Plays Part 16

ADELAIDE: I can't tell yet. (laughingly) No, I don't think so.

HARRY: (reaching back a hand for her) The last lap-is the bad lap. (ADELAIDE is up, and occupied with getting her breath.)

HARRY: Since you wouldn't come down, Claire, we thought we'd come up.

ADELAIDE: (as CLAIRE does not greet her) I'm sorry to intrude, but I have to see you, Claire. There are things to be arranged. (CLAIRE volunteering nothing about arrangements, ADELAIDE surveys the tower. An unsympathetic eye goes from the curves to the lines which diverge. Then she looks from the window) Well, at least you have a view.

HARRY: This is the first time you've been up here?

ADELAIDE: Yes, in the five years you've had the house I was never asked up here before.

CLAIRE: (amiably enough) You weren't asked up here now.

ADELAIDE: Harry asked me.

CLAIRE: It isn't Harry's tower. But never mind-since you don't like it-it's all right.

ADELAIDE: (her eyes again rebuking the irregularities of the tower) No, I confess I do not care for it. A round tower should go on being round.

HARRY: Claire calls this the thwarted tower. She bought the house because of it. (going over and sitting by her, his hand on her ankle) Didn't you, old girl? She says she'd like to have known the architect.

ADELAIDE: Probably a tiresome person too incompetent to make a perfect tower.

CLAIRE: Well, now he's disposed of, what next?

ADELAIDE: (sitting down in a manner of capably opening a conference) Next, Elizabeth, and you, Claire. Just what is the matter with Elizabeth?

CLAIRE: (whose voice is cool, even, as if herself is not really engaged by this) Nothing is the matter with her. She is a tower that is a tower.

ADELAIDE: Well, is that anything against her?

CLAIRE: She's just like one of her father's portraits. They never interested me. Nor does she. (looks at the drawings which do interest her)

ADELAIDE: A mother cannot cast off her own child simply because she does not interest her!

CLAIRE: (an instant raising cool eyes to ADELAIDE) Why can't she?

ADELAIDE: Because it would be monstrous!

CLAIRE: And why can't she be monstrous-if she has to be?

ADELAIDE: You don't have to be. That's where I'm out of patience with you Claire. You are really a particularly intelligent, competent person, and it's time for you to call a halt to this nonsense and be the woman you were meant to be!

CLAIRE: (holding the book up to see another way) What inside dope have you on what I was meant to be?

ADELAIDE: I know what you came from.

CLAIRE: Well, isn't it about time somebody got loose from that? What I came from made you, so-

ADELAIDE: (stiffly) I see.

CLAIRE: So-you being such a tower of strength, why need I too be imprisoned in what I came from?

ADELAIDE: It isn't being imprisoned. Right there is where you make your mistake, Claire. Who's in a tower-in an unsuccessful tower? Not I. I go about in the world-free, busy, happy. Among people, I have no time to think of myself.

CLAIRE: No.

ADELAIDE: No. My family. The things that interest them; from morning till night it's-

CLAIRE: Yes, I know you have a large family, Adelaide; five and Elizabeth makes six.

ADELAIDE: We'll speak of Elizabeth later. But if you would just get out of yourself and enter into other people's lives-

CLAIRE: Then I would become just like you. And we should all be just alike in order to a.s.sure one another that we're all just right. But since you and Harry and Elizabeth and ten million other people bolster each other up, why do you especially need me?

ADELAIDE: (not unkindly) We don't need you as much as you need us.

CLAIRE: (a wry face) I never liked what I needed.

HARRY: I am convinced I am the worst thing in the world for you, Claire.

CLAIRE: (with a smile for his tactics, but shaking her head) I'm afraid you're not. I don't know-perhaps you are.

ADELAIDE: Well, what is it you want, Claire?

CLAIRE: (simply) You wouldn't know if I told you.

ADELAIDE: That's rather arrogant.

HARRY: Yes, take a chance, Claire. I have been known to get an idea-and Adelaide quite frequently gets one.

CLAIRE: (the first resentment she has shown) You two feel very superior, don't you?

ADELAIDE: I don't think we are the ones who are feeling superior.

CLAIRE: Oh, yes, you are. Very superior to what you think is my feeling of superiority, comparing my-isolation with your 'heart of humanity'. Soon we will speak of the beauty of common experiences, of the-Oh, I could say it all before we come to it.

HARRY: Adelaide came up here to help you, Claire.

CLAIRE: Adelaide came up here to lock me in. Well, she can't do it.

ADELAIDE: (gently) But can't you see that one may do that to one's self?

CLAIRE: (thinks of this, looks suddenly tired-then smiles) Well, at least I've changed the keys.

HARRY: 'Locked in.' Bunk.u.m. Get that our of your head, Claire. Who's locked in? n.o.body that I know of, we're all free Americans. Free as air.

ADELAIDE: I wish you'd come and hear one of Mr Morley's sermons, Claire. You're very old-fas.h.i.+oned if you think sermons are what they used to be.