SCENE 7 – INT. FLIGHT DECK

SOUND: DOOR OPENING AND CLOSING

CAROLYN: Make room, boys, we've got a casualty from the war zone.

DOUGLAS: How are things on the front? We got worried when the screaming and crashing sounds subsided.

MARTIN: But they seem to have started up again, so clearly all is right with the world.

CAROLYN: Now that I've wrested Arthur out of Miss Cadwallader's clutches, it is. He won't be in your hair long, just until I'm certain she's lost interest.

MARTIN: Wait, interest? Interest, in Arthur? What interest?

CAROLYN: Our poor boy here found himself the hapless pawn in a power struggle between two forces promised to join in holy union.

DOUGLAS: Which explains Arthur's unusually hunted mien.

ARTHUR: God, she was everywhere.

MARTIN: Hahaha… what?

ARTHUR: She said she was craving me.

CAROLYN: Oh, heavens.

MARTIN: What!?

DOUGLAS: Easy, Martin. Arthur, he was just wondering what Miss Cadwallader had in mind for you.

ARTHUR: Aw, was he? Don't worry, Skip! I can explain it to you.

MARTIN: What? No, I- Arthur, I know what that means! Miss Cadwallader, really?

CAROLYN: Oh, don't be so surprised. If he had a quid for every country club chippie that pursued Arthur as a way of striking back at some former boyfriend, parental figure, or religious authority, he could buy himself the good sense to find himself a better class of girl.

ARTHUR: Mum! I like to think some of them liked me for me.

MARTIN: Are you joking?

ARTHUR: Gee, Skip, is it so hard to believe?

MARTIN: No, not that. Do you do pretty well, you know, with the girls?

ARTHUR: Well, I don't like to go on, but-

CAROLYN: Good heavens, he draws them like flies.

DOUGLAS: Ha! Well done, Arthur!

ARTHUR: I don't think you should talk about them that way.

DOUGLAS: Oh, yes? What's the proper way to refer to overprivileged toff girls who enjoy a go-round with a human golden retriever?

ARTHUR: Come on, Douglas, a lot of them were nice!

DOUGLAS: They'd have to be, I'm sure.

ARTHUR: Mum, you don't really think—

CAROLYN: As much as I enjoy dissecting the personal qualities of your bevy of ladyfriends, Arthur, why don't you slip very quietly back into the galley and start preparing lunch? I'm sure Miss Cadwallader is too distracted by tearing a strip off of her fiance to try to do the same to you.

ARTHUR: All right, Mum.

SOUND: DOOR OPENING AND CLOSING

MARTIN: Arthur, even Arthur's got a better hold on it than me!

DOUGLAS: Carolyn, tell Martin something reassuring.

CAROLYN: Why me?

MARTIN: You've got some experience of it.

CAROLYN: Experience of what?

MARTIN: Love.

CAROLYN: Ha!

MARTIN: Well, marriage at least.

CAROLYN: By "marriage," do you mean the lifelong slog through hell with a man chained behind you at the ankle and children strapped in struggling bundles to your back?

DOUGLAS: In fairness, you only have one child, and managed to head off the "lifelong" part of things at the pass.

CAROLYN: I should think you, of all people, would understand. Mr. "Third Time Was Definitely Not the Charm."

DOUGLAS: Yes, well, I'm attempting to maintain some vestige of faith in the ideal.

CAROLYN: Oh, God, don't even start this with me.

MARTIN: We are, after all, talking to the woman who refers to the bloke she's been seeing for a year now a "man she knows."

DOUGLAS: Well, if that's your metric, Carolyn, there's quite a few fellows who count! You tramp, you.

CAROLYN: If my marriages were the alternative, I should have been so lucky.

DOUGLAS: Come now, Carolyn, you were a flight attendant! You're too young to remember, Martin, but there was a time when a hostie could practically name her own price on the old meet market.

CAROLYN: If by name her own price, you mean keep to a weight limit, an age ceiling, and an endless barrage of drunken rich prats pinching your bottom as you walked by. But if you managed to brave all of that to sniff out a fellow in a half-decent suit who could keep his hands to himself, then, yes, we certainly had the world on a string.

MARTIN: So that's what drew you to Gordon. Your expectations were low.

CAROLYN: Ugh. You should have met my first husband. Little did my twenty-year-old self know, it turns out there is something less appealing than life stuck in Cheshire with my sister Ruth.

DOUGLAS: Ah, a tale as old as time. Boy meets girl, boy likes girl, boy is driven like rented mule in escape from girl's suffocating home life.

CAROLYN: If only I'd though to start flying sooner. It would have been a less grueling way to get half a world away.

MARTIN: So how did you end up with Gordon then? If you don't mind my asking!

CAROLYN: Oh, you know how it is. With men who are too used to getting their way.

DOUGLAS: No, I really think he doesn't.

CAROLYN: If you haven't learned anything in two marriages, you've only yourself to blame. Men like him, with a bit of money, who walk around like they own the place... their confidence beyond reason and sense has a sort of charm to it.

DOUGLAS: God bless it.

CAROLYN: Yes, thank you, Douglas! Trouble is, when you're young, you don't always see that... men who always get what they want don't like to give that up... even if you want something different. You try your best to be whatever it is you think he wants, and when you've turned yourself into something so thoroughly false even you can't stand yourself, and soon you find out that he was never worth it anyhow.

MARTIN: Ah.

(Pause.)

CAROLYN: And of course there was Arthur. Heaven knows he would try the patience of Mother Theresa, but if a boy's own father can't take pity on him, who can?

DOUGLAS: Sounds as though you made the right decision.

CAROLYN: I thought so.

MARTIN: I have to say, it's hard to imagine you putting up with that sort of thing.

CAROLYN: Well, that's when I decided. I was never going to... deal with a man, any man, as anything other than stubbornly, resolutely myself. So if I'm going to fright them off, well, they'll be frighted off sooner rather than later.

(Pause.)

CAROLYN: Go on and laugh.

DOUGLAS: No. As a matter of fact, I think that's rather beautiful. If they can't handle you at your worst, then they don't deserve you at your... ordinary level of horrid.