Read Online Rock 'n' Roll by Tom Stoppard - Free Book Online Page B

cigarette.
    Alice enters the dining area from inside. She is sixteen, and like Esme when young, wearing Esme’s old once-red-leather bomber jacket. She turns on a lamp.
    ESME Alice?
    Alice comes outside.
    ALICE What are you doing, Mum?
    ESME Thinking about something.
    ALICE No, you’re not, you’re smoking.
    ESME I’m smoking about something.
    ALICE (
scolds) Mum.
    ESME It’s not a hobby, you know. I realised who that man was and my body went, ‘Give me a cigarette.’
    ALICE What man?
    ESME That man at the supermarket who said hello.
    ALICE Who was he, then?
    ESME He was the Piper, a beautiful boy as old as music, half-goat and half-god.
    ALICE Mum, what are you smoking? He was an old baldy on a bike.
    ESME When I was your age, I mean. Is this where it’s all going if we’re lucky? A windy corner by a supermarket, with a plastic bag on the handlebars full of, I don’t know, ready-meals and loo paper … lumpy faces and thickening bodies in forgettable clothes, going home with the shopping? But we were all beautiful then, blazing with beauty. He played on his pipe and sang to me, and it was like suddenly time didn’t leave things behind but kept them together, and everything there ever was was still there, even the dead, coming up as grass or down as rain on the crematorium gardens, so I wasn’t really surprised by the Great God Pan getting it together again in my, you know, spaced-out brain.
    She steps on her cigarette.
    ESME (
cont.
) Ashes to ashes anyway.
    She picks up the stub and throws it into hiding.
    ESME (
cont.
) There, look, I’ve given up, so don’t nag me. What did you see? Are you hungry?
    ALICE The Great God Pan? No, I had a burger before the cinema, except I didn’t go in the end, I just walked around looking to see what I could remember. It’s a dump, isn’t it, Cambridge?
    ESME Some people speak kindly of the college buildings, I believe.
    ALICE I mean the bus station and Jigsaw and Monsoon an’ that.
    ESME ‘An’ that, an’ that.’
    ALICE Virgin was closed … When can we go home?
    ESME (
irritated
) He’s only just got out of hospital! (
pause
) Look … Grandpa’s on crutches, he can’t cook, he won’t take the rooms the college offered him, he won’t have a housekeeper, he’s starting to forget things, and altogether he can’t be left like this, so how would you feel if I moved back here?
    ALICE When?
    ESME Now. I think I’ve had Hammersmith, now you’ve done with Godolfyn.
    ALICE (
pleased
) Oh. You mean I’d have the flat?
    ESME No, you’d be here, with me, of course.
    ALICE What, I’d have my gap year hanging about Cambridge before starting Cambridge?
    ESME You haven’t had your results yet.
    ALICE (
whines in horror
) Mum …! What about my friends?
    ESME Well, you’d make new friends.
    ALICE I don’t want new friends!
    ESME Not so loud. Well, you could live with your dad, I suppose.
    ALICE There’s only one bathroom, and it’s in Tottenham! Anyway, with Dad three’s a crowd, especially with Busty Babs from the massage parlour.
    ESME That’s quite enough of that. She’s an aroma therapist and I would kill for her tits.
    ALICE Why can’t I have the flat? I’d be all right.
    ESME Possibly, but I wouldn’t. As it happens, Dad thinks we should sell the flat and divvy it up.
    ALICE (
cross
) Oh, so you’ve got it all worked out, the two of you!
    ESME Now the paper’s upped sticks to Wapping he wants to put his half into one of those dockland conversions … and I’d have some spare cash, which would be a novelty.
    ALICE Oh, right. Good. So Grandpa gets a free housekeeper, Dad gets trendy brick walls with river view, you get a nest egg, and I get stuffed.
    ESME (
exasperated, wailing
) Well, what else can I do? I’ve racked my brains …
    ALICE (
flaming
) Tell Grandpa it’s a housekeeper or