GONERIL'S VOICEMAIL TO CORDELIA IN FRANCE
I'll make this fast, the cross-Channel rates are absurd.
You know what happened, don't you? Or maybe not.
He cursed me. Our father. Before my whole Court.
He screamed and threw chairs around. He wished me
sterility. Or thalidomide babies. I hate him.
Now I understand, sweetheart, how what he said to you
must've been like a knife. How did you endure it
without throwing something or just hitting him?
I think he's gone quite mad or just weak in the head.
Something's wrong with him, no matter what it's called.
How do you pack a King into skilled nursing, get him
a Home Health Aide or someone who'll wipe his arse,
someone who'll call him on his vile temper and viler mouth?
Our sister won't even call him back now. She said
she's had more than enough of his insults.
A King. I see the kind of bloody King he was.
Ride out like I did, on horseback with the Duke,
look at the untended fields, the peasants drunk, slack jaws,
copulating in the goddamn fields, they're far away from us,
but they've run out of care, just sadness in this awful place.
You did right, baby, you told him truth he did not want
to hear and could not stand. Burgundy, fortune-hunter,
all he wanted was your dowry. About you he cared not a bit.
He got what he deserved. I hope he had a homebound boat ticket,
because he'd otherwise have to dive in and swim.
It's sad here now you're gone. You can't see it.
Our father stand out in the snow, and curses his gods,
snow falls in his white hair but changes nothing.
You're missed by me and by Regan. And I hear through letters
that you're with child? Be happier, sweet, than we were.
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