Ends and Odds Read Online Free Page A

there on the step in the pale sun you heard yourself at it againnot a curse for the passers pausing to gape at the scandal huddled there in the sun where it had no warrant clutching the nightbag drooling away out loud eyes closed and the white hair pouring out down from under the hat and so sat on in that pale sun forgetting it all
    C: perhaps fear of ejection having clearly no warrant in the place to say nothing of the loathsome appearance so this look round for once at your fellow bastards thanking God for once bad and all as you were you were not as they till it dawned that for all the loathing you were getting you might as well not have been there at all the eyes passing over you and through you like so much thin air was that the time or was that another time another place another time
    B: the glider passing over never any change same blue skies nothing ever changed but she with you there or not on your right hand always the right hand on the fringe of the field and every now and then in the great peace like a whisper so faint she loved you hard to believe you even you made up that bit till the time came in the end
    A: making it all up on the doorstep as you went along making yourself all up again for the millionth time forgetting it all where you were and what for Foley’s Folly and the lot the child’s ruin you came to look was it still there to hide in again till it was night and time to go till that time came
    C: the Library that was another another place another time that time you slipped in off the street out of the cold and rain when no one was looking what was it then you were never the same after never again after something to do with dust something the dust said sitting at the big roundtable with a bevy of old ones poring on the page and not a sound
    B: that time in the end when you tried and couldn’t by the window in the dark and the owl flown to hoot at someone else or back with a shrew to its hollow tree and not another sound hour after hour hour after hour not a sound when you tried and tried and couldn’t any more no words left to keep it out so gave it up gave up there by the window in the dark or moonlight gave up for good and let it in and nothing the worse a great shroud billowing in all over you on top of you and little or nothing the worse little or nothing
    A: back down to the wharf with the nightbag and the old green greatcoat your father left you trailing the ground and the white hair pouring out down from under the hat till that time came on down neither right nor left not a curse for the old scenes the old names not a thought in your head only get back on board and away to hell out of it and never come back or was that another time all that another time was there ever any other time but that time away to hell out of it all and never come back
    C: not a sound only the old breath and the leaves turning and then suddenly this dust whole place suddenly full of dust when you opened your eyes from floor to ceiling nothing only dust and not a sound only what was it it said come and gone was that it something like that come and gone come and gone no one come and gone in no time gone in no time
    Silence 10 seconds. Breath audible. After 3 seconds eyes open. After 5 seconds smile, toothless for preference. Hold 5 seconds till fade out and curtain.

Footfalls

    Footfalls
was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre in the spring of 1976 during a season mounted to mark the author’s seventieth birthday.
    MAY (M),
dishevelled grey hair, worn grey wrap hiding feet, trailing.
    WOMAN’S
voice
(V)
from dark upstage.
    Strip: downstage, parallel with front, length nine steps, width one metre, a little off centre audience right.

    Pacing: starting with right foot (r) from right (R) to left (L), with left foot (l) from L to R.
    Turn: rightabout at L, leftabout at R.
    Steps: clearly audible rhythmic tread.
    Lighting: dim, strongest at floor level, less on body, least on head.
    Voices: both