DIRECTIONS
A park in April. CRAIG RIDLEY, middle-aged and dressed in an attempt at smartness
that is somehow not quite convincing, is sitting on a bench completing a printed form.
His briefcase is next to him. From the nearby children’s play area, on which he is
keeping an eye, there comes the sound of small boys breaking into whoops of
laughter. CRAIG looks up, concerned. Getting to his feet, he crams the form into his
pocket but, unnoticed by him, it escapes and falls to the ground.
CRAIG: (calling out. His accent is American) Hey, Caesar. Not so much of that darn
foolin’ around. Didn’t I just tell you, concentrate on getting that carousel going round
real fast – faster than the other kids.
The laughing stops. But ANNABEL, in her late thirties and well presented, is hurrying
past. She witnesses the incident and halts. She looks at CRAIG admiringly, then
approaches.
CRAIG (explaining): Kids! They don’t realise. There’s more to life than playing
games.
ANNABEL: Is he your son?
CRAIG: Guess so. Saturday’s my day when I get to see him.
ANNABEL: What a lovely name – Caesar.
CRAIG: His mother doesn’t like it. Says it’s pretentious. Now we’re divorced she
calls him Mickie. I know what she means but I was right to insist. You’ve got to point
your boy in the direction it’s important he goes.
ANNABEL: And not have fun?
CRAIG: I’m not against fun. But he takes it too far. Like at school. Couple of years
ago they got this choice. You could go swimming Friday mornings or you could be
drilled for the entrance test to get you into Bournehurst, the best junior school in
town. Caesar wanted the swimming. Cried like a kid when I said no.
ANNABEL: Couldn’t you have helped him with the test at home?
CRAIG (ill at ease): Nah, that’s not my line.
ANNABEL: Surely you could if you’d tried, though. An educated man like you.
CRAIG: I was still living with his mother – my third and final wife. She wouldn’t
have let me pile any more homework on him. I’d have loved to let him go swimming.
But it’s a dog-eat-dog world. Fall a step behind and the jackals pounce.
ANNABEL (fascinated): You make your life sound very fierce. You’re American,
aren’t you? Are you in the cut-throat world of business?
CRAIG (again uneasy but summoning defiance, his accent more American): I’ve
worked in the States and round the world. I manage a pharmaceuticals firm, one of the
top names. We make medicines, drugs, anti-depressants. You must have heard of
Pentahycotile. That’s one of ours. Earns us billions of dollars.
ANNABEL: And is the competition…simply horrendous?
CRAIG (expanding): Sure. But we do fine. Only downside is, you see other people’s
tricky dodges all round you. Rival firms breaking the law; attourneys with shady
clients; politicians with weasel words and false promises. You have to fight hard to
build up a position like mine.
ANNABEL: I wish I’d had success like you. There’s so much I want to ask you.
CRAIG (slightly hurriedly): Yeh, yeh, sometime. I write business articles as well. For
the quality press. Newsweek, the Financial Times..
ANNABEL: Oh, I’d love to see one of them. With your name in big letters at the top.
CRAIG: You’re in luck, then. (He brings out from his briefcase a tattered and
crumpled newssheet.) Here.
ANNABEL: My! How amazing! And just look how often it’s been read. (She notices
the date on the sheet.) Hey, July nineteen eighty-five. That’s old, isn’t it? I bet it’s a
classic.
CRAIG: We-ell, I wouldn’t say exactly -
ANNABEL: How clever you are. I could tell it as soon as I saw you. Not a bit like
me. I’ve never got anywhere on the stage.
CRAIG: The stage? You’re an actress?
ANNABEL: In a way. When I can get a part. The trouble is, the last few have been
non-speaking. I did have a speaking one, though, on telly. I was the call-girl in
Masterby of the Yard. Did you watch it?
CRAIG: Well –
ANNABEL: She slams the door on Detective Inspector Masterby’s assistant in the
sixth episode -
CRAIG: It rings a vague –
ANNABEL: - even though she knows he’s on the right trail and it would lead to the
arrest of her most violent client. All for love. It’s very moving.
CRAIG: But it didn’t open up any more acting opportunities?
ANNABEL: No. I hoped it would lead on to playing a femme fatale opposite Colin
Firth or Christopher Eccleston, but I always flunked the auditions.
CRAIG: No reason given?
ANNABEL: The first time, I had a black eye after a row with Galahad – the man I
was living with at the time. I’m sure that’s what ruined my chances. Not looking
fatale enough.
CRAIG: He got violent with you, Galahad?
ANNABEL: It wasn’t him, that time. In the middle of the row I picked up one of
those folding rulers – you know, the sort with hinges in it. I was going to use it as an
offensive weapon, but instead it bent back and hit me in the eye. ‘Hoist with my own
petard’ was how I summed it up. But Galahad was a draftsman and didn’t know
Hamlet.
CRAIG (puzzled at the last reference): Pardon me? (saving face) Ah, no, gee, I
guess… But when your eye had healed?
ANNABEL: It was a different story each time. They said I was too old to play Ilsa in
the stage version of Casablanca, even though I told them I was twenty-five -
shrinking it ten years. Then the night before the audition to be Miss Billy Perry, Dave
the Dude’s moll in Runyon on Broadway, I was in a car accident, driving uninsured
and high on some hash I stole from a stage rival. It did it after Jamie Hall walked out
on me.
CRAIG: Oh, hard luck, hard luck.
ANNABEL: Oh, he was no loss. Looking back, I think I only shacked up with him for
his luxury life-style. Only, at the time it seemed like love. It always does.
CRAIG: So…what are you doing now for cash? Signing on?
ANNABEL: How can you ask that, a gentleman like you? Certainly not. It wouldn’t
be moral.
CRAIG : Guess not. (ruefully): Though sometimes it can’t be helped. They treat folk
tougher in the States, believe me. They sure do.
ANNABEL: It’s one of my moral rules, to be a free spirit, not dependent on anyone.
CRAIG: A real self-standing career girl.
ANNABEL: I’ve other rules, too. Like not driving, because it uses up irreplaceable
fossil fuels. Or buying wastefully packaged goods that harm the environment. Or
things made from tropical hardwood.
CRAIG: Is that a big temptation?
ANNABEL: Not really. I can’t afford most of the wicked, wasteful things anyway.
CRAIG: So, for money..?
ANNABEL: (guardedly) I do modelling. Matter of fact, that’s where I’m going now.
CRAIG : Well, holy smoke! Gee, I guess I should have known. You have a real good
figure.
While he speaks ANNABEL stands up, unfastens her coat and swirls round, showing
off a slim, still youthful figure. At the same time the PARKKEEPER enters
momentarily, showing in MRS HERBERT, a middle-aged woman of ferocious aspect.
PARKKEEPER: Is this the lady you wanted?
MRS HERBERT: It certainly is. (to ANNABEL) And where do you think you’ve been
this last half hour?
ANNABEL (immediately fighting fear and anger): I had to come out. You said you
wanted the extra rent you’ve just added, even though it isn’t what we agreed. So I had
to go to the bank and get it.
MRS H: I don’t see much of a bank here.
ANNABEL: I met this gentleman. We werejust chatting.
MRS H: And meanwhile, who do you think’s looking after the baby? I asked you to
do it.
ANNABEL: But then you wanted this extra rent. Straight away, you said. So I got
Nora to mind the baby while I was out.
MRS H: When I give you a job I don’t expect to see it handed back to my daughter.
ANNABEL: What else could I have done?
MRS H: Waited till I came back. That’s what you could have done!
ANNABEL (almost in tears): You were away an hour! And you said ten minutes.
MRS H: I was held up. I can’t arrange my whole life to suit you.
ANNABEL dissolves in tears. CRAIG, distressed, rises to his feet to intervene.
CRAIG: She’s a bit overwrought. Sounds like she’s had too many jobs to do at once.
MRS H: Her? She hasn’t had a job since she rented our flatlet. Just fancy it! Someone
like her answering an ad for a bijou pied a terre!
CRAIG: It’s hard, getting work as an actress. You have to make allowances. (A
thought comes to him.) Say, hadn’t you better get back and see to that baby?
MRS H: My neighbour’s seeing to that. It’s lucky I was talking to her when I saw
Nora through the window, left all alone with the kid.
CRAIG: Wasn’t that all right, then? Wasn’t the baby safe with Nora?
MRS H: Why should she have to mind him when this flibbertigibbet said she would?
It’s the brass nerve that gets me, the insolence of it.
CRAIG: So long as there was someone –
MRS H: I smelled trouble the minute I saw her. It’s what I just can’t stand - people
who won’t do as they’re told!
(MRS HERBERT turns and marches off. CRAIG realises with disconcertment that he
has involuntarily put his arm round ANNABEL’s shoulder to comfort her. Slowly her
tears subside.)
ANNABEL: I’m so sorry. I just can’t do anything right. I’m a complete hopeless case.
(She shows signs of giving way to tears again.)
CRAIG: You’re not. You’re just more honest. In a way it’s your weaknesses, and
honesty, that make me…like you.
The PARKKEEPER reappears.
PARKKEEPER: Excuse me, sir. I didn’t like to interrupt with that lady here – bit of a
harridan, i’n’t she? – but now she’s gone, there’s a paper you’ve dropped, just by the
bench there. Came out of your pocket, I think.
CRAIG retrieves the form.
CRAIG: Oh, thanks. (He views the form without enthusiasm. ANNABEL, on the other
hand, peers at this new source of interest with eagerness.)
ANNABEL: Oh, what is it? I saw you were filling it in. Is it (she displays her
technical language with relish) a dollar bill of exchange payable by your business in
the States?
CRAIG (hesitates, looks round, decides. Curiously, his American accent weakens):
Look, between you and me, the truth is, I haven’t any business in the States. Actually,
I’ve never been there. I work for quite a small British firm.
ANNABEL: I didn’t think you had the right accent. We learned the different ones at
RADA – New England, the mid-West, the South.
CRAIG: So you guessed all along..?
ANNABEL (nods): And the U.S. Food and Drugs Administration has banned
Pentahycotile. My aunt in Boston was on it. That’s how I know.
CRAIG: You’re shrewd, aren’t you? A cute cookie.
ANNABEL: It’s all right, you can speak English now. (She peers again at the form he
is holding) What’s this?
CRAIG (with an English accent): I’m applying for some shares, a new issue.
ANNABEL: So you do have some money! You’re quite a success after all.
CRAIG: I get by. But it’s a hard struggle. That’s why I want Caesar to take life
seriously. Hey! (He sees CAESAR doing something forbidden and gets up to intervene
but ANNABEL restrains him.)
ANNABEL: Leave him, Craig. He’s doing no harm. Do you mind me calling you that
- Craig? It was on your form.
CRAIG: Not really.
ANNABEL: Unreally?
CRAIG: Not that, either. In a way it’s refreshing. Meeting someone who isn’t out to
impress. Someone you can trust.
ANNABEL: What’s this firm you’re buying shares in? South-East Asian Logging
plc? But isn’t that the one that -?
CRAIG: I know. I shouldn’t. But it’s a hard world. You have to put number one first
and not get too sentimental or else –
His protest peters out. They sit for a moment in silence. ANNABEL looks at him, the
share application form in her hand. CRAIG takes it from her and tears it up.
CRAIG: I’d never have thought I’d do that.
ANNABEL: Maybe there’ll be other things you wouldn’t have thought you’d do.
They get up, tentatively starting to move away together.
CRAIG (looking at his watch, remembering): You’ve missed your modelling
appointment.
ANNABEL simply shakes her head, slowly.
CRAIG (softly): Caesar! Come on.
CAESAR runs on stage and goes on ahead of them. ANNABEL lays a hand on
CRAIG’s forearm. He reciprocates. They leave the stage. CURTAIN.