A beat. DR REID gives her a look at once indulgent and reproachful.
Has she given you an answer?
DR REID. Not yet. For heaven’s sake, Flora, I am proposing to lift the burden from your shoulders, to shield this family from calumny and pain, is not that your dearest wish and mine?
FLORA. Ay …
DR REID mounts the stairs, turns and waits for her to follow. VICTOR exits.
Scene 4 Pearl’s Study
PEARL is seated, leaning forward, head between her knees. VICTOR rushes on.
VICTOR. Pearl, I must have a talk with you –! What’s the matter?
PEARL [sitting up]. You look like a dog’s breakfast.
VICTOR. You’re white as a sheet.
PEARL. I am blanched with disappointment, but quite prepared to hear your apology.
VICTOR. For what?
PEARL. You know perfectly well for what, you and your petty revenge, I had nothing to do with Father’s will, Victor, it came as just as much of a shock to me as it did to you.
VICTOR. I don’t care about the damn will.
PEARL. Well you ought to. [Pointedly returning to her work.] Don’t worry, I’ll have Abbott arrange a suitable annuity for you.
VICTOR. Fine. Pearl –
PEARL. You’ll not have a penny for liquor though, my boy.
VICTOR. I’ll drink myself to death if I damn well please.
PEARL. Not on my money, you won’t.
VICTOR. I don’t want your stinkin’ money.
PEARL. No brother of mine will traipse about like a bohemian; I’ll no’ give you the satisfaction of being poor.
VICTOR. Do shutup –
PEARL. And I’ll thank you not to go rummaging among my specimens.
VICTOR. I wouldn’t touch your gruesome specimens with a ten-foot pole.
PEARL. You were in fooling with the ear last night.
VICTOR. I was not – What “ear”?
PEARL. This ear, here! You’re lucky it didn’t turn to jelly overnight.
VICTOR. I never touched it.
PEARL. You did.
VICTOR. I didna.
PEARL. Did so.
VICTOR. Did –
PEARL. How many opposable digits are there in this household?!
VICTOR. What?
PEARL. Thumbs! Mankind’s distinguishing tool; thumbs! wrought by aeons of natural selection; thumbs! to raise us up above the beasts.
And you can find no better use for yours than to steal about in the night twistin’ the lids offa jars. [Cutting him off.] You did so! And Puppy took the blame. Poor Puppy.
VICTOR. Where is he?
PEARL. Don’t worry, Victor, Wee Farleigh’s got him on a leash. At the bottom of the pond.
VICTOR, shocked.
You’re too suggestible, Vickie.
VICTOR. I hope it does come out in you.
PEARL. What?
VICTOR. The “flaw”, the family curse.
PEARL. What do you know about it?
VICTOR. I heard Dr Reid talking to Auntie Flora. She wants to tell you the truth about our family, and he won’t let her. He’s up to something.
PEARL. I know the truth.
VICTOR. You do? What is it?
PEARL [dismissive]. I can’t tell you, you couldn’t take the shock.
VICTOR. I could too, I’m as much a man as you. Pearl, I’ve a right to know.
PEARL. It’s for your own good, Victor.
Victor. Tell me.
PEARL. No.
VICTOR. Tell me.
PEARL. Nay.
VICTOR. I’ll make you – [grabbing the jar].
PEARL. Give it –!
He begins to have difficulty breathing, eyes fixed on the jar.
[disgusted] Hypochondria: the last refuge of the scoundrel.
He is gasping.
VICTOR., control yourself or you really will have a –
He is asphixiating.
Auntie! Wee Farleigh! Someone!
She tries to wrest the jar from his grasp.
Scene 5 The Drawing Room
FLORA, PEARL, and WEE FARLEIGH are gathered round VICTOR who goes limp on the couch. DR REID. withdraws the needle from VICTOR’S arm and returns it to his medical bag.
DR REID. These fits are a terrible strain on the heart.
FLORA. Pearl, why did you let your brother look at the ear?
PEARL. I didn’t “let” him do anything, Auntie, he’s a grown man. What are we to do, Doctor, he can’t go on like this, what’s to become of him out in the world, hysterical and swallowing his tongue every five minutes, is there no cure?
DR REID. For hysteria in the male? Not yet.
PEARL. If he were a woman you could snip out his uterus and be done with it.
DR REID. There are specialists in Europe.
PEARL. Where?
DR REID. At the Sal Petrière in Paris. They’ve had promising results with the galvanic battery, but –
FLORA. We’ll no’ send your brother to be keyed awa’ in a fremmit loony hoos!
DR REID. Dear Flora, there is no reason why you should be capable of imagining the fear, the keening sorrow, the harm that awaits a patient like Victor should his illness go untreated. But I have seen it, and all too often.
PEARL. Doctor, I would accompany my brother to the antipodes and back if I thought it would cure him, but I cannot pin my hopes on an asylum, whether here or on the continent –Victor would become completely hysterical if we sought to admit him for so much as a consultation.
DR REID. Mm. Puts me in mind of an old case history I came across recently. A patient faced the prospect of living out her days in a cheerless institution, or dwelling amid her family who were quite ill-equipped to provide for her … unusual medical needs. So the physician in the case offered to take the patient in and care for her in his own home.
PEARL. Doctor, such an offer – if that is what you intend – surpasses generosity, but I cannot see Victor consenting to such an arrangement.
DR REID. Nor, frankly, can I.
FLORA [apprehensive]. And did he?
DR REID. What’s that, Flora?
FLORA. Did the Doctor take her in?
DR REID. oh, as it happened, he was called away, and the family was left to bear their burden alone. It ended badly, I’m afraid.
PEARL. Don’t worry, Auntie, I’ll not send Victor away, nor will he languish here. If we cannot go to the asylum, let the asylum come to us. We’ll import the finest therapies, regardless of expense, and rearrange Belle Moral to suit his needs. I’ll make an artist’s studio for him in the attic, see to it he doesn’t indulge excessively in spirits, we’ll purge the estate of dogs, and Dr Reid will direct his care, won’t you, Doctor?
DR REID. Of course. I’ll make regular house calls. In between my other commitments. And providing I am not called away to the continent.
PEARL. You see, Auntie? Everything will be all right.
FLORA. Pearl, we canna care for your brother here on our own.
PEARL. For pity’s sake, Flora, make up your mind.
FLORA. There’s more to … there are things beyond your ken, pet.
PEARL. What “things”?
A beat.
FLORA. Have you considered Dr Reid’s proposal?
PEARL at a loss, looks from FLORA to DR REID.
DR REID. I spoke to your aunt, Pearl. I did think it proper.
PEARL. Of course. [to FLORA] Dear Auntie, I …
DR REID [to WEE FARLEIGH]. I think we could all do with a cup of tea.
WEE FARLEIGH exits.
PEARL. Auntie, I know you cherish certain other … hopes. And, though I’d thought to speak first to Dr Reid in private, I wish you both to know that I –
FLORA. Marry him, Pearl.
PEARL. What?
FLORA. Dr Reid will live here and look after Victor, he’ll look after … everything.
PEARL. Wh – why? You think me incapable?
FLORA. No, no –
PEARL.
Sheltered and ignorant because I’ve dedicated my life to study rather than gad about the world like Victor – much good it’s done him. I’ll have you know there is a greater distance between two cells than between the poles of the earth –
FLORA. Pearl –
PEARL. I am mistress of Belle Moral! My father willed me capable. You would have me forego my inheritance, my chance to consecrate myself to my work – forgive me, Doctor, your proposal does me nothing but honour, I speak on principle only –
FLORA. Pearl, there’s more to life than work.
PEARL. You’d rather I were more like your precious Victor; sensual, dissolute –
FLORA. Nay, pet –
PEARL. Dismissing my work as if it were just another lady-like “accomplishment” on a par with playing the pianoforte, “mind you don’t get too accomplished, dear, and frighten the young gentlemen away –
DR REID. Pearl, I’m eager to hear of your insights into the ear.
FLORA. Don’t encourage the lass.
PEARL [to FLORA]. If you can’t stomach science, go back to your elves and pixies and –!
DR REID. Now, Pearl, don’t be too hard on your auntie, she is of another generation.
FLORA [to DR REID]. So are you.
PEARL [almost feverish with excitement]. Doctor, I have indeed been vouchsafed a fresh insight into the ear which I am longing to share with you.
DR REID. I am longing to receive it.
PEARL. You claim it is more than a freak, meaningless –
DR REID. Not meaningless, no. Indeed, no, no, no, it is pregnant with meaning.
PEARL. What kind of meaning?
DR REID. Pearl. Even now there are those among us whose bodies function as evolutionary Trojan Horses, concealing traits that harken back to a common ancestor. Not only of man. But of every mammal on Earth.
PEARL. You think the ear is a throwback?
DR REID. I think it likely.
PEARL. Victor’s fit proves the ear is canine –
DR REID. Victor’s fit proves that he perceived the ear to be canine. As such it may say more about him than about the ear. Indeed, is the fit merely one side of the phobic coin? Heads: an unwholesome fear of canines in particular. Tails: an unwholesome identification with animals in general, witness his new-found vegetarianism.
PEARL. We’re all of us animals.
DR REID. Touché, my dear; we differ in degree only, not in kind. But if Man does not cast off the vestiges of his animal origins, he can only revert; back to the beast.
PEARL. But how do we know which vestiges to cast off? We are all changing – evolving – even now, in this drawing room. Life teems at the uncertain line between species, and who’s to say it’s a line at all, perhaps it’s more of a … blur. The bones of my hand with which I take up a pen or wield a paint brush are the same that propel a bat to fly, a horse to gallop, a whale to swim. Darwin said “we shall never probably disentangle the inextricable web of affinities between the members of any one class.”
DR REID. That doesn’t mean we should not try.
PEARL. Of course not, but what is it we are supposed to glean from these endless variations? –[wonderment] apart from an odd disequilibriating sense of déja vue; such as when we gaze upon the countenance of a great ape.
A beat.
FLORA [likewise in wonderment]. I’ve seen the photo of those monkeys drinking tea in the London Zoo. All got up in top hats and bonnets. I’ve never been so disequi-liberated.
PEARL. Perhaps Victor’s phobia is an effect of his overheated mythopoetical faculty; it having rendered him susceptible to a deep recognition of animal kinship.
A beat.
DR REID. Intriguing.
PEARL. Canines, of course, are invested with supernatural significance in many cultures including our own, frequently as psycho-pomps.
FLORA. Who?
DR REID. Guides between this world and the next.
PEARL. Guardians at the gates of the Underworld. Witness the Greeks with their three-headed dog, Cerberus, who was soothed by music; the Egyptians with Anubis, an imposing creature with the head of a Jackal and the body of a man. Often depicted carrying baked goods.
FLORA. Baked goods?
WEE FARLEIGH enters, carrying tray with tea, and piled high with pastries.
WEE FARLEIGH. Baked goods.
PEARL. For the journey into the afterlife. What is the secret these mythic creatures keep? [Takes a pastry.]
FLORA. Who? The apes or the pompadours?
PEARL. And how are we to winkle it out of them? What is the – [taking a bite]. What’s this?
WEE FARLEIGH. A madeleine. Small, rich gateau, baked in a shell-shaped tin.
FLORA. A what?
PEARL. A biscuit. Only better.
She eats it, takes another. WEE FARLEIGH serves tea.
It is the secret of immortality. And what is immortality, but the fact of our common substance? One day, you and I and those daubs of paint [the family portrait] might trace our origins to a common ancestor, and that ancestor might turn out to be a mere … particle.
FLORA. “Remember man that thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.”
PEARL. What’s wrong, Doctor?
DR REID. Nothing. You reminded me of someone just now.
PEARL. Who? Father?
DR REID. No, no; someone I knew a very long time ago.
PEARL. Did she look like me?
DR REID. It was a he. And no, he didn’t resemble you in the slightest – not outwardly – but I dare say the two of you might have struck up a friendship.
PEARL. We might even now. Is he still alive?
DR REID. In a manner of speaking, yes. He was, I confess, myself. Foolish –
PEARL. Not at all.
DR REID. Fanciful –
PEARL. Seamus, you’re blushing.
A beat. She’s smiling at him. He returns the smile. Laughs. She joins in.
DR REID. Pearl, I too heard that siren call from the bottomless well of deep time, for that is where our ultimate origins are to be found. And in my mind’s eye, I gazed through that microscope of finer and finer distinctions until it seemed all was … one. But those hypnotic depths can paralyze the will. Cast your gaze forward, my friend. Science now calls upon us to stake out the boundaries; to etch boldly those lines between one species and another, lines which Myth and Religion have smudged, and which Nature has only sketchily indicated.
PEARL. Nature is an impressionist, then.
DR REID. And I would not have a Renoir on my wall for all the tea in China, for what do these Turners and Whistlers do? They glorify Nature’s seductive pull back to the primordial swamp out of which we so recently crawled; a pull to which we are now more susceptible than ever. Pearl, when our great Queen Victoria was born, man could travel no more swiftly than the ancient Egyptians, by horse; now the country is traversed by trains, oceans are plied by steamships; there will soon be horseless carriages clogging the streets and flying machines crowding the heavens. Innoculations save lives, sanitation extends lives, humane laws protect the defective where once they’d have been cruelly cast out to perish. We are at an historic juncture. Thanks to our interventions, Nature no longer holds dominion over our survival; she has lost the power to select the fit and discard the unfit. It’s up to us. We are, like it or not, in locus Dei.
PEARL. And what we are to do in God’s place? How are we to know what God’s work is?
DR REID. It is to forge an earthly paradise; to rouse the infant science of eugenics from its cradle; to engender a blueprint for the New Man: genetically pure, morally uncontaminated.
PEARL. To identify the cause of the ear. And eradicate it.
DR REID. Yes.
PEARL. As far as we know, there is nothing in the fossil record to indicate man’s descent from dogs.
DR REID. There is not.
PEARL. Then, assuming the ear is canine, how can it be a throwback? If it were, one would expect it to be ape-like.
DR
REID. All mammals share a common ancestor.
PEARL. Wolves and primates diverged much later; thus if a human being exhibits a canine trait, the chance of it being atavistic is exceedingly slight.
DR REID. Point taken. Then we are left, merely, with a case of monstrous birth; singular, interesting, but … [disappointed] meaningless.
PEARL. Unless …
DR REID. Unless?
PEARL. Cast your gaze forward, my friend. Might it not be an emergent characteristic? Signalling the rise of a new species.
A beat. The holy grail.
DR REID. Nature’s most closely guarded secret.
PEARL. The inner workings of life itself. Exposed.
A beat.
DR REID. Marry me, Pearl, and I will take you to the source of the ear.
PEARL. So you do know where it is from.
DR REID. Yes.
PEARL. And you will take me there. To the village on the Caucasian steppes.
DR REID. I will take you to the ends of the earth. As man and wife.
A beat.
PEARL. Seamus … [suddenly] What’s that smell? FLORA. What smell?
PEARL. It’s an overpowering stench of … paint. [Covers her mouth.]
DR REID. Pearl –
PEARL. I’m fine. I felt a bit queasy this morning, but I’m better now.
FLORA. Queasy?
DR REID. This morning?
FLORA. Is it your woman’s time?
PEARL. Flora! I’m perfectly fine, [as though suddenly recovered] in fact I’m longing for luncheon.
FLORA. Wee Farleigh’s fixed a lovely … French thing.
WEE FARLEIGH exits.
PEARL. Winkles.
FLORA. Winkles?
PEARL. I must have them, tell Wee Farleigh – or no, I’ll tell him myself.
PEARL exits.
FLORA. What’s the matter with the lass? Queasy one moment, craving winkles the next, it’s almost as though she were … Seamus, you haven’t!
DR REID. of course not, Flora.
Belle Moral: A Natural History Page 6
