TALKING HEADS

GUIN, FOR GUINEVERE

by Pam Gems

Copyright © Pam Gems
Pam Gems is hereby identified as author of this work in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. The author has asserted her moral rights. 

All rights whatsoever in this play are strictly reserved and application for performance etc. should be made before rehearsal to Rose Cobbe, United Agents, 12-26 Lexington Street, London W1F 0LE, UK. Tel: +44 (0) 20 3214 0800.
http://unitedagents.co.uk/agents/rose-cobbe/. Assistant: Dan Usztan. Email: dusztan@unitedagents.co.uk Tel: +44 (0) 20 3214 0873. No performance may be given unless a licence has been obtained.

TALKING HEADS

GUIN, FOR GUINEVERE

	Oh dear.  Silly to get upset - they'd no idea I could hear them.  Of course they were put off, an older body looks unpleasant, I'd have been the same at their age.  After four children one after the other your whole front sags, well, mine did.  People get tucks taken in.  I'd hate that.  Anyway, as the Daily Mail says, things can go wrong.  One woman was left in agony, with more or less permanent seepage.  I wouldn't have anything like that done.  Enough orifices already, and a few more to come I daresay, pace Mr Hartson.

	I suppose if you had a big hooter you might consider it.

	No.  I like saggy bits.  Alan used to say you could tell a lot from the face.  Everything.

	It's funny.  He never said a lot but when he did people listened.

	It's costing the earth, this place - I've never spent so much on myself in my life, and I paid the supplement for a view over the mountains.  Which I couldn't see at all when I arrived - mist everywhere.

	And then, in the morning...I wasn't in a hurry, my stomach was upset from the journey, I hate travelling at the best of times.  Anyway, after they'd taken the breakfast tray I staggered over and drew back the curtains - lovely curtains, blue and green, and white nets made of see-through linen with deep drawn-thread hems.

	I stood there.

	And I could not believe it.

	Over there, deep rose clouds.  Over there, soft pink clouds.  Mother of pearl clouds, pink and cream and mauve, over white, white mountains as far as you could see in every direction.  The sun was picking up the snow, turning it into sparkles of light.

	I felt quite ill.  I had to go and sit down - they'd put out a tray with fruit and Evian so I had a drink.  When I got up and went out onto the terrace the clouds had completely changed.  Now they were all white, draped like wispy tulle scarves, all along the ridges.

	I got a coat and sat outside.

	Down below, in the valley, I could hear horses on the road, and their harnesses jingling.

	Otherwise, just silence.  A little wind, very light.

	It would never even have occurred to me to visit a spa.  Not my sort of thing at all.

	Me?

	Guin McGregor?

	On my own, thousands of feet up, on the side of a mountain, in Switzerland?

	I've always had a thing for mountains, I don't know why.  From home I suppose.

	There was this picture in the Sunday supplement.  Of this place.

	In Switzerland.

	A hotel and spa.

	Roger Moore lived near.

	I've always liked Roger Moore.

	A stayer.

	Doesn't take himself too seriously, well that's how he comes over.

	Right out of my range - I don't know what made me enquire!  In a mood, I suppose.

	Oh, go on, what does it matter now, do something stupid, why not?

	I was lucky.  The girl in the travel agency knew the place and couldn't have been more helpful.  She said she'd always travelled alone, she liked to get away, and gave me all the tips.  Still, it was an ordeal, getting to Heathrow on my own, then the flight to Zurich, then a big train, then a little train.  That did me in, there seemed to be nothing between us and the track, it was jar, bump, lurch all the way, and the noises, right through your head.  I thought never mind, I'll have a good rest when I get there.

	If I'm not frightened to death by the place.  What if they change in the evening, long skirts and dinner jackets?

	I needn't have bothered to get all nervous.  The Swiss must be the best hoteliers in the world, in fact I read somewhere that the chap who owned the Ritz was Swiss - well there you are.  The little man in the dark suit with the gold lapels - he's the concierge - welcomed me in as though I was royalty, or somebody important, he couldn't have been more friendly.  Asked me where I wanted to sit in the dining room, gave me a lovely table with a view of the mountains, even though it's only a table for one.  And the food!  Magic!  Light, not too much, just a series of little courses, and the puddings! - a little bit of this, a little bit of that - a scoop of ice-cream, a tiny meringue, exotic fruit like mango and papaya, raspberry or chocolate sauce round the edge of the plate.  Fidgety to do yourself but as a treat...

	Not that I can eat much.

	Still.

	It took me a few days to brave the pool, let alone any of the list of treatments in the spa.  However, having brought my costume, dug out after not being used for years, I wandered down the two flights.  It's massive, the pool.  Not a bit like most of the pools you see on telly.  Everything was a soft, pale green - the blue green of a thrush's egg.  Lots of space all round - a jacuzzi - I haven't used that, too hot and sweaty after the pool - glass everywhere so you look straight out at the mountains in the sun.  I felt so good.  I thought, there's nothing wrong with me, you're as right as rain, Guin.  You're bound to gasp, it's lack of oxygen, being so high.  But the air!  So pure!  You realise the muck we all breathe.  No noise.  The odd car.  There is a television but I don't watch it much, except for football.  You get all the games - Premiership League, Serie A, Champions League, the lot.  I don't miss the radio - funny, it's never off at home.

	No, I thought I was the only one in the changing room.  I swim early, before breakfast, to have the place to myself.  Then these two girls turned up.  Good figures, very smart gear.  I got out after they dived in, yelling blue murder.  American.  Noisy.  I guess it's coming from a big country.  Anyway, I thought I was safe to strip and dry off since they'd only just started when, blow me, both of them came barging into the changing room, me with not a stitch on. They went so quiet - I just grabbed the towelling dressing-gown they give you and pushed off.

	I heard them, I couldn't avoid it - there's a big voice echo in the pool.

	"My Gahd - did you see that?  Belly down to her knees!"
	"Are you kidding?"
	"Jee-sus."

	They said some more but I was too far away to catch the words.  I didn't stop.

	It was my fault.  You shouldn't put younger women off.  They'll probably never want babies in their lives - well - have Caesareans.  That's the thing nowadays.  Even with epidurals people don't want all that labour and being stretched.  Nowadays everything's going more and more artificial.  I heard that Bishop of Durham say on the radio "We're all turning into cyphers and functions."  I know what he means.  We'll end up building robots so good they'll do away with us as obsolete, useless.  Me for a start.  I still get Eammon Holmes or snooker when I've set the video for the ballet or a Bruce Willis movie.  Well, growing up on the farm in Wales in the fifties, we only had candles upstairs.  No hot water, bath once a week in front of the range.  Lovely.  You appreciated it more.  Things were more...I don't know...real.

	I'll brave the health spa tomorrow.

	Well, would you ever know!

	I couldn't believe my eyes.

	It's like a palace down there - like something belonging to the Sultan of Brunei or a rock star.  Certainly not my idea of a spa - I asked Marina what it would be like, she said it'll be hoover the wallet, manicure and face-pack I should think - she's got so quick since she started college.  Oh, by the way, she said don't have the lymphatic drainage.  I said, not likely, I'm not sitting on a loo after a pipe up my bum, she said, no, that's colonic irrigation, Princess Diana liked that.  Which threw me.  Lymphatic drainage was too gentle, she told me.  You want a good Swedish massage, preferably from a man.  I thought, no thanks.

	They give you an appointment with the doctor before treatments.  He was a smoothie, private-medicine sort of chap - younger than me.  He asked me about my bowels, did I get constipated, I said sometimes, so there you are - I had the irrigation after all.  Which wasn't so bad and I feel wonderful, except the nice tired woman who was doing it said would I like to meet her daughter and something told me she was a single parent so I said yes.  I didn't mean then and there.  Next thing I know there's this bolshy young seventeen year old being introduced, me on my back with a canula up my ass.  They seemed to think nothing of it.

	If only Alan could see these mountains.  He noticed things - trees, birds, the colour of rocks.  I miss having things pointed out, I'm so inside myself I tend not to notice.  Get your head out of that book, Mum used to say, still jerks her head if I'm reading when we go down there.  If you weren't doing something with your hands you were wasting time - never mind we all got to grammar school.  Reading was being idle.

	Alan read.  A lot.  Mostly technical things.  Not fiction.  He lived in this world.  In touch with things.  He had to know how everything worked.  How to make it go.  He was inventive, he liked to work things out.  We made a good pair.  We complemented each other.  I would say "Let's take the kids to St Petersburg and see the Kirov ballet," and he would figure out how to do it without breaking the bank, and fit in Sweden and Finland on the way home.

	Well, I did have the lymphatic drainage.  They talked me into it and it was very nice.  Sort of feathery.  She did it for a long time and when I got up off the table I felt lighter and younger.  I lay on my bed and looked out at the mountains and the sky and I thought it'll be all right.

	You'll be all right, Guin.

	Well - perhaps not all right.

	But you'll cope.

	You'll manage.

	The days went so quickly, and the journey home seemed to take no time at all.  The house looked dark and small - and it's a four-bedroomed detached three storeyed old place, with two attics.  The dogs and cats were down the road with my friend Lorna, Chloe was away digging in Cornwall, Ian on the farm with Mum and Dad, Marina back at college rehearsing for The Importance of Being Earnest, and Mike swotting away at King's.

	I'm so proud of them all.

	All our own work.

	Alan's and mine.

	Our claim to glory, we used to say.  Silly, I know, but it meant everything to us.

	Well, Guin, here we go.  My bag is packed - two nighties in case I have an accident and soil one, anyway I don't know how long I'll be in - a change of underwear - toilet bag - some paperbacks in case I'm well enough to read.

	"We need to go in and take a look."

	That's what they said.

	It's a nice hospital.

	Not too big.  Not like those great London places where my old pal Jill had the twins and Marina and I got lost trying to find her ward and had to leave the flowers at the desk...we felt like real country cousins.  She did laugh when we did turn up.  Lovely little boys - two girls since.

	One's called Tiffany.

	Still.

	There are eight of us in Elm Ward.  Grace, the nice woman next to me, said I hope we don't get Dutch elm disease.  She's very cheerful but there's nothing of her.  I've no idea how old she is, she could be forty or sixty...even older.

	The nights are very long.
	I've had tests.  They're all very efficient and polite, the girls.  Careful.  They check everything, and they listen to what you say.  I've no complaints.

	I wish they'd get on with it.

	Mr Hartson had to go to London.

	He's back.

	I'm scheduled for tomorrow morning.

	Why do I keep thinking of that old French film "Le Jour se Leve"?

	It was Jean Gabin, holed up in a room.  He's committed some sort of a crime, and the building is surrounded by the police.  They play the second movement of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony.  Mike used to play the piano version of it at home.  Very sad.  Like Liszt's Sonata in A minor that he played for his scholarship.  Pity he couldn't have gone in for the music professionally, but after we lost Alan I was advised that science was a safer bet.  He's doing very well.

	They remade Le Jour se Leve in English with Henry Fonda.  He was good but of course there was nothing like the pain of Jean Gabin, Fonda being American.  Very timid man, I always felt.  As a person.  They kept the seventh symphony in his version, which surprised me.

	Grace died this afternoon.  I was reading a book by a woman who'd driven from Algeria to Capetown on a motorbike for charity.  Full of herself, but good-hearted.  Just something grating, something in her attitude to the people she met.  I dropped off, which I didn't want to do as I shan't sleep tonight.  When I woke up Grace's bed had been remade.  She was gone.

	I don't understand it, she seemed fine.

	I'm too frightened to ask.

	I knew I wouldn't sleep.

	I tried word games, names of footballers, then names of actors on TV, then fruit, then vegetables, then girls' names beginning with A, then boys and so on.
	Useless.

	I was as alert as a rat.

	Right, Guin.

	This time tomorrow you could be the same as Grace.

	A goner.

	Out of it.

	Snuffed.

	Toes up and chin tied.

	I thought OK.

	I'll have a good think.

	A review.

	From the off.

	Earliest memory, in the garden with Mum, blundering into the sheets on the line and feeling bewildered.

	Dad under the car, sliding out to make us jump.

	In the garden growing those damn marrows - at least it's chrysanths now.

	Dad teasing Mum about my name - what sort of name's Guinevere? - it's fussy - anyway, it was Guin pretty much from the off - even the teachers at school called me Guin.  I think they thought Guinevere was pretentious.

	At least it wasn't Tiffany.

	School.

	Bangor Uni.

	Alan.

	The children.

	Funny, I don't remember much about when they were babies, or at school.  I think you're so busy doing it, like now, trying to stop Chloe putting studs in her nose, and keeping Ian's sports kit clean.  We've got photos of course, but I don't look at them.  That was then.  I do remember Mike being born.  I remember everything.  The amazement.  Alan and I looking down at him, and across at each other.

	We couldn't believe it.

	Love, and now this.

	This - creature.

	Breathing.

	Gazing at us.

	Clutching with long fingers.

	A person.

	It was the same with all of them.  All wonderful, beyond the power to say - oh, I am so sorry for people who can't or don't want children.  I'm so sorry for what they miss.  That incomparable knowledge of having made another human being.

	Four kids.  It made us short of money, coming so close together.  I ran up curtains and covers for people from home, and worked at the animal sanctuary - plenty of tears in that job, people's cruelty to animals can be very numbing - still, we saved and rehomed a lot.  Alan said no more dogs when I brought back a miserable, spavined little poodle - they were breeding from the runts to get miniatures.  We gave him to the postman's wife.

	There was no warning.

	Nothing.
	Nothing at all.

	They say you get a feeling.  A premonition - even a dream.

	Nothing.

	My Alan.

	We'd always felt so lucky.  Both of us.

	My friend Lorna and I - was it her or was it me - we were walking to the bus-stop after working late and one of us said "Fancy a drink?"  Perhaps the bus was late, anyway we went into The Nelson.  Just a local pub, nothing special - a dart board, crisps and dry sandwiches, but a good glass of bitter - free house.  We got our drinks and sat down.  I heard the door go and I looked up, and it was Alan.  He looked at me for a second, went to the bar, drank half a pint and a went out again.  I said to Reg, who was that and he said Alan McGregor, the new chaser at Airspeed.

	That's good, I thought.

	That's a well-paid job.

	I went to the next Airspeed do - they used to have them on Saturdays, with different bands and singers, sometimes quite well-known, it's a big place.  He came in late, after the pubs closed.  I thought, I hope he's not a drinker, like a lot of those Scots.  He looked around and came straight over and asked me to dance.

	We didn't say much.

	We didn't have to.

	I'm so sorry for people who've never know ecstasy.

	We were married the same year.

	Then the children.

	One after the other.

	Boy, girl, boy, girl.  I would have had more, your body gets the habit after the second, but four was enough so I went on the coil.  Alan was promoted - twice - and I packed in the sewing, and went voluntary at the animal sanctuary.  We bought a Volvo brake, big and reliable, and had lovely holidays in Cornwall and Scotland, and in the Border Country - McGregor territory.  A tough lot the McGregors, no doubt about that.  Alan was tough but it didn't show.  Hardly ever.  I only once remember him losing his cool.  I was pregnant with Mike - heavy - and we were in London staying with friends for Christmas and like a fool I said I wanted to go down to Trafalgar Square, see in the New Year.  It was packed, and a chap pushed past me, and knocked me off the pavement.  And Alan turned, ever so quick, next thing, chap's in the gutter.  Alan never said a word, just took my arm.  Big, good-looking man.  I always felt safe.  The children favour his looks, blue eyes, so blue and that bright, sandy hair - people have always commented on the children's looks.  We've been so lucky, they've all done well at school, and at sport.  As they got older we went abroad for our holidays...Malta, Bavaria, Portugal.

	We were living a dream.

	A dream world.

	Till the knock on the door.

	I'd just come in from shopping.  I was going to do liver and bacon and a queeno pudding.

	Two policemen.

	I knew at once.

	Everything in your body stops.

	I thought - the kids!

	They asked to come in and we stood in the hall, and one of them said would I like to sit down.

	Who?!  Which one?!

	Then they said there had been an accident on the motorway.

	So I knew it was Alan.

	Wrong.  It was wrong.  All wrong.

	Not meant.

	We were right in the middle of it.

	Not now!

	It was stupid, meaningless.

	No sense at all.

	A mistake.

	They took me to see him.  He looked like himself.  No damage.  Just very white.

	I say `he' but he wasn't there.

	Alan wasn't there.

	He'd gone.  I even looked round the room.  Surely I'd feel him if he was about somewhere.

	I didn't feel him.

	Just an empty room with something left on a trolley.

	The funeral was beautiful.

	A lot of flowers.

	So many people - workmates, women, girls - they all fell for Alan.

	A lot of tears.  They played Amazing Grace in the church.  Which upset everybody.  They all came out weeping.

	The sympathy was the worst.  Some people avoid you.  I can understand it.  There's nothing they can do and it makes them feel ratty.  And for some - well - bad luck could be catching, so they stay clear.  The worst ones are the ones who get off on it, feed on misery...oh, don't their little eyes gleam.  There are some very sick people around.

	I wanted to die.  It seemed logical.  I wanted to be where he was.

	How could I?

	With the children.

	The night before an operation can be the longest night of your life.

	Nil by Mouth over the bed.

	I've made as many arrangements as I can.

	Put things in order.

	Should I have told the kids?

	Mum and Dad?

	Prepared them?

	But we don't know.

	It's exploratory.

	I must try and sleep.

	Mental arithmetic - that sends you off.  OK, three seventeens plus fifty-one, odd numbers are always harder.

	Three sevens are twenty-one, carry two...fifty-one......

	The sun's shining.  They're wheeling me down this corridor at a lick - am I that urgent?  No, you fool.  They're probably running late, they've got a schedule to keep.

	Mr Hartson bends over me, says good morning.  He's got a silly green hat on.  I'm going to give you a jab, says the nurse, and you're going to feel wonderful.  Count back from a hundred.

	One hundred...ninety-nine...ninety-eight...ninety-seven...nine-

	Ooh.

	Oh Christ.

	Somebody's looking in my face.  Shove off.

	I think I must have been dreaming.  The cat had had a tiny, tiny kitten in the airing cupboard and left it - and I was worried, but Anthony Hopkins was there and I had to entertain him but he looked over my shoulder and helped me put Smoky back with her kitten.

	I can't feel much.

	Just a dull ache, as if Mike Tyson had had a go at me below the belt.

	You're still here, Guin.

	You can see.

	Hear.

	You must be alive.

	For how long, though?

	Ohhh.

	I've read the treatments are dreadful.

	You lose your hair.

	You feel sick.

	You put on weight from the steroids.

	I think I'll just push off.  (Falls asleep.)

	I'm sorry?

	Oh.  Good morning.

	Fine.  Well - sore.

	Thank you.

	I beg your pardon?

	What?

	I'm sorry, Mr Hartson - what did you say?

	Benign?

	It's benign?

	Very big...

	...But benign.

	Oh, Alan.

	It's all right.

	I'm here for them, I'm here for the kids.  You don't have to worry.

	It's benign.

	It's benign, my love.

	As big as an orange, he said.

	But not malignant.
	Benign.

	They've cut it out and they say I'll be fine.

	I'm all right.

	Benign.

	I'll be home in a week, or soon after.

	The lilacs will be out.

END