Pearl Well - what do Ronnie say? 

Beatie He say the gal is responsible only for makin’ the decision to strip off 
and go across and that she do that because she’s in love. After that she’s the 
victim of two phoney men - one who don’t love her but take advantage of her 
and one who say he love her but don’t love her enough to help her, and that the 
man who say he love her but don’t do nothin’ to help her is most responsible 
because he were the last one she could turn to. 

Jenny He’ve got it all worked out then! 

Beatie (jumping on a chair thrusting her fist into the air like Ronnie, and 
glorying in what is the beginning of a hysteric outburst of his quotes ) ‘No one 
do that bad that you can’t forgive them.’ 

Pearl He’s sure of himself then? 

Beatie ‘We can’t be sure of everything but certain basic things we must be sure 
about or we’ll die.’ 

Frank He think everyone is gonna listen then? 

Beatie ‘People must listen. It’s no good talking to the converted. Everyone 
must argue and think or they will stagnate and rot and the rot will spread.’ 

Jenny Hark at that then. 

Beatie (her strange excitement growing; she has a quote for everything ) ‘If 
wanting the best things in life means being a snob then glory hallelujah I’m a 
snob. But I’m not a snob Beatie, I just believe in human dignity and tolerance 
and cooperation and equality and -’ 

Jimmy (jumping up in terror ) He’s a communist! 

Beatie ‘I’m a socialist!’ 

There is a knock on the front door. 

Beatie (jumping down joyously as though her excited quotes have been leading 
to this one moment) He’s here, he’s here! (But at the door it is the postman, 
from whom she takes a letter and a parcel.) Oh, the silly fool, the fool. Trust him 
to write a letter on the day he’s coming. Parcel for you Mother. 



Pearl Oh, that’ll be your dress from the club. 

Mrs Bryant What dress is this then? I didn’t ask for no dress from the club. 

Pearl Yes you did, you did ask me, didn’t she ask me Frank? Why, we were 
looking through the book together Mother. 

Mrs Bryant No matters what we was doin’ together I aren’t hevin’ it. 

Pearl But Mother you distinctly - 

Mrs Bryant I aren’t hevin’ it so there now! 

Beatie has read the letter - the contents stun her. She cannot move. She stares 
around speechlessly at everyone. 

Mrs Bryant Well, what’s the matter wi’ you gal? Let’s have a read. ( Takes 
letter and reads contents in a dead flat but loud voice - as though it were a 
proclamation .) ‘My dear Beatie. It wouldn’t really work would it? My ideas 
about handing on a new kind of life are quite useless and romantic if I’m really 
honest. If I were a healthy human being it might have been all right but most of 
us intellectuals are pretty sick and neurotic - as you have often observed - and 
we couldn’t build a world even if we were given the reins of government - not 
yet any rate. I don’t blame you for being stubborn, I don’t blame you for 
ignoring every suggestion I ever made - I only blame myself for encouraging 
you to believe we could make a go of it and now two weeks of your not being 
here has given me the cowardly chance to think about it and decide and I -’ 

Beatie ( snatching letter ) Shut up! 

Mrs Bryant Oh - so we know now do we? 

Mr Bryant What’s this then - ent he cornin’? 

Mrs Bryant Yes, we know now. 

Mr Bryant Ent he cornin’ I ask? 

Beatie No he ent comin ’. 

An awful silence ensues. Everyone looks uncomfortable. 

Jenny ( softly ) Well blust gal, didn’t you know this was going to happen? 
Beatie shakes her head. 



Mrs Bryant So we’re stubborn are we? 

Jenny Shut you up Mother, the girl’s upset. 

Mrs Bryant Well I can see that, I can see that, he ent coming, I can see that, 
and we’re here like bloody fools, I can see that. 

Pearl Well did you quarrel all that much Beatie? 

Beatie (as if discovering this for the first time ) He always wanted me to help 
him but I never could. Once he tried to teach me to type but soon ever I made a 
mistake I’d give up. I’d give up every time! I couldn’t bear making mistakes. I 
don’t know why, but I couldn’t bear making mistakes. 

Mrs Bryant Oh - so we’re hearin’ the other side o’ the story now are we? 

Beatie He used to suggest I start to copy real objects on to my paintings 
instead of only abstracts and I never took heed. 

Mrs Bryant Oh, so you never took heed. 

Jenny Shut you up I say. 

Beatie He gimme a book sometimes and I never bothered to read it. 

Frank (not maliciously ) What about all this discussion we heard of? 

Beatie I never discussed things. He used to beg me to discuss things but I 
never saw the point on it. 

Pearl And he got riled because o’ that? 

Beatie ( trying to understand ) I didn’t have any patience. 

Mrs Bryant Now it’s coming out. 

Beatie I couldn’t help him - I never knew patience. Once he looked at me with 
terrified eyes and said, ‘We’ve been together for three years but you don’t know 
who I am or what I’m trying to say - and you don’t care do you?’ 

Mrs Bryant And there she was tellin’ me. 

Beatie I never knew what he wanted - I didn’t think it mattered. 

Mr Bryant And there she was gettin’ us to solve the moral problem and now 
we know she didn’t even do it herself. That’s a rum ’un, ent it? 



Mrs Bryant The apple don’t fall far from the tree - that it don’t. 

Beatie ( [wearily ) So you’re proud on it? You sit there smug and you’re proud 
that a daughter of yours wasn’t able to help her boyfriend? Look at you. All of 
you. You can’t say anything. You can’t even help your own flesh and blood. 

Your daughter’s bin ditched. It’s your problem as well isn’t it? I’m part of your 
family aren’t I? Well, help me then! Give me words of comfort! Talk to me - for 
God’s sake, someone talk to me. ( She cries at last.) 

Mr Bryant Well, what do we do now? 

Mrs Bryant We sit down and we eat that’s what we do now. 

Jenny Don’t be soft Mother, we can’t leave the girl crying like that. 

Mrs Bryant Well, blust, ’tent my fault she’s cryin’. I did what I could - I 
prepared all this food, I’d’ve treated him as my own son if he’d come but he 
hevn’t! We got a whole family gathering specially to greet him, all on us look, 
but he hevn’t come. So what am I supposed to do? 

Beatie My God, Mother, I hate you - the only thing I ever wanted and I 
weren’t able to keep him, I didn’t know how. I hate you, I hate . . . 

Mrs Bryant slaps Beatie ’s face. Everyone is a little shocked at this harsh 
treatment. 

Mrs Bryant There! I hed enough! 

Mr Bryant Well what d’you wanna do that for? 

Mrs Bryant I hed enough. All this time she’ve bin home she’ve bin tellin’ me 
I didn’t do this and I didn’t do that and I hevn’t understood half what she’ve said 
and I’ve hed enough. She talk about bein’ part o’ the family but she’ve never 
lived at home since she’ve left school look. Then she go away from here and fill 
her head wi’ high-class squit and then it turn out she don’t understand any on it 
herself. It turn out she do just the same things she say I do. ( Into Beatie ’s face.) 
Well, am I right gal? I’m right ent I? When you tell me I was stubborn, what you 
mean was that he told you you was stubborn - eh? When you tell me I don’t 
understand you mean you don’t understand isn’t it? When you tell me I don’t 
make no effort you mean you don’t make no effort. Well, what you blaming me 
for? Blaming me all the time! I haven’t bin responsible for you since you left 
home - you bin on your own. She think I like it, she do! Thinks I like it being 
cooped up in this house all day. Well I’m telling you my gal - I don’t! There! 



And if I had a chance to be away working somewhere the whole lot on you’s 
could go to hell - the lot on you’s. All right so I am a bloody fool - all right! So I 
know it! A whole two weeks I’ve bin told it. Well, so then I can’t help you my 
gal, no that I can’t, and you get used to that once and for all. 

Beatie No you can’t Mother, I know you can’t. 

Mrs Bryant I suppose doin’ all those things for him weren’t enough. I suppose 
he weren’t satisfied wi’ goodness only. 

Beatie Oh, what’s the use. 

Mrs Bryant Well, don’t you sit there an’ sigh gal like you was Lady 
Nevershit. I ask you something. Answer me. You do the talking then. Go on - 
you say you know something we don’t so you do the talking. Talk - go on, talk 
gal. 

Beatie ( despairingly ) I can’t Mother, you’re right - the apple don’t fall far 
from the tree do it? You’re right, I’m like you. Stubborn, empty, wi’ no tools for 
livin’. I got no roots in nothing. I come from a family o’ farm labourers yet I ent 
got no roots - just like town people - just a mass o’ nothin’. 

Frank Roots, gal? What do you mean, roots? 

Beatie ( impatiently ) Roots, roots, roots! Christ, Frankie, you’re in the fields all 
day, you should know about growing things. Roots! The things you come from, 
the things that feed you. The things that make you proud of yourself - roots! 

Mr Bryant You got a family ent you? 

Beatie I am not talking about family roots - I mean - the - I mean - Look! 
Ever since it begun the world’s bin growin’ hasn’t it? Things hev happened, 
things have bin discovered, people have bin thinking and improving and 
inventing but what do we know about it all? 

Jimmy What is she on about? 

Beatie ( various interjections ) What do you mean, what am I on about? I’m 
talking! Listen to me! I’m tellin’ you that the world’s bin growing for two 
thousand years and we hevn’t noticed it. I’m telling you that we don’t know 
what we are or where we come from. I’m telling you something’s cut us off from 
the beginning. I’m telling you we’ve got no roots. Blimey Joe! We’ve all got 
large allotments, we all grow things around us so we should know about roots. 



You know how to keep your flowers alive don’t you Mother? Jimmy - you know 
how to keep the roots of your veges strong and healthy. It’s not only the corn that 
need strong roots, you know, it’s us too. But what’ve we got? Go on, tell me, 
what’ve we got? We don’t know where we push up from and we don’t bother 
neither. 

Pearl Well, I aren’t grumbling. 

Beatie You say you aren’t - oh yes, you say so, but look at you. What’ve you 
done since you come in? Hev you said anythin’? I mean really said or done 
anything to show you’re alive? Alive! Blust, what do it mean? Do you know 
what it mean? Any of you? Shall I tell you what Susie said when I went and saw 
her? She say she don’t care if that ole atom bomb drop and she die - that’s what 
she say. And you know why she say it? I’ll tell you why, because if she had to 
care she’d have to do something about it and she find that too much effort. Yes 
she do. She can’t be bothered - she’s too bored with it all. That’s what we all are 
-we’re all too bored. 

Mrs Bryant Blust woman - bored you say, bored? You say Susie’s bored, with 
a radio and television an’ that? I go t’hell if she’s bored! 

Beatie Oh yes, we turn on a radio or a TV set maybe, or we go to the pictures 
- if them’s love stories or gangsters - but isn’t that the easiest way out? 

Anything so long as we don’t have to make an effort. Well, am I right? You 
know I’m right. Education ent only books and music - it’s asking questions, all 
the time. There are millions of us, all over the country, and no one, not one of us, 
is asking questions, we’re all taking the easiest way out. Everyone I ever worked 
with took the easiest way out. We don’t fight for anything, we’re so mentally 
lazy we might as well be dead. Blust, we are dead! And you know what Ronnie 
say sometimes? He say it serves us right! That’s what he say - it’s our own 
bloody fault! 

Jimmy So that’s us summed up then - so we know where we are then! 

Mrs Bryant Well if he don’t reckon we count nor nothin’, then it’s as well he 
didn’t come. There! It’s as well he didn’t come. 

Beatie Oh, he thinks we count all right - living in mystic communion with 
nature. Living in mystic bloody communion with nature (indeed). But us count? 
Count Mother? I wonder. Do we? Do you think we really count? You don’ 
wanna take any notice of what them ole papers say about the workers bein’ all- 
important these days - that’s all squit! ’Cos we aren’t. Do you think when the 



really talented people in the country get to work they get to work for us? Hell if 
they do! Do you think they don’t know we ’ont make the effort? The Til wait 
for you in the heavens blue’ writers don’t write thinkin’ we can understand, nor 
the painters don’t paint expecting us to be interested - that they don’t, nor don’t 
the composers give out music thinking we can appreciate it. ‘Blust,’ they say, 

‘the masses is too stupid for us to come down to them. Blust,’ they say, ‘if they 
don’t make no effort why should we bother?’ So you know who come along? 
The slop singers and the pop writers and the film makers and women’s 
magazines and the Sunday papers and the picture-strip love stories - that’s who 
come along, and you don’t have to make no effort for them, it come easy. ‘We 
know where the money lie,’ they say, ‘hell we do! The workers’ve got it so let’s 
give them what they want. If they want slop songs and film idols we’ll give ’em 
that then. If they want words of one syllable, we’ll give ’em that then. If they 
want the third-rate, blustl We’ll give ’em that then. Anything’s good enough for 
them ’cos they don’t ask for no more!’ The whole stinkin’ commercial world 
insults us and we don’t care a damn. Well, Ronnie’s right - it’s our own bloody 
fault. We want the third-rate - we got it! We got it! We got it! We . . . 

Suddenly Beatie stops as if listening to herself She pauses, turns with an 
ecstatic smile on her face - 

D’you hear that? D’you hear it? Did you listen to me? I’m talking. Jenny, 
Frankie, Mother - I’m not quoting no more. 

Mrs Bryant ( getting up to sit at table ) Oh hell, I hed enough of her - let her 
talk a while she’ll soon get fed up. 

The others join her at the table and proceed to eat and murmur. 

Beatie Listen to me someone. (As though a vision were revealed to her.) God 
in heaven, Ronniel It does work, it’s happening to me, I can feel it’s happening, 
I’m beginning, on my own two feet - I’m beginning . . . 

The murmur of the family sitting down to eat grows as Beatie’s last cry is heard. 
Whatever she will do they will continue to live as before. As Beatie stands alone, 
articulate at last - 


The curtain falls. 



Music 


‘I’ll wait for you in the heavens blue’ (pages 39-40) 






























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This edition published 2013 by Bloomsbury 

First published by Methuen Drama in 2001 as part of Wesker Plays 1 Published in 2008 as part of The Methuen Drama Book of Plays 
from the Sixties Published in 2013 in this edition with a new cover and introductory material 

© Arnold Wesker 1959, 2001, 2008, 2013 

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