Mrs Delgado

Mike Bartlett

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781839040542
• eBook ISBN: 9781788504966
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Helen, along with sixty-seven million other people, is in lockdown. Unfortunately, Helen's neighbour, Mrs Delgado, is not.

Mike Bartlett's funny and poignant play for one actor tells a story of desire, control, raised blinds and lowered boundaries.

Mrs Delgado was first performed by Ellen Robertson and directed by Clare Lizzimore in December 2021 at the Old Fire Station, Oxford, where Bartlett's play Snowflake premiered to critical acclaim.

This edition also includes the monologue Phoenix, a powerful story of fire and destruction, self-deceit and the corrosion of trust.

Phoenix was first performed in 2020 by Bertie Carvel as an audio drama, part of English Touring Theatre and Headlong's Signal Fires storytelling project.

ONE

There was something almost supernatural about Mrs Delgado, Helen thought, as she stared out her back window at the house opposite, while stirring her cup of tea with a Sainsbury’s own-brand chocolate bourbon. Helen liked the idea of the supernatural. In fact she wished the supernatural happened more often. It seemed to her that given the number of supernatural occurrences that appeared in fiction, the amount that happened in real life was… well… dispiriting. She remembered clearly at breakfast, aged four, when her mother explained in astonishingly plain language that the tooth fairy was entirely made up. That getting money for discarded body parts was a gruesome idea and wasn’t going to happen, not just because fairies didn’t exist but because the source of the cash, her, was broke. From then onwards the following twenty-eight years had been a process of lowering expectations. All possible avenues for the supernatural had one by one, been closed off: Father Christmas was an early casualty. Loch Ness has been scanned by lasers and found to be empty. They’d worked out how the Egyptians had built the pyramids and it turned out they didn’t use aliens, just physics. Even Derek Acorah turned out to be a fraud. And then died. Yes, she thought as the wet bourbon collapsed under the sheer weight of tea, the world had proved to be obstinately natural and consistently not-super.

Especially this year.

Mrs Delgado was, from what she could tell, pruning a house plant. Incredibly slowly.

Helen glanced down at an Amazon parcel by the door, still not disinfected. Recent reports were that the virus could survive on surfaces for twenty-eight days. That was a longer lifespan than any of her previous three relationships. Although the most recent ‘relationship’ maybe shouldn’t count since it was one night, entirely about sex, and sex that didn’t even happen. His name was Mark. They had met on Tinder and agreed a date. It had got off to a bad start when the restaurant had failed to receive her booking, and had no space. Her flat was just round the corner so they had gone back there, where one thing (him coming in) had very quickly led to another (him taking his top off). It was then awkward as she faced a moral dilemma. He was very attractive. He had muscles on his arms just the right size, like they came from genetic and accidental athleticism, not hours in the gym. Helen liked this. He also was quite lean and looked like he was ready to just sort of… go to town on her. He seemed adept, liberal, and generous. Like he was a man into actual real-life actual women who had bits and hair and fluids and needs. It was a guess of course but she was good at judging these things and so, in conclusion, yeah, she was definitely up for it.

Technically. Because unfortunately, unlike Mark, she’d not prepared for actual sex to be on the cards on this very first date and she hadn’t thought it through. Once he started coming on to her, moving closer, she had got flustered, at first found excuses to move away like, ‘Oh actually have you seen this weird shape in the wall?’ or ‘Actually shall I close the blind, we don’t want people looking in do we?’ but eventually that strategy had become exhausted and she had to stop him and say look, sorry, sorry, this kind of casual sexual encounter? Would you believe it’s actually against the rules?

We’re not allowed. Because of the old… You know, corona.

She smiled.

Then apologised. She was desperately sorry – really – but a quick fuck wasn’t going to be possible, not right now. Maybe next year? He was stopped in his tracks. He looked… bewildered and hurt and then looked up at her like she was some kind of weirdo.

But she wasn’t, was she? These were the rules. And they had quite a lot of moral weight behind them. I mean if they did it, they could literally accidentally kill someone.

He didn’t reply. So almost just to fill the silence Helen said politely that the only thing she could suggest is if what if perhaps they were to get themselves off, while looking at the other person? That might be… well… A reasonable socially distanced option? (She didn’t in fact want to do it as she sensed correctly that it had a very high risk of being awful and literally anticlimactic but she felt she had to show some kind of willing and maybe if he removed his top and those arms of his were involved she might find a way to get over the line or at the very least convincingly pretend.)

‘Nah.’ He said. ‘Maybe just call it a night.’

She agreed and in seconds he was on his way and out the door.

She didn’t regret it. It was that kind of bending of the rules she hated. People thinking that a small misdemeanor might not matter very much, without realising that if everyone does it, the minor becomes the major and starts to matter a hell of a lot. The cost would be counted in lives. She had to hold the line: No sex. No thank you. Not with strangers. She’s making a stand against the global pandemic by not putting out. We all have to make sacrifices. And hers was whatever Mark would have done to her with his lean toned body and care and strength and, probably, eventually, penis. That would all have to remain a really quite frustrating mystery.

But yes. Twenty-eight days. And yes, the biscuit was history, a mush at the bottom of the mug. And no. There was no such thing as the supernatural.

Except, possibly, for this old woman opposite.

Mrs Delgado.

Perhaps she was the exception.

Mrs D snipped the house plant and it collapsed. Not simply a branch but the entire thing, just fell, inelegantly, to the floor. The woman stared at it for a moment, then abandoning all care, picked the whole thing up and dumped it in her kitchen bin.

Helen always liked watching Mrs Delgado. There was always a new piece of madness. Helen had at first tried not to look: to respect the unspoken rule in a city that although one happened to be able to see in at each other’s windows, one never watched. But the problem was that every time Helen opened the blind on her back window Mrs Delgado was doing something really weird. Smoking a very long thin cigarette while sat on the kitchen table. Standing in her small garden hanging up washing that was all, every bit of it, made of wool. Or just standing in the living room staring straight up, for four minutes. Of course this year there had been more opportunity for this observation than previously and it turned out Mrs Delgado’s madness was daily. She knew who Helen was well enough to wave if she saw her. Occasionally they would smile if they passed in the street, but really, other than these sporadic acts of mild eccentricity Helen knew very little about her.

The old woman turned away from the house plant. She seemed to hear a noise and she rushed out of the room. A few moments later she came out the back door. Just as she did a young man came through the gate that opened into her back garden from the side passage. The man was maybe forty with long greying hair in a ponytail. He was unshaven and had the impression he needed someone in his life to care for him. He shuffled into the garden, and saw Mrs Delgado. They spoke (Helen couldn’t hear what about. She was too far away and her window was closed).

At first they observed social distancing rules quite well. But then Mrs Delgado looked concerned and after a minute or two the man became upset. He was standing facing away from Helen but from his shoulders, which tensed and then started shaking, she knew he was crying. She saw Mrs Delgado watch, then put down the secateurs which were still in her hand, and walk over to the man, whom Helen now felt sure was probably her son. She got closer and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• Original Production Details
• ‘Writing in Isolation’ by Mike Bartlett
• Note on Text
• Mrs Delgado
• Phoenix
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information