«I'll have to.»
«You're a woman over fifty, with no education and no skill. You're unemployable.»
«You're so unkind-«
The telephone rings again.
The oily ingratiating tones of Mr. Francis Marloe.
«Oh Brad, please forgive me, but I thought I'd just give a tinkle to ask how Priscilla is.»
«Oh good. Oh Brad, I just thought I'd tell you the hospital psych said better not leave her alone, you know.»
«Rachel told me yesterday.»
«I don't want to know things like that.»
«You and Dad made me feel so ashamed and inferior in the old days, you were both so cruel to me and Mum, Mum was so unhappy-«
«Either you must return to Roger or you must make some definite financial arrangement with him. It's nothing to do with me. You've got to face up to things.
«Bradley, please, will you go and see Roger-?»
«No, I will not!»
«Oh God, if only I'd taken my jewels with me, they mean so much to me, I saved up to buy them, and the mink stole. And there's two silver goblets on my dressing table and a little box made of malachite-«
«Priscilla, don't be childish. You can get these things later.»
«No, I can't. Roger will have sold them out of spite. The only consolation I had was buying things. If I bought some pretty thing it cheered me up for a while and I could save out of the housekeeping money and it cheered me up a little bit. I got my diamante set and I got a crystal-and-lapis necklace which was quite expensive and-«
«Why hasn't Roger telephoned? He must know you're here.»
«He's too proud and hurt. Oh you know, in a way I feel so sorry for Roger, he's been so miserable, shouting at me or else not talking at all, he must be so terribly unhappy inside himself, really wrecked and mentally broken somehow. Sometimes I've felt he must be going mad. How can anyone go on living like that, being so unkind and not caring any more? He wouldn't let me cook for him any more and he wouldn't let me into his room and I know he never made his bed and his clothes were filthy, and smelt and sometimes he didn't even shave, I thought he'd lose his job. Perhaps he has lost his job and didn't dare to tell me. And now it must be even worse. I kept the house a bit tidy though it was hard to when he so obviously didn't care. Now he's all alone in that filthy pigsty, not eating, not caring-«I thought he was surrounded by women.»
«Bradley, please would you go to Bristol-«It sounds to me as if you're dying to go back to the man-«Please would you go and get my jewels, I'll give you the key.»
«Oh do stop going on about your jewels. They're all right. They're legally yours anyway. A wife owns her own jewellery.»
«The law isn't anything. Oh I do want them so, they're the only things I've got, I haven't got anything else, I haven't anything else in the world, I feel they're calling out to me-And the little ornaments, that stripy vase-«Priscilla dear, do stop raving.»
«Bradley, please please go to Bristol for me. He won't have had time to sell them yet, he won't have thought of it. Besides he probably imagines I'm coming back. They're all still in their places. I'll give you the key of the house
