ELIZABETH GORDON QUINN

EXTRACT

It is the night that AIDAN QUINN, a deserter, has returned to the family home. Him and his sister MAURA are about to go to bed.

AIDAN. Nothing you want to ask? You haven’t seen me in four months.

MAURA turns down the light, and starts to undress.

MAURA. Nothing I want to ask, no.

AIDAN. How I survived? Why I’ve come home?

MAURA. You can’t stay, Aidan.

AIDAN. It looks lovely, that bed. I could sleep for a year in that.

MaURA. Don’t worry. I’ll wake you.

AIDAN. I’ll lie on the floor.

MAURA. Don't worry about it.

AIDAN. I stink. I smell like rancid butter.

MAURA. Take your shirt off. I'll wash your back.

AIDAN takes his shirt off. MAURA pours some hot water into a basin. She starts scrubbing him.

AIDAN. Ah yah. Not so hard. That’s the scrubbing-brush for the stair.

MAURA. You’re a lot dirtier than the stair.

AIDAN. That’s how I survived. Dirt. I got tired of begging and stealing and letting men touch me, and got a job as a smelly man.

MAURA. What does a smelly man do?

AIDAN. He works for a debt-collector. Over in Dublin I worked for Powell’s on Camden Street. You put shite on your coat and urinate in your trousers and stand on some dog-keech and put a dead rat in your pocket, it doesn’t have to be a rat, anything that’s decomposing, and the debt-collector sends you to sit in someone’s office until they pay up. No one lays a finger on you, they can’t get close enough for gagging. You sit there in perfect peace and tranquillity. It’s wonderful. It’s like you disappear.

MAURA. Why did you come home?

AIDAN. Did I tell you I met the devil on my travels.

MAURA. How was he?

AIDAN. Very bitter.

MAURA. I don’t see why. Everything’s going his way.

AIDAN. That’s his nature. Even when things go his way – huge slaughter of young men etcetera – he still finds something to complain about. (After a pause.) I’ll be dead soon. You’d think there would be more to say.