(Jean and Margaret are seated at the table, eating breakfast.)

JEAN ASHTON
You haven't been to a concert for ages.

MARGARET PORTER
(annoyed at the comment)
Mum, if I want to go to a concert, I'll go. I wish everyone would shut up about concerts. Going to concerts isn’t going to make life all bright and beautiful, now is it?

JEAN
Well, why don't you take the day off, for a change?

MARGARET
How could I do that, hmm? It's not just half the children who've been evacuated, you know. It's half the teachers as well.

JEAN
I don't see why you had to go back to that teaching anyway.

MARGARET
Don't you? Who was it complaining, just before Christmas, that she hadn't done enough with her life? Anyway, who's going to pay for John George's upbringing, if I don't? I haven't got a husband to support me, have I?

JEAN
You have us.

MARGARET
And what if Dad and Uncle Sefton fell out, and Sefton sold the roof over our heads? What would we do then...live off our Freda?

JEAN
(laughing)
No. Uncle Sefton wouldn't do that. He's my brother. It's family.

MARGARET
Is it?

JEAN
Anyway, he seems to appreciate your father more these days.

MARGARET
Needs him, you mean. Oh, honestly, Mum. It's about time you've decided whose side you're on, Dad's or Sefton's.
(laying down her barely-eaten slice of toast)
I don't think I want that.
(glancing at her wristwatch)
It's about time I was off, anyway.

(She stands up, takes her sweater off the back of the chair, and walks toward the door.)

MARGARET
Um... I'll be going to the doctor's after tea, by the way. I need another prescription for John George.

JEAN
He doesn't need any more of that stuff, love...surely.

MARGARET
No, but I'd like to have some in the house, just in case.

JEAN
Well... Why don't you get something for yourself, hey?

MARGARET
(smiling)
Something to make me easier to live with, do you mean?

JEAN
(chuckling)
No. Only you were...oh, I don't know...so much...so much more your old self just before Christmas.

MARGARET
"A bottle of something to bring back my old self." Is that what I ask for?

(She smiles at her mother and leaves.)

 

(from "I Can Be Happy, Can't I?" by John Finch)