Play With a Tiger and Other Plays

DAVE: Ah, hell, man, well. Anna beat me up and be done with it and get it over. [a pause] OK, I know it. I don’t know what gets into me; OK I’m still a twelve-year-old slum kid standing on a street corner in Chicago, watching the expensive broads go by and wishing I had the dough to buy them all. OK, I know it. You know it. [a pause] OK and I’m an American God help me, and it’s no secret to the world that there’s bad man-woman trouble in America. [a pause] And everywhere else, if it comes to that. OK, I do my best. But how any man can be faithful to one woman beats me. OK, so one day I’ll grow up. Maybe.

ANNA: Maybe.

DAVE [switching to black aggression]: God, how I hate your smug female guts. All of you – there’s never anything free – everything to be paid for. Every time, an account rendered. Every time, when you’re swinging free there’s a moment when the check lies on the table – pay up, pay up, baby.

ANNA: Have you come here to get on to one of your anti-woman kicks?

DAVE: Well I’m not being any woman’s pet, and that’s what you all want. [leaping up and doing his mocking dance step] I’ve kept out of all the traps so far, and I’m going to keep out.

ANNA: So you’ve kept out of all the traps.

DAVE: That’s right. And I’m not going to stand for you either – mother of the world, the great womb, the eternal conscience. I like women, but I’m going to like them my way and not according to the rules laid down by the incorporated mothers of the universe.

ANNA: Stop it, stop it, stop boasting.

DAVE: But Anna, you’re as bad. There’s always a moment when you become a sort of flaming sword of retribution.

ANNA: At which moment – have you asked yourself? You and I are so close we know everything about each other – and then suddenly, out of the clear blue sky, you start telling me lies like – lies out of a corner-boy’s jest book. I can’t stand it.

DAVE [shouting at her]: Lies – I never tell you lies.

ANNA: Oh hell, Dave.

DAVE: Well you’re not going to be my conscience. I will not let you be my conscience.

ANNA: Amen and hear hear. But why do you make me your conscience?

DAVE [deflating]: I don’t know. [with grim humour] I’m an American. I’m in thrall to the great mother.

ANNA: Well I’m not an American.

DAVE [shouting]: No, but you’re a woman, and at bottom you’re the same as the whole lousy lot of…

ANNA: Get out of here then. Get out.

DAVE [he sits cross-legged, on the edge of the carpet, his head in his hands]: Jesus.

ANNA: You’re feeling guilty so you beat me up. I won’t let you.

DAVE: Come here.

[ANNA goes to him, kneels opposite him, lays her two hands on his diaphragm.]

Yes, like that. [he suddenly relaxes, head back, eyes closed] Anna, when I’m away from you I’m cut off from something – I don’t know what it is. When you put your hands on me, I begin to breathe.

ANNA: Oh. [She lets her hands drop and stands up.]

DAVE: Where are you going?

[ANNA goes back to the window. A silence. A wolf-whistle from the street. Another.]

ANNA: He’s broken his silence. He’s calling her. Deep calls to deep.

[Another whistle. ANNA winces.]

DAVE: You’ve missed me?

ANNA: All the time.

DAVE: What have you been doing?

ANNA: Working a little.

DAVE: What else?

ANNA: I said I’d marry Tom, then I said I wouldn’t.

DAVE [dismissing it]: I should think not.

ANNA [furious]: O-h-h-h.

DAVE: Seriously, what?

ANNA: I’ve been coping with Mary – her son’s marrying.

DAVE [heartily]: Good for him. Well, it’s about time.

ANNA: Oh quite so.

DAVE [mimicking her]: Oh quite so.

ANNA [dead angry]: I’ve also spent hours of every day with Helen, Harry’s ever-loving wife.

DAVE: Harry’s my favourite person in London.

ANNA: And you are his. Strange, isn’t it?

DAVE: We understand each other.

ANNA: And Helen and I understand each other.

DAVE [hastily]: Now, Anna.

ANNA: Helen’s cracking up. Do you know what Harry did? He came to her, because he knew this girl of his was thinking of getting married, and he said: Helen, you know I love you, but I can’t live without her. He suggested they should all live together in the same house – he, Helen and his girl. Regularizing things, he called it.

DAVE [deliberately provocative]: Yeah? Sounds very attractive to me.

ANNA: Yes, I thought it might. Helen said to him – who’s going to share your bed? Harry said, well, obviously they couldn’t all sleep in the same bed, but…

DAVE: Anna, stop it.

ANNA: Helen said it was just possible that the children might be upset by the arrangement.

DAVE: I was waiting for that – the trump card – you can’t do that, it might upset the kiddies. Well not for me, I’m out.

ANNA [laughing]: Oh are you?

DAVE: Yes. [ANNA laughs.] Have you finished?

ANNA: No. Harry and Helen. Helen said she was going to leave him. Harry said: ‘But darling, you’re too old to get another man now and …’

DAVE [mocking]: Women always have to pay – and may it long remain that way.

ANNA: Admittedly there’s one advantage to men like you and Harry. You are honest.

DAVE: Anna, listen, whenever I cheat on you it takes you about two weeks to settle into a good temper again. Couldn’t we just speed it up and get it over with?

ANNA: Get it over with. [she laughs]

DAVE: The laugh is new. What’s so funny?

[A wolf-whistle from the street. Then a sound like a wolf howling. ANNA slams the window up.]

DAVE: Open that window.

ANNA: No, I can’t stand it.

DAVE: Anna, I will not have you shutting yourself up. I won’t have you spitting out venom and getting all bitter and vengeful. Open that window.

[ANNA opens it. Stands by it, passive.]

Come and sit down. And turn the lights out.

[As she does not move, he turns out the light. The room as before: two patterned circles of light on the ceiling from the paraffin lamps.]

ANNA: Dave, it’s no point starting all over again.

DAVE: But baby, you and I will always be together, one way or another.

ANNA: You’re crazy.

DAVE: In a good cause. [he sits cross-legged on the edge of the carpet and waits] Come and sit. [ANNA slowly sits, opposite him. He smiles at her. She slowly smiles back. As she smiles, the walls fade out. They are two small people in the city, the big, ugly, baleful city all around them, over-shadowing them.]

DAVE: There baby, that’s better.

ANNA: OK.

DAVE: I don’t care what you do – you can crack up if you like, or you can turn Lesbian. You can take to drink. You can even get married. But I won’t have you shutting yourself up.

[A lorry roars. A long wolf-whistle. Shrill female voices from the street.]

ANNA: Those girls opposite quarrel. I hate it. Last night they were rolling in the street and pulling each other’s hair and screaming.

DAVE: OK. But you’re not to shut it out. You’re not to shut anything out.

ANNA: I’ll try.

[She very slowly gets to her feet, stands concentrating.]

DAVE: That’s right. Now, who are you?

END OF ACT ONE

Act Two

[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?