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ANNA and DAVE in the same positions as at the end of Act Two – no time has passed.

ANNA: Yes, I daresay it is.

[She goes to the light, switches it on, the room is closed in.]

ANNA [as she switches on the light]: I must be mad. I keep trying to forget it’s all over. But it is.

[From the moment ANNA says ‘It’s all over’ it is as if she has turned a switch inside herself. She is going inside herself: she has in fact ‘frozen up on him’. This is from self-protection, and DAVE knows it. Of course he knows by now, or half-knows, and still won’t admit to himself, about JANET. But he is trying to get through to ANNA. He really can’t stand it when she freezes up on him. From now until when Mary comes in should be played fast, wild, angry, mocking: they circle around each other, they do not touch each other.]

[ANNA goes straight from the light switch to the record-player, puts on ‘I’m on My Way’, goes to the bottom of her bed, where she kneels, and shuts Dave out by pretending to work on something.]

DAVE [shouting across music]: Anna. I could kill you. [as she ignores him] … come clean, what have you been really doing in the last weeks to get yourself into such a state?

ANNA [shouting]: I’ve been unhappy, I’ve been so unhappy I could have died.

DAVE: Ah come on, baby.

ANNA: But I can’t say that, can I? To say, You made me unhappy, is to unfairly curtail your freedom?

DAVE: But why the hell do you have to be unhappy?

ANNA: Oh quite so. But I didn’t say it. I’ve been sitting here, calm as a rock, playing ‘I’m on My Way.’

DAVE: Why?

ANNA: It would seem I have the soul of a negro singer.

DAVE: Oh Christ. [He turns off the record player.]

ANNA [too late]: Leave it on.

DAVE: No, I want to talk.

ANNA: All right, talk. [He bangs his fist against the wall.] Or shall I ask you what you’ve been doing in the last few weeks to get yourself into such a state?

[A silence.]

ANNA: Well, talk. [conversational] Strange, isn’t it how the soul of Western man – what may be referred to, loosely, as the soul of Western man, is expressed by negro folk music and the dark rhythms of the … [DAVE leaps up, he begins banging with his fists against the wall.] I’m thinking of writing a very profound article about the soul of Western man as expressed by …

DAVE [banging with his fists]: Shut up.

ANNA: I’m talking. Looked at objectively – yes objectively is certainly the word I’m looking for – what could be more remarkable than the fact that the soul of Western man …

DAVE [turning on her]: You have also, since I saw you last, been engaged to marry Tom Lattimer.

ANNA: Don’t tell me you suddenly care?

DAVE: I’m curious.

ANNA [mocking]: I was in lurve. Like you were.

DAVE: You were going to settle down?

ANNA: That’s right, I decided it was time to settle down.

DAVE: If you’re going to get married you might at least get married on some sort of a level.

ANNA: But Dave, the phrase is, settle down. [she bends over, holds her hand a few inches from the floor] It is no accident, surely, that the phrase is settle down. [DAVE stands watching her, banging the side of his fist against the wall.] I’m thinking of writing a short, pithy, but nevertheless profoundly profound article on the unconscious attitude to marriage revealed in our culture by the phrase settle down.

[DAVE lets his fist drop. Leans casually against the wall, watches her ironically.]

DAVE: Anna, I know you too well.

ANNA: An article summing up – how shall I put it – the contemporary reality.

DAVE: I know you too well.

ANNA: But it seems, not well enough … We’re through Dave Miller. We’re washed up. We’re broken off. We’re finished.

DAVE [with simplicity]: But Anna, you love me.

ANNA: It would seem there are more important things than love.

DAVE [angry]: Lust?

ANNA: Lust? What’s that? Why is it I can say anything complicated to you but never anything simple? I can’t say – you made me unhappy. I can’t say – are you sure you’re not making someone else unhappy. So how shall I put it? Well, it has just occurred to me in the last five minutes that when Prometheus was in his cradle it was probably rocked by the well-manicured hand of some stupid little goose whose highest thought was that the thatch on her hut should be better plaited than the thatch on her neighbour’s hut. Well? Is that indirect enough? After all, it is the essence of the myth that the miraculous baby should not be recognized. And so we are both playing our parts nicely. You because you’re convinced it can’t happen to you. Me because I can’t bear to think about it.

DAVE: Anna, you haven’t let that oaf Tom Lattimer make you pregnant.

ANNA: Oh my God. No. I haven’t. No dear Dave, I’m not pregnant. But perhaps I should be?

DAVE: OK Anna, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I made you unhappy. But – well, here I am Anna.

ANNA: Yes, here you are. [in pain] Dave, you have no right, you have no right … you’re a very careless person, Dave … [She gets off the bed and goes to the window.] What’s the use of talking of rights and wrongs? Or of right or wrong? OK, it’s a jungle. Anything goes. I should have let myself get pregnant. One catches a man by getting pregnant. People like you and me make life too complicated. Back to reality. [looking down] My God, that poor fool is still down there.

DAVE: Anna, don’t freeze up on me.

ANNA: You want to know what I’ve been doing? Well I’ve been standing here at night looking into the street and trying not to think about what you’ve been doing. I’ve been standing here. At about eleven at night the law and the order dissolve. The girls stand at their window there, kissing or quarrelling as the case might be, in between customers. The wolves prowl along the street. Gangs of kids rush by, living in some frightened lonely violent world that they think we don’t understand – ha! So they think we don’t understand what’s driving them crazy? Old people living alone go creeping home, alone. The women who live alone, after an hour of talking to strangers in a pub, go home, alone. And sometimes a married couple or lovers – and they can’t wait to get inside, behind the walls, they can’t wait to lock the doors against this terrible city. And they’re right.

DAVE: They’re not right.

ANNA: Put your arms around one other human being, and let the rest of the world go hang – the world is terrifying, so shut it out. That’s what people are doing everywhere, and perhaps they are right.

DAVE: Anna, say it!

ANNA: All right. You’re an egotist, and egotists can never bear the thought of a new generation. That’s all. And I’m an egotist and what I call my self-respect is more important to me than anything else. And that’s all. There’s nothing new in it. There’s nothing new anywhere. I shall die of boredom. Sometimes at night I look out into the street and I imagine that somewhere is a quiet room, and in the room is a man or a woman, thinking. And quite soon there will be a small new book – a book of one page perhaps, and on the page one small new thought. And we’ll all read it and shout: Yes, yes, that’s it.

DAVE: Such as?

ANNA [mocking]: We must love one another or die, something new like that.

DAVE: Something new like that.

ANNA: But of course it wouldn’t be that at all. It would probably turn out to be a new manifesto headed: Six new rules for egotists, or How to eat your cake and have it.

DAVE: Anna, stop beating us up.

ANNA: Ah hell.

[DAVE puts out a hand to her, drops it on her look.]

DAVE: OK, Anna, have it your way … You’re not even interested in what I’ve been doing since I saw you? You haven’t even asked.

ANNA: The subject, I thought, had been touched on.

DAVE: No, honey, I was being serious. Work, I mean work. I’ve been working. [mocking himself] I’ve been writing a sociological-type article about Britain.

ANNA: So that is what you’ve been doing for the last week. We were wondering.

DAVE [acknowledging the ‘we’]: OK Anna, OK, OK.

ANNA: What am I going to be without you? I get so lonely without you.

DAVE: But baby, I’m here. [at her look] OK Anna. OK.

ANNA: All right, Dave. But all the same … I sometimes think if my skin were taken off I’d be just one enormous bruise. Yes, that’s all I am, just a bruise.

DAVE: Uh-huh.

ANNA: However, comforting myself with my usual sociological-type thought, I don’t see how there can be such pain everywhere without something new growing out of it.

DAVE: Uh-huh.

ANNA [fierce]: Yes!

DAVE: All the same, you’re tough. At a conservative estimate, a hundred times tougher than I am. Why?

ANNA [mocking]: Obviously, I’m a woman, everyone knows we are tough.

DAVE: Uh-huh … I was thinking, when I was away from you, every time I take a beating it gets harder to stand up after-wards. You take punishment and up you get smiling.

ANNA: Oh quite so. Lucky, isn’t it?

DAVE: Tell me, when your husband was killed, did it knock you down?

ANNA: Oh of course not, why should it?

DAVE: OK Anna.

ANNA: Everyone knows that when a marriage ends because the husband is killed fighting heroically for his country the marriage is by definition romantic and beautiful. [at his look] All right, I don’t choose to remember. [at his look] OK, it was a long time ago.

DAVE: Well then, is it because you’ve got that kid?

ANNA [irritated]: Is what because I’ve got that kid. That kid, that kid … You talk about him as if he were a plant in a pot on the windowsill, or a parcel I’ve left lying about somewhere, instead of what my life has been about.

DAVE: Why take men seriously when you’ve got a child?

ANNA [ironic]: Ho-ho, I see.

DAVE: All right then, tell me truthfully, tell me straight, baby, none of the propaganda now, what does it really mean to you to have that kid?

ANNA: But why should you be interested, you’re not going to have children …

DAVE: Come on, Anna, you can’t have it both ways.

ANNA: No.

DAVE: Why not?

ANNA [angry]: Because I can never say anything I think, I feel – it always ends up with what you think, you feel. My God, Dave, sometimes I feel you like a great black shadow over me I’ve got to get away from … oh all right, all right … [She stands, slowly smiles.]

DAVE: Don’t give me that Mona Lisa stuff, I want to know.

ANNA: Well. He sets me free. Yes, that’s it, he sets me free.

DAVE: Why, for God’s sake, you spend your time in savage domesticity whenever he’s within twenty miles of you.

ANNA: Don’t you see? He’s there. I go into his room when he’s asleep to take a good long look at him, because he’s too old now to look at when he’s awake, that’s already an interference. So I look at him. He’s there.

DAVE: He’s there.

ANNA: There he is. He’s something new. A kind of ray of light that shoots off into any direction. Or blazes up like a comet or goes off like a rocket.

DAVE [angry]: Oh don’t tell me, you mean it gives you a sense of power – you look at him and you think – I made that.

ANNA: No, that’s not it. Well, that’s what I said would happen. You asked, I told you, and you don’t believe me.

[She turns her back on him, goes to window. A long wolf-whistle from outside. Another.]

ANNA: Let’s ask him up and tell him the facts of life.

DAVE: Not much point if he hasn’t got fifty shillings.

ANNA: The State is prosperous. He will have fifty shillings.

DAVE: No, let us preserve romance. Let him dream.

[Shouting and quarrelling from the street.]

DAVE [at window with her]: There’s the police.

ANNA: They’re picking up the star-struck hero as well.

DAVE: No mixing of the sexes at the police station so he can go on dreaming of his loved-one from afar even now.

[A noise of something falling on the stairs. Voices. Giggling.]

DAVE: What the hell’s that?

ANNA: It’s Mary.

DAVE: She’s got herself a man? Good for her.

ANNA [distressed and irritable]: No, but she’s going to get herself laid. Well that’s OK with you isn’t it? Nothing wrong with getting oneself laid, according to you.

DAVE: It might be the beginning of something serious for her.

ANNA: Oh quite so. And when you get yourself laid. [conversationally and with malice] It’s odd the way the American male talks of getting himself laid. In the passive. ‘I went out and got myself laid’ what a picture – the poor helpless creature, pursuing his own pure concerns, while the predatory female creeps up behind him and lays him on his back …

DAVE: Don’t get at me because you’re worried about Mary.

[He goes over and puts his ann about her. For a moment, she accepts it.] Who is it?

ANNA: Harry. [MARY and HARRY have arrived outside ANNA’S door. Can be seen as two shadows. One shadow goes upstairs. One shadow remains.] I hope she doesn’t come in.

DAVE: But he shouldn’t be here if Helen’s in a bad way … [as ANNA looks at him] Hell. [He goes across to the mirror, where he stands grimacing at himself.]

[MARY knocks and comes in. She is rather drunk and aggressive.]

MARY: You’re up late aren’t you?

ANNA: Have a good time?

MARY: He’s quite amusing, Harry. [She affects a yawn.] I’m dead. Well, I think I’ll pop off to bed. [looking suspiciously at ANNA] You weren’t waiting up for me, were you?

ANNA [looking across at DAVE]: No.

[MARY sees DAVE, who is draping the black cloth across the mirror.]

MARY: Well, what a stranger. What are you doing? Don’t you like the look of yourself?

DAVE: Not very much. Do you?

MARY: I’ve been talking over old times with Harry.

DAVE: Yes, Anna said.

MARY: I expect you two have been talking over old times too. I must go to bed, I’m dead on my feet. [There is a noise upstairs.] [quickly] That must be the cat. Have you seen the cat?

ANNA: Yes, I suppose it must.

MARY: I was saying to Anna, only today, I’m getting a proper old maid – if a widow can be an old maid, fussing over a cat, well you’d never believe when you were young what you’ll come to.

DAVE: You an old maid – you’ve got enough spunk for a twenty-year-old.

MARY: Yes, Harry was saying, I wouldn’t think you were a day over twenty-five, he said. [to DAVE] Did you know my boy was getting married next week?

DAVE: Yes, I heard.

MARY: He’s got himself a nice girl. But I can’t believe it. It seems only the other day … [There is a bang upstairs. A moment later, a loud miaow outside ANNA’S door.] Why, there’s my pussy cat. [Another crash upstairs.] I must go and see … [She scuttles out. HARRY’S shadow on the stairs.] [putting her head around the door] Isn’t it nice, Harry’s decided to pop back for a cup of coffee. [She shuts the door.]

[ANNA and DAVE, in silence, opposite each other on the carpet. Dance music starts, soft, upstairs.]

ANNA: A good lay, with music.

DAVE: Don’t, baby. If I was fool enough to marry I’d be like Harry.

ANNA: Yes.

DAVE: Don’t hate him.

ANNA: I can make out Harry’s case as well as you. He wanted to be a serious writer, but like a thousand others he’s got high standards and no talent. So he works on a newspaper he despises. He goes home to a wife who doesn’t respect him. So he has to have the little girls to flatter him and make him feel good. OK Dave – but what more do you want? I’ll be back on duty by this evening, pouring out sympathy in great wet gobs and I’ll go on doing it until he finds another little girl who looks at him with gooey eyes and says: oh Harry, oh Dave, you’re so wonderful.

DAVE: It wouldn’t do you any harm to indulge in a bit of flattery from time to time.

ANNA: Oh yes it would. I told you, I’m having the truth with a man or nothing. I watch women buttering up their men, anything for a quiet life and despising them while they do it. It makes me sick.

DAVE: Baby, I pray for the day when you flatter me for just ten seconds.

ANNA: Oh go and get it from – Janet.

[MARY comes in fast, without knocking.]

MARY [she is very aggressive]: Anna, I didn’t like your manner just now. Sometimes there is something in your way I don’t like at all.

[ANNA turns away.]

ANNA: Mary, you’re a little high.

MARY: I’m not. I’m not tight at all. I’ve had practically nothing to drink. And you don’t even listen. I’m serious and you’re not listening. [taking hold of Anna] I’m not going to have it. I’m simply not going to have it.

[HARRY comes in. He is half drunk.]

HARRY: Come on, Mary. I thought you were going to make me some coffee. [MARY bangs ineffectually at ANNA’S shoulder with her fist.] Hey, girls, don’t brawl at this time of night.

MARY: I’m not brawling. [to DAVE] He’s smug too, isn’t he. Like Anna. [to ANNA] And what about you? This afternoon you were still with Tom and now it’s Dave.

HARRY: You’re a pair of great girls.

[ANNA looks in appeal at DAVE.]

DAVE [coming gently to support MARY]: Hey, Mary, come on now.

MARY [clinging to him]: I like you Dave. I always did. When people say to me, that crazy Dave, I always say, I like Dave. I mean, it’s only the crazy people who understand life when you get down to it …

DAVE: That’s right, Mary. [He supports her.]

[HARRY comes and attempts to take MARY’S arm. MARY shakes him off and confronts ANNA.]

MARY: Well Anna, that’s what I wanted to say and I’ve said it.

[HARRY is leading MARY out.]

MARY: The point is, what I mean is.

HARRY: You’ve made your point, come on.

ANNA: See you in the morning, Mary.

MARY: Well I’ve been meaning to say it and I have.

[HARRY and MARY go out, HARRY with a nod and a smile at the other two.]

DAVE: Anna, she’ll have forgotten all about it in the morning.

[He goes to her. She clings to him.]

DAVE: And if she hasn’t, you’ll have to.

ANNA: Oh hell, hell, hell.

DAVE: Yes, I know baby, I know.

ANNA: She’s going to wish she were dead tomorrow morning.

DAVE: Well, it’s not so terrible. You’ll be here and you can pick up the pieces. [He leads her to the bed, and sits by her, his arm around her.] That’s better. I like looking after you. Let’s have six months’ peace and quiet. Let’s have a truce – what do you say?

[The telephone rings. They are both tense, listening. HARRY comes in.]

HARRY: Don’t you answer your telephone, Anna? What’s the matter with you two? [He goes to the telephone to answer it. Sees their faces, stops.] I’m a clod. Of course, it’s Tom.

ANNA: It isn’t Tom.

HARRY: Of course it is. Poor bastard, he’s breaking his heart and here you are dallying with Dave.

ANNA: I know it isn’t.

DAVE: Never argue with Anna when she’s got one of her fits of intuition.

ANNA: Intuition!

HARRY: Mary’s passed clean out. Mary’s in a bad way tonight. Just my luck. I need someone to be nice to me, and all Mary wants is someone to be nice to her.

ANNA: I hope you were.

HARRY: Of course I was.

ANNA: Why don’t you go home to Helen?

HARRY [bluff]: It’s four in the morning. Did you two fools know it’s four in the morning? I’ll tell Helen my troubles tomorrow. Anna, don’t tell me you’re miserable too. [going to her] Is that silly bastard Dave playing you up? It’s a hell of a life. Now I’ll tell you what. I’ll pick you up for lunch tomorrow, I mean today, and I’ll tell you my troubles and you can tell me yours. [to DAVE] You’ve made Anna unhappy, you clod, you idiot.

ANNA: Oh damn it, if you want to play big Daddy why don’t you go home and mop up some of Helen’s tears?

HARRY [bluff]: I don’t have to worry about Helen, I keep telling you.

ANNA: Harry!

HARRY [to DAVE, shouting it]: Clod. Fool … all right, I suppose I’ve got to go home. But it’s not right, Anna. God in his wisdom has ordained that there should be a certain number of understanding women in the world whose task it is to bind up the wounds of warriors like Dave and me. Yes, I’ll admit it, it’s hard on you but – you’re a man’s woman Anna, and that means that when we’re in trouble you can’t be.

ANNA: Thank you, I did understand my role.

[The telephone rings.]

HARRY: He’s a persistent bugger, isn’t he? [He picks up telephone, shouts into it.] Well you’re not to marry him, Anna. Or anyone. Dave and I won’t let you. [He slams receiver back.]

ANNA: Go home. Please go home.

HARRY [for the first time serious]: Anna, you know something? I’m kind Uncle Harry, the world’s soft shoulder for about a thousand people. I make marriages, I patch them up. I give good advice. I dish out aid and comfort. But there’s just one person in the world I can’t be kind to.

ANNA: Helen’s ill.

HARRY: I know she is. I know it. But every time it’s the same thing. I go in, full of good intentions – and then something happens. I don’t know what gets into me … I was looking into the shaving glass this morning, a pretty sight I looked, I was up all last night drinking myself silly because my poppet’s getting married. I looked at myself. You silly sod, I said. You’re fifty this year, and you’re ready to die because of a little girl who … you know, Anna, if she wanted me to cut myself into pieces for her I’d do it? And she looked at me yesterday with those pretty little eyes of hers and she said – primly, she said it, though not without kindness – Harry, do you know what’s wrong with you? You’re at the dangerous age, she said. All men go through it. Oh Christ, Anna, let me take you out and give you a drink tonight. I’ve got to weep on someone’s shoulder. I’d have wept on Mary’s, only all she could say was: ‘Harry, what’s the meaning of life?’ She asks me.

ANNA: Anything you like but for God’s sake go home now.

HARRY: I’m going. Helen will pretend to be asleep. She never says anything. Well I suppose she’s learned there’s not much point in her saying anything, poor bitch.

[He goes. DAVE and ANNA look at each other.]

DAVE: OK Anna. Now let’s have it.

ANNA [in cruel parody]: I’m just a little ordinary girl, what’s wrong with that? I want to be married, what’s wrong with that? I never loved anyone as I loved Dave …

DAVE: No, Anna, not like that.

ANNA [in JANET’S voice, wild with anxiety]: When I knew I was pregnant I was so happy. Yes I know how it looks, trapping a man, but he said he loved me, he said he loved me. I’m five months’ pregnant.

[She stands waiting. DAVE looks at her.]

ANNA: Well haven’t you got anything to say?

DAVE: Did you expect me to fall down at your feet and start grovelling? God Anna, look at you, the mothers of the universe have triumphed, the check’s on the table and Dave Miller’s got to pay the bill, that’s it, isn’t it?

[She says nothing. DAVE laughs.]

ANNA: Funny?

DAVE [with affection]: You’re funny, Anna.

ANNA: It’s not my baby. I’m sorry it isn’t. I wasn’t so intelligent.

DAVE: That’s right. You’ve never got the manacles on me, but Janet has. Now I marry Janet and settle down in the insurance business and live happily ever after, is it that? Is that how you see it? If not, this cat and mouse business all evening doesn’t make sense.

ANNA: And the baby? Just another little casualty in the sex war? She’s a nice respectable middle-class girl, you can’t say to her, have an illegitimate baby, it will be an interesting experience for you – you could have said it to me.

DAVE: Very nice, and very respectable.

ANNA: You said you loved her.

DAVE: Extraordinary. You’re not at all shocked that she lied to me all along the line?

ANNA: You told her you loved her.

DAVE: I’ll admit it’s time I learned to define my terms … you’re worried about Janet’s respectability? If the marriage certificate is what is important to her I’ll give her one. No problems.

ANNA: No problems!

DAVE: I’ll fix it. Anna, you know what? You’ve been using Janet to break off with me because you haven’t the guts to do it for yourself? I don’t come through for you so you punish me by marrying me off to Janet Stevens?

ANNA: OK, then why don’t you come through for me? Here you are, Dave Miller, lecturing women all the time about how they should live – women should be free, they should be independent, etc., etc. None of these dishonest female ruses. But if that’s what you really want what are you doing with Janet Stevens – and all the other Janets? Well? The truth is you can’t take us, you can’t take me. I go through every kind of bloody misery trying to be what you say you want, but …

DAVE: OK, some of the time I can’t take you.

ANNA: And what am I supposed to do when you’re off with the Janets?

DAVE [with confidence]: Well you can always finally kick me out.

ANNA: And in a few months’ time when you’ve got tired of yourself in the role of a father, there’ll be a knock on the door … ‘Hi, Anna, do you love me? Let’s have six months’ peace and quiet, let’s have a truce … ’ and so on, and so on, and so on, and so on …

[The telephone rings.]

DAVE [at telephone]: Hi, Janet. Yeah. OK, baby. OK, I’m on my way. Don’t cry baby. [He puts down receiver.]

[They look at each other.]

DAVE: Well baby?

ANNA: Well?

[He goes out. Now ANNA has a few moments of indecision, of unco-ordination. She begins to cry, but at once stops herself. She goes to the cupboard, brings out Scotch and a glass. She nearly fills the glass with Scotch. With this in her hand she goes to the mirror, carefully drapes the black cloth over it. Goes to the carpet, where she sits as if she were still sitting opposite Dave. The Scotch is on the carpet beside her. She has not drunk any yet. ANNA sits holding herself together, because if she cracked up now, it would be too terrible. She rocks herself a little, perhaps, picks a bit of fluff off her trousers, makes restless, unco-ordinated movements. MARY comes in.]

MARY: I must have fallen asleep. I don’t know what Harry thought, me falling asleep like that … what did you say? I don’t usually … Where’s Dave?

ANNA: He’s gone to get married.

MARY: Oh. Well he was bound to get married some time, wasn’t he?

[Now she looks closely at ANNA for the first time.]

MARY: I must have been pretty drunk. I still am if it comes to that.

[She looks at the glass of Scotch beside Anna, then at the black cloth over the mirror.]

MARY: Hadn’t you better get up?

[MARY goes to the mirror, takes off the black cloth and begins to fold it up. She should do this like a housewife folding a tablecloth, very practical.]

MARY: I suppose some people will never have any more sense than they were born with.

[She lays down the cloth, folded neatly. Now she comes to Anna, takes up the glass of Scotch, and pours it back into the bottle.]

MARY: God only knows how I’m going to get myself to work today, but I suppose I shall.

[She comes and stands over ANNA. ANNA slowly picks herself off the floor and goes to the window.]

MARY: That’s right. Anna, have you forgotten your boy’ll be home in a few days? [as ANNA responds] That’s right. Well we always say we shouldn’t live like this, but we do, don’t we, so what’s the point … [She is now on her way to the door.] I was talking to my boy this morning Twenty-four. He knows everything. What I wouldn’t give to be back at twenty-four, knowing everything …

[MARY goes out. Now ANNA slowly goes towards the bed. As she does so, the city comes up around her, and the curtain comes down.]

THE END