Act 2, Scene 1 Flashcards
What! You here already? (Accepting the fact.) You haven’t been working
The place closed down.
Sarah
(takes off coat and unpacks shopping bag) The place closed down! But you only started there on Monday.
Well! So the place closed down! Is it my fault?
Sarah
It always happens where he works. You can’t bring luck anywhere, can you! When it’s a slump you always manage to be the first one sacked and when the season starts again you’re the last one to find work. Ah, Harry, you couldn’t even make money during the war. The war! When everybody made money
Nah
Sarah
(reading it) What’s this? Seven pounds thirteen? Why only seven pounds thirteen?
Harry
Four days’ work.
Sarah
You haven’t worked all day today? So what you been doing?
Harry
I felt tired.
Sarah
Sleep! That’s all he can do. You didn’t peel potatoes or anything? (No answer.) Oh, what am I standing here talking to you for? Don’t I know you by now?
Harry
I got a headache.
Sarah
(going to kitchen and talking from there) Yes, yes – headache! Ronnie not home yet?
Harry
He’s distributing leaflets.
Sarah
What leaflets?
Harry
I don’t know what leaflets. What leaflets! Leaflets!
Sarah
Come and make some tea. Ada will be here soon.
Harry
Leave me alone, Sarah.
Ronnie
Good old Pops. Dad, I saw Monty Blatt. He says you must attend the meeting tonight.
Harry
Ach! Do me a favour!
Ronnie
Are you going to the meeting?
Harry
Let me down, you fool! Let me down!
Ronnie
The meeting?
Harry
Stop it, you idiot – I’ve got a headache.
Ronnie
(lowering his father) I’ll fight you. Come on, fists up, show your mettle; I just feel in the mood. (Assumes quixotic boxing stance.)
Harry
(grinning) Bloody fool! Leave off!
Ronnie
Windy! (Playfully jabs Harry.)
Harry
(raising his fists) I’ll knock your block off.
Sarah
You like it?
Harry
They just said they did.
Ronnie
She wasn’t talking to you.
Harry
Your mother never talks to me.
Ronnie
Don’t tell me. He’s out of work.
Harry
(pathetically) The shop closed down.
Ada
Oh, Daddy, why does it always happen to you?
Harry
It doesn’t always happen to me.
Ada
Always! All my life that’s all I can remember, just one succession of jobs which have fallen through.
Harry
Is it my fault if the garment industry is so unstable?
Ada
It’s not the industry – it’s you.
Harry
Yes, me.
Ada
Well, isn’t it you?
Harry
Oh, Ada, leave off. I have enough with your mother. I’ve got a headache.
Ada
I don’t wonder you have a headache, you spend most of your time sleeping.
Harry
Yes, sleeping.
Ada
What are you going to do now?
Harry
I’ll look for another job on Monday.
Ada
What’s wrong with Sunday – on the Whitechapel Road? There’s always governors looking for machinists.
Harry
Those people aren’t there for work. They go to gossip. Gossip, that’s all! Monday I’ll find a job and start straight away. It’s busy now, you know.
Ada
He ought to be ashamed of himself. The industry’s booming with work, and he’s out of a job. You probably got the sack, didn’t you?
Harry
(offended) I did not get the sack
Ada
I’m tired, Mother. I spent eighteen months waiting for Dave to return from Spain and now I’ve waited six years for him to come home from a war against Fascism and I’m tired. Six years in and out of offices, auditing books and working with young girls who are morons – lipsticked, giggling morons. And Dave’s experience is the same – fighting with men who he says did not know what the war was about. Away from their wives they behaved like animals. In fact they wanted to get away from their wives in order to behave like animals. Give them another war and they’d run back again. Oh yes! the service killed any illusions Dave may have once had about the splendid and heroic working class.
Harry
(pedantically) This is the talk of an intellectual, Ada.
Ada
God in heaven save me from the claptrap of a threepenny pamphlet. How many friends has the Party lost because of lousy, meaningless titles they gave to people? He was a bourgeois intellectual, he was a Trotskyist, he was a reactionary Social Democrat. Whisht! Gone!
Harry
But wasn’t it true? Didn’t these people help to bolster a rotten society?
Ada
As if that meant he lived? Even a flower can grow in the jungle, can’t it? Because there is always some earth and water and sun. But there’s still the jungle, struggling for its own existence, and the sick screeching of animals terrified of each other. As if laughter were proof!
Harry
And we and the Party don’t want to do away with the jungle, I suppose?
Ronnie
Whoa, whoa!
Harry
But it is an industrial age, you silly girl. Let’s face facts –
Ada
(mocking) Don’t let us kid ourselves.
Harry
(with her) Don’t let us kid ourselves – it’s a challenge of our time.
Ada
Balls!
Harry
You can’t run away from it.
