Half Nine Was Right in 1983
(Half past nine on a Saturday night, outside a club on Whitworth Street in Manchester. The door is open. Nobody is going in.)
Ingeborg: The door’s open. The lights are on.
Desmond: The lights are on because they’re mopping.
Ingeborg: We said half nine. Half nine was always right.
Desmond: Half nine was right in 1983.
(Inside. One room, one barman, a mop bucket parked by the stage.)
Ingeborg: Two of whatever’s cold, please. Is it always this empty?
Barman: It’s half nine.
Desmond: Yes. That’s what we keep telling each other.
Barman: Nobody’s in before midnight. Half twelve, if I’m honest. The DJ’s not on till eleven.
Ingeborg: Midnight. People arrive at midnight.
Barman: They drink at home first. It’s cheaper.
Desmond: We used to drink at the pub first, and then the pub shut at eleven, and that’s why you went dancing. That was the whole system.
Barman: Pubs don’t shut at eleven any more.
Desmond: Well. Everything I know is from a country that closed thirty years ago.
Ingeborg: So we go home and come back at midnight.
Desmond: I’m not doing this twice. I’ve had a shower. I’ve got a shirt on. My sister said I looked nice, and she hadn’t said that since about 2011.
Ingeborg: Then what do we do with two and a half hours?
Desmond: We’re already in. Nobody’s asked us to leave.
Barman: I’ve got to test the sound anyway. If you want music, I’ll put something on. Here, use this.
Ingeborg: Oh, this is dangerous.
Desmond: Don’t put on the Bee Gees.
Ingeborg: I’m putting on the Bee Gees.
Desmond: Under these lights? They’ve got the working lights on. You can see the floor. You can see the state of the floor.
Ingeborg: Desmond. There’s nobody here to see you.
Desmond: That’s the first good argument you’ve made all night.
(They dance one song on an empty floor with the lights up. Desmond sits down afterwards, carefully.)
Desmond: My knee’s fine. I want that on record. My knee is fine.
Ingeborg: I didn’t say anything about your knee.
Desmond: You looked at it.
Ingeborg: Do you remember queueing outside the Ritz in February in a shirt?
Desmond: I remember it as fun. It was not fun. I’d been cold since the Tuesday.
Ingeborg: We’d queue for an hour and we’d be delighted about it.
Desmond: We were twenty-two. Being cold was free.
Barman: Half eleven. It’ll start filling up now, if you’re staying.
Desmond: Right. Coats.
Ingeborg: Look at the queue out there. It goes past the chicken shop.
Desmond: And all of them staring at us.
Ingeborg: They think we’re going home early.
Desmond: We’re going home late. We’ve been in there since half nine.