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turning to page one
Rain on windows and rumbles of thunder & lightning, as a cleaned up but still bruised DOMINIC eats a little too open- mouthed. PADRAIC can barely eat through his depression, SIOBHAN keeping an eye on him throughout, worried.
DOMINIC
What’s this mope so mopey for? Eh?! *
He’s just a fecking man, lads! A fat
ginger man!
(eats)
Ay yi yi, well I’ll tell ya this much.
Ye two are awful mopey hosts.
SIOBHAN
Luckily you won’t have to put up with
us more than the one night, so, and try
eating with your mouth closed.
DOMINIC
Where are we now, France?
SIOBHAN
Will you tell him, Padraic?
PADRAIC
(distantly)
Aye. Stop being a little fecking
bollocks, Dominic.
SIOBHAN
No... just about the mouth thing.
DOMINIC
Colm Doherty and his fat fecking
fingers! He probably couldn’t even cut
through the blubber on them fingers!
Would you not want to have him do the
one finger, just to see if he was
bluffing, like?
SIOBHAN
No, we wouldn’t.
DOMINIC
That’s what I’d do, I’d have him do the
one finger, just to see if he was
bluffing, like. Cos if worst came to
the worst, he could still play the
fiddle with four fingers, I’ll bet ya.
Or a banjo!
SIOBHAN
We don’t want any of that. We just want
nothing to do with him no more.
DOMINIC
You don’t. This gom does.
PADRAIC
I am a gom, is right.
SIOBHAN
You’re not a gom.
DOMINIC
(pause)
Jeez, this is a depressing house.
SIOBHAN
Would you prefer your own so? I’ve
heard it’s a barrel of laughs.
DOMINIC
Well... touché.
PADRAIC
(pause)
Too wha?
DOMINIC
Ché. Touché. It’s from the French. *
PADRAIC exchanges a look with SIOBHAN, worried he might’ve dropped a place in the island’s dim pecking order. He drifts off again, which allows...
DOMINIC (CONT'D)
And how is it, Siobhan, that you were
never married?
SIOBHAN
It’s none of your fecking business how
I was never fecking married!
DOMINIC
How isn’t it?
SIOBHAN
How isn’t it?!
DOMINIC
Was you never wild?
SIOBHAN
Wild? Was I never wild? I don’t know
what you’re talking about, Dominic.
Wild how? Angry? Cos I’m getting angry
now, I can tell ya!
DOMINIC
‘Angry’. Wild!
SIOBHAN
You just keep saying wild, Dominic!
DOMINIC
(hitting the table)
Wild!
SIOBHAN
My brother told you, didn’t he, that
you’d be out on the road if you started
talking stupid to me?
DOMINIC
He said creepy, not stupid.
SIOBHAN
Well you’ve failed on both counts,
haven’t ya?
DOMINIC *
I have! *
SIOBHAN
I’m off to bed and he’s not staying
here another night, Padraic. I don’t
care how depressed you are. I’d rather
have the donkey in.
She goes off to the bedroom.
DOMINIC
Foiled again! But ‘faint heart’, and
all that!
DOMINIC observes the distant PADRAIC a moment, & can see he’s in a bleak place, & unusually for DOMINIC, it touches him.
DOMINIC (CONT'D)
Here... Ye two, ye’ll be alright.
PADRAIC
Will we be?
DOMINIC nods kindly, and PADRAIC almost smiles.