after Daphne Du Maurier
Mabel and Ursula are having breakfast together at the Queens Hotel, Blackpool. After Mabel's abduction by aliens, a mini-break seemed the answer.
MABEL:
Last night I dreamt I went to Swindon again.
URSULA:
You've been gone some time Mabel.
MABEL:
It seemed to me I was stood by the iron gates leading to Town Gardens, and for a while I could not enter, because the way was barred to me.
URSULA:
They lock it up after 5pm. What shall we have for breakfast?
MABEL:
Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed all of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed the barrier before me.
URSULA:
I'm having full English.
MABEL:
I reached the rose garden with plants standing fifty feet high and with naked limbs.
URSULA:
That's symbolic.
MABEL:
Their branches like a strange embrace, making a vault above my head like the archway of a church.
URSULA:
Big rose bushes...hadn't anyone pruned them?
MABEL:
And weeds had thrust themselves out of the quiet earth, along with monster shrubs and plants, none that I can remember.
URSULA:
It seems to me Mabel, you should stop the idea of this wedding with Mr. Tuttle, and any dreams of children, (although that might not be possible at your age of course). This nightmare of thrusting weeds and strange embraces is all about fear of your hidden female psyche Mabel and very unhealthy.
MABEL:
But then Ursula, vast and secretive, was our cafe with its myriad of chairs extending to the iron gates on the other side, so many chairs Ursula.
URSULA:
Weddings again ... cancel the whole thing.
MABEL:
Then those rose bushes came out of the garden like serpents and entered into alien embraces with the pansy displays that look so lovely in March.
URSULA:
Do I need to say any more? a bus driver and a poet...doesn't add up. It will lead to misery.
MABEL:
Then a primrose mated with a rhododendron!
URSULA: Very crude. Reminds me of Sandra and Charlie, the babies they might have made if things lasted longer than a week.
MABEL:
Then to bind them, evermore closely, the malevolent ivy...
URSULA:
Hmmm, that'd be Barry. He introduced you to Tuttle at the Harvey. Always an enemy to grace! My kind of man.
MABEL:
I'll have a boiled egg.
