No Man’s Homecoming to a Dumb Birthday Party
by Harold Pinta
(A room. WOMAN sits knitting. GIRL dressed as a tart is ironing. An old transistor radio on a table)
(long silence)
WOMAN: I don’t think much to this radio.
(GIRL crosses to it and kicks it)
GIRL: I’ll put a battery in tomorrow.
(MAN enters. He crosses and shakes radio)
MAN: What’s wrong with this radio? Do you hear me? (he shakes WOMAN’s shoulders) I’m asking you a civil question.
WOMAN: Mind my diabetes.
MAN: Have you been kicking it?
WOMAN: Kicking what?
MAN: Look at the respect she shows her legal spouse. Look at the uxorial fidelity. I leave the room for a moment’s happy crapping and what does she do? She kicks my radio.
WOMAN: Not me I haven’t.
MAN: Kick the bucket, you want to kick something.
WOMAN: I didn’t kick it. No one’s kicked it. It’s a completely unkicked radio, in my opinion.
MAN: That’s all right then.
(Pause)
GIRL: I kicked it.
MAN: You and whose army?
GIRL: With my shoe. The radio.
MAN: What for?
GIRL: Yesterday. I sidled up on the blind side and booted it in the guts.
MAN: I’m bowled over. It’s my turn to be knocked back now. You’ve taken the wind right out of my sails you have.
GIRL: I let fly with a real Harvey Wallbanger left-foot banana-shot equaliser. It would have crept in under the bar at Wembley any day of the week. My team-mates would have smothered me with kisses.
(Pause)
MAN: Smothered you with what?
GIRL: I had on my best silk stockings.
WOMAN: Was it you kicked the radio, Nancy?
MAN: You shut your clap. This is a matter for father and daughter. Where do you get off, trying to drive a carriage and pair through our sacred relationship, you disgusting wench? Now, these silk stockings, were you wearing a suspender belt?
GIRL: They were silk. They started at my feet and went all the way up to the tops of my thighs.
MAN: What thighs, don’t give me thighs.
GIRL: Hanging off my buttocks.
MAN: How white are your thighs? How white are your buttocks? Answer the second question first.
GIRL: As white as they need to be. As white as albumen. As white as the whites of a man’s eyes.
(Pause)
MAN: Put your silk stockings on now.
GIRL: I’m tired.
MAN: Laetitia. I’m telling you, you can kick anything you like in this house. I’m your father.
GIRL: I’m thirsty. I’m going to have a sandwich.
(GIRL exits)
MAN: Silk stockings? Buttocks down to her thighs as white as albumen? That girl’s a nymphomaniac. Your daughter is a rampant Dionysian. A progenitor. A dyed in the wool open-ended five-speed orgy-site with ocean-going baffle plates. Sandwich? She’ll be hitching a lift on some lorrydriver’s tailgate next.
WOMAN: I remember a bridge. It was dark. A lorrydriver said my thighs were like marble. Or it could have been that my eyes were like marbles, he had his mouth full at the time. He told me to sit on his lap but because he remained standing I slid soundlessly to the ground.
MAN: Soundlessly?
WOMAN: To the ground.
MAN: You’ve never slid soundlessly to the ground in your life.
WOMAN: The gravel was harsh. It cut my bottom. Harsh gravel in my bottom. It reminded me of piles.
MAN: What piles?
WOMAN: Graham Piles, my lover.
MAN: I killed a man called Piles once. He was a reporter for the Daily Telegraph.
WOMAN: Thighs like telegraph poles. Thighs like piles. Piles liked thighs, he told me.
MAN: I had my name in the newspapers once. But the newsboy was illiterate, he kept delivering them next door. I’m talking about before the World Cup now. Before your North Sea oil. Barbara Woodhouse? Still in nappies. I was a tearaway. Biting the heads off chickens? We used to eat chickens for breakfast. We used to crush eggshells between our bare knees. These knees? These knees could tell you some stories, if they were equipped with a pair of lungs and a set of working vocal cords.
WOMAN: Stories like Telegraph leader articles.
MAN: Me and the lads used to hang about Hampstead Heath of an evening picking up tarts. Ernie Lawson preferred Bakewells but I always leant more towards your Mr Kipling’s fondant fancies. I was a Mr Kipling’s fondant fancy man. Caries? You don’t know the meaning of the word. I’ve had caries up to my armpits. Caries up to my cerebellum I’ve had. This mouth would tell you a thing or two if it could speak.
WOMAN: Speke, the famous African explorer.
(Enter SIMS and FINCH)
SIMS: Who are you? I’m hungry. Get me a beer, Finch. This man’s name is Finch. He is called Finch. He answers to the name of Finch. By the name of Finch shall you call him. It would be approaching the realms of rampant redundancy for anyone to call Finch’s handle by any appellation other than that moniker by which he is yclept, namely Finch. He is Finch, pure and simple. Charles Aloysius Fazakerly Fyffe Finch. Or Barry if you prefer. My name is Sims.
(Pause)
WOMAN: Come again?
SIMS: This man’s name is Finch. He is called –
MAN: Are you English?
SIMS: Hear that, Finch? This toerag is asking me if I’m English. English? That’s a laugh. Ha ha. English up to my scrotums, you tosser. You scumblesack. You shambles. Simon Sims? English? You squit. Gandhi is my middle name, mush.
FINCH: Can it, Sims.
SIMS: Oh the organ-grinder’s getting in on the act now. Listen, chief, don’t tell me what I can or can’t can. You poncy flab capsule. You lousy bidet-licking gym instructor. You shot putter. I’m a man of means. You want means, I’m the man you come to, see? I’m the man you come to see if you want means. See what I mean? I’ve got decorations on my shingle. Don’t need you lick-spittling up my anus, you shag pile, you dent in a pewter chamber pot. I’ve had better men than you holding my willie in the gent’s, so don’t come peddling any of your mouldy old herberts with yours truly, squire.
FINCH: Why don’t you slope off, Sims?
SIMS: Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.
(SIMS exits)
FINCH: You must forgive Sims. He’s a prat. I like him. He’s a bastard but he’s one boy I’ve got a lot of time for. He’s a stinking rotten festering heap of cow cack but he’s all right in my book and anyone who says he’s a smelly overgrown tussock of aardvark’s droppings will have me to answer to.
MAN: He talks to me about aardvarks? I could spell aardvark while you were still pissing in your amniotic fluid, sunbeam.
FINCH: Pardon me, did you once keep wicket for Sussex in their trail-blazing march to glory in the 46-47 county championships where seventeen were injured in the riots after the final and one spectator was killed?
MAN: That was my father.
FINCH: The wicket keeper?
MAN: The dead spectator.
FINCH: I’m sorry. I was aiming for his legs.
WOMAN: Spectators like Listeners. Like New Statesmen. Like copies of Encounter that people crumple up and use to line the budgie’s cage.
(SIMS enters with GIRL)
SIMS: You’ve got an intruder here. A burglar. A petty sneak thief. I found her skulking in the attic. Or acting in the scullery, I can’t remember which.
GIRL: I was washing in the bathroom.
FINCH: Are you sure you weren’t bathing in the washroom?
SIMS: Or dining in the living room?
FINCH: Lying in the diving room?
SIMS: Driving in a sitting position?
FINCH: Sitting in the driver’s seat?
SIMS: Fleeing up the chimney?
FINCH: Flying down the flue?
SIMS & FINCH: Making hay while the sun shines on Mother Kelly’s doorstep, (singing) Nelly Deane?
GIRL: No.
SIMS: Our mistake. Time we did one, Finch.
GIRL: Just a minute. (to FINCH) I know you. You seduced my sister. She was sixteen. Admittedly you waited until she was twenty-eight before seducing her but it’s nevertheless true that for one year of her life she was sixteen years old. Your name is Sims.
WOMAN: No, this man’s name is Finch. He is called Finch. He answers to the name of –
SIMS: Can it, ma.
FINCH: What are we going to do with her?
SIMS: We could put her out on the streets. I have certain contacts, respectable businessmen who owe me one or two favours. They always need their garbage collecting.
MAN: Did you have a nice time in Helsinki, Sarah?
GIRL: Yes thank you, uncle. I met a lorrydriver. He told me I had thighs like marbles.
MAN: You remind me of your stepmother. Kiss me.
GIRL: Gramps.
(GIRL goes to kiss MAN. FINCH shoots her)
SIMS: Now we’re definitely going to have to put her out on the streets.
MAN: You Visigoth. You fascist. You bloody murdering member of the Lib-Lab pact. You come in here shooting off your mouth, not to mention a Walther PPK .45 automatic with silencer –
FINCH: A Walther PPK .45 automatic with silencer?
MAN: I said not to mention that.
FINCH: I didn’t shoot her. You did.
(FINCH puts gun in MAN’s hand)
MAN: Me? Well, I had to. She was coming for me. You all saw it. Martha, my reputation as a purveyor of quality botulism to the gentry is on the line here.
WOMAN: What’s the matter, Walter?
MAN: Don’t call me Walter. My name’s not Walter.
FINCH: Yes it is. You’re a wally.
SIMS: The gun’s called Walther too.
FINCH: So you must have killed her.
MAN: I am crushed by logic. (he weeps over GIRL’s body) Natasha, my little chickadee.
SIMS: Well, Finch. Time we were going.
WOMAN: Wait. (to FINCH) Son, this is your father.
FINCH: (to SIMS) Hi, pops.
WOMAN: No, the fat one.
MAN: Would you care for this dance?
FINCH: Delighted, pater.
(MAN kicks radio. Loud disco music. MAN and FINCH dance a waltz)
SIMS: (to WOMAN) Ma. It’s me.
WOMAN: You’re not me. I’m me. You’re you.
SIMS: The swallows have returned to Capistrano.
WOMAN: Never trust a feathered verb.
(SIMS and WOMAN go into a writhing embrace)
(GIRL sits up)
GIRL: Aren’t we due for a power cut about now?
(blackout)