Visitors

Barney Norris

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781783191048
• eBook ISBN: 9781783196036
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

On a farmhouse at the edge of Salisbury Plain, a family is falling apart. Stephen can't afford to put his mother into care; Arthur can't afford to stop working and look after his wife. When a young stranger with blue hair moves in to care for Edie as her mind unravels, the family are forced to ask: are we living the way we wanted? Visitors is a haunting, beautiful look at the way our lives slip past us. Critics Circle Award 2014 for Most Promising Playwright. Winner of the Best New Play Award at the Off West End Theatre Awards 2014. Shortlisted for the Evening Standard Theatre Award for Most Promising Playwright and the Writers Guild of Great Britain 2014 award for Best Play.

Act Two

SCENE ONE

EDIE is sitting, unable to see STEPHEN, who is standing in the doorway. She sings Celine Dion’s ‘Only Girl In The World’. KATE enters, singing at the top of her voice, a plate of cake in each hand. Sees STEPHEN and stops.

KATE: Oh.

STEPHEN: That’s a truly horrible noise Mum.

EDIE: Who’s there?

STEPHEN: Me, idiot.

KATE: Stephen.

EDIE: Who’s there?

STEPHEN: The bloke you shag on Wednesdays.

EDIE: Oh you.

KATE: It’s good for her.

STEPHEN: Why?

KATE: She likes it.

EDIE: It’s nice.

KATE: She remembers the words.

STEPHEN: I just wish you had better taste.

EDIE: I’ve got wonderful taste!

KATE: What do you like anyway? Old man music I reckon.

STEPHEN: Depeche Mode are brilliant. I bet you listen to the folk revival and pretend you enjoy it.

KATE: Cake?

KATE leaves.

STEPHEN: Lovely. God I’m stiff from the car.

EDIE: What are you doing?

STEPHEN: Stretches. Chiro said it’s good for me. Don’t look, I get embarrassed.

EDIE: So you should. What are you doing here anyway?

STEPHEN: I had a meeting in glamorous Swindon, I thought I’d take a detour on the way back and see you.

EDIE: Ooh aren’t we lucky?

KATE: Do you often have meetings in Swindon?

STEPHEN: Meetings are all people in Swindon have.

KATE: Really?

STEPHEN: It’s just office after office after office, yeah. It’s the life insurance capital of the world.

EDIE: Really?

STEPHEN: No, that’s probably Zurich. But Swindon’s like a close third, it’s the big thing there. That and prostitution.

KATE: Seriously?

STEPHEN: Sort of goes with the meetings. There’s a lot of trade from the company cars. They line up on the commercial roads like welcome parties.

EDIE: How distasteful.

STEPHEN: Swindon is like the Vietnam of the insurance industry. No one wants to go, but you have to go because that’s where everything’s happening. Then once you get there there are millions of prostitutes. But we have Paolo Di Canio running the football club instead of Robin Williams running the radio station. Which is basically the same thing.

STEPHEN exits.

EDIE: What’s he doing?

STEPHEN: Sorry?

EDIE: What’s he want, why’s he come here?

KATE: He was just dropping by to see you.

EDIE: Don’t fall for that, I know him, he wants something. Turning up like that.

KATE: Edie –

EDIE: I bet you’ve come to take me, has he come to take me? I don’t want to go into a home. I won’t know where I am.

Enter STEPHEN.

KATE: I’m sure it’s nothing like that. Be calm. It’s fine.

EDIE: So you just thought you’d drop by?

STEPHEN: Yeah. That OK?

EDIE: It’s lovely. You’ve never done it before.

STEPHEN: I have.

EDIE: When?

STEPHEN: I don’t know, but in the last, twenty years I will have dropped by.

EDIE: Will you.

STEPHEN: I didn’t have any more meetings. I thought you’d be pleased to see me.

EDIE: Yes.

STEPHEN: But you’re not.

EDIE: No, just surprised is all.

KATE: What is it you do, exactly? You’re a sort of salesman, I guess? Not in a bad way, I just mean –

STEPHEN: Well –

KATE: More than the money side, / anyway.

EDIE: Terrible / at maths.

STEPHEN: Yeah. I’m in the human side.

KATE: Do you have to spend a lot of time talking to – dying people?

EDIE: Only when he comes here.

KATE: Edie.

STEPHEN: Those calls happen lower down. I manage the people who make them. Sometimes I get involved in difficult cases.

KATE: What’s a difficult case in life insurance?

STEPHEN: Well, I guess – (He nods to EDIE, who has started to hum very quietly.)

KATE: You what?

STEPHEN: Sometimes people are insured. And they have a type of cover which might pay out if they get a certain type of illness. Like, cancer. But the guidelines on dementia make for problem cases. In a way, in a technical, legal way, someone with dementia’s already dead –

KATE: Whoa –

STEPHEN: No, because it’s got you, and it’s going to get you completely. It’s just about timing. So if I was – if you were related to someone in that situation, you could go to your insurers and say, look, if I go NHS for her care, by the time someone comes free to visit her every now and then and check she’s watering her flowers she’s going to be on life support. So will you pay out now so I can make her comfortable? And that would be a problem case.

KATE: Why?

STEPHEN: Because right now you can’t call this a terminal illness, can you. So if I we...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Characters
• Act One
• Act Two