The Mousetrap

(He exits up Centre to Left. HENRIETTA moves to JOHN and gives him her cigarette. Now that they are alone her voice holds a new intimacy.)

HENRIETTA. Is there anything the matter, darling?

JOHN. (Crossing to the sofa) M’m? I was—thinking—remembering. I’m sorry. (He sits on the sofa at the Left end, and faces Right.)

HENRIETTA. (Easing to the fireplace) There’s an atmosphere of remembering about this place. (She turns and looks at the picture over the mantelpiece.) I’ve been remembering, too.

JOHN. Have you? (Disinterested) Remembering what?

HENRIETTA. (Turning; bitterly) The time when I was a long-legged lanky girl with untidy hair—a happy girl with no idea of the things that life could do to her. (She turns to face the fire.) Going back . . .

JOHN. (Dreamily) Why should one want to go back—suddenly? Why do things you haven’t thought of for years suddenly spring into your mind?

HENRIETTA. (Turning) What things, John?

JOHN. (Dreamily) Blue sea—the smell of mimosa . . .

HENRIETTA. When?

JOHN. Ten years ago.

HENRIETTA. (Crossing to Left of the sofa) And you’d like—to go back?

JOHN. I don’t know—I’m so tired.

(HENRIETTA, from behind, lays a hand on JOHN’s shoulder.)

(He holds her hand but still stares dreamily Right.) What would I do without you?

HENRIETTA. Get along quite well, I expect.

JOHN. Why should things come back into your mind—things that are over and done with?

HENRIETTA. (Crossing above the sofa to Right of it) Perhaps because they are not really over and done with.

JOHN. Not after ten years? Heaven knows how long since I thought about it. But lately—even when I’m walking round the wards, it comes into my mind and it’s as vivid as a picture. (He pauses. With sudden energy) And now, on top of it all, she’s here, just a few yards down the lane.

HENRIETTA. (Moving below the Right end of the sofa) Veronica Craye, you mean?

JOHN. Yes. I was engaged to her once—ten years ago.

HENRIETTA. (Sitting on the sofa at the Right end of it) I—see.

JOHN. Crazy young fool! I was mad about her. She was just starting in pictures then. I’d qualified about a year before. I’d had a wonderful chance—to work under Radley. D.H. Radley, you know, the authority on cortex of degeneration.

HENRIETTA. What happened?

JOHN. What I might have guessed would happen. Veronica got her chance to go to Hollywood. Well, naturally, she took it. But she assumed, without making any bones about it, that I’d give up everything and go with her. (He laughs.) No idea how important my profession was to me. I can hear her now. “Oh, there’s absolutely no need for you to go on doctoring—I shall be making heaps of money.” (He gives his cigarette to HENRIETTA.) I tried to explain it all to her. Radley—what a wonderful opportunity it was to work under him. Do you know what she said? “What, that comic little old man?” I told her that that comic little old man had done some of the most remarkable work of our generation—that his experiments might revolutionize the treatment of Rigg’s Disease. But of course that was a waste of time. She’d never even heard of Rigg’s Disease.

HENRIETTA. Very few people have. I hadn’t till you told me about it and I read it up.

(JOHN rises, moves up Centre, goes on to the terrace and stands facing Left.)

JOHN. She said who cared about a lot of obscure diseases anyway. California was a wonderful climate—it would be fun for me to see the world. She’d hate to go there without me. Miss Craye was the complete egoist—never thought of anyone but herself.

HENRIETTA. You’re rather by way of being an egoist too, John.

JOHN. (Turning to faceHENRIETTA) I saw her point of view. Why couldn’t she see mine?

HENRIETTA. What did you suggest?

JOHN. (Moving to the sofa and leaning over the back of it) I told her I loved her. I begged her to turn down the Hollywood offer and marry me there and then.

HENRIETTA. And what did she say to that?

JOHN. (Bitterly) She was just—amused.

HENRIETTA. And so?