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[ANNA and DAVE, in the same positions as at the end of Act One. No time has passed. The lights are out. The walls seemed to have vanished, so that the room seems part of the street. There is a silence. A lorry roars]

DAVE: Who are you?

ANNA [in English]: Anna Freeman.

DAVE: OK. Go, then.

[A silence.]

ANNA: I can’t. I’m all in pieces.

DAVE: Then go back. Who are you now?

ANNA [she slowly stands up, at the edge of the carpet]: Anna.

DAVE: Anna who?

ANNA [in Australian]: Anna MacClure from Brisbane [in English] The trouble is, she gets further and further away. She’s someone else. I know if she goes altogether then I’m done for. [a pause] [in Australian] The smell of petrol. In a broken-down old jalopy – six of us. It’s night. There’s a great shining moon. We’ve been dancing. I’m with Jack. We’ve stopped at the edge of the road by a petrol pump. All the others are singing and shouting and the petrol pump attendant’s angry as a cross cat. Jack says, ‘Anna, let’s get married.’ [Speaking to JACK] ‘No, Jack, what’s all this about, getting married. I want to live, Jack. I want to travel. I want to see the world … Yes, I know, but I don’t want kids yet. I don’t want … ’ [to DAVE] He says, ‘Anna you’ll be unhappy. I feel it in my bones, you’ll be unhappy.’ [she talks back to JACK] ‘I don’t care, I tell you. I know if I marry you, you’ll be for the rest of my life. You aren’t the world Jack … All right, then I’ll be unhappy. But I want a choice. Don’t you see, I want a choice.’ [she crouches down, her hands over her face] Let’s have the lights Dave.

DAVE: Wait. Go back some more – that’s not Anna MacClure the Australian. That’s Anna MacClure who’s already half in Europe.

ANNA: But it’s so hard.

DAVE: Breathe slowly and go. Who are you?

ANNA [slowly standing] [in a child’s voice, Australian]: Anna MacClure.

DAVE: Where?

ANNA: On the porch of our house. I’ve quarrelled with my mother. [she stands talking to her mother] I’m not going to be like you, ma, I’m not, I’m not. You’re stuck here, you never think of anything but me and my brother and the house. You’re old ma, you’re stupid. [listening while her mother lectures her] Yah, I don’t care. When I grow up I’m never going to be married, I’m not going to get old and dull. I’m going to live with my brother on an island and swim and catch fish and … [she sings] The moon is in my windowpane, the moon is in my bed, I’ll race the moon across the sky and eat it for my bread. I don’t care, ma, I don’t care … [She dances a blithe, defiant dance. In English] Dave, Dave, did you see? That was just like you.

[DAVE gets up and does his blithe defiant dance beside her on the carpet. He mocks her. ANNA furious, leaps over and smacks him.]

ANNA: ‘There, stupid child, you’re wicked and stupid you’re not going to defy me, so you think you’ll defy me … ’

[They both at the same moment crouch down in their former positions on either side of the carpet.]

ANNA: Let me have the light on now, please Dave.

[DAVE switches it on, the room becomes the room again. DAVE returns to where he was.]

DAVE [patting the carpet beside him]: Anna.

ANNA: No.

DAVE: Let me love you.

ANNA: No.

DAVE [laughing and confident]: You will, Anna, so why not now?

ANNA: You’ll never love me again, never never never.

DAVE [suddenly scared]: Why not? Why not?

ANNA: You know why.

DAVE: I swear I don’t.

ANNA: What am I going to be without you, what shall I do?

DAVE: But baby, I’m here.

ANNA: And what are you going to do with Janet?

DAVE: Janet?

ANNA: Janet Stephens, from Philadelphia.

DAVE: What about her?

ANNA: You don’t know her, of course.

DAVE: She’s a friend of mine, that’s all.

ANNA: Do you know Dave, if I walked into your room and found you in bed with a girl and said Dave, who is that girl, you’d say what girl? I don’t see any girl, it’s just your sordid imagination.

DAVE: Some time you’ve got to learn to trust me.

ANNA: What you mean by trust is, you tell me some bloody silly lie and I just nod my head and smile.

DAVE [inside the wild man]: That’s right baby, you should just nod your head and smile.

ANNA: You mean, it’s got nothing to do with me.

DAVE: That’s right, it’s got nothing to do with you.

[ANNA withdraws from him into herself.]

DAVE: Ah hell, Anna, she means nothing to me.

ANNA: Then it’s terrible.

[A pause.]

DAVE: I don’t understand why I do the things I do. I go moseying along, paying my way and liking myself pretty well, then I’m sounding off like something, and people start looking at me in a certain way, and I think, Hey, man is that you? Is that you there, Dave Miller? He’s taken over again, the wild man, the mad man. And I even stand on one side and watch pretty awed when you come to think of it. Yes, awed, that’s the word. You should be awed too, Anna, instead of getting scared. I can’t stand it when you’re scared of me.

ANNA: I simply want to run out of the way.

DAVE: The way of what? Go on, tell, I want to know.

ANNA: I want to hide from the flick-knives, from the tomahawks.

DAVE [with a loud, cruel laugh – he is momentarily inside the wild man]: Jesus. Bloody Englishwoman, middle-class lady, that’s what you are. [mimicking her], Flick-knives and tomahawks – how refined.

ANNA [in the voice of ANNA MACCLURE]: Dave, man, stand up and let it go, let it go.

[DAVE slowly stands. He switches off the light – the walls vanish, the city comes up. Back on the carpet, stands relaxed.]

ANNA: Who are you?

DAVE: Dave Miller, the boss of the gang, South Street, Al Capone’s territory … Chicago.

ANNA: What’s your name?

DAVE: Dave Miller.

ANNA: No, in your fantasy.

DAVE: Baby Face Nelson. No, but the way I dreamed him up, he was a sort of Robin Hood, stealing from the rich to give to the poor.

ANNA: Oh, don’t be so childish.

DAVE: That was the point of this exercise I thought.

ANNA: Sorry. Go ahead.

DAVE: I’m fifteen years old. I’m wearing a sharp hat, such a sweet sharp hat – pork-pie, cleft in the middle, set on side. The hat is in dark green. My jacket is two yards wide across the shoulders, nipped in at the waist, and skirted. In a fine, sweet cinnamon brown. Trousers in forest green, very fancy. My shirt is the finest money can buy, one dollar fifty, at Holy Moses Cut Price Emporium. In deciduous mauve. My tie is orange and black in lightening stripes. I wear velveteen spats, buttoned sweetly up the side, in hearth-rug white. I have a key-chain with a key on it, probably about six feet long, which could sweep the pavement if it hung free, but it never does, because we stand, lounging on the street corner, our home, men of the world, twirling the chain between our fingers, hour after hour through the afternoons and evenings. That year I’m a shoe-shine boy, a news-boy and a drug-store assistant. But my life, my real sweet life is on the pavement. [speaking to someone] Jedd, see that broad? [waits for an answer] Gee, some dish, bet she’s hot. [waits again] See that dame there, Jesus Christ. [he wolf-whistles]

[ANNA swanks, bottom wagging in front of him. DAVE whistles after her. He is echoed by a wolf-whistle from the street. ANNA wheels at the window to shut it.]

DAVE: I told you, keep it open.

[ANNA returns, squatting on the edge of the carpet.]

DAVE: Jesus, Anna, when I think of that kid, of all us kids, it makes me want to cry.

ANNA: Then cry.

DAVE: The year of our Lord, 1936, all our parents out of work, and World War II on top of us and we didn’t know it.

ANNA: Did you carry a knife?

DAVE: We all did.

ANNA: Ever use it?

DAVE: Hell no, I told you, we were fine idealistic kids. That was my anarchist period. We stood twirling our keychains on the corner of the street, eyeing the broads and I quoted great chunks out of Kroptkin to the guys. Anyone who joined my gang had to be an anarchist. When I had my socialist period, they had to be socialists.

ANNA: Go on.

DAVE: Isn’t it enough?

ANNA: I’m waiting for the tomahawk. You’re seven years old and you scalp all the nasty adults who don’t understand you.

DAVE: OK. I was a Red Indian nine-tenths of my childhood. OK. [in his parody of an English upper-class accent] There is no point whatever in discussing it … OK. Somewhere in my psyche is a tomahawk-twirling Red Indian … Anna? Do you know what’s wrong with America?

ANNA: Yes.

DAVE: At the street corners now the kids are not prepared to fight the world. They fight each other. Every one of us, we were prepared to take on the whole world single-handed. Not any longer, they know better, they’re scared. A healthy country has kids, every John Doe of them knowing he can lick the whole world, single-handed. Not any more.

ANNA: I know.

DAVE: You know. But you’re scared to talk. Everyone knows but they’re scared to talk. There’s a great dream dead in America. You look at us and see prosperity – and loneliness. Prosperity and men and women in trouble with each other. Prosperity and people wondering what life is for. Prosperity – and conformity. You look at us and you know it’s your turn now. We’ve pioneered the golden road for you …

ANNA: Who are you lecturing, Anna MacClure?

DAVE: OK, OK, OK. [he flops face down on the carpet]

[ANNA puts her arms around his shoulders.]

DAVE: If you think I’m any safer to touch when I’m flat than when I’m mobile you’re wrong. [He tries to pull her down. She pulls away.] OK. [pause] Did I tell you I went to a psycho-analyst? Yeah, I’m a good American after all, I went to a psycho-analyst.

ANNA [mocking him]: Do tell me about your psycho-analysis.

DAVE: Yeah, now I refer, throwing it away, to ‘when I was under psycho-analysis’.

ANNA: The way you refer, throwing it away, to ‘when I was a car salesman’, which you were for a week.

DAVE: Why do you always have to cut me down to size?

ANNA: So, how many times did you go?

DAVE: Twice.

[ANNA laughs.]

DAVE: The first interview was already not a success. Now, doc, I said. I have no wish to discuss my childhood. There is no point whatever in discussing it. I want to know how to live my life, doc. I don’t want you to sit there, nodding while I talk. I want your advice, I said. After all, doc, I said, you’re an educated man, Eton and Oxford, so you told me – throwing it away, of course. So pass on the message, doc, pass it on.

[ANNA rolls on the carpet, laughing.]

DAVE: It was no laughing matter. I talked for one hour by the clock, begging and pleading for the favour of one constructive word from him. But he merely sat like this, and then he said: ‘I’ll see you next Thursday, at five o’clock precisely.’ I said, it was no laughing matter – for a whole week I was in a trance, waiting for the ultimate revelation – you know how we all live, waiting for that revelation? Then I danced up to his room and lay on to his couch and lay waiting. He said not a word. Finally I said don’t think I’m resisting you, doc, please don’t think it. Talk doc, I said. Give. Let yourself go. Then the hour was nearly up. I may say, I’d given him a thumb-nail sketch of my life previously. He spoke at last: ‘Tell me, Mr Miller, how many jobs did you say you had had?’ My God, doc, I said, nearly falling over myself in my eagerness to oblige, if I knew, I’d tell you. ‘You would admit,’ he said at last, ‘that the pattern of your life shows, ho, hum, ha, a certain instability?’ My God, yes, doc, I said, panting at his feet, that’s it, you’re on to it, hold fast to it doc, that’s the word, instability. Now give doc, give. Tell me, why is it that a fine upstanding American boy like me, with all the advantages our rich country gives its citizens, why should I be in such trouble. And why should so many of us be in such trouble – I’m not an American for nothing, I’m socially minded, doc. Why are there so many of us in such trouble? Tell me doc. Give. And why should you, Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey, citizen of England, be sitting in that chair, in a position to dish out advice and comfort? Of course I know that you got all wrapped up in this thing because you, uh, kind of like people, doc, but after all, to kinda like people doc, puts you in a pretty privileged class for a start – so few citizens can afford to really kinda like people. So tell me doc, tell me …

ANNA: Well don’t shout at me, I’m not Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey.

DAVE: You listen just like him – judging. In possession of some truth that’s denied to me.

ANNA: I’ve always got to be the enemy. You’ve got to have an enemy …

DAVE: You’re right. I’ve got to have an enemy. Why not? I’m not going to love my brother as myself if he’s not worth it. Nor my sister, if it comes to that – where was I?

ANNA: Kinda liking people.

DAVE: There was a sort of thoughtful pause. I waited, biting my nails. Then he said, or drawled. ‘Tell me, just at random now, is there any thing or event or happening that has seemed to you significant. Just to give us something to get our teeth into, Mr Miller?’ Well, doc, I said, just at random, and picking a significant moment from a life full of significant moments, and on principle at that – latch on to that doc, it’s important in our case, that my life has been uninterruptedly full of significant moments … but has yours doc? I want to know? We should talk as equals doc, has your life been as full as mine of significant moments?

ANNA: Dave, stop boasting.

DAVE: Hell, Anna. If you love me, it’s because I lived that way, Well? And so. But to pull just one little cat or kitten out of the bag, doc, I would say it was the moment I woke beside a waitress in Minnesota, and she said to me in her sweet measured voice: ‘Honey you’re nuts. Did you know that?’ … Well, to tell the truth, no, I hadn’t known it. Light flooded in on me. I’ve been living with it ever since. And so. I was all fixed up to see one of your opposite numbers in the States, my great country, that was in LA, California, where I happened to be at the time, writing scripts for our film industry. Then I heard he was a stool pigeon for the FBI. No, don’t look like that doc, don’t – very distasteful, I’ll admit, but the world’s a rough place. Half his patients were int-ell-ectuals, and Reds and Pinks, since intellectuals so often tend to be, and after every couch session, he was moseying off to the FBI with information. Now, doc, here’s an American and essentially socially-minded, I want an answer, in this great country, England, I can come to you with perfect confidence that you won’t go trotting off to the MI5, to inform them that during my communist period I was a communist. That is, before I was expelled from that institution for hinting that Stalin had his weak moments. I tend to shoot off my mouth, doc. A weakness, I know, but I know that you won’t, and that gives me a profound feeling of security.

ANNA: Dave, you’re nuts.

DAVE: So said the waitress in Minnesota. Say it often enough and I’ll believe it.

ANNA: So what did Dr Cooper-Anstey say?

DAVE: He lightly, oh so lightly, touched his fingertips together, and he drawled: ‘Tell me Mr Miller, how many women have you had?’

[ANNA laughs.]

DAVE: Hey doc, I said, I was talking seriously. I was talking about the comparative states of liberty in my country and in yours. He said: ‘Mr Miller, don’t evade my question.’

[ANNA laughs.]

DAVE: OK doc, if you’re going to be a small-minded … but let’s leave the statistics, doc. I’m pretty well schooled in this psycho-analysis bit, I said, all my fine stable well integrated friends have been through your mill. And so I know that if I pulled out a notebook full of statistics, you’d think I was pretty sick – you may think it careless of me, doc, but I don’t know how many women I’ve had. But Mr Miller, he drawled, you must have some idea? Well, at this point I see that this particular morale-builder is not for me. Tell me, Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey, I said, how many women have you had?

[ANNA rolls, laughing.]

DAVE: Hey, Anna, this is serious girl. A serious matter … hey, ho, he was mad, was Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey sore. He sat himself up to his full height, and he told me in tones of severe displeasure, that I was an adolescent. Yeah, doc, I said, we Americans are all children, we’re all adolescent, we know that. But I wanted to know – how many women have you had doc? Because we have to talk man to man, doc, adolescent or not. There’s got to be some sort of equality around this place, I said. After all, I said, one woman is not like another doc, believe me, if you’ve slept with one woman you’ve not slept with them all and don’t you think it. And besides, doc, I said, you’re an Englishman. That is not without relevance. Because, judging from my researches into this field, Englishmen don’t like women very much. So English women complain. So they murmur in the dark night watches with their arms gratefully around the stranger’s neck. Now I like women doc, I like them. The point is, do you? He laughed. Like this [DAVE gives a high whinnying laugh] But I persisted. I said, doc, do you like your wife? And what is more important, does she like you? Does she, doc? And so.

ANNA: And so?

DAVE: And so he kicked me out, with all the dignity an upperclass Englishman brings to such matters. In tones frozen with good taste, he said, ‘Mr Miller, you know how to find your own way out, I think.’

ANNA: It’s all very well.

DAVE: [mimicking her] It’s all very well, don’t freeze up on me Anna, I won’t have it. [a pause] Anna, he did vouchsafe me with two little bits of information from the heights of integration. One. He said I couldn’t go on like this. I said, that’s right, that’s why I’ve come to you. And two. He said I should get married, have two well-spaced children and a settled job. Ah, doc, now you’re at the hub of the thing. What job, I said? Because I’ll let you into a secret. What’s wrong with all of us is not that our mummies and daddies weren’t nice to us it’s that we don’t believe the work we do is important. Oh, I know I’m earnest, doc, I’m pompous and earnest – but I need work that makes me feel I’m contributing. So doc, give – I’m a man of a hundred talents, none of them outstanding. But I have one thing, doc, just one important thing – if I spend eight hours a day working, I need to know that men, women and children are benefiting by my work. So … What job shall I do. Tell me.

ANNA: So?

DAVE: He said I should get any job that would enable me to keep a wife and two children, and in this way I would be integrated into society. [he flings himself down on the carpet] Anna, for God’s sake, Anna.

ANNA: Don’t ask me.

DAVE: Why not? I can’t ask Dr Anstey. Because the significant moment I keep coming back to he wouldn’t see at all. It wasn’t the moment I decided to leave America. I drove right across the States, looking up all my friends, the kids who’d been world-challengers with me. They were all married. Some of them were divorced, of course, but that’s merely an incident in the process of being married. They all had houses, cars, jobs, families. They were not pleased to see me – they knew I was still unintegrated. I asked each one a simple question. Hey, man, I said, this great country of ours, it’s in no too healthy a state. What are we going to do about it? And do you know what they said?

ANNA: Don’t rock the boat.

DAVE: You’ve got it in one, kid. But I had one ace up my sleeve. There was my old buddy, Jedd. He’ll still be right in there, fighting. So I walked into his apartment where he was sitting with his brand new second wife. There was a nervous silence. Then he said: Are you successful yet, Dave? And so I took the first boat over.

ANNA: And the wife and the two well-spaced kids?

DAVE: You know I can’t get married. You know that if I could I’d marry you. And perhaps I should marry you. How about it?

ANNA: No. The wedding would be the last I’d see of you – you’d be off across the world like a dog with a fire-cracker tied to its tail.

DAVE: I know. So I can’t get married. [a pause] Why don’t you just trap me into it? Perhaps I need simply to be tied down?

ANNA: No.

DAVE: Why not?

ANNA: Any man I have stays with me, voluntarily, because he wants to, without ties.

DAVE: Your bloody pride is more important to you than what I need.

ANNA: Don’t beat me up.

DAVE: I will if I want. You’re my woman so if I feel like beating you up I will. And you can fight back … Anna what are you being enigmatic about? All the time, there’s something in the air, that’s not being said. What is it?

ANNA: Not being said, I keep trying. Don’t you really know.

DAVE [in a panic]: No. What?

ANNA: If I told you, you’d say I was just imagining it. All right, I’ll try again, Janet Stevens.

DAVE [furious]: You’re a monomaniac. Janet Stevens. Do you imagine that a nice little middle-class girl, whose poppa’s sort of sub-manager for an insurance company, do you imagine she can mean anything to me?

ANNA: Oh my God, Dave.

DAVE: You’re crazy. It’s you that’s crazy.

ANNA: Dave, while you’re banging and crashing about the world, playing this role and that role, filling your life full of significant moments – there are other people in the world … hell, what’s the use of talking to you. [a pause] As a matter of interest, and this is a purely abstract question, suppose you married Janet Stevens, what would you have to do?

DAVE: Anna, are you crazy? Can you see me? God help me, I’m a member of that ever-increasing and honourable company, the world’s ex-patriates. Like you, Anna.

ANNA: Oh, all right.

DAVE: How the hell could I marry her? She wouldn’t under-stand a word I ever said, for a start.

ANNA: Oh all right.

DAVE: ‘There’s no point at all in discussing it.’

ANNA: None at all.

DAVE: I said to Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey: This society you want me to be integrated with, do you approve of it? If you don’t, what are you doing, sitting there with those big black scissors cutting people into shapes to fit it? Well, doc, I’ll tell you something, I don’t approve of society, it stinks. I don’t want to fit into it, I want society to fit itself to me – I’ll make a deal with you, doc, I’ll come and lie on this comfortable couch of yours, Tuesdays and Fridays from 2 to 3 for seven years, on condition that at the end of that time society is a place fit for Dave Miller to live in. How’s that for a proposition doc? Because of course that means you’ll have to join the Dave Miller fraternity for changing the world. You join my organization and I’ll join yours. [he turns on ANNA] Hey, Anna, don’t just lie there, reserving judgment.

ANNA: I didn’t say a word.

DAVE: You never have to. You’re like Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey – you put your spiritual fingertips together and purse your lips.

ANNA [furious]: Dave do you know something – when you need an enemy, you turn me into a kind of – lady welfare worker. Who was the great enemy of your childhood? The lady welfare worker. [jumping up – in Australian] I’m Anna MacClure the daughter of a second-hand car dealer. My grand-father was a horse-doctor. My great-grand-father was a stock farmer. And my great-great-grand-father was a convict, shipped from this our mother country God bless her to populate the outback. I’m the great-great-grand-daughter of a convict, I’m the aristocracy so don’t get at me, Dave Miller, corner-boy, street-gang-leader – I’m as good as you are, any day. [he pulls her down on to the carpet, she pushes his hands away] No. I told you, no.

DAVE [swinging her round to sit by him. His arms round her]: OK then baby, we don’t have to make love. Like hell we don’t. OK sit quiet and hold my hand. Do you love me, Anna?

ANNA: Love you? You are me. [mocking] You are the flame, the promise and the enchantment. You are for me – what Janet Stevens is for you. [she laughs] Imagine it Dave Miller, for you the flame is embodied in a succession of well-conducted young ladies, each one more banal than the last. For me – it’s you. [suddenly serious] You are my soul.

DAVE [holding her down beside him]: If I’m your soul, then surely it’s in order to sit beside me?

[They sit, arms round each other, ANNA’S head on his shoulder.]

ANNA: I only breathe freely when I’m with you.

DAVE [complacent]: I know.

ANNA [furious]: What do you mean? I was on the point of getting married.

DAVE: Don’t be absurd.

ANNA: What’s going to become of us?

DAVE: Perhaps I shall go back to Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey – like hell.

ANNA: It’s not fair to take it out of Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey just because he isn’t God.

DAVE: Of course it’s fair. If God wasn’t dead I wouldn’t be going to Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey. Perhaps I should wrestle with him – after all, these people have what’s the word? Stability.

ANNA: Stability. Security. Safety.

DAVE: You were born with one skin more than I have.

ANNA [mocking]: But I come from a stable home.

DAVE: Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey said to me: ‘Mr Miller, your trouble is, you come from a broken home.’ But doc, I said, my home wasn’t broken – my parents were both union organizers. He winced. A look of distaste settled around his long sensitive nose. He fought for the right comment. At last it came: ‘Really?’ he said. Yeah, really, I said. My parents were professional union organisers.

ANNA [being DR MELVILLE COOPER-ANSTEY]: Union organizers, Mr Miller?

DAVE: That’s right, doc, it’s true that my childhood was spent hither and thither as you might say, but it was in a good cause. My mother was usually organizing a picket line in Detroit while my father was organizing a strike in Pittsburgh.

ANNA: Really, Mr Miller.

DAVE: But doc, it was the late ’twenties and early ’thirties – people were hungry, they were out of work.

ANNA: You must stick to the point Mr Miller.

DAVE: But if I spent my time hither and thither it was not because my parents quarrelled. They loved each other.

ANNA: Were you, or were you not, a disturbed child, Mr Miller?

DAVE: The truth compels me to state, I was a disturbed child. But in a good cause. My parents thought the state of the world was more important than me, and they were right, I am on their side. But I never really saw either of them. We scarcely met. So my mother was whichever lady welfare worker that happened to be dealing with the local delinquents at the time, and my father was the anarchists, the Jewish socialist youth, the communists and the Trotskyists. In a word, the radical tradition – oh, don’t laugh doc. I don’t expect they’ll have taught you about the radical tradition in Oxford, England, but it stood for something. And it will again – it stood for the great dream – that life can be noble and beautiful and dignified.

ANNA: And what did he say?

DAVE: He said I was an adolescent. Doc, I said, my childhood was disturbed – by the great dream – and if yours was not, perhaps after all you had the worst of it.

ANNA: You are evading the issue, Mr Miller.

DAVE: But you’re all right, you have stability – Anna, you didn’t come from a broken home.

ANNA: No, I come from a well-integrated, typical stable marriage.

DAVE: Then tell me Anna, tell me about stable and well-integrated marriage.

ANNA [standing up and remembering. She shudders]: My mother wanted to be a great pianist. Oh she was not without talent. She played at a concert in Brisbane once – that was the high point of her life. That night she met my father. They married. She never opened the piano after I was born. My father never earned as much money as he thought life owed him – for some reason, the second-hand cars had a spite on him. My mother got more and more garrulous. In a word, she was a nag. My father got more and more silent. But he used to confide in me. He used to tell me what his dreams had been when he was a young man. Oh yes, he was a world-changer too, before he married.

DAVE: All young men are world-changers, before they marry.

ANNA: OK. It’s not my fault …

[They look at each other. DAVE leaps up, switches out the light. DAVE stands across from ANNA, in a hunched, defeated pose. ANNA has her hands on her hips, a scold.]

ANNA: Yes, Mr MacClure, you said that last month – but how am I going to pay the bill from the store, tell me that?

DAVE [in Australian]: A man came in today, he said he might buy that Ford.

ANNA: Might buy! Might buy! And I promised Anna a new coat, I promised her, this month, a new coat.

DAVE: Then Anna can do without, it won’t hurt her.

ANNA: That’s just like you – you always say next month, next month things will be better – and how about the boy, how can we pay his fees, we promised him this year …

DAVE: Ah, shut up. [shouting] Shut up. I said. Shut up …

[He turns away, hunched up.]

ANNA [speaking aloud the monologue of her mother’s thoughts]: Yes, that’s how I spend my life, pinching and saving – all day, cooking and preserving, and making clothes for the kids, that’s all I ever do, I never even get a holiday. And it’s for a man who doesn’t even know I’m here – well, if he had to do without me, he’d know what I’ve done for him. He’d value me if he had to do without me – if I left him, he’d know, soon enough. There’s Mr Jones from the store; he’s a soft spot for me, trying to kiss me when there’s no one there but us two, yes, I’d just have to lift my finger and Mr Jones would take me away – I didn’t lack for men before I married – they came running when I smiled. Ah God in heaven, if I hadn’t married this good-for-nothing here, I’d be a great pianist, I’d know all the golden cities of the world -Paris, Rome, London, I’d know the great world, and here I am, stuck in a dump like this, with two ungrateful kids and a no-good husband …

DAVE [speaking aloud MR MACCLURE’S thoughts]: Well what the hell does she want – I wouldn’t be here in this dump at all if it wasn’t for her; does she think that’s all I’m fit for, selling old cars, to keep food and clothes in the home? Why, if I hadn’t married her, I’d be free to go where I liked – she sees me as a convenience to get money to keep her and her kids, that’s all she cares about, the kids, she doesn’t care for me. Without her I’d be off across the world – the world’s a big place I’d be free to do what I liked – and the women, yes, the women, why, she doesn’t regard me, but only last week, Mrs Jones was giving me the glad eye from behind the counter when her old man wasn’t looking – yes, she’d better watch out, she’d miss me right enough if I left her …

ANNA [as ANNA]: A typical well-integrated marriage. [as her MOTHER]: Mr MacClure, are you listening to me?

DAVE [as MR MACCLURE]: Yes, dear.

ANNA [going to him, wistful]: You’re not sorry you married me?

DAVE: No dear, I’m not sorry I married you.

[They smile at each other, ironical.]

ANNA [as ANNA]: The highest emotion they ever knew was a kind of ironical compassion – the compassion of one prisoner for another … [as her MOTHER] There’s the children, dear. They are both fine kids, both of them.

DAVE: Yes, dear, they’re both fine kids. [patting her] There, there dear, it’s all right, don’t worry dear.

ANNA [as ANNA]: That’s how it was. And when I was nine years old I looked at that good fine stable marriage and at the marriages of our friends and neighbours and I swore, to the God I already did not believe in, God, I said, God, if I go down in loneliness and misery, if I die alone somewhere in a furnished room in a lonely city that doesn’t know me – I’ll do that sooner than marry as my father and mother were married. I’ll have the truth with the man I’m with or I’ll have nothing. [shuddering] Nothing.

DAVE: Hey – Anna!

[He switches on the lights, fast. Goes to her.]

DAVE [gently]: Perhaps the irony was the truth.

ANNA: No, no, no. It was not.

DAVE [laughing at her, but gently]: You’re a romantic, Anna Freeman. You’re an adolescent.

ANNA: Yes, I’m an adolescent. And that’s how I’m going to stay. Anything, anything rather than the man and woman, the jailed and the jailer, living together, talking to themselves, and wondering what happened that made them strangers. I won’t, I’ll die alone first. And I shall. I shall.

DAVE [holding her]: Hey, Anna, Anna. [gently laughing] You know what Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey would say to that?

ANNA: Yes.

DAVE: And what all the welfare workers would say?

ANNA: Yes.

DAVE: And what all the priests would say?

ANNA: Yes.

DAVE: And what the politicians would say?

ANNA: Yes. [she tears herself from him] Don’t rock the boat.

DAVE: [taking her up]: Don’t rock the boat. [he switches off the lights]

[They look at each other, beginning to laugh. The following sequence, while they throw slogans, or newspaper headlines at each other should be played with enjoyment, on the move, trying to out-cap each other.]

ANNA: Don’t rock the boat – work.

DAVE: Produce goods and children for the State.

ANNA: Marry young.

DAVE: The unit of society is a stable marriage.

ANNA: The unit of a healthy society is a well-integrated family.

DAVE: Earn money.

ANNA: Remember the first and worst sin is poverty.

DAVE: The first and best virtue is to own a comfortable home full of labour-saving devices.

ANNA: If you have too much leisure, there are football matches, the pools and television.

DAVE: If you still have too much leisure be careful not to spend it in ways that might rock the boat.

ANNA: Don’t rock the boat – society might have its minor imperfections, but they are nothing very serious.

DAVE: Don’t dream of anything better – dreams are by definition neurotic.

ANNA: If you are dissatisfied with society, you are by definition unstable.

DAVE: If your soul doesn’t fit into the patterns laid down for you –

ANNA: Kill yourself, but don’t rock the boat.

DAVE: Be integrated.

ANNA: Be stable.

DAVE: Be secure.

ANNA: Be integrated or –

DAVE:		Die! Die! Die!
ANNA:

DAVE: The trouble with you, Anna, is that you exaggerate everything.

ANNA: The trouble with you Dave, is that you have no sense of proportion.

DAVE: Proportion. I have no sense of proportion. I must scale myself down … I have spent my whole life on the move … I’ve spent my youth on the move across the continent and back again – from New York to Pittsburgh, from Pittsburgh to Chicago, from Chicago … [by now he is almost dancing his remembering] … across the great plains of the Middle West to Salt Lake City and the Rocky Mountains, and down to the sea again at San Francisco. Then back again, again, again, from West to East, from North to South, from Dakota to Mexico and back again … and sometimes, just sometimes, when I’ve driven twelve hours at a stretch with the road rolling up behind me like a carpet, sometimes I’ve reached it, sometimes I’ve reached what I’m needing – my head rests on the Golden Gates, with one hand I touch Phoenix, Arizona, and with the other I hold Minneapolis, and my feet straddle from Maine to the Florida Keys. And under me America rocks, America rocks – like a woman.

ANNA: Or like the waitress from Minnesota.

DAVE: Ah, Jesus!

ANNA: You are maladjusted Mr Miller!

DAVE: But you aren’t, do tell me how you do it!

ANNA: Now when I can’t breathe any more I shut my eyes and I walk out into the sun – I stand on a ridge of high country and look out over leagues and leagues of – emptiness. Then I bend down and pick up a handful of red dust, a handful of red dust and I smell it. It smells of sunlight.

DAVE: Of sunlight.

ANNA: I tell you, if I lived in this bloody mildewed little country for seven times seven years, my flesh would be sunlight. From here to here, sunlight.

DAVE: You’re neurotic, Anna, you’ve got to face up to it.

ANNA: But you’re all right, you’re going to settle in a split-level house with a stable wife and two children.

DAVE [pulling ANNA to the front of the stage and pointing over and down into the house]: Poke that little nose of yours over your safe white cliffs and look down – see all those strange coloured fish down there – not cod, and halibut and Dover sole and good British herring, but the poisonous coloured fish of Paradise.

ANNA: Cod. Halibut. Dover Sole. Good British herring.

DAVE: Ah, Jesus, you’ve got the soul of a little housewife from Brixton.

ANNA [leaping up and switching on the lights]: Or from Philadelphia. Well let me tell you Dave Miller, any little housewife from Brixton or Philadelphia could tell you what’s wrong with you.

DAVE [mocking]: Tell me baby.

ANNA: You are America, the America you’ve sold your soul to – do you know what she is?

DAVE [mocking]: No baby, tell me what she is.

ANNA: She’s that terrible woman in your comic papers – a great masculine broad-shouldered narrow-hipped black-booted blonde beastess, with a whip in one hand and a revolver in the other. And that’s why you’re running, she’s after you, Dave Miller, as she’s after every male American I’ve ever met. I bet you even see the Statue of Liberty with great black thigh-boots and a pencilled moustache – the frigid tyrant, the frigid goddess.

DAVE [mocking]: But she’s never frigid for me, baby. [he does his little mocking dance]

ANNA: God’s gift to women, Dave Miller.

DAVE: That’s right, that’s right baby.

ANNA: And have you ever thought what happens to them – the waitress in Minnesota, the farmer’s wife in Nebraska, the club-hostess in Detroit? Dave Miller descends for one night, a gift from God, and leaves the next day. ‘Boo-hoo, boo-hoo,’ she cries, ‘stay with me baby.’ ‘I can’t baby, my destiny waits’ – your destiny being the waitress in the next drive-in café. [she is now dancing around him] And why don’t you stay, or don’t you know? It’s because you’re scared. Because if you stay, she might turn into the jackbooted whip-handling tyrant.

DAVE: No. I’m not going to take the responsibility for you. That’s what you want, like every woman I’ve ever known. That I should say, I love you baby and …

ANNA: I love you, Anna Freeman.

DAVE: I love you, honey.

ANNA: I love you, Anna Freeman.

DAVE: I love you, doll.

ANNA: I love you, Anna Freeman.

DAVE: I love you – but that’s the signal for you to curl up and resign your soul to me. You want me to be responsible for you.

ANNA: You’ll never be responsible for anyone. [flat] One day you’ll learn that when you say I love you baby it means something.

DAVE: Well, everything’s running true to form – I haven’t been back a couple of hours but the knives are out and the tom-toms beating for the sex-war.

ANNA: It’s the only clean war left. It’s the only war that won’t destroy us all. That’s why we are fighting it.

DAVE: Sometimes I think you really hate me, Anna.

ANNA [mocking]: Really? Sometimes I think I’ve never hated anyone so much in all my life. A good clean emotion hate is. I hate you.

DAVE: Good, then I hate you.

ANNA: Good, then get out, go away. [She wheels to the window, looks out. He goes to where his duffle bag is, picks it up, drops it, and in the same circling movement turns to face her as she says] I hate you because you never let me rest.

DAVE: So love is rest? The cosy corner, the little nook?

ANNA: Sometimes it ought to be.

DAVE: Sometimes it is.

ANNA: Ha! With you! You exhaust me. You take me to every extreme, all the time, I’m never allowed any half-measures.

DAVE: You haven’t got any.

ANNA: Ah, hell. [she flings her shoes at him, one after the other. He dodges them, jumps to the bed, crouches on it, patting it]

DAVE: Truce, baby, truce …

ANNA [mocking him]: You’re going to love me, baby, warm-hearted and sweet? Oh you’re a good lay baby, I’d never say you weren’t.

[The sound of screechings and fighting from the street. ANNA is about to slam the window down, stops on a look from DAVE.]

ANNA: Last night the four of them were scratching each other and pulling each other’s hair while a group of fly-by-night men stood and watched and laughed their heads off. Nothing funnier, is there, than women fighting?

DAVE: Sure, breaks up the trade union for a bit … [this is black and aggressive – she reacts away from him. He looks at her, grimaces] Hell, Anna.

[He goes fast to the mirror, studies the black cloth.]

DAVE: What’s the pall for?

ANNA: I don’t like my face.

DAVE: Why not?

ANNA: It wears too well.

DAVE: You must be hard-up for complaints against life …

[looking closely at her] You really are in pieces, aren’t you? You mean you went out and bought this specially?

ANNA: That’s right.

DAVE: Uh-huh – when?

ANNA: When we quarrelled last time – finally, if you remember?

DAVE: Uh-huh. Why really, come clean?

ANNA: It would seem to suit my situation.

DAVE: Uh-huh … [he suddenly whips off the cloth and drapes it round his shoulders like a kind of jaunty cloak, or cape. Talking into the mirror, in angry, mocking self-parody] Hey there, Dave Miller, is that you, man? [in a Southern accent] Yes, Ma’am, and you have a pretty place around here. Mind if I stay a-while? Yeah, I sure do like your way of doing things … [accent of the Mid-West] Hi, babe, and what’ve you got fixed for tonight? Yes, this is the prettiest place I’ve seen for many a day … [in English] Why, hullo, how are you? [he crashes his fist into the mirror]

[ANNA, watching him, slowly comes from window as he talks, first crouches on the carpet, then collapses face down – she puts her hands over her ears, then takes them away.]

DAVE [into mirror]: Dave Miller? David Abraham Miller? No reply. No one at home. Anna, do you know what I’m scared of? One of these fine days I’ll look in the glass, expecting to see a fine earnest ethical young … and there’ll be nothing there. Then, slowly, a small dark stain will appear on the glass, it will slowly take form and … Anna, I want to be a good man. I want to be a good man.

ANNA [for herself]: I know.

[But he has already recovered. He comes to her, pulls her up to sit by him.]

DAVE: If that God of theirs ever dishes out any medals to us, what’ll it be for?

ANNA: No medals for us.

DAVE: Yes, for trying. For going on. For keeping the doors open.

ANNA: Open for what?

DAVE: You know. Because if there’s anything new in the world anywhere, any new thought, or new way of living, we’ll be ready to hear the first whisper of it. When Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey, imagines God, how does he imagine him?

ANNA: As Dr Melville Cooper-Anstey, two sizes larger.

DAVE: But we’ve got to do better. Anna look – the walls are down, and anyone or anything can come in. Now imagine off the street comes an entirely new and beautiful phenomenon, a new human being.

ANNA: Jewish boy – you’re a good Jewish boy after all waiting for the Messiah.

DAVE: That’s what everyone’s waiting for, even if they don’t know it – something new to be born. Anna, supposing superman walked in now off the street, how would you imagine him?

ANNA: Superwoman.

DAVE: Oh OK.

ANNA [in despair]: Me.

DAVE: I know. I know it. Me too. I sit and think and think – because if we don’t know what we want to grow into, how can we shape ourselves better? So I concentrate until my brain is sizzling, and who comes in through the door – me!

ANNA: Just once it wasn’t me.

DAVE [excited]: Who?

ANNA: I was sitting here, like this. I was thinking – if we can’t breed something better than we are, we’ve had it, the human race has had it. And then, suddenly …

DAVE: What?

ANNA: He walked in, twitching his tail. An enormous, glossy padding tiger. The thing was, I wasn’t at all surprised. Well tiger, I said, and who do you belong to?

DAVE [furious]: Anna, a tiger walks in here, and all you can say is, wild beast, whose label is around your neck?

ANNA: I thought you wanted to know.

DAVE: Go on.

ANNA: The tiger came straight towards me. Hullo tiger, I said, have you escaped from the zoo?

DAVE [mocking]: Of course he’s escaped from the zoo. He couldn’t be a wild tiger, could he?

ANNA [she kneels, talking to the tiger]: Tiger, tiger, come here. [she fondles the tiger] Tiger, tiger – The tiger purred so loud that the sound drowned the noise of the traffic. And then suddenly – [ANNA starts back, clutching at her arms.] He lashed out, I was covered with blood. Tiger, I said, what’s that for … he backed away, snarling.

[ANNA is now on her feet, after the tiger.]

DAVE [very excited]: Yeah. That’s it. That’s it. That’s it.

ANNA: He jumped on to my bed and crouched there, lashing his tail. But tiger, I said, I haven’t done anything to you, have I?

DAVE [furious]: Why didn’t you offer him a saucer of milk? Kitty, kitty, have a nice saucer of milk?

ANNA [beside the bed, trying to hold the tiger]: Tiger, don’t go away. But he stared and he glared, and then he was off – down he leaped and out into the street, and off he padded with his yellow eyes gleaming into the shadows of Earls Court. Then I heard the keepers shouting after him and wheeling along a great cage … [She comes back opposite DAVE.] That was the best I could do. I tried hard, but that was the best – a tiger. And I’m covered with scars.

DAVE [gently]: Anna.

[They kneel, foreheads touching, hands together.]

[The telephone starts ringing.]

DAVE: Answer it.

ANNA: No.

DAVE: Is it Tom?

ANNA: Of course it isn’t Tom.

DAVE: Then who?

ANNA: Don’t you really know?

[She goes to answer telephone, it stops ringing. She stands a moment. Then turns to him, fast.]

ANNA: Love me Dave, Love me Dave. Now.

[DAVE rolls her on to the carpet. They roll over and over together. Suddenly she breaks free and begins to laugh.]

DAVE: What’s so funny?

ANNA [kneeling up, mocking]: I’ll tell you what’s funny, Dave Miller. We sit here, tearing ourselves to bits trying to imagine something beautiful and new – but suppose the future is a nice little American college girl all hygienic and virginal and respectable with a baby in her arms. Suppose the baby is what we’re waiting for – a nice, well-fed, well-educated, psycho-analysed superman …

DAVE: Anna, please stop it.

ANNA: But imagine. Anything can come in – tigers, unicorns, monsters, the human being so beautiful he will send all of us into the dust-can. But what does come in is a nice, anxious little girl from Philadelphia.

DAVE: Well Anna?

ANNA: Well Dave?

[A fresh burst of fighting from the street. ANNA moves to shut the window, DAVE holds her.]

DAVE: I’m surprised I have to tell you that anything you shut out because you’re scared of it becomes more dangerous.

ANNA: Yes, but I’ve lived longer than you, and I’m tired.

DAVE: That’s a terrible thing to say.

ANNA: I daresay it is.

END OF ACT TWO