Les Dawson's Cissie and Ada (3 page)

CISSIE:

There doesn't appear to be anyone here, Ada love.

ADA:

Perhaps they've gone on their holidays.

CISSIE:

Well while we're waiting it will give us the chance to decide where we want to go this year.

ADA:

Well anywhere as long as it isn't Greece, I didn't like that Rhodes place last year.

CISSIE:

I told you, you should have gone to Athens, you'd have liked it there, it's lovely, they have an acropolis there.

ADA:

They had one in Rhodes, I was never off it.

CISSIE:

Oh you're pig ignorant Ada, you really are. The Acropolis is an old ruin!

ADA:

Well this one had a crack in it and a loose board.

CISSIE:

I quite fancy Italy, myself.

ADA:

Me too, a coach tour would be nice.

CISSIE:

How about the Dolomites?

ADA:

Well if they start to play me up I can always sit on a rubber ring. I quite fancy Blackpool too, to tell you the truth.

CISSIE:

Oh I find it so uncouth, Blackpool.

ADA:

Yes, nice isn't it. Me and Bert had our honeymoon there, you know. It's the place where I finally became a woman - that first night at the Seaview guest house.

CISSIE:

And tell me Ada-girl talk here - when you went on your honeymoon, were you
virgo intacta
?

ADA:

No, just bed and breakfast.

CISSIE:

I mean that prior to your honeymoon you and Bert hadn't done it?

ADA:

Cissie. I’ve never heard such filthy talk from you. Muck mucky muck muck.

CISSIE:

Nonsense Ada, it’s only human nature.

ADA:

I suppose so. Can you keep a secret, Cissie? Bert didn't know how to do it.

CISSIE:

Really? I must say I find that very hard to believe, knowing your Bert as I do.

ADA:

May God strike me dead, Cissie. He hadn't got a clue. My mother told me to lie back and think of England. I'd time to think of England, Scotland, Ireland, Algeria.....

CISSIE:

Oh you poor dear.

ADA:

And I did everything in my power to tempt him, everything in my power Cissie.

CISSIE:

Did you wear a sexy night-gown?

ADA:

Yes, one I got it from Silky Billy's on the market, off the bargain rail.

CISSIE:

Was it see-through?

ADA:

Oh yes. Yes you could see my vest and liberty bodice through it as plain as day. Anyway I went to the doctor to see if he could suggest anything and he told me to try taking Bert past the Tower a few times.

CISSIE:

Auto suggestion.

ADA:

No we drove past in a landau. And I walked him past it several times.

CISSIE:

And did he.... rise to the occasion, as it were?

ADA:

Well I'll put it this way, I think he must have been looking at the Central Pier, not the tower.

CISSIE:

Well I don't know about us going to Blackpool for your holiday I would have thought you would want to steer well clear the place after an experience like that.

ADA:

That's why I want to go, I'm hoping he'll leave me alone again.

CISSIE:

And where does Bert want to go?

ADA:

Well he did once mention that he'd always wanted to return to the place where he spent the war.

CISSIE:

What, the glasshouse at Colchester?

ADA:

No, I mean before he stole that tank. Normandy.

CISSIE:

Now that's not such a bad idea, because my Leonard would like that. He saw action at Normandy, you know. That was where he almost got the VC.

ADA:

Well that's the chance you take when you go with foreign women. The hussies!

CISSIE:

I think we'll settle for Normandy then. Now how shall we travel there, on the cross-channel ferry or shall we fly?

ADA:

Oh the ferry, because it cost us an extra thirty quid the only time me and Bert ever flew.

CISSIE:

Thirty pounds? Why was that?

ADA:

Well you know that little paper bag they give you?

CISSIE:

Yes.

ADA:

Well Bert asked the stewardess what it was for. And she told him it was to be sick in.

CISSIE:

So why did that cost you another thirty pounds?

ADA:

Well he had to drink three bottles of whisky before he felt sick.

***************

SEANCE

ADA'S LIVING ROOM. CISSIE AND ADA ARE SEATED AT A TABLE. ADA IS LOOKING MORE THAN A LITTLE APPREHENSIVE ABOUT THINGS WHILST CISSIE IS MUCH MORE COMFORTABLE.

CISSIE:

So it's your mother you'd like to contact then, is it Ada?

ADA:

Yes, if that witch friend of yours ever gets here. She said she'd be here for eight.

CISSIE:

Well it's only just turned. And she isn't a witch, she's a medium is Mrs Scattergood, she has occult powers. You ought to think yourself lucky she's agreed to do a seance for you because mediums like Mrs Scattergood are few and far between.

ADA:

Sort of medium rare, is she. (LAUGHS. CISSIE GIVES HER A REPROVING LOOK) Sorry Cissie love, it's just that I'm a bit nervous about it.

CISSIE:

Well that is understandable I suppose. After all this will be the first time you've ever tried to contact the dead, won't it.

ADA:

Apart from when I try to get Bert up for work. Tell me chuck, when you contact the dead....do you hear their voice?

CISSIE:

No. No the communication from the astral body comes through the medium, Mrs Scattergood.

ADA:

Fancy. How?

CISSIE:

Well mostly through her ouija.

ADA:

Through her ouija? I don’t like the sound of that.

CISSIE:

Well she does pull a face sometimes.

ADA:

Perhaps it’s painful?

CISSIE:

Then she goes into a trance.

ADA:

I'm not surprised, I'd be in more than a trance if an astral body started talking through my ouija.

CISSIE:

But sometimes she doesn't bother with the ouija method at all and simply calls up the spirits by asking them if there's anybody there. That's usually followed by an eerie silence.

ADA:

I have the same trouble when I ring the gas board. And what else can she do?

CISSIE:

Well I believe she's quite expert at levitation.

ADA:

We always get the plumber in when ours is blocked, but if she reasonable I'll try her the next time it happens, what’s her number?

CISSIE:

Honestly Ada you're pig ignorant, you really are. Don't you know anything about mind over matter?

ADA:

No but Bert does. He uses it to control our sex life.

CISSIE:

Control your sex life? How do you mean?

ADA:

If he's in the mind, my feelings don't matter. It's true Cissie, he doesn't give a damn about how I feel about it. He comes home from that pub at chucking out time and there's no stopping him. It's like trying to hang onto a beer barrel with legs. Every night's the same with him. You want to see my side of the bed, there's no nap left on my flannelette sheets.

CISSIE:

Perhaps you should try separate beds?

ADA:

No fear, he might use his as a springboard. I mean I wouldn't mind Cissie but sometimes he hasn't even got the decency to wake me up, there's many the time I've woken up halfway through.

CISSIE:

Yes well that is of course the advantage of being married to a gentleman like my Leonard. You see if I don't feel in the mood Leonard respects my feelings and exercises control over his libido.

ADA:

Yes but we haven't got a dog and Bert wouldn't take it for a walk even if we had one.

CISSIE:

No, you misunderstand me chuck. Your libido is your sexual drive. The ideal situation is when your partner's needs and your needs are in tandem.

ADA:

Well if he thinks he's doing it to me on a bike he's got another think coming. Not one with a pump anyway.

CISSIE:

Well perhaps your mother can give you some advice if Mrs Scattergood manages to contact her, because if anybody knew how to handle a man your mother did.

ADA:

She did that, Cissie. I remember her once taking my father's Sunday dinner to the pub, roast brisket and mash and two veg with bread pudding for afters. He was so surprised he missed the double twenty.

CISSIE:

And what did he do?

ADA:

He went for the bull.

CISSIE:

Anyway you still haven't told me why you want to contact your mother?

ADA:

Well it's to do with when she went Cissie, when she passed over.

CISSIE:

When she joined the choir invisible.

ADA:

No she was never in the Salvation Army. I'll never forget her going, Cissie. She lay there on her deathbed and I'd just put the best sheets on because the doctor was coming and she said to me: “Ada, I've never asked for much, but with the insurance money I'd like you to get a nice stone.”

CISSIE:

And did you?

ADA:

(POLISHES THE STONE IN HER RING) Yes and I've worn it ever since, in her memory, ever since she took her last ride. It was Bert who took her, you know, on her last ride.

CISSIE:

Bert? I didn't know Bert ever drove a hearse.

ADA:

No, we couldn't afford a hearse but he'd just got this job as a milkman with Express Dairies so he took her on his float. It took us four hours to get to the church.

CISSIE:

Four hours? But it's only about a mile away from your house.

ADA:

I know but Bert had to keep stopping to deliver the milk.

CISSIE:

I believe she took her last breath under mysterious circumstances, didn't she? Wasn't she asphyxiated?

ADA:

No we had he buried.

CISSIE:

I mean that she choked.

ADA:

Yes, on a slice of her home-made Bakewell tart. I'll never forgive myself, Cissie.

CISSIE:

You mustn't blame yourself, it wasn't you fault Ada.

ADA:

It was Cissie. Me and Bert had gone to her house for tea. And there was this one piece of Bakewell tart left, and you know what a lovely Bakewell tart my mother made, so naturally both me and Bert had our eyes on it. But I insisted my mother had it and it must have gone down the wrong pipe....she turned black Cissie, I can see her now, Frank Bruno isn't that black.....then she went, just like that.

CISSIE:

Yes I can see now why you want to contact her. It's so you can apologise to her for insisting she had the last piece of Bakewell tart, isn't it.

ADA:

No, I want her to give me the recipe.

***************

AT THE DOCTOR’S

DOCTOR'S WAITING ROOM. CISSIE IS WAITING HER TURN. ADA COMES IN. CISSIE IS PLEASED OF THE COMPANY.

CISSIE:

Oh Hello Ada love, sit yourself down next to me. What brings you to the Doctor's?

ADA:

I keep having these funny turns Cissie, these dizzy do's.

CISSIE:

Oh I don't like the sound of that.

ADA:

And I keep getting these hot flushes.

CISSIE:

Oh I say! And what do you think might be causing them?

ADA:

Well I am at a funny age, Cissie. I mean I am approaching the change.

CISSIE: