by Alison Lyssa
AXIS: That’s the good news.
She takes out a letter.
Louise brought an agreement for you to sign. [Reading] ‘To obviate the stress of a court case with its concomitant emotional and financial embarrassment, agreement must be reached for Alabastar to continue at Bedlingham Grammar School …’
THEENIE: Axis, we’ll accept it. It’s only a stuck up school, we can go back to month and month about, we can have our turn.
AXIS: I thought you were ready to fight.
She gives THEENIE the letter.
There’s more.
THEENIE: [reading] He grants me access, one weekend in five, the Easter Break from the morning of Good Friday until Children’s Day is over at the Show. And three weeks at Christmas, with alternating Christmas Days. All, Sylvester, is that all? Do we have to go down on our knees and beg for scraps of candles?
AXIS: That’s not all God wants. Read the rest.
THEENIE: [reading] ‘I undertake during any period of access to refrain from any word or act which may reasonably be calculated to suggest to Alabastar that I am, or any friend of mine is, a lesbian, such acts to include remaining overnight with any lover, or engaging in any public display of affection’.
She screams.
You kiss me back to life and then they kill me for it.
SCENE FOUR
The court. AXIS and THEENIE watch as SOLOMON enters in the robes of a judge, with books, gavel, concealed flask of brandy. VANDELOPE enters with leaflets, collection bucket, books and papers ready to demonstrate against him. SOLOMON and VANDELOPE fight for control of the stage as they move the chairs and table into position. SOLOMON pushes VANDELOPE’s books onto the floor.
VANDELOPE: [giving the books and papers to AXIS and THEENIE] Okay, sisters, hang in there.
SOLOMON: Out, vandal!
VANDELOPE: I’ll be back. When you need me, yell.
SOLOMON: [calling] Constable!
VANDELOPE moves to leave, shouts, joined by crowd of demonstrators offstage.
VANDELOPE: You’re in there for us.
We’re out here for you.
She leaves. Demonstrators offstage, singing, chanting, shouting.
SOLOMON: ‘King Solomon excelled all
The kings of the earth
In riches and in wisdom.’
VANDELOPE & CROWD: [off, singing] We own our own bodies,
We shall not be moved.
SOLOMON: ‘And the whole earth sought
The presence of Solomon
To hear the wisdom which God had
Put into his mind.’
LOUISE enters and takes up position in court. AXIS and THEENIE move to their positions opposite her.
SOLOMON: Bring before me evil,
Perverted and unnatural.
Let it open and cavort—
We will sniff it out and kill it
In our Family Law Court.
VANDELOPE: [off] Not the church, not the state,
Women must decide their fate.
SOLOMON: As I apprehend we have here an application for custody, and the issue for me to try is whether or not in the pertaining circumstances account should be taken of the moral odium which attaches itself to homosexuals.
VANDELOPE: [off] Get your laws off our bodies.
SOLOMON: I am given to understand that a report has been entered by a Dr Gareth Porteus, Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatry. [Reading] Homosexuality, in the literature, would seem to be something of an affliction, and while it may no longer be recognised as a criminal offence, or a disease, it is best avoided, especially in the young. Bring in the boy.
LOUISE: It’s not the boy.
SOLOMON: Not the boy?
LOUISE: It’s the mother, Your Honour.
SOLOMON: Impossible! Dear lady, ‘ … you are going to tell the whole world that there is such an offence, to bring it to the notice of women who have never heard of it, never thought of it, never even dreamed of it. I think that this is a very great mischief …’ And there you have the very words of the Honourable Speaker of the House of Lords, London, nineteen twenty-one.
VANDELOPE: [off] Get your Lords off our bodies.
SOLOMON: The community in general is still sufficiently old-fashioned to view with disfavour, and even abhorrence, unnatural acts, whether between male and female, or male and male, or female and female, whether they be illegal or not.
THEENIE: [offering reports and papers] Your Honour, we have a report which counteracts …
SOLOMON: The grave problem about all this is that I am already part heard on other matters and it is almost impossible for me to take up any extensive time with this matter; however, it is clear that some conclusion has to be reached on this matter if it is at all possible before lunch.
He consults his papers.
Summon the grandfather, Mr Archibald Havistock!
ARCHIBALD enters.
ARCHIBALD: Ask Alabastar what nine sevens are and he does not know. Ask him the capital of Tanganyika and he says, ‘Can you lend me twenty cents?’
THEENIE: Look at him. His hair pressed onto his head, his tie, his neck held tight.
ARCHIBALD: From the Department of Education to the Gulag Archipelago we have spawned a generation who deny the distinction between good and evil.
THEENIE: His shoulders caught inside his suit, tight, tighter, his belly up against his belt, his shoes too narrow at the toes.
ARCHIBALD: To be modern is to stare at the destruction that flickers on the screen and have no way of knowing what it is.
THEENIE: He’s frightened! He must hate it when the world around him seems to be coming undone.
ARCHIBALD: Bereft from a standard to tell him right from wrong, like a boy who has come to the end of his pile of coins, twentieth century man stands before posterity, disconnected and disappointed.
THEENIE: I can’t bear it. Can’t we find a paradise where your truth and mine can meet? You, whose love once held me on your knee.
SOLOMON: Order, order.
AXIS: After what we’ve been through, are you asking me to have sympathy for him?
THEENIE: Yes.
She cries.
ARCHIBALD: If the mother of my children were well and could be with us she would agree with me. Her voice was ever soft, gentle and low. I shall go from here, an old, tired man.
He leaves.
AXIS: [concerned for THEENIE] Adjournment, please, Your Honour!
SOLOMON: Five minutes!
He pulls out a small transistor radio and listens. The last few moments of a horse race. Meanwhile VANDELOPE enters disguised as a doctor of laws, pours AXIS and THEENIE a cup of tea, dodges Solomon’s view and adds a sign or graffiti: ‘THE KOALA TEA OF MERCY IS NOT STRAINED’. She leaves.
SOLOMON: ‘Every one of them brought his present,
Articles of silver and gold,
Garments, myrrh, spices, horses and mules.’
That was the wrong bloody race! Time’s up. Call the new wife.
LOUISE moves forward.
CROWD: [off] No god, no master … No, No, Nanette,
No god, no master … No, No, Nanette.
SOLOMON: Truly lovely.
‘Our couch is green;
The beams of our house are cedar.’
LOUISE: Your Honour, we do not want Alabastar to despise his former mother. We would rather have protected him from the shock of learning she is … is …
SOLOMON: A lesbian?
AXIS: The bitch! How long are we going to sit here and put up with this?
LOUISE: It’s not the way most people live. We love Alabastar very much. He’s very happy with us. We’ve found him an excellent school, when time and weather permit we take him sailing, and his friends. We like children. But we’re worried that if he goes on living in that commune, he’ll be a teenager soon, he’ll want to take a girlfriend home, she’ll find out his mother’s a … a …
SOLOMON: Thingamebob?
LOUISE: He’ll be so … embarrassed.
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THEENIE: Objection!
SOLOMON: Order!
‘I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
That you stir not up nor awaken love
Until it please.’
LOUISE: Alabastar has expressed a wish to attend university, and we both encourage him in his studies. I do work part-time as my husband’s research assistant, but I am always available to welcome Alabastar home from school, and his friends.
SOLOMON: A fair and far-sighted woman. Do you intend to have any children yourself with your current husband—out of curiosity, you understand?
LOUISE: Your Honour, well, at the moment, we are hoping. I’m not … I’m not …
SOLOMON: A lesbian. Thank you. Call the husband.
SYLVESTER enters.
LOUISE: [to SYLVESTER] Stand up straight, darling, everybody’s watching.
SYLVESTER: Your Honour, I am here reluctantly, without a bandwagon to push, or axes to grind. I remember with affection my former wife, and it is uncomfortable to be placed in opposition to her for the sake of a child we both love. Alabastar in his adolescence deserves a stable and consistent home with the love and role model of a father as well as a mother.
AXIS: [to THEENIE] Tell him we want a world without straitjackets.
THEENIE: Wait. I’ve got to understand what they want.
SYLVESTER: I respect his mother’s right to her lifestyle qua lifestyle. That is her own choice. What causes me distress is her obsessive need to advertise what she is, to drag the drama past her bedroom door and seek public acclaim for a private idiosyncrasy.
AXIS: People get married on billboards!
SYLVESTER: In such a household, a household for the most part without men, I would feel afraid for Alabastar.
AXIS: If had a wart on my nose, and a cat, they’d burn us.
SOLOMON: Order! Words, words, as repetitive as muesli, Mahler, and our Asian future. Affidavits have been heard to the effect that in the first year of the boy Alabastar’s life, the respondent wife had the eccentricity to hold an exhibition of paintings, which provided entertainment to a heated crowd and a hot press …
AXIS: She made them look at things, and they hated it.
SOLOMON: … While the young husband, embarking on his career, had the burden of the child, and nobly filled the vacuuming.
THEENIE: Objection! Sylvester, tell them we shared the housework.
During the following dialogue between THEENIE, LOUISE and SYLVESTER, SOLOMON swigs surreptitiously from his brandy flask.
SYLVESTER: Objection, Your Honour.
LOUISE: You can’t object to that, darling.
SYLVESTER: Christ, she’s never neglected Alabastar. I was through my PhD by then, I could afford childcare, we helped one another. Christ, if I’d had her talent. If the press hadn’t given her a ducking. Louise, I need your support and your love.
LOUISE: You’re my life, Sylvester.
THEENIE: Louise! If you put yourself in a cage, how can any of us be free?
SYLVESTER: I’ve said from the beginning this case can’t go through if it means assassinating Theenie. Darling, let’s go home. Now. You and me. Us.
LOUISE: If we walk out of here without Alabastar, you’ll never forgive me.
SYLVESTER: You’re right. When he’s with me I remember growing up. I’m not cut off from kangaroos and crazy things. And he’s got those precious independent eyes. Theenie, I haven’t any choice, we can’t control this. Your Honour …
THEENIE: Sylvester, don’t give him power over us.
SYLVESTER: Your Honour, objection withdrawn.
SOLOMON: Ipso dipso, the origins of the former wife’s fractured family stem from the excesses of her artistic period.
CROWD: [off] What do we want?—Clear thinking.
When do we want it?—Now.
SOLOMON: Who’s next?
AXIS and THEENIE move forward.
SOLOMON: ‘Who is that coming up from the wilderness,
Leaning upon her beloved?’
Two of them. Custody confers the responsibility of proper training and example. This factor of your alternative admitted lifestyle which is not the normally considered life of the majority, does not make you, per se, an unfit mother, but it cannot, in conscience, be ignored.
SOLOMON motions THEENIE to move back and AXIS to take a position ready for being questioned.
SOLOMON: In your fragmented family, do you not think the boy Alabastar will be subjected to social discomfort? To the ridicule of his peers?
AXIS: Not unless you give them lessons.
SOLOMON: Young lady, be warned.
AXIS: ‘Solomon had seven hundred wives, princesses,
And three hundred concubines.’’
SOLOMON: What was that?
AXIS: Kings, chapter eleven, verse 3.
SOLOMON: The devil would quote the scriptures, eh? I could have you charged for contempt of court. Alabastar would be at a disadvantage, would he not, in that normal parents would not allow their sons to mix with known homosexuals.
AXIS: Especially if they had halitosis or were blacks.
SOLOMON: Ms Axis, are you not denying yourself your own instinct for motherhood, if we try to complete the picture of the odd situation you have there?
AXIS: Get your laws off my body.
SOLOMON: I could use this as a further opportunity to deplore the sort of exceedingly imprecise language which does nothing to assist the court. Do you attend clubs of the type where homosexuals congregate?
CROWD: [off] We want to be
Nuclear free.
SOLOMON: Don’t mumble. What goes on at these clubs? Do you see anything wrong in the boy seeing you, and you, unclothed, at a beach designated ‘nude’? Have you no thoughts on an old fashioned virtue called modesty?
AXIS: None.
SOLOMON: If the boy were to entertain notions of homosexuality, would you not seek to dissuade him from these notions?
AXIS: Alabastar knows himself.
SOLOMON: Mmm. Ms Axis, in what role may we see you in relation to the child? A duplicate mother figure? A father figure?
AXIS: You can’t fit me into your boxes. You haven’t got one that’s my size.
SOLOMON: You do not see anything wrong with yourself, do you?
AXIS: No!
SOLOMON: How many of these unnatural relationships have you had?
AXIS: I’m going to explode.
SOLOMON: Do you, how shall I put it, in whatever it is that the two of you do together, involve the child?
AXIS: We make billycarts together. You’re the porn-pusher, not us.
SOLOMON: What is it exactly that you and you do together? Is there no danger of you leaving, in the bedroom or the bathroom where the child may come upon them, any sexual instruments that you may use?
THEENIE: Your Honour, our love is not a violent thing.
CROWD: [off] Free our bodies, free ourselves.
SOLOMON: You are of a religious, an evangelical nature, are you not?
Police siren.
AXIS: The pigs.
THEENIE: What if they’re hurting people out there?
AXIS: Think of something.
THEENIE grabs books and papers.
THEENIE: We can produce evidence to refute the idea that homosexuality is linked with mental illness. Statistically lesbians are as well adjusted as their heterosexual counterparts, and in some cases may consume less valium. There is no evidence that homosexual households create homosexual children, any more than the other way round. Openness and acceptance of sexual diversity could contribute to a child’s well-being and growth. There is clear statistical evidence that most sexual offences are committed by heterosexual men upon women, and not by lesbian women upon children.
AXIS: Put your hand up. See if he’ll listen.
THEENIE: Sir!
SOLOMON: Yes, Theenie. You can be excused.
THEENIE: Sir! Could this case be considered not as a debate about sexual preference, but one about a world which does
not trust and value women?
SOLOMON: You don’t know what you’re talking about. Out of order.
THEENIE: We’ve lost. I try to use their language, and still they refuse to understand.
AXIS and THEENIE hold one another.
SOLOMON: Order! This perverse affection cannot be allowed. I have weighed most carefully what I have heard. The law is cognisant of current debate about the position of women. Women deserve the respect and freedom of an equal partnership with men, and no higher compliment can be paid her, than that she devote herself to the welfare of her family within that partnership, as an equal. Servile wombs cannot create free men. However, when radical forces attack the familiar way of joining people together, they attack the cement of our society. It is my melancholy duty to uphold the sanctity of womanhood against those who wish to profane it.
THEENIE: Mr Justice Solomon, this is not a criminal court. Why have I been on trial since I began?
One child instead of two, guilty;
Three legs on my studio easel, guilty;
Four legs in bed and all of them gentle.
Five dirty socks found in the cupboard, guilty.
Six o’clock and it’s not my turn for cooking, guilty;
Seven days in the weakness—
[Singing] Eight ladies dancing, guilty.
Nine o’clock and he’s up playing pinball, guilty;
[Singing] There were ten in the bed
And the little one said …
Write this in your books: She stood in the court and said, Let the women ask the questions.
She includes with a gesture herself, AXIS and the women demonstrating outside the court.
VANDELOPE & CROWD: [off, singing] Just like the trees that grow
Until the forest sings
We shall not be moved.
SOLOMON: Young lady, do you think a mere anyone can be initiated into the mysteries and ritual when it has taken us centuries to wrap the cloak around us? And you are merely a woman. After thorough deliberation the court awards the boy Alabastar to that dedicated family, man and wife, whose love, propriety and property will enable him to follow his chosen career, and to grow to manhood exercising responsibility for all that is worthwhile in our society.
‘His legs are alabaster columns,
set upon bases of gold.’
Court dismissed.
He gathers his books to leave.
