A Storm in a Teacup Gracefully Presented
[Curtain rises. A dingy bathroom is lit gradually by gentle, blue-tinged light; it is early evening. A bathtub, centre, with a yellowing shower curtain drawn up on the right and a sink on the left with a mirror. GRACE is lying in the bathtub without water, bare feet dangling over the sides, head held back, contemplating, solemn. She is dressed in the attire of a typical university student. After a moment, she shakes her head and touches her forehead with her fingertips and begins speaking aloud.]
GRACE: [muttering] ...easy...so easy...as if they...but what can be done? How can I decide? [Pause] It’s almost as if they wanted this. To serve me, freshly prepared and baked in expectation, and then watch me get passed around on a platter, unwanted, unsure, until I’m finally discarded in the corner of the table and left untouched to rot. As if it was planned. And now they act ignorant of it?
[Angered, GRACE swivels round in the bathtub, legs still dangling over the side, to face the audience.]
GRACE: [miserably] I used to be so good at making friends. I was always the sociable one, and I’d talk to anyone—my mother’s friends, the older ladies, even the grouchy teenage girls who never wanted to go to garden parties, and I’d talk to them about the weather, and the lime trees, and how fine the party looked in their dresses. Even the teens softened around me. I was approachable. Trusted. [Laughs] Literally—everyone trusted me, with their secrets. I remember when Mrs Thora told me about her scandalous trip to New York in the seventies, when she ran away with a bricklayer, and was free to perform on the stage, lie in a delicious red frock on a piano and sing to all the world. She didn’t seem ashamed, and I was fascinated, she could see. Young Bronte Lesiden told me about her escapes from school to see a boy across the road, who bought her fish and chips and held her hand, and treated her like a gentleman, she said. Only her parents would be frantic, so I kept her in my confidence. Hardly Corrie gossip, but they trusted me. With these secret moments, little realities in a bowl of pretend. Perhaps I was not so perfect after all, when I left. Because I knew everything. I had the power to ruin, and yet nobody here would care in the slightest.
[GRACE sighs and stands up from the bath, pacing around and lingering at the centre of the stage in self-contemplation. Lighting darkens gradually as if night is taking over.]
GRACE: I tried, I really did, I tried so hard to fit in. It just wasn’t what I expected. Everyone told me, you’ll find your group, they’ll come along, don’t worry. But they were wrong. No one has garden parties, and no one has any secrets—here, people aren’t ashamed of who they’ve slept with, where they’ve been when they sneaked out of their windows. They all smoke and drink and laugh as if they’re free. [Pause] Freedom is beyond my reach, and my life, my life is desolate. I always felt that I was on some sort of crooked bridge, wobbling along the line of my life, in an easy, straightforward direction, and a gentle sun above me, a calm river below. I thought I would find being away from home easy, natural. But the journey was an illusion, just like those—those parties—[picks up the toothbrush and throws it in frustration]—they were so unreal! A front, a social pretence, a mockery. They all glided around in their perfect masks while all along I knew who they really were. An exotic dancer, a runaway bunker, a wretch. And what does that make me? The secret-keeper? [Pause] I have no secrets here. No one trusts me, like they did back home. No one has any secrets and if they do, they are known. So, the secret-keeper has no purpose. [Pause. Lights begin to dim. GRACE looks into the mirror, leaning both arms on the sink, devastated] No purpose...purpose...on the bridge of life, I can’t just wobble around, one day I might lose my way...one day I might fall... [After a long pause] And who would save the secret-keeper from that river, when all your secrets will drown with her? [Curtain falls. End of scene.]