Keith Waterhouse by Keith Waterhouse

Author:Keith Waterhouse [Waterhouse, Keith]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781849432573
Publisher: Oberon Books Ltd.

Act Two

The same. Perhaps an hour later.

The light of dawn filters through the windows of the Coach and Horses, highlighting the wisps of smoke from the chair or sofa which has been set on fire by JEFF’s cigarette while he was asleep.

Muttering oaths, he has been trying to extinguish the conflagration with a pair of old cricket flannels from his suitcase. He now acquires a soda siphon from the bar and applies it to the smouldering upholstery.

JEFF: (Muttering to himself.) This – is going to do – my reputation – no good – whatsoever... Such as it is. How absurd. How ridiculously absurd...

He surveys his flannels, which are badly charred, and tosses them aside.

Which makes me a survivor, I suppose. A good friend of mine, Eva Johansen, used to say you can’t get through life without a highly-developed sense of the absurd. She could well have been here now to recognize the absurdity of my situation, but one night she went to bed drunk with a lit cigarette in her hand and in her case she was taken seriously. How inconsiderate, Eva. Soon there’ll be no-one left to drink with at all... The rows we had, always in pubs. And if Norman or some other anxious landlord tried to intervene, she’d say with her winning smile –

EVA: Oh, it’s quite all right. This is a friend of mine and I’m just trying to explain to him what a stupid bastard he is.

JEFF: Our longest standing row goes back to when I was living in the country and I asked her what she’d like for breakfast.

EVA: A slice of cold, rare, roast beef and a glass of Tio Pepe, preferably chilled.

JEFF: Why can’t you have a fucking egg like anyone else, you flash cow?

EVA: Because I’m not anyone else.

JEFF: And she wasn’t. One of these people she used to call ‘these people’ approached her here in the Coach and Horses with a view to picking her up.

BORE: Good-morning. Nice day.

EVA: Your place or mine?

JEFF: Exit frightened rabbit. Someone who did succeed in picking her up and became a close friend, one day said to her for some reason –

FRIEND: You know, Eva, if I hadn’t met you I think I would have taken up keeping bees.

JEFF: He was known as The Beekeeper and Eva said –

EVA: The poor sod wanted to keep bees and he ended up with a hornet’s nest.

JEFF: Some months before she set herself on fire she wrote to me and it was a case of like calling to like.

EVA: So I have no flat, no job, no lover, no income and as far as I can see no prospects. Even my cat has left me. I keep sitting around expecting fear and all I’m getting is exhilaration. Here I am, exulting in the clean dry air of absolute selfishness, secure in the knowledge that there’s nothing more they can do to me. If it weren’t so totally out of keeping with everything I’ve been told, I’d say it could only be described as happiness.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.