Play With a Tiger and Other Plays

HARRY: Yes, but that’s all very well, Anna. It’s all right for you – you’re such a self-contained little thing. But not for Mary. You should get her married regardless to the first clot who comes along.

ANNA: I – self-contained!

TOM: Yes, it’s true – self-contained!

MARY [from downstairs]: Pussy, pussy, yes come here, puss, puss, puss, puss.

TOM [to HARRY]: She’s getting worse. [as ANNA stiffens up] Yes, all right, Anna, but it’s true. [to HARRY] She’s man-crazy …

HARRY: Oh you silly ass.

TOM: Well she is. She’s crazy for a man, wide open, if you so much as smile at her, she responds. And Anna says she doesn’t want to marry. Who are you fooling, Anna?

ANNA [sweetly]: Perhaps she prefers to be sex-starved than to marry an idiot. Which is more than can be said about most men.

HARRY: Now Anna, don’t start, Anna, Tom’s a nice man, but he’s pompous. [to TOM] You’re a pompous ass, admit it, Tom.

TOM: All I said was, Mary’s man-crazy.

ANNA [on the warpath]: Do you know how Tom was living before he started with me?

HARRY: Yes, of course. Anna, don’t make speeches at us!

TOM: Well, how was I living before I started with you?

HARRY: Oh, my God.

ANNA: What is known as a bachelor’s life – Tom’s own nice inimitable version of it. He sat in his nice little flat, and round about ten at night, if he felt woman-crazy enough, he rang up one of three girls, all of whom were in love with him.

HARRY: Christ knows why.

ANNA: Imagine it, the telephone call at bedtime – are you free tonight, Elspeth, Penelope, Jessica? One of them came over, a drink or a cup of coffee, a couple of hours of bed, and then a radio-taxi home.

HARRY: Anna!

ANNA: Oh from time to time he explained to them that they mustn’t think his kind attentions to them meant anything.

HARRY: Anna, you’re a bore when you get like this.

TOM: Yes, you are.

ANNA: Then don’t call Mary names.

[MARY comes in.]

MARY [suspicious]: You were talking about me?

ANNA: No, about me.

MARY: Oh I thought it was about me. [to ANNA] There’s a girl wants to see you. She says it’s important. She wouldn’t give her name.

ANNA [she is thinking]: I see.

MARY: But she’s an American girl. It’s the wrong time of the year – summer’s for Americans.

ANNA: An American girl.

MARY: One of those nice bright neat clean American girls, how they do it, I don’t know, all I know is that you can tell from a hundred yards off they’d rather be seen dead than with their legs or their armpits unshaved, ever so antiseptic, she looked rather sweet really.

HARRY: Tell her to go away and we’ll all wait for you. Come on, Tom.

TOM: I’m staying.

HARRY: Come on, Mary, give me a nice cup of coffee.

MARY: It’s a long time since you and I had a good gossip.

[HARRY and MARY go out, arm in arm.]

TOM: Well, who is she?

ANNA: I don’t know.

TOM: I don’t believe you.

ANNA: You never do.

[MARY’S voice, and the voice of an American girl, outside on the stairs.]

[JANET STEVENS comes in. She is a neat attractive girl of about 22. She is desperately anxious and trying to hide it.]

JANET: Are you Anna Freeman?

ANNA: Yes. And this is Tom Lattimer.

JANET: I am Janet Stevens. [she has expected ANNA to know the name] Janet Stevens.

ANNA: How do you do?

JANET: Janet Stevens from Philadelphia. [as ANNA still does not react] I hope you will excuse me for calling on you like this.

ANNA: Not at all.

[JANET looks at TOM. ANNA looks at TOM. TOM goes to the window, turns his back.]

JANET [still disbelieving ANNA]: I thought you would know my name.

ANNA: No.