Two acts as monologues. In act one, Lily is 27 years old, on the eve of her wedding. She wonders about her life up to that point and how it will change as she becomes a married woman and grows up. In act two, Lily is 89 and her husband is dead. She looks back on her life with a more pessimistic attitude than when she was young.
Characters
Lily: aged 27 in 1914.
Lily: aged 89 in 1976.
Act 1:
Set
An attic-like bedroom. Sparsely furnished with say, an iron single bed, small wardrobe, wash-stand with ewer, basin and tooth-mug. Upright chest-of-drawers-type dressing table with separate mirror. A small table, front, with a lighted lamp and a bowl of white lilies, an Austrian-bent chair beside. There may be a small mat under these and another beside the bed. A white counterpane and white lacy curtains on the window. A white wedding-dress and veil hand on the wardrobe. White satin shoes on floor beside them. The wall are painted an unattractive but serviceable dun-colour. As, in an attic room, the door and window cannot be in the same wall, the set might be best constructed corner-wise.
Time
April, 1914.
Business
In the course of this act would be what a bride might be involved in before going to bed on the night before her wedding: extra hair-brushing, a complete manicure (but remember that nail-lacquer was not invented then!), clipping toenails and creaming her feet, elbows, hands, neck. She may select her best handkerchiefs and put them into a sachet etc., last minute packing in several suitcases.
Act 2:
Set
Virtually the same room as before, but the whole thing is bigger, better and prettier. As though the place has grown and filled out, coming to maturity. For instance, the door and window are in the same place, but are now of better timber, bigger openings in larger walls. There are good curtains and carpet, and so on. There is also much more in the rooms: a large TV set, a radio, family photographs, bric-a-brac, ornaments, fulsome flower arrangements, some piles of books and papers. There is a pretty little rocking-chair; a hand-bell on the bedside table. The room is really rather untidy with crocheted rugs and shawls and even clothes on every available place where such things could be put down and left, and the dressing-table is really cluttered with bottles and pots, the bedside-table with pill-bottles.
Time
It is November, 1976. Night.
