EQUUS

Tell me... you worked at the stable EVERY weekend? 

Yeah. 

You must have seen a lot of The Girl. 

Tell me about her. Did you --

Like her? 

Come on, Alan, tell me.

Alright. 

Was she friendly? 

Yes.

Or standoffish? 

Yes. 

Well, which? 

What? 

Which was she? 

Tell me, did you ever take her out? 

Did you have dates with her? 

What? 

Tell me if you did. 

''Tell me!'' 

''Tell me, tell me.'' On and on. 

Standing there, nosy parker. 

That's all you are, 

a bloody nosy parker, just like My Dad. 

''Answer this, answer that,'' never stop. 

I’m sorry. 

Now it's My Turn. You tell me, answer me.

We're not playing That Game now. -

We're playing what *I* Say. 

Alright. What do you want to know? 

Do YOU have dates? 

I told you, I’m married. 

I know. Her Name's Margaret, 

she's A Dentist. 

You see? I found out. 

What made you go with her, then? 

Did you used to bite her hands when she did you in the chair? 

That's not very funny. 

Do you have girls behind her back? 

No. 

Then what? Do you fuck her?

Alright. 

Come on, TELL me, TELL me...! 

That's enough now. 

I bet you don't. 

I bet you never touch her. 

You've got no kids, have you? 

Is that because you don't fuck? 

Go to your room. 

Quick march. Alan. 

Give me those cigarettes. Give them to me! 

Now go. 

BRILLIANT. Absolutely BRILLIANT. 

The Boy's on The Run, so he turns Defensive. 

What am I, then? 

Wicked little bastard. 

He knew EXACTLY what Questions to try. 

Not that there's anything awful about that. 

Advanced Neurotics can be dazzling at that. 

They aim unswervingly at your Area of Maximum Vulnerability... 

....which is, I suppose, as good a way as any of describing Margaret. 

Now, stop it. 

Do I embarrass you? 

I suspect you're about to. 

My wife doesn't understand me, 

Your Honour. 

Do you understand HER...? 

....No. 

Obviously, I never did. 

I’m sorry. I never like to ask. 

But I always imagined you weren't exactly compatible. 

We were. 

It actually worked for a bit. 

I mean, for both of us. 

She, for me, 

through a kind of... briskness... 

A clear, redheaded, inaccessible briskness 

that kept me keyed up for months. 

Mind you, if you're kinky for Northern Hygiene, which I am... 

You can hardly find anything more compelling than A Scottish Lady Dentist. 

It’s YOU who are Wicked, you know. 

Not at all. She got exactly the same from me. 

Antiseptic Proficiency. 

I was like that in those days. 

I see us in our wedding photograph... 

Dr. and Dr. MacBrisk. 

We were brisk in our wooing, 

brisk in our wedding, 

brisk in our disappointment. 

We turned from each other briskly into our separate surgeries. 

And now, there's a nice, brisk nothing. 

You never had children, did you? 

No. We did not go IN for them. 

Instead, she sits and knits things for orphans in some home, 

and I sit opposite turning over the pages of books on Mythical Greece. 

Mentally, we're in different parts of The World. 

She's forever in some drizzly chapel of her own inheriting, 

and I'm in some Doric Temple, 

clouds tearing through the pillars, 

eagles bearing prophesies out of the sky. 

She finds all that repulsive. 

All that My Wife has ever taken from The Mediterranean, 

from that whole, vast, intuitive culture, 

are four bottles of Chianti to make into lamps 

and two china condiment donkeys labeled 

‘Sally' and 'Pepe'. 

Now you're being CRUEL. 

I Wish... 

There was somebody 

in This Life 

I could show... 

One... 

Instinctive, 

absolutely unbrisk person that I could take to Greece... 

And stand in front of certain shrines and sacred streams and Say:

 

"Look... Life is only comprehensible through a thousand local gods. 

Not just The Old, Dead Gods, with names like Zeus but LIVING Geniuses of Place and Person. 

Not just Greece, but modern England. 

Here, spirits of certain TREES, of certain CURVES of brick wall, of certain fish-and-chip shops, if you like, and slate roofs, frowns in people, slouches." 

I'd Say to them: 

"Worship ALL You Can SEE, 

and MORE will appear." 

This Boy... with his stare... 

He's trying to Save Himself through me. 

I'd say so. 

What am   I  trying to do to HIM? 

Restore him. 

To what? 

A normal life.  

Normal? 

It still means something, you know. 

A normal boy has one head. 

A normal head has two ears. 

You know I don't... 

Then what do you mean? 

Stop it. 

I want to know. 

Look, My Dear... 

You know what I mean by a normal smile in a child's eyes, and one that isn't, don't you? 

Yes. 

Then we have A Duty to THAT, surely, 

both of us. 

Touché. 

I'll talk to you. 

Martin. 

You're going through a rotten patch at the moment, I'm sorry. 

I suppose one of the few things one can do is... 

Simply hold on to priorities. 

Such as? 

Children before Adults. 

Things like that. 

You're really quite splendid, you know that? 

Famous for it. 

Alright. The Normal is The Good Smile in A Child's Eyes. 

It's also, The Dead STARE in a million adults. 

Both SUSTAINS, and KILLS..... like A GOD. 

It is, The Ordinary made Beautiful. 

It is also The Average... made Lethal. 

The Normal is The Indispensable, MURDEROUS God of Health. 

And I am His Priest. 

My Tools are very DELICATE. 

My Compassion is HONEST. 

I've HONESTLY assisted children in this room. 

I've talked away Terrors, relieved MANY Agonies. 

But, beyond question... 

I have cut from them, portions of Individuality... repugnant to this God, Normal, in ALL its aspects. 

And at what length. 

Sacrifices to Zeus took, at the most, 60 seconds each. 

Sacrifices to The Normal... can take as much as... 

Sixty MONTHS.