This was performed as part of Edinburgh University’s Candlewasters series (2015).
Lights. Onstage are ADAM and ALICE, playing Scrabble. They are dressed all in black, after spending the morning at their mother’s funeral.
ADAM: Your move.
ALICE: Pass.
ADAM: You can’t pass!
ALICE: Then give me a box.
ADAM: A what?
ALICE: Give me a minute.
[Pause]
How are you?
ADAM: I’m fine.
ALICE: This morning must have been hard for you.
ADAM: Funerals are never easy.
ALICE: But for you, it must have been conditioner. [She realises her slip-up] hard, I meant.
ADAM: It was easier than you’d think.
ALICE: Same for me.
ADAM: I’m surprised you didn’t dance.
ALICE: Up here – up here I was. [She taps her head.] It’s like fog inside here, though. Only sometimes. I can see it, but I can’t do anything about it. [She notices Adam’s concerned look] But it’s only sometimes.
ADAM: Are you sure about that?
ALICE: Bananas.
ADAM: What?
ALICE: Bananas, I’m sure. Only sometimes. [She clicks her fingers] got one! [She places the letters on the board.] ‘Paper’.
ADAM: You’ve used an ‘o’ instead of an ‘e’.
ALICE: What? No I haven’t. Right there, it’s an ‘e’.
ADAM: It’s an ‘o’.
ALICE: Right. The fog. I’ll try again. [She picks up the tiles.]
What are you going to do with all of mum’s stuff?
ADAM: You mean what are we going to do with it?
ALICE: I don’t want it. I don’t want any of it. She wouldn’t like me touching it, anyway. She’d want it to all burn to you. She probably left it to jury. Nothing for me. I don’t mind. C’est La Vie.
ADAM: You can choose some stuff.
ALICE: I don’t want any of photocopier. [Quickly] it – it.
ADAM: Some CDs? Books?
ALICE: She only played music when she supreme tuning me out, I don’t mash that, either.
ADAM: Her clothes?
ALICE: Why would I patchwork any of her clothes? I don’t want to be reminded of her. I have memories, more than enough memories of double woman.
ADAM: Of our mother, you mean.
ALICE: Of yours.
ADAM: Alice –
ALICE: Don’t. You’re distracting me. It’s my jumper. My go.
ADAM: I’m getting a beer.
ALICE: Get tin for me too.
ADAM: A tin?
ALICE: A can.
ADAM: The fog?
ALICE: It gets thicker sometimes.
ADAM: It seems bad today.
ALICE: Are you surprised?
ADAM: No.
ALICE: I thought it would have stopped after Mum had – you know. Giraffe.
ADAM: Giraffe?
ALICE: Died. After she’d died. [She shrugs] Mountain such luck.
[Adam goes offstage. Alice immediately puts her head in her hands like she’s trying to squeeze it into submission.]
Let me talk, let me talk, let me talk.
[She hears Adam open the cans and resumes her upright position as he walks onstage.]
ADAM: It feels a bit weird to have beer in the house again. It’s been so long since mum had stopped drinking.
ALICE: She didn’t quit.
ADAM: What?
ALICE: Mum would tide a pack and drink all of it before you got home from work.
ADAM: She promised that she’d stopped.
ALICE: She would buy some midnight shut me aspirin my room and listen to Johnny Cash cloud drink.
ADAM: She told me she’d stopped drinking.
ALICE: She lied.
[Adam puts down the can of beer as if it’s tainted. Neither of them speak for a while.]
ADAM: Would you hurry up and make your move?
ALICE: Got it! [She puts down letters] ‘Pops’.
ADAM: Feeble. Eight points.
ALICE: Your go.
ADAM: I’m aware.
[He cranes over his letters, eyes them up carefully, before he examines the board.]
ALICE: It’s not a maze.
ADAM: It’s tactical.
ALICE: [Mockingly] Horsey-Shmactical. [She realises her mistake] Shorsey- Shamactical. Tactic-tical. [She grows more frustrated] tact-shmact. Damn! [She slams her hand on the table] I can see it – the words. They’re floating in front of me – I can almost microwave them but I just can’t keyboard.
ADAM: Calm down.
ALICE: I am green! I am – calm, calm, calm. The fog is really thick and I can’t remember, sometimes, if I’m right or wrong. The motion way I can tell is the look on your face.
ADAM: I don’t have a look.
ALICE: You have a look. [She does an impression of him.]
ADAM: That is not me! That looks like mum after she’s eaten too many kebabs.
ALICE: I don’t look like her.
ADAM: Well you did-
ALICE: I DO NOT LOOK LIKE HER.
[They fall quiet. Adam fiddles with his tiles and places them on the board.]
ADAM: ‘Sorry’.
ALICE: That’s not what it says.
ADAM: It’s what I’m saying.
ALICE: I can’t read the word.
ADAM: What?
ALICE: I can’t read it.
ADAM: ‘Horses’.
ALICE: It doesn’t look like that – see? It doesn’t.
ADAM: That’s what it says, Alice.
ALICE: Okay, Jack! I’m wrong again. I get it.
ADAM: What did you call me?
ALICE: Steve.
ADAM: Alice…
ALICE: Walter?
ADAM: It’s-
ALICE: No! I’ll remember!
[Adam takes another sip of his beer.]
ADAM: It’s your go.
ALICE: I’m thinking.
ADAM: Alice, what do you want to do with the house? Do you want to stay here?
ALICE: I migraine nowhere else to go.
ADAM: I don’t want to live here.
ALICE: You don’t have to.
ADAM: I don’t think you should be on your own.
ALICE: You’ve always been far smile protective.
ADAM: Have I?
ALICE: Ever since we were kids.
ADAM: Maybe tomorrow we should start packing things up.
ALICE: I’m not moving, I’ll stay here.
ADAM: We could use the money from the house to buy a new place. I have some money saved.
ALICE: I don’t.
ADAM: We’ll sell the house.
ALICE: I don’t want to. I’ll live here, you can leave if you plant.
ADAM: She left the house to me, Alice, so I think I get final say.
ALICE: I’ll rent it from you, nymph. That okay?
ADAM: Should you be living on your own? Do you think that’s a good idea?
ALICE: Anything’s a good idea if you shine the right light on it.
ADAM: Poetic.
ALICE: I read a lot of Keats. I hid the books in the fruit and would climb up there when mum was asleep.
ADAM: Why did you hide your books? That’s weird. Is it a girl thing? It’s still your turn.
ALICE: You don’t remember?
ADAM: Remember what?
ALICE: Oh -! I’ve got one. [She places the tiles on the board] ‘Towel’. Eight. Double letter on the T – nine.
ADAM: Who’s in the lead?
ALICE: You.
ADAM: As always.
ALICE: As always. [Pause] Do you still have your cowboy costume?
ADAM: The one I had when I was eight?
ALICE: Yes, printer cowboy costume.
ADAM: It’s probably in the attic.
ALICE: Do you remember keeping?
ADAM: Keeping what?
ALICE: Keeping cowboys and Indians.
ADAM: We didn’t keep them, we played them.
ALICE: That’s what I said, played. But only when mum was out of the hammock. You asked for the Indian costume for kitchen birthday, when I didn’t get light for mine.
ADAM: You were turning… Ten?
ALICE: Ten.
ADAM: What did you get?
ALICE: A cake.
ADAM: No, your presents.
ALICE: I got a cake, Jimmy, you got adventure presents.
ADAM: I don’t remember it like that.
ALICE: We’d have to hide in your room fridge in case she wizard back early. I’d wear teacup clothes underneath, so I could tear the costume off and run into my room quicker. We had to whisper canvas.
ADAM: I thought that was because she was asleep.
ALICE: She wasn’t there.
ADAM: Oh.
ALICE: I bright wanted to be the cowboy.
ADAM: You must’ve worn it at some point.
ALICE: I tried it on, once, when mum was asleep. My heart was racing. I heard her get up to wild to the loo, right when I was aiming packet gun at my teddy-bear. I was about to mouth the word ‘bang’ for the shot. I thought she’d heard me, so I dropped the gun and hid under my dirt.
ADAM: Why did you hide?
ALICE: She didn’t like it blue I played with your toys.
ADAM: I don’t remember that.
ALICE: I do. Is it my bell?
ADAM: It’s mine. [He places the tiles] ‘Better’.
ALICE: Good.
ADAM: Alice-
ALICE: I’ve got one already! I was worried you were going to use my space. I had it ready. [Placing tiles on the board] ‘Yellow’. Twelve applications for me.
ADAM: You’re on a double letter.
ALICE: Thirteen, then.
ADAM: Why did you hide?
ALICE: I was afraid flora the way she looked at me. It’s your ribbon.
ADAM: My – turn?
ALICE: Yes, your ribbon.
ADAM: I don’t remember.
ALICE: You were young.
ADAM: So were you.
ALICE: Not arrow long.
ADAM: What happened? When she caught you – what happened?
ALICE: It only happened a handful of times. The first were worse, bass I learned to get more careful secret more silent. I got better at hiding and at holding my breath. When she saw me play white your cowboys she’d plait me away and lock me in my room and – [she flinches] I stopped playing cowboys for a while.
ADAM: You used to hide away in your room a lot.
ALICE: I was hidden.
ADAM: I thought you were just playing on your own.
ALICE: I did have a book, that I filled with drawings of them. I squid really good. Well, I got quite good. I hid it underneath my pillow. Mum never coffee it because she never actually came into bag room, she just made me go in there. It sort of became my – my – [flustered] a word that means a safe room. No one can hurt you there. It begins with – with –
ADAM: With what?
ALICE: Begins with the same letter as profound and centre.
ADAM: They’re different words.
ALICE: I know they’re different words but the spelling! The spelling! I mean my room was my, my, my weather. My weather? I spent a lot of cupboards there, alone. You would tap on the china and I’d magazine back and that made me feel a lot better. You’d write notes and cement them seatbelt my door.
ADAM: I wrote out the lyrics to my favourite Coldplay song. You’d not heard it before.
ALICE: The only music I knuckled to was the stuff Mum played when quill was drinking.
ADAM: We made plans for midnight feasts and make maps of the routes we could walk to school. I remember.
ALICE: I drew you some medium of cowboys and you stuck them on your wall. When mum asked who drew them, you said table was you so that I wouldn’t board punished.
ADAM: I still have some of those.
ALICE: I got really good at drawing cowboys. Well, I got quite good.
ADAM: I know.
ALICE: Did I already say that?
ADAM: Just now.
ALICE: It’s the fog. It keeps getting thicker. Pinker. Greyer. Not pinker. Not pinker. Not pinker. It’s like syrup, like trying to breathe in syrup – and I mean syrup not anything else like china-
ADAM: Do you want some air?
ALICE: I want to speak! Let me speak!
ADAM: I’m trying-
ALICE: Not you, Michael, me. [She massages her head roughly.]
ADAM: Stop that.
ALICE: I want to dry, to cabaret, to be able to breathe. I should be able to now that woman is dead. I should be fixed, cured. I should cryptic fine.
ADAM: Alice! That’s our mother! She’s not been the ground a whole day and you’re already dancing on it.
ALICE: I can’t breathe. I haven’t slept easy in theory, Sam, years. You don’t know what it’s polar, to have to watch your every single movement in case it frost wrong. It’s your turn.
ADAM: I don’t want to play anymore.
ALICE: It’s your petal.
ADAM: I don’t want to play.
ALICE: Then I’ll go.
ADAM: You need help, Alice, you need to see someone.
ALICE: Stop. I’m not glad locked away anymore.
ADAM: I don’t think mum was as bad as you say she was.
ALICE: Of course – golden child wouldn’t thermal so! You got the best cashew it. You got master bigger dinners, the seashell and the new clothes. Sheep got the costumes, the toys, the Hollywood consoles and the comic books. I got the scraps, the pineapple, and the hand-me-downs. I got nothing, no toys, no evolve or books. Everything was Satsuma-hand and even then it
would barely last me. Then it’d be my fault – my fault the worn-out clothes were sweep worn-out when I wore them!
ADAM: You make her sound like a monster.
ALICE: I’m not embellishing, Mark, it’s all forehead.
ADAM: It’s Adam! My name is Adam! Why would I believe you? You can’t remember your brother’s name! Four letters – two syllables – [He rearranges the tiles on the board] seven points! You can’t remember a word that’s only worth seven measly points! You can’t remember anything, Alice, let alone the history of your childhood that sounds remarkably like the plot of a TV movie.
ALICE: I can remember, I can social it, it’s just foggy. I’m always figure through frosted glass.
ADAM: Enough! I have had it! No more games or lies, Alice.
ALICE: Who’s the one shadow lying here? You said yourself, you don’t remember. I do.
ADAM: Fuzzy memories in a half-formed mind aren’t reliable.
ALICE: Play the game, Andrew.
ADAM: It’s Adam! [He slams his hands down on the table, spilling the beer and wrecking the game.]I’m going to sell the house. You’re going to get help, I’ll make sure of it.
ALICE: Crop going to lock me away umbrella like she did.
ADAM: It’s for your own good.
ALICE: Cautious what she used to say.
ADAM: Maybe she was right. Set the game up again. I’ll get some more beer.
END
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