_Victoria appears asleep, head slumped o...

Victoria appears asleep, head slumped on her hand.

Annabelle enters silently. She is thirty-five, smiling, dressed in 1960s dress and when she speaks it is with a posh accent. She floats close to Victoria, looks at her and smiles, then pours herself a large glass of vodka from the bottle on the table.

Annabelle: Cheers!

Her first swig causes a spluttering fit.

Annabelle: Bloody hell! That's got a kick!

She pours herself another. Victoria wakes up and half-asleep examines the bottle of vodka in front of her.

Victoria: I don’t remember drinking that, probably got me to sleep though. I am not a big drinker, I usually start singing after a couple of glasses of wine, well, (pulls her face) that’s when I sound like Barbra Streisand, naturally. (normal) That’s why I avoid wine. And I hardly ever drink vodka. We aren’t big drinkers in our house...

Annabelle emphatically sloshes her drink in response.She reacts to Victoria’s comments in exaggerated fashion.

Victoria: I never was. Can't blame being drunk for my big mistake during my last year of school either.

Annabelle: A mistake?!

Victoria jumps.

Victoria: Jesus!

Annabelle looks around.

Annabelle: No, just me.

Victoria: Mother! You scared me to death.

Annabelle: Don’t talk to me about death. I’ve been dead since 1966.

Victoria: (as Eamonn Andrews, to audience) Victoria Ravenscroft, this is your life...

Annabelle: Life, death, makes no difference to me. Go on, you were just about to blame me and your father for all your problems by the sounds of it.

Victoria: No I wasn't.

Annabelle: The first and last vestige of the underachiever - blame mum and dad for your failings. Do continue, Victoria dear, should I pull up a chair?

Victoria: I’m not in the mood for one of your lectures.

Annabelle: And what are you doing up at this time young lady?

Victoria: (to audience) Young lady? I’m fifty-nine. (to Annabelle) What are you doing here?

Annabelle: Ooh that’s nice. Can a mother not visit her only daughter?

Victoria: But you’ve been dead forty-odd years.

Annabelle: Thanks very much for reminding me.

She produces a box of cigarettes and waves one about but does not light it.

Annabelle: Dead. That’s my fault as well I suppose? Pardon me for dropping dead, I should have known a zebra crossing was not a safe place to cross and that drunk motorists always do sixty miles an hour there. How stupid of me, thanks a lot.

Victoria: Do you mind not smoking? It’s bad for you.

Annabelle: Since when? And what do I care? So’s crossing a road. You’ve got to die of something and as you so kindly point out I already have.

Victoria: No need to give up then...

Annabelle: Don’t talk to me about giving up smoking. I tried to stop once when I was pregnant with you. I woke up in the middle of the night and simply had to have one...I sat up in bed and puffed my head off...The duty nurse went mad!

She looks at Victoria for a smile, which does not come.

Annabelle: Oh lighten up girl. Talking of which...

She indicates she needs a light.

Victoria: Okay, if I can have one?

Annabelle cocks her head expectantly. Victoria looks flummoxed then it clicks.

Victoria: May I have one?

Annabelle: Good grammar costs nothing. And no you may not. You’ve given up.

Victoria looks perplexed.

Victoria: (To audience) How does she know I’ve given up? All my friends were egging me on. (in a nagging voice) Try it, give up, you might like it. Go on, try, give them up. (normal voice) So I gave in to peer pressure...and quit smoking. (to Annabelle) How you know that?

Annabelle: It’s a mother’s job to know everything about her daughter.

Victoria: (panicked) Everything?! (to audience) But she doesn’t know everything. (to Annabelle) You don’t know what happened to me when I was fifteen.

Annabelle: No, I died when you were fourteen.

Victoria: Yes! I was completely lost.

Annabelle: So? Is it my fault you went off the rails? My fault you married that long haired boy who makes Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men seem sane? Is it my fault you’ve been married several more times and now you’re dreading turning sixty when I would give my wisdom teeth to be sixty. Wisdom teeth which were still not fully through when I died incidentally. Inci-dental-ly. Get it? Dental, teeth...

Victoria: (quietly) I know it’s not your fault you died. And not your fault I went off the rails. Do you think I have failed in life?

Annabelle: I didn’t say failed. I said you ought not to blame me and your father for where you are today.

Victoria: I don’t!

Annabelle: Parents can’t be blamed forever. A person has to make their own way in life, after a certain age. Your mistakes are yours.

Victoria: Mistakes?

Annabelle: A big mistake you said. Nor is it my fault you got the cane for telling the deputy head the nice bald Mr Jones, to, um now what was it? Oh yes.

Together: Go and polish your head. Sir.

Victoria laughs like a child.

Victoria: Come on mother, Mr Jones had a comb-over like Bobby Charlton.

Annabelle: Apparently Bobby Charlton is our best hope for winning the World Cup, according to your dad. Jimmy Greaves is our best striker but I believe some young upstart called Geoff Hurst may play in the final, big mistake according to Dad.

Victoria: In 1966? Tell that to the Germans.

But Annabelle is miles away.

Annabelle: Jimmy Greaves is better looking too. I wouldn’t mind playing ninety minutes with him...

Victoria: Mother!

Annabelle: What? I meant play football. Your dad is a single man now...What a pair of legs.

Victoria: Dad’s?

Annabelle: Jimmy Greaves’s! Mine aren’t too bad, for my age...

Victoria: It’s alright for you, you never get older than thirty-six.

Annabelle: Do you mind?...Thirty-five and seven eighths, can’t you count? You did get your maths O-Level didn’t you?

Victoria winces and stares anywhere but at her mother.

Annabelle: You didn’t, did you? Oh God, I’ve mothered a moron.

Victoria: Mother! You can’t say ‘moron’ anymore.

Annabelle: Who says? I just did. Moron. You can insult me though, call me older than I actually am. Thirty-six. None of us is getting any older.

Victoria: Don’t you mean none of us is getting any younger?

Annabelle: Do I look any older? Be honest child.

Victoria: (to audience) She died just before the World Cup Final in July 1966, after two days intensive care, hit by a speeding car. Me and Dad were football mad but our family was probably the only one in Liverpool not interested in the final that Summer's day. (to Annabelle) You look the same as you did when I last saw you.

Annabelle: (proudly) How kind.

Victoria: (to audience) I would give anything to see my mother again. Just to hear her correct my grammar or help me with my maths homework or show me how to bake a cake or even shout me to get up in the morning.

Together: (shouting) Vic-to-ri-a! I am not going to call you again!

Victoria: (to Annabelle) Good, then I can get back to sleep!...(softly) Just five minutes please.

She smiles.

Victoria: (to audience) Just five minutes, let her know what I have been up to. Talk. So many years. I’d tell her she’s a great-great grandmother now, would she believe that? What would she say? How old would she be? Eighty four? Five? What she would have made of that? What would she have made of me, almost a pensioner myself, older than she ever was. She never even reached thirty-six. Mum was always older than me...and always will be, frozen in time. Wish I could tell her I still miss her after all these years. The pain doesn’t go away, time doesn’t heal. Time just moves you along, you have no choice but to move along with it, time isn’t a doctor or some cosmic healer, time doesn’t care, it just happens. And the pain? That doesn’t go away, you just fasten it on to all the other stuff you carry around with you, you heap it on to your life’s sorrowful load, you get used to it and gradually get accept it and it’s no longer a surprise every morning even though it’s changed your life forever. It doesn’t matter how old you are, you still miss them every single day.

Annabelle: God, you're depressing me.

Victoria: Is it any wonder I went off the rails? Dad couldn’t cope, I knew I should have been there to help him, then more than ever but I couldn’t cope either. (to audience) At first I blamed him for mum’s death, why had he not picked her up that evening? He usually did, why not that day? And why didn’t she look when she crossed the road? It was summer, broad bloody daylight, couldn’t she see the car, or hear it? You know, I was asking myself these questions more than forty years ago and I didn’t have any answers then. And I don’t now. And what difference does it make? My mum’s still dead.

Annabelle: And still thirty-five. How could I possibly understand the problems of a woman about to turn sixty? Do you think anyone delights in the fact they are getting older? Nobody wants to get older, apart from children who want to be a year or two older so they can buy alcohol or see an X certificate film.

Victoria: I thought you knew everything about me.

Annabelle: I can’t know everything. Did you actually do anything with your life?

Victoria: I have been asking myself that.

Annabelle: And?

Victoria: Three marriages, groovy Doug for ten months in the 1960s...

Annabelle: Him? I can see why you only lasted ten months.

Victoria: (to audience) I left Doug for London, to move in with a groovy friend in Notting Hill, first became a seamstress making clothes and sometimes jewellery for theatre productions. I loved it right off. Loved London too, the Swinging Sixties had passed but the city was buzzing with new music and fashion and I was turning eighteen and loving every second of it. Once I had landed in the world of theatre I knew I wanted to stay there but behind the scenes, directing not acting. That’s where I am still. Lizzie and I had a blast, life was a gas as T-Rex confirmed, talking of which we even got on Top of the Pops, if you look closely you can see me and Lizzie dancing behind Marc Bolan while he sings ‘Get It On’. Really closely. (to Annabelle) After some histrionics to and fro I eventually married Peter a sensible doctor, a lot older than me, for five years in the 1970s.

Annabelle: A doctor? Now he sounds promising.

If you are interested in licensing Stupid Old Cow for a full production, please contact Edward Chapman through his website

Edward Chapman's Wikipedia entry:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EdChapman(artist)