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 ADA'S LIVING ROOM. CISSIE AND ADA ARE SEATED AT A TABLE. ADA IS LOOKING MORE THAN A LITTLE APPREHENSIVE ABOUT THINGS, WHILST CISSIE IS MUCH MORE COMFORTABLE. CISSIE: So it's your mother you'd like to contact then, is it Ada? ADA: Yes, if that witch friend of yours ever gets here, she said she'd be here for eight. CISSIE: Well it's only just turned. Ans she isn't a witch, she's a medium is Mrs Scattergood, she has occult powers. You ought to think yourself lucky she's agreed to do a seance for you because mediums like Mrs Scattergood are few and far between ADA: Sort of medium rare, is she. (LAUGHS. CISSIE GIVES HER A REPROVING LOOK) Sorry Cissie love, it's just that I'm a bit nervous about it. CISSIE: Well that is understandabe I suppose. After all this will be the first time you've ever tried to contact the dead, won't it. ADA: Apart from when I try to get Bert up for work, yes. Tell me chuck,when you contact the dead....do you hear their voice? CISSIE: No. No the communication from the astral body comes through the medium, Mrs Scattergood. ADA: Fancy. How? CISSIE: Well mostly through her ouija. ADA: Through her ouija? Isn't it painful for her? CISSIE: Well she does pull some faces sometimes so I suppose it might be. Then she goes into a trance. ADA: I'm not surprised, I'd be in more than a trance if an astral body started talking through my ouija. CISSIE: But sometimes she doesn't bother with the ouija method and calls up the spirits by asking them if there's anybody there. That's usually followed by an eerie silence . ADA: I have the same trouble when I ring the gas board. And what else can she do? CISSIE: Well I believe she's quite expert at levitation. ADA: We always get the plumber in when ours is blocked, but if she reasonable I'll try her the next time it happens. CISSIE: Honestly Ada you're pig ignorant, you really are. Don't you know anything about mind over matter? ADA: No but Bert does. He uses it to control our sex life. CISSIE: Control your sex life? How do you mean? ADA: If he's in the mind, my feelings don't matter. It's true Cissie, he doesn't give a damn about how I feel about it. He comes home from that pub at chucking out time and there's no stopping him. It's like trying to hang onto a beer barrel with legs. Every night's the same with him. You want to see my side of the bed, there's no nap left on my flannelette sheets. CISSIE: Perhaps you should try separate beds? ADA: No fear, he might use his as a springboard. I mean I wouldn't mind Cissie but sometimes he hasn't even got the decency to wake me up, there's many the time I've woken up halfway through. CISSIE: Yes well that is of course the advantage of being married to a gentleman like my Leonard. You see if I don't feel in the mood Leonard respects my feelings and exercises control over his libido. ADA: Yes but we haven't got a dog and Bert wouldn't take it for a walk even if we had one. CISSIE: No, you misunderstand me chuck. Your libido is your sexual drive. The ideal situation is when your partner's needs and your needs are in tandem. ADA: Well if he thinks he's having me on a bike he's got another think coming. Not one with a pump anyway. CISSIE: Well perhaps your mother can give you some advice if Mrs Scattergood manages to contact her, because if anybody knew how to handle a man your mother did. ADA: She did that, Cissie. I remember her once taking my father's Sunday dinner to the pub, roast brisket and mash and two veg with bread pudding for afters. He was so surprised he missed the double twenty. CISSIE: And what did he do? ADA: He went for the bull. CISSIE: Anyway you still haven't told me why you want to contact your mother? ADA: Well it's to do with when she went Cissie, when she passed over. CISSIE: When she joined the choir invisible. ADA: No she was never in the Salvation Army. I'll never forget her going Cissie. She lay there on her deathbed and I'd just put the best sheets on because the doctor was coming and she said to me: 'Ada,I've never asked for much, but with the insurance money I'd like you to get a nice stone'. CISSIE: And did you? ADA: (POLISHES THE STONE IN HER RING) Yes and I've worn it ever since, in her memory, ever since she took her last ride. It was Bert who took her, you know, on her last ride . CISSIE: Bert? I didn't know Bert ever drove a hearse. ADA: No, we couldn't afford a hearse but he'd just got this job as a milkman with Express Dairies so he took her on his float. It took us four hours to get to the church. CISSIE: Four hours? But it's only about a mile away from your house. ADA: I know but Bert had to keep stopping to deliver the milk. CISSIE: I believe she took her last breath under mysterious circumstances, didn't she? Wasn't she asphyxiated? ADA: No we had he buried. CISSIE: I mean that she choked. ADA: Yes, on a slice of her home-made bakewell tart. I'll never forgive myself, Cissie. CISSIE: You mustn't blame yourself, it wasn't you fault Ada. ADA: It was Cissie. Me and Bert had gone to her house for tea. And there was this one piece of bakewell tart left, and you know what a lovely bakewell tart my mother made, so naturally both me and Bert had our eyes on it. But I insisted my mother had it and it must have gone down the wrong pipe....she turned black Cissie, I can see her now, Frank Bruno isn't that black.....then she went, just like that. CISSIE: Yes I can see now why you want to contact her. It's so you can apologise to her for insisting she had the last piece of bakewell tart, isn't it. ADA: No, I want her to give me the recipe. |
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