DR F: I see. And when did this start?
WOMAN: The minute I opened the door.
DR F: Mm.
WOMAN: You’ve got to help me, doctor.
DR F: And I shall. But I thought we finished with all this after Al Pacino bought that old cooker-hood you advertised in Loot?
WOMAN (faintly): So did I.
DR F: I mean, Elizabeth Taylor never turned up for the hairdrier, did she?
WOMAN: No. Not after we worked on it for two months, five days a week, at £75 a go.
DR F: And you realized, in the end, that it wasn’t Warren Beatty who bought the pram?
WOMAN: It was – um, David Essex?
DR F: That’s right. Not Warren Beatty, but David Essex. That’s very good. You’ve been doing the breathing exercises?
WOMAN: Every day.
DR F: And how big is this Bob Dylan?
WOMAN: Quite small.
DR F: Thank God for that, at any rate.
Suddenly the door opens, and BOB DYLAN enters the room, carrying a tape-measure and wearing a puzzled expression. The WOMAN whispers hoarsely into the phone, ‘I’ll call you back,’ and hangs up. She scrambles to her feet, looking guilty.
WOMAN (nervously): Ha ha.
DYLAN smiles politely, strolls to the french window, looks at the view, shrugs, mumbles something appreciative, and exits. The WOMAN points wordlessly at his departing back, and then faints on the hearth-rug. Black-out, curtain.
Scene: The same, an hour later. MAN with briefcase, evidently returning from work, enters to find wife lying insensate on the best Persian. Thinking quickly, he hurls his briefcase at her recumbent form, and it bounces off her head.
MAN: Darling, speak to me!
WOMAN (rubbing her bonce, indicating the briefcase): Why did you do that?
MAN: I didn’t have a glass of water.
WOMAN: I see.
MAN: Why are you on the carpet? Not another of your delusions, poppet?
The WOMAN nods, reluctantly.
MAN (sympathetically): Not Michael Jackson offering to spay the cat again?
WOMAN: No. Bob Dylan, wanting to buy the house, for £310,000.
The MAN whistles through his teeth.
MAN: £310,000? Well that’s something. Good heavens, £310,000, it might almost cover the therapy. I mean, what did we get for the cooker-hood?
WOMAN: Five pounds. But –
MAN: I think we should go for it.
The doorbell rings. The MAN prepares to answer it. He re-enters, dumbfounded, with ELIZABETH TAYLOR at his side.
MISS TAYLOR (for it is she): Sorry I’m late, I’ve come to collect the hairdrier.
As the curtain falls, the WOMAN collapses into her husband’s arms, and ROBERT DE NIRO enters whistling with a bucket and ladder, asking to use the tap. End.
The front-page headline of last Thursday’s East London Advertiser was rather alarming, especially for the sort of neurotic pet-owner who periodically grabs her cat by the shoulders and searches its furry, inscrutable face, saying with a choked voice, ‘You’ve got to tell me something. If I died, would you eat me?’
‘DEAD MAN “EATEN” IN GRUESOME CAT HORROR’ screamed the headline, thereby putting an end to all speculation. Of course I hoped it was a sensational joke – along the lines of the Weekly World News: ‘Bat With Human Face Found (He’s Smart As A Whip, Says Expert)’ – but I knew in my heart it was serious. Evidently, this poor chap in Shadwell died of a heart attack, and in the ensuing week his thirty cats – starving hungry, but with no money for Whiskas, and anyway congenitally hopeless with a tin-opener – perpetrated the gruesome cat horror which involved him being ‘eaten’. It doesn’t bear thinking about. Apparently he loved those cats. He thought they loved him back. So far as I could see, the only positive aspect to the story was that he was ‘eaten’ only in inverted commas.
I don’t usually see the East London Advertiser, but a kind friend sent me the cutting, thinking I ought to know. Possibly she recalled that my latest effort to tighten the bond with my own cats entails entertaining them each morning with spirited impersonations of the animals they are about to eat, which suddenly smacks of insane recklessness, given the Shadwell experience. ‘Now, what have we got here?’ I say excitedly, examining the tin. They give me a weary ironical look that says, ‘Go on, surprise us.’ ‘Rabbit!’ I raise the tin-opener, and their ears prick up, so I put it down again and they scan the ceiling for flies. ‘A rabbit goes like this,’ I say, assuming the goofy-teeth thing, and waggling my hands on top of my head, in semblance of floppy ears. They look at each other in despair. ‘How’s she going to do liver, that’s what I’d like to know?’
(Incidentally, sorry to interrupt the flow, but for anyone thinking of adopting this pleasurable and essentially harmless daily routine, here are some tips. First, it is hard to imitate salmon unless you have a fairly high ceiling, for the leaping upstream. Kidneys and liver are indeed virtually impossible to impersonate, and should therefore be eliminated at the shopping-trolley stage. For high-class meals involving crab, one needs an energetic sideways scuttle, so clear all furniture first. The turkey impression comes to life splendidly if you can be bothered to tie empty red balloons to the sides of your head. Beef, lamb and duck are a doddle, obviously. And finally, a word of warning: if you find yourself trying to impersonate a chunk per se, you may have let things get out of hand.)
Anyway, in my initial alarm at this story, I kept thinking of that famous scene in Charlie Chaplin: the snow-bound cabin, the two companions ravenous, and the fat man with the heavy eye-liner hallucinating that the little fellow is a chicken. How ghastly to think this is happening in my own home – and not just when I am selflessly attempting to enliven mealtimes with a spot of one-sided Old MacDonald charades. When they watch me trotting to the shed, those cats just see a huge tin of Whiskas on legs. When I’m asleep, they see a huge tin of Whiskas, with legs, lying on its side.
But the interesting thing about the Shadwell story was the line, ‘The RSPCA had been called in, to destroy the cats.’ What? Destroyed? Why on earth would you do that? Suddenly all my sympathies swung the other way. These cats should be counselled for post-traumatic stress. It is a well-observed fact that in extremis human beings will cannibalize each other; and we don’t generally hand the bewildered survivors to a humane vet afterwards. These cats needed food, there was nothing depraved about it. Imagine you were locked in a Kellogg’s warehouse, and helped yourself to a few Rice Krispies to keep yourself alive. At the end of the week, the police burst in, and you say, ‘Thank God you’ve come, there’s not a drop of milk in this place, can you believe that?’ But they survey the scene – snap, crackle and pop all over the place – and shrink back, screaming. ‘CEREALS “EATEN” IN GRUESOME VEGETARIAN HORROR’ runs the headline in next week’s paper, and you are peremptorily taken out and shot.
The Single Woman Considers Going Out but Doesn’t Fancy the Hassle
I have been toying with an idea for a short story. It’s a variation on the film Thelma and Louise, in which a third, previously overlooked woman character (let’s call her Abigail) gets a phone call from Louise. ‘Git yer bags, honey, me and Thelma we’re headin’ fer the mountens.’ ‘Count me