MICHAEL: Listening to you? Why the hell...

MICHAEL: Listening to you? Why the hell should I listen to you Jane? We’ve been married twenty-odd years and you don't know anything about me. But you’re a woman and I am talking about a man’s need which naturally you know nothing about.

A spotlight now also hits JANE, feet on the table at home, who stares at MICHAEL.

JANE: Don’t I?

MICHAEL: A man wants more than to hear something other than how your screwed up patients are doing when you come in from work. Change the subject you're boring me.

JANE stares in disbelief for several seconds at MICHAEL then lifts her feet off the table.

JANE: Change it to what? What subject would you like to talk about?

The lights come back up as JANE stands and MICHAEL sits and folds his arms.

JANE: How about changing it to you, my wonderful husband?

MICHAEL: OK your starter for ten, why am I so pissed off with my wife?

She stands.

JANE: I have no idea. Because you’re drunk?

MICHAEL: (does a ‘buzzer’ sound) Wrong! I’ve had two pints. Guess again.

JANE: (growing angry) Afternoon in the pub, again? I want to know why you think you are so interesting and I am so bloody boring. Husband who sits around all day doing nothing then is out every other night pissing my income up a wall.

MICHAEL: It’s not every night.

JANE: And every afternoon.

MICHAEL: So I like a drink once in a while, it’s good for relieving stress. Oh I forgot, you don’t get stressed do you?

JANE: I do. The Pope would be stressed if he lived with you.

MICHAEL: Be more fun living with him.

JANE: Just because I’ve got a life, a job, thank God, and a reason to get up in the morning and just because I don’t fancy a drink every night does not make me boring.

MICHAEL: Change the bleeding record.

JANE: To what? Nowhere Man?

MICHAEL: Haven’t you been listening? I thought you were paid to listen in that precious job of yours. That’s the problem.

JANE paces the floor.

JANE: This is so like you to turn things on me. I am the one who goes out to work every day, earning the money so you can piss about. Talk about giving up and wasting talent.

MICHAEL: Piss about.

JANE: What do you call it then? Because you have the security of my money paying all the bills you can play the artistic genius and that means stay in bed half the day and dabble with a paintbrush only when the creative urge takes you. Bollocks. (man’s voice) Oh I don’t feel creative today. I am creatively bankrupt. Time for another lager, same again lads? The wife’s payin’. (normal voice) Yet again. Me ever the optimist always waiting for the day when you manage to get started again. What a load of pretentious arty bullshit, that’s not what I signed up for.

MICHAEL: Signed up for, have you heard yourself? Where did you read that, in Grazia?

JANE: (firmly) Not what I got married for. Twenty-odd years...

MICHAEL: Oh cue the violins. Once upon a time in a register office far, far away...

JANE: You would be nowhere without my help.

MICHAEL: Help?

JANE: Yes, I am the poor mug who enabled you to pursue the career you apparently wanted whereas I have had to do the nine to five.

MICHAEL: I made money.

JANE: Made, past tense.

MICHAEL: And you love your job, which I got you started with remember?

JANE: So what if I love my job? You take the piss out of me when I come home and find you in your underpants.

MICHAEL: Underpants? Oh that was one time and it was hot and I was just about to take a shower. I was just checking my email.

JANE: You were watching Countdown.

MICHEL: Countdown?

JANE: Drooling over that blonde girl who does the numbers in short skirts and heels.

MICHAEL: What girl? I haven’t watched it for ages. (reflecting) I can only manage four letter words since she’s been on it...

JANE: Here’s a word for you, dickhead.

MICHAEL: Isn’t that two words?

JANE: Do you really only see me as some stupid cow who goes out to work, dresses smart and has to make sure she meets deadlines, isn’t late and has to obey the latest...bloody rules sent down by some medical board management tosspot?

MICHAEL yawns noisily.

JANE: Boring isn’t it? All the time I have to smile and nod and agree and sympathise and listen to their never ending problems and meanwhile my husband is doing God knows what all day, watching Loose Women or Jeremy Kyle-

MICHAEL: (outraged) I never stoop that low!

JANE: (anger rising) Or Crap in the Attic and playing your precious bloody Nintendo like a bed-ridden teenager. Do you remember when I came in after I had a terrible day with that eighteen-year-old girl who had cut herself again and taken fifty paracentamol and had to have her stomach pumped and all you said was ‘I made it to Level 9 on Super Mario today’. Mr Artist, yeah like Pick Arshole...or Vincent van Cock!.

MICHAEL: You finished?

JANE: We seem to be.

MICHAEL: (imitating JANE) We seem to be. (normal voice) Stop being a drama queen.

JANE: Drama queen? You’re the one who deserves an Oscar, for pretending to be a husband. Four o’clock in the afternoon, curtains drawn, the whole house a tip, like being back in our student terrace with pizza boxes and beer cans everywhere. Michael, you cannot behave like this, you think it’s OK, it’s not doing anyone any harm. It is, it’s doing me harm. The person you are supposed to care most about. It is not my fault you resent me for your own lack of motivation.

MICHAEL: I know, I'm projecting! Psychobabble mumbo jumbo, yap yap yap.

JANE: You don’t talk to me anymore.

MICHAEL: (to himself) I do, you don’t listen.

JANE: I do listen. You don’t want to talk to me. I watch you and you are just not there. You are away in a world of your own, doing whatever it is you do when you are on the internet, gambling, poker, God knows...dating sites.

MICHAEL flashes a look at JANE.

JANE: That’s when I can see you. I don’t know what goes on when I’m not there.

MICHAEL: Spit it out.

JANE: I’m scared of the future. Do you still love me? What’s going to happen to us? In ten years, five years, twenty-five years? You’ll say shut up woman don’t be so typically melodramatic, we’ll muddle through we always have done. I don’t want to muddle through until one of us drops dead of boredom.

(Pause)

JANE: It is obvious I am not giving you any pleasure.

MICHAEL: (to himself) You can say that again.

JANE: What?

MICHAEL: Nothing.

JANE: No come on, Super Mario, what did you mean by that?

MICHAEL: A man...likes to feel like a man.

JANE: Thinking with that philosopher in your trousers, again? Start behaving like a man then, instead of some...washed-up rock star. You're a leech, sucking the life out of me, no at least a leech does something with determination. You just let things happen around you like you’re at the centre of some hurricane, unaffected by the emotional chaos. You’re like a...a jellyfish!

MICHAEL: Is that the best you can come up with?

JANE: Floating around with no goal. A washed-up jellyfish. What a waste of ability.

MICHAEL: That right is it?

JANE: It is from where I’m looking.

MICHAEL: Where’s that then, on your high horse? Mother Superior who deals with other people’s problems all day, got her head so far away in the clouds she can’t see what’s going on at home.

JANE: Not a lot going on as far as I can see.

MICHAEL: Dead right, nothing going on...in one area.

JANE: The bedroom?

MICHAEL sits up.

MICHAEL: Got it in one. You can’t have a headache every bloody night.

JANE: Is this what it’s all about, your unquenchable male libido?

MICHAEL: Speak English, not doctor.

JANE: (in MICHAEL’S face) Sex! Sex, sex. You think I want to do anything like that, with you?

MICHAEL: Anything like sex, with me? You must be joking, I know you don’t. I have known for six fucking months, or six no fucking months.

JANE: You’re just a jellyfish floating about.

MICHAEL: Oh am I? That’s what you think.

JANE steps right up to MICHAEL so her face is right up to his again.

JANE: Jellyfish!

MICHAEL stands.

MICHAEL: I’m a waste of space am I?

JANE: Yes! Give the jellyfish a prize.

MICHAEL: A complete loser am I? Not everyone thinks so, darling.

JANE: Hah! Have your fellow boozers down at the local been telling you how great you are again?

MICHAEL: Not them. Someone who listens to me.

JANE: Your Nintendo?

MICHAEL: Somebody else....another woman.

_JANE immediately stops dancing and stares at MICHAEL.

There is a long pause before....

Cut lights to a single spotlight on JANE._

JANE: What did you say?

Chapman, Edward. Facing Up.

If you are interested in licensing any of his plays for a full production, please contact Edward Chapman through his website at http://www.edchapman-mosaics.co.uk/.

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