A friend in need...

A friend in need …

Just look at the two women walking down the street arm in arm, their steps matching, their heads bobbing up and down as they exchange confidences. They are old friends now, on their way to work.
An hour later they have dusted the auditorium of the local theatre where they are employed, as usual keepin one eye on the actors going through the motions of rehearsing.
The actors eventually wander off the stage for lunch and the two women wander on stage to ”tidy up”. After all, the set does look like someone’s living-room.
Ada and Nora are dressed in floral patterned overalls and carrying mops and buckets, the typical props of any charlady you care to mention. Ada is the boss. That is clear. Nora just follows suit. Ada is working-class. Her hands are gnarled from arthritis and sore from decades of detergents. Nora has seen better times. Her hands are smooth and her nails are painted bright red.
Ada complains bitterly that actors must all be pigs, whilst Nora makes excuses for them, since she secretly admires them.
“Go on, Ada!” she sneers. “They only leave it like this because they´ve got us to clean up after them.”
“While they sit in some fancy rest-i-rant-i, wrapping theirselves round their dinners. As if they didn´t exercise their jaws enough here!”
“And they good money into the bargain. Just imagine…people paying to hear me talk.”
“I wouldn´t. You´d make a fool of yourself, Nora.”
“Don’t underestimate me, Ada. If they´ve left one of those scripts about, I´ll show you how good I am.”
Ada spots a newspaper that is being used in the plot.
“Here you are, Nora. Try the agony column. Actors can make a drama out of a shopping list, so you should be well away.”
Nora protests that agony columns can’t be blurted out all over the place.
“That´s your excuse,” Ada sneers.
As far as Ada is concerned, anything in the paper is public property and gospel truth.
“Oh, give it here and let´s get it over with.” concedes Nora, snatching the newpaper. She asks herself why she opened her big mouth in the first place. Ada was common and she shouldn’t stoop to her level.
Ada settles into one of the stage armchairs and lights a cigarette. “Get a move on!” Ada commands. “They´ll be back in a jiff.”
“I´m doing my best, aren’t I? You wouldn´t want me to recite the weather forecast, would you?”
Ada feigns indifference and puffs at her cigarette, dropping the ash into the pocket of her overall.
Nora starts to read:
“COURT REPORT….THIS MORNING MRS DOREEN SMITH WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR A YEAR AFTER BEING FOUND GUILTY OF THE MURDER OF HER LATE HUSBAND, MR HERBERT SMITH. IT WAS SAID IN HER DEFENCE THAT SHE HAD HAD TO COPE WITH HIS DRINKING FOR 20 YEARS BUT THE LAST STRAW HAD BEEN WHEN HE STARTED LEAVING HIS FALSE TEETH ON THE KITCHEN TABLE TO BE CLEANED. SHE SAID IN HER DEFENCE THAT SHE DIDN´T MIND BRUSHING HIS SHOES BUT SHE DREW THE LINE AT DENTURES”
“Well, I never!” both ladies exclaimed simultaneously.
“I’d have done the same as her,” Ada confesses.
“You wouldn´t!”
“Yes, I would. I´ve been trying to pluck up courage to smother George in ´is drunken sleep for years.”
“Oh Ada. And you never let on.”
“Well, you don´t have to know everything, do you?”
“But you let me think your George is a paragon of virtue.”
“What´s that? Don’t get all la-di-da with me!”
“You know, bringing good wages home and keeping out of fights at the pub,” explains Nora in words Ada is bound to understand.
“Don´t make me laugh, Nora. Why d´you think I come here every day? And I don´t buy caviar and fur coats with the proceeds, either.”
“You told me your George is a policeman.”
“So he was, in his youth. Then he decided the pilferers he was supposed to be nabbing were a darn sight better off than us.”
“They would be, wouldn´t they?”
“So he swapped sides, so to say. Only he was too brainless to stay clear of the law, so now he´s got a jail sentence behind him and a life of bloody idleness in front.”
“Don´t be coarse, Ada.”
“I´ll be as coarse as I like.”
Nora felt the desire to top Ada’s story, so she told her that when she I was courting Nigel her dad had said he was too posh. He was right, too. Nigel was too posh to work for a living. Military manners and empty pockets, that´s Nigel.
Ada is astonished at these revelations.
Nora tells her that Nigel gets easy credit by showing everyone his war wounds.
Ada’s patriotism comes to the fore.
“You should be ashamed of yourself, Nora. He defended Britain and now you´re insulting ´im.”
“He got his ”war” wound falling off the big wheel in Blackpool, and his military manners come from playing the Chocolate Soldier in amateur dramatics,” Nora tells her. “He´s a fraud, Ada. Pity I didn´t find out before I married him.”
“You should have guessed. Why else would he have married you?”
Ignoring Ada’s jibe, Nora tells her that she used to be nice-looking.
“Beauty over brains, you mean?”
“Better to have one of them than neither!” snipes Nora.
Ada is indignant.
“Take that back!” she shouts.
But Nora´s attention is now on the pistol. She picks it up from under the pseudo-Rococo coffee table and turns suddenly to Ada, pointing it at her. Ada screams.
“Don´t panic, Ada. It´s only a stage prop.”
“You scared the livin’ daylights out of me.”
There is a long pause while they stare at each other.
Finally Nora says “Are you thinking what I´m thinking?”
“I ‘ardly dare.”
“Did you see how quick on the draw I was? What if I could get hold of a real gun?”
Entering into the spirit of things, Ada remembers that Nigel shoots foxes.
Nora is practical. She explains to Ada that you can´t creep up behind anyone pointing a two-bore shot-gun.
Ada sidles up to Nora and whispers in her ear “What if I were to tell you that I could get hold of a real pistol?”
“I wouldn´t believe you.”
“Well, listen to this, then. When my ol’ man got put away, he told everyone that he´d lost his police pistol. They even searched the house. But they didn´t look under the lining of the laundry basket. It’s been there ever since.”
Nora could see the headlines now. Man shot with his own gun.
“You could make it look like suicide, Nora.”
”Me? what have I got to do with it? Well. I’ll think about it. And what about Nigel?”
Ada is brimming over with criminal energy.
“How about a little shooting accident? You tell him you´ve taken the gun to be cleaned, then we send him a secret message telling him he can hear something to his advantage.”
Nora wants to know where.
Ada has no scruples whatsoever. She offers to ask George. He will know all the best places for meeting people.”
“What if we miss, Ada? What then?”
“We won´t, Nora. We can´t!”
“Why didn´t we think of this before?”
Ada explains that if she had known about Nigel, she might have.
“You said George works for the queen.” say Nora, reproachfully.
Nora can’t get over that bit of duplicity, though it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other.
Ada laughs heartily.
“Sewing Royal mailbags. A dab hand he was, too.”
“I wonder how many other unhappy wives would like to do what we´re planning?” Nora conjectures.
“With a bit of luck there´ll be two less by next week.”
Ada feels dizzy with anticipation. Nora thinks it might be worth asking around. They can earn a bit of extra cash doing favours for women in need. Better than cleaning up after gormless actors. And of course, with no Nigel around, she can live in the style she would like to be accustomed to on the proceeds of his life insurance. Ada just wants to be rid of George. She’ll think about what comes next when the time comes.
Noises from backstage indicate that the actors are on the way back.
“We’ll do the dressing rooms now, Nora.”
“Good idea, Ada. Lead the way!
Ada picks up her bucket and makes her way off stage.
Nora points the gun at her receding figure and pulls the trigger, just for kicks.
The gun is loaded, after all.

• Favorite
• Report Concern
• Share This
  • Facebook
  • Twitter

Add your comment

You need to login or signup to add your comment to this work.

Tags:

sketch, story, theatre, twist and women