Mapp & Lucia

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
My dear, you can get another parlour-maid.

Georgie Pillson:
Well, if it comes to that, Cadman can get another wife!

Georgie Pillson:
To think I've left her five hundred pounds in my will. Now I shall have to add a codicil, "If still in my employ".

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
But after you're dead, Georgie, you won't miss the five hundred pounds.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
No strawberry bed shall be manured today or any other day until the garden looks less like a tramp who hasn't shaved for a month.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
I find it a rather roundabout business to buy these figs at Twistevant's when I know they have been plucked in the garden here.

Godiva 'Diva' Plaistow:
But surely Elizabeth includes garden produce!

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Oh no, dear, just flowers for the house. She sells the fruit and vegetables to Twistevant's.

Godiva 'Diva' Plaistow:
But I've let my house to her and included garden produce, because I thought she gave you hers!

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
No, dear, just flowers.

Godiva 'Diva' Plaistow:
So she's selling yours and eating mine.

Miss Elizabeth Mapp:
I'm sorry, dear one, but I cannot possibly permit it. The ragtag and bobtail of Tilling passing through my house, tramping on my flower-beds, ruining the carpets...

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
The price of admission will be half a crown, all the doors to the rooms will be locked, and I am sure nobody in Tilling would be so ill-bred as to force them open.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
My dear Elizabeth, I must beg of you not to call me "Lulu". Such a dreadful abbreviation. How would you like to be called "Liblib" or something like that?

Miss Elizabeth Mapp:
I have contracted all my garden produce to Mr Twistevant. The fruit is no longer mine.

'Quaint' Irene Coles:
Perhaps you could let the Padre have some from Diva's garden, unless you've sold that too.

'Quaint' Irene Coles:
It really sounds as though you mean to buy the house. I must be there when Mapp is told. She'll say, "Darling Lulu, what a joy!" and then fall down foaming at the mouth.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
The letter of the Brocklebanks. I saw at once what I could make of it. Really, Georgie, I turned it into a stroke of genius.

Georgie Pillson:
Well, Lucia, it was a stroke of genius already.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Dear Elizabeth. I do not suppose there was a more thoroughly thwarted woman in all Sussex than she.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
I can hardly be expected to live where I don't want to so that you don't lose a parlour-maid.

Georgie Pillson:
It's not just that! Riseholme would be ditch-water without you.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Thank you, Georgie, I was wondering if and when, as the lawyers say, you'd think of that.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Why don't you settle here too? You'd have Foljambe, me, your career and this marvellous sense of not knowing what's going to happen next.

Georgie Pillson:
Well, there it is. I shall just go back to Riseholme without Foljambe or you. [Lucia shoots him a look] Without you or Foljambe.

Georgie Pillson:
I wish I had never sent you that Italian letter.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Georgie!

Georgie Pillson:
Well, if I hadn't sent it, your reputation here would have suffered a...

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Irretrievable eclipse.

'Quaint' Irene Coles:
She's not going back to Riseholme after all. She's sold her house. She's staying here. She's bought Grebe!

Elizabeth Mapp:
[Looking horrified] Oh, what a joy.

Major Benjamin Flint:
For my part, a little Mozart goes a long way, particularly if it is a long way on a wet night.

'Quaint' Irene Coles:
The walls should all be different colors. Vermillion, emerald green, ultramarine, yellow, lapis lazuli.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Not practical, dear.

'Quaint' Irene Coles:
Why not?

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
There are only four walls.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Since I've changed my plans, I shall also change my will. I shall leave Grebe to you. And, well, a small sum of money.

Georgie Pillson:
How very kind! Oh, but I hope it will be ages and ages before you...

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
So do I.

Major Benjamin Flint:
What in heaven's name is that?

'Quaint' Irene Coles:
An embroidered cover for a hot-water bottle. Isn't it pretty?

Major Benjamin Flint:
Good God. Always knew the man was a milliner.

Rev. Kenneth Bartlett:
Didn't you see anything, Keith?

Keith Godstone:
Aye.

'Quaint' Irene Coles:
What exactly?

Keith Godstone:
Well at first, I thought I saw a kitchen table, arse over tittle - beggin' your pardon, ladies - upside down, with two females a-clingin' to it. With an arm round a leg apiece, and the other round each other.

Major Benjamin Flint:
Yes, yes, go on!

Keith Godstone:
Well, I knew it couldn't be that!

'Quaint' Irene Coles:
Heavens above!

Rev. Kenneth Bartlett:
What did you think it was?

Keith Godstone:
Sea serpents.

Godiva Plaistow:
Sea serpents?

Keith Godstone:
Aye, sea serpents a-frolickin'. Mind you, it did look mighty like a kitchen table.

'Quaint' Irene Coles:
Shades of Polonius!

Georgie Pillson:
We've the Socialists to blame for that Bolshie attitude.

Major Benjamin Flint:
And then there's Mallards to think about. Probably let it furnished, servants and all, what, ten guineas a week? Why not? She got fifteen last summer from the other poor corpse!

Georgie Pillson:
[dressed as Beau Brummell] Do I look the thing?

Major Benjamin 'Benjy' Flint:
You look exactly the thing, old man. Whatever it is... Oscar Wilde... Marie Antoinette.

'Quaint' Irene Coles:
The boys all know I'm a gal, and the girls know I look like a boy, so here goes! Qui-hi!

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Mr Wyse certainly suspects something of the sort.

Georgie Pillson:
Yes, he said there'd been some hanky-panky, which is pretty strong language for him.

Godiva 'Diva' Plaistow:
She began by saying how anxious she was to learn. Now she lays down the law like anything. It's quite like playing with you.

Mr. Algernon Wyse:
[Referring to his sister, the Contessa di Faraglione] Would it be socially in order if I were to ask Mrs Lucas if my wife and I could bring her?

Miss Elizabeth Mapp:
Oh, how can you ask? Of course you must ask Lulu, and of course she'll say yes. What else could she say?

Georgie Pillson:
All Tilling is agog!

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
It is ridiculous that we have to break ourselves of the habit of doing something we can't do.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Folkstone or Littlestone, whichever you prefer.

Georgie Pillson:
Well, nobody could prefer Littlestone!

Mrs. Brocklebank:
My husband is English. As English as English! He is a diplomatist, and he's next posted to Roma. Like a letter, no?

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Irene, can you keep a secret?

'Quaint' Irene Coles:
Not as a rule, no.

'Quaint' Irene Coles:
What have you got for sale in Tilling which would accommodate Mrs Lucas?

Mr. Woolgar:
In Tilling proper, very little.

'Quaint' Irene Coles:
What about Tilling improper?

Rev. Kenneth Bartlett:
Aye, ye cannae mourn forever and a day.

'Quaint' Irene Coles:
And after five months, the Padre's speaking Scots again!

Elizabeth Mapp:
But if we hadn't bumped into the boat in that fog...

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Quite, dear, but we did bump into it. Pity it wasn't British, but drowing beggars can't be choosers.

Elizabeth Mapp:
[passing the graveyard] Oh look, a new stone! Who do you think has died?

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
[reading the stone] Good heavens, it's us!

Elizabeth Mapp:
Then she sat with that sailor or this, with her fingers entwined in his...

Godiva Plaistow:
No! Actually...?

Elizabeth Mapp:
Yes!

Godiva Plaistow:
And?

Elizabeth Mapp:
He would pretend to teach her a clove hitch.

Godiva Plaistow:
[aghast] No!

Elizabeth Mapp:
That's a knot, isn't it? Probably with some improper meaning as well.

Godiva Plaistow:
And?

Elizabeth Mapp:
Such flirtation - at her age too - but I don't judge her and I beg you won't. Thank heavens a British ship appeared in the nick of time before she went too far.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
If you were about to embark on a m?salliance, would you honestly expect me to stay mum?

Georgie Pillson:
Honestly?

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Yes.

Georgie Pillson:
No.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Well, there you are. Or if I was, wouldn't you be the first to point out the positive dangers?

Georgie Pillson:
Well, yes and no.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Which?

Georgie Pillson:
No.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Well! I couldn't sleep with a clear conscience if I didn't... what's the phrase?

Georgie Pillson:
Put your oar in?

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
That's *not* what I was going to say!

Daisy Quantock:
Your joy in life will revive again.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
I doubt it at this rate.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Even servants have a right to a private life.

Georgie Pillson:
[after meeting the Padre, who affects a phoney Scottish accent] Funny accent he had, didn't he?

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Little tipsy, I thought.

Georgie Pillson:
Scotch, perhaps.

Emmeline 'Lucia' Lucas:
Or both, perhaps.

Miss Elizabeth Mapp:
Dear Quaint Irene, if you know I've let it, why bother to come?

'Quaint' Irene Coles:
Because I was hoping for a cocktail and because we want to know the price you screwed her up to.

Miss Elizabeth Mapp:
The price I...

'Quaint' Irene Coles:
What's she gonna pay ya?

Godiva 'Diva' Plaistow:
The damage.

'Quaint' Irene Coles:
The dibs.

'Quaint' Irene Coles:
If you've made her pay through the nose, then Diva here should make you pay through the nose, and me Diva for mine. Equality, fraternity and nosality!

Miss Elizabeth Mapp:
Diva dear, old friends though we are, I should be sorry to have a mind like yours.