The Mistress Contract

Abi Morgan

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781783190539
• eBook ISBN: 9781783195527
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Inspired by the memoir The Mistress Contract by She and He For 30 years he has provided her with a home and an income, while she provides 'mistress services' – 'All sexual acts as requested, with suspension of historical, emotional, psychological disclaimers.' They first met at university and then lost touch. When they met again twenty years later, they began an affair when She – a highly educated, intelligent woman with a history of involvement in the feminist movement – asked her wealthy lover to sign the remarkable document that outlines their unconventional lifestyle: The Mistress Contract. Was her suggestion a betrayal of all that she and the women of her generation had fought for? Or was it brave, honest, and radical? Then — on a small recorder that fit in her purse — this extraordinary couple began to tape their conversations about their relationship, conversations that took place while travelling, over dinner at home and in restaurants, on the phone, even in bed. Based on reams of tape recordings made over their 30 year relationship, The Mistress Contract is a remarkable document of this unconventional couple, and the contract that kept them bound together to this day.

SCENE 1 – HOUSE

A low slung beautiful 60s house in West California. It is empty, in waiting.

A wide window, strung with a broken blind. Late afternoon sunlight scissored across the room.

It is late afternoon, 1981.

HE stands his coat still on.

SHE rummages through her handbag, in search of her cigarettes.

SHE: You know this won’t work if you don’t take it seriously.

SHE finds the cigarettes triumphant.

HE: I can’t see why you’re so mad with me. I visited less than a week ago –

SHE: We went over this on the telephone –

SHE wavers, lighting a cigarette.

HE: …And as I seem to remember it I made love to you all night.

SHE: That’s not strictly true.

HE wavers.

HE: Didn’t you enjoy it?

SHE crosses the room, over to the window, peers through the broken blind. SHE searches for a cord at last finding it and pulls up a broken blind to reveal, a garden in need of work, and then the desert.

SHE: It was fine.

SHE fiddles with a window lock. It refuses to budge.

What d’you want? A medal?

SHE reaches in her handbag, pulling out a pile of books, clearly in search of something.

HE: Is this your group? Is this what you discuss in your group? The inadequacies of penetration?

SHE: Oh please –

HE: What? What?

He peers at the clutch of books, pulled out of her bag.

(Reading titles.) The Feminine Mystique – Betty Friedan. The Female Man by Joanna Russ. Woman Hating – A Radical Look at Sexuality – Andrea Dworkin.

He turns over the book, considers the photo of the author on the back cover.

Is she in fact a he? Is that a man? Did you read all of these? Is it obligatory before you can sit with your sisters and decimate the men in your lives?

SHE: Oh my God you are a shit. You are a shit. You are just like him.

HE: We often are. Apparently. Ex-husbands. Or so my ex-wife tells me.

SHE stubs out her cigarette.

SHE: Forget it… Forget it… I can see how ridiculous this is.

SHE shoves the books back in her bag.

These books. These books are opening me up. These books are what got me out of my last marriage. These books are what got me here. These books are what I read when you’re not around. When you’re asleep.

HE: What does that mean? What do you infer?

SHE: We got back to the hotel room and you fell asleep. So strictly speaking you did not make love to me all night.

HE: That’s not entirely true.

SHE: Really? When you got off the plane you were tired, tired.

HE: I drove.

SHE: …so that halfway down the freeway, you could pull out your penis and say ‘Suck me’.

HE: Ah –

SHE: What I’d been doing, what I’d been feeling, you didn’t ask. You said ‘Do it’. You didn’t ask me if I wanted to.

HE: And you didn’t say no.

SHE hesitates.

And then when we got to the hotel, I made love to you all night.

SHE: No, when we got to the hotel, you talked and then you went to sleep because you were so tired. Then you woke in the middle of the night and it grazed your conscience that maybe we should make love. So you did.

HE: You weren’t present?

SHE: Being present didn’t seem important. I didn’t notice you checking whether I was present or not. Intimacy to you is one thing, to me another. Is another.

HE: Is this because I didn’t stay for breakfast the next day?

HE laughs, moving around the house, opening cupboards, doors.

You want companionship with breakfast, long walks.

SHE: You want sex.

HE: In all shapes, sizes, varieties.

SHE: Therefore an exchange between individuals can be considered a marketplace in which individuals exchange those things they have for those things they want.

They smile at one another.

HE: Was this an idea you came up with in your group?

SHE: No. They don’t know about it.

HE: I should think not. What would the sisters say to that?

SHE shakes her head.

You sucked his cock? Your husband’s?

SHE: Ex-husband’s. (Beat.) Yes.

HE: And your husband before that? Your first husband’s –

SHE: I did.

HE: But you didn’t like it? You don’t like it?

SHE looks at him.

SHE: You raided the mini bar and complained that there was no cabernet. And I rang down and got you some. While you gave a lecture on existentialism and what is the point of one’s existence. And then you asked me to suck your cock again and I responded by saying to you…

HE: I do remember this.

SHE: …I said ‘This is my present. My present condition is, the point of my existence is when I am asked to suck, when it is conveyed to me –

HE: This is all making sense to me now.

SHE: …that that would be desired, my existence at that moment is to wonder why you like it so much. To wonder why I have been doing it all these years. To wonder if there is anything more useless to me and more pleasurable to you.

He goes to interrupt.

Let me finish my sentence…I think in that moment… ‘I wonder what my vagina is for.’ And that is when you fell asleep.

She exits. He looks on.

HE: (Calling out.) I wasn’t saying being an existentialist meant being a zombie. My message…my message…was that you have a choice. And you exaggerate. Which you are prone to do. It wasn’t the only thing we talked about.

She comes back, picking up her forgott...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Characters
• Scene 1 – House
• Scene 2 – Bed
• Scene 3 – Post Canyon Run
• Scene 4 – Dinner
• Scene 5 Pre-Breakfast