Barker, Plays Eight

by Howard Barker

  CECILIA: I have a child.

  (His eyes open. Pause.)

  MORE: It’s easily done.

  CECILIA: Yes! Very! So easily I scarcely –

  (She stops, looks at him. Pause. Suddenly she takes his face in her hands, thrusting her arms through the bars.)

  MUST YOU DIE WITH ME HATING YOU? MUST YOU TAKE MY CONTEMPT –

  MORE: Ow –

  CECILIA: I AM SO COLD AND –

  MORE: Ow –

  CECILIA: DEAD IN FEELING TO YOU –

  MORE: Ow –

  CECILIA: DEAD AND –

  MORE: Ow –

  CECILIA: INDIFFERENT.

  (Pause. She releases him. ROPER is behind her, with an artist, HOLBEIN, who holds a sketchbook.)

  ROPER: Mr Holbein will begin his preparatory drawings now.

  (Pause. CECILIA withdraws from the grille. She looks at HOLBEIN.)

  CECILIA: You drew me when I was a child.

  (HOLBEIN inclines his head.)

  Why not draw me now?

  ROPER: Mr Holbein is very busy –

  CECILIA: I know he is! BUT WHAT ABOUT MY GRIEF?

  That needs catching, surely?

  (Pause. HOLBEIN nods.)

  Thank you. You see, a great artist does not miss an opportunity. What shall I wear?

  ROPER: I don’t think –

  CECILIA: Black, presumably?

  (HOLBEIN nods. She goes.)

  MORE: She envies me my death. She knows how well I shall die, and envies me. Are you drawing yet?

  (He leans against the grille.)

  Last time…

  (The chalk works on the paper.)

  How different it was last time…!

  (He laughs.)

  HOLBEIN: Not so very.

  MORE: Then I was mighty. Then I was a power. How different it was last time!

  HOLBEIN: Not so very.

  MORE: Why do you say that? I have fallen, I am dragged to the floor. Why do you say that?

  HOLBEIN: Because last time you were swollen with power. And now you are swollen with the absence of power. But swollen, still swollen.

  MORE: As you draw me I draw you, not with pencil, but I criticize, I am your critic and my eye is fierce as a gull’s scanning your features as it will be on the axeman’s too, he also will experience a shame for fear he is not so good an axeman as I am a poet…

  (Pause. HOLBEIN draws.)

  ROPER: (Gaily.) I have taken down all that. I have a record of all that –

  (He turns a page.)

  Isn’t it a fact that in extremity a man will say things possibly better composed, possibly better conceived, than he could have in the comfort of his study?

  MORE: COMFORT OF HIS STUDY?

  ROPER: Yes –

  MORE: COMFORT? IT WAS A CHAMBER OF PAIN!

  ROPER: Yes.

  (Pause. MORE smiles.)

  MORE: Have you got that?

  ROPER: (Writing.) Yes…

  MORE: It isn’t true. My study was heaven, and the best things I wrote were written in heaven…

  (Pause. ROPER stops writing.)

  SCENE 6

  A niche in the wall. THE SERVANT is dressing CECILIA in funeral garments.

  THE SERVANT: I think in my unsatisfactory life my finest pleasures come from executions.

  CECILIA: What does the head do on its separation from the body?

  THE SERVANT: I saw a bishop’s, and that was excellent, because it murmured.

  CECILIA: What? What did it murmur?

  THE SERVANT: Stand me up. It saw the World from upside-down, and was obviously uncomfortable.

  CECILIA: (Piqued.) Are you trying to –

  THE SERVANT: It did not say the least thing philosophical.

  (Pause.)

  But your father may be different. He may mouth some wit or wisdom. Or a stream of filthy epithets. There! You are wonderful in black.

  (She goes to leave.)

  CECILIA: Don’t leave our employment…!

  THE SERVANT: Leave Brutopia?

  CECILIA: If you give notice, I shall follow you and beg a slave’s job in your slum.

  THE SERVANT: Yes, and I’ll beat you, even for perfect labour.

  (THE DOCTOR stands before them. She looks at him.)

  He won’t plead guilty to Utopia. Not now. He’s arranging his funeral.

  (THE SERVANT goes. THE DOCTOR looks at CECILIA. Pause.)

  CECILIA: Were you in Utopia?

  (He looks, silently.)

  You can’t have been, there is none!

  (Pause.)

  I see you wandering the estate, limping and intellectual, a pose I have to admire, I admit, since I adore good poses, and crippled brilliance surely is the best, but tell me, what’s your trick?

  (Pause.)

  THE DOCTOR: You are not as shallow as you seem.

  CECILIA: I am. More shallow.

  (Pause.)

  As for your spectacles, they’re false.

  (She tears them off his nose, and wears them.)

  Yes! Plain glass!

  (She clasps his hand.)

  I do admire you!

  THE DOCTOR: All doctors must wear spectacles, whether their eyes are weak or not.

  CECILIA: That isn’t in his book!

  THE DOCTOR: Not written, no. But in the book. The seeds of all our comic pains are in the book.

  (She suddenly holds him in her arms.)

  CECILIA: Yes! Yes, it’s true! I know it is. You’re ill, and maybe dying… it’s death, isn’t it? That’s smeared on you…?

  (HOLBEIN appears.)

  Draw me like this. With this man’s head here, in my lap.

  (She draws THE DOCTOR’s head into her lap.)

  And a little fruit…festooning him…

  (She draws down a trailing bramble. HOLBEIN sits on a folding stool, and begins. Silence as he works.)

  HOLBEIN: (At last.) I was talking to Meg…

  CECILIA: Meg? Oh, Meg…

  HOLBEIN: Who plans an exhaustive translation –

  CECILIA: Remarkable Meg –

  HOLBEIN: Of your father’s correspondence with Erasmus.

  CECILIA: Never throw away a letter! It will make a scholar’s lunch!

  (He brushes the paper with his hand.)

  HOLBEIN: This is, I think, the first time I have seen you as a woman in repose…

  CECILIA: I am not in repose…

  HOLBEIN: It will be about ten guineas, who shall I bill?

  CECILIA: (Gazing down at him.) Look, how his eyelids dip, like overladen coasters, get that, can you?

  HOLBEIN: I assume Sir Tom’s debts will be honoured –

  (He blows chalk dust away. CECILIA has observed a book protruding from THE DOCTOR’s pocket and is fixed by it.)

  You –

  Your head has shifted –

  (Pause. She stares.)

  Miss –

  CECILIA: Yes –

  (She draws the book from his pocket.)

  What is this?

  (She extends it to HOLBEIN.)

  HOLBEIN: (Wiping his hands on a rag, takes it.) It appears to be –

  CECILIA: Yes –

  HOLBEIN: A book.

  (Pause.)

  CECILIA: What book?

  HOLBEIN: Handwritten. It’s –

  CECILIA: What?

  (HOLBEIN examines the cover.)

  HOLBEIN: My English is –

  CECILIA: Just read it, would you?

  HOLBEIN: ‘A Proposal…for the…Governance… of… Just Society…’ By… Emmanuel Salgado…MD…Utopia…

  (Pause.)

  CECILIA: His body is a rack of pain… thin and hammered like old tin… and yet no sooner does he get his paws around a pencil but he begins – he can’t resist – to inscribe laws of new societies! I believe in every prison the victims of one system scratch plans for the next – on walls, in blood!

  SCENE 7

  BERTRAND, restless in an orangery. ALICE, observing.

  BERTRAND: I am so sorry
but – you have your problems, obviously – but she – Cecilia – is quite intolerable and I –

  ALICE: Yes –

  BERTRAND: Her moods and tempers I must confess I do not find at all endearing –

  ALICE: No –

  BERTRAND: On the contrary, she offends me and provokes me and I am obliged to ask myself the simple question IS THIS LOVE and I –

  ALICE: Yes –

  BERTRAND: Admit I am inclined to say – forgive me, you are in such turmoil but –

  ALICE: No, no, you bubble –

  BERTRAND: Inclined to say not love but something else and – oh, do forgive me, I am so self-regarding when you are –

  ALICE: No, no, you froth –

  BERTRAND: I find her quite unstable which is in its own way captivating but I have my own concerns to balance, what I require is partnership not struggle and –

  (ALICE is staring over the garden at the figure of THE COMMON MAN, who is moving about in a massive overcoat.)

  ALICE: You! (He stops.) You! Yes! (He thinks, falters, turns to run.) Here, I said! (He stops, and surlily approaches her, his eyes on the ground.) That is my husband’s gown you’re wearing. (He shrugs.) No, do not shrug like that. It is his otter. AND DON’T SHRUG LIKE THAT. (BETRAND watches from the wall.) Get if off this minute. (He raises his eyes, cruelly. She meets them.) You only stare like that because you have no power. How it hurts. You put your anger in your stare. But I stare also. Get it off. (Pause. He does nothing. BERTRAND leans off the wall to threaten THE COMMON MAN.)

  THE COMMON

  MAN: He gave it me! (Pause.)

  ALICE: He couldn’t have…

  THE COMMON

  MAN: TRUE. (Pause.)

  ALICE: (Thinly.) He couldn’t have because I bought it for him as a wedding gift. I wrapped it in fine tissue and I laid it on our bed. He walked into the room and sunlight flashed over its collar. It is a Pope of coats, he said. It is a Tsar of garments, GET IF OFF.

  THE COMMON

  MAN: Who cares, it’s mine now –

  BERTRAND: GET OUT THE SHAFTING OTTER COAT. (THE COMMON MAN smiles, cruelly. He undoes the tapes. It falls to the ground. He is naked. ALICE turns her head very slightly.)

  ALICE: He has nothing underneath.

  THE COMMON

  MAN: (Triumphantly.) The Common Man.

  ALICE: Yes, I know you are.

  THE COMMON

  MAN: Steals where he can. But this wasn’t stolen.

  ALICE: I have my needs also. Cover yourself with your hands go quietly.

  THE COMMON

  MAN: ISN’T A COAT FOR WEARING? (Pause.)

  ALICE: No. (He goes, naked, over the garden. They watch him.)

  BERTRAND: You are inspiring. In your ordeal. Inspiring. (Her eyes remain on the diminishing figure.)

  ALICE: Of course he gave it to him. It’s obvious he did. (Pause. She looks at BERTRAND.) He gave him my love gift. (She shrugs.) So what? (Pause.)

  BERTRAND: You grow. You flourish, as if pain brought out some hidden self. May I say this? As if Sir Thomas, in his waning, brought out your subtler light.

  ALICE: Oh?

  BERTRAND: May I say this? May I? May I say that widowhood might be your chance? May I?

  ALICE: Say anything. Say what you like.

  BERTRAND: I hesitate, but –

  ALICE: Don’t hesitate –

  BERTRAND: Tremble, even –

  ALICE: Tremble, yes, but speak –

  BERTRAND: Weren’t you a widow always? (Pause.)

  ALICE: What are you saying?

  BERTRAND: I don’t know.

  ALICE: You do. (Pause.) You do know. Hold my hand if that will help. (She stretches out a hand to him.)

  BERTRAND: I can’t. (The hand remains.) IT IS IMPOSSIBLE, I CAN’T! (He seizes it.)

  SCENE 8

  HOLBEIN has completed the drawing. He holds it out, its back to CECILIA.

  CECILIA: I rarely look in mirrors. But this is not a mirror, is it? This is a picture of the soul?

  (He goes to turn it to her.) Don’t show me yet! (He stops.) Have you made me terrible?

  (He offers it to her, and she receives it without taking her eyes from his. Pause.) I think, if I like it, the reasons for doing so will be false.

  I think I shall like only what I believe myself to be, which is not what I am, of course. (Pause. Then she coolly tears the drawing across, first one way, then the other, her eyes remaining on his all the time. Then she swiftly departs. Pause.)

  HOLBEIN: I have never known such terrible self-consciousness. Such an agony of sensibility… (The eyes of THE DOCTOR open.)

  THE DOCTOR: She is unloved. Do you think she could bear to see she is unloved?

  SCENE 9

  A part of the garden. CECILIA is hurrying with a package. She encounters HENRY. She stares. She curtsies.

  KING HENRY: Cecilia More. Uncommonly sore. Bore to a bore. And cold to the core. (Pause.) I quote the common opinion. (On an inspiration, she holds out the package.)

  CECILIA: License my book!

  KING HENRY: Refer it to the censor.

  CECILIA: But you’re the monarch.

  KING HENRY: I don’t appoint officials so I may do their work for them.

  CECILIA: (Smiling.) No, stuff all that, just –

  KING HENRY: Authority is a pyramid, whose apex rests on functions no matter how obscure –

  CECILIA: You just put H there, on the cover.

  (He declines to take it.)

  KING HENRY: You are weak on constitutional affairs but what a mouth you have. It burns. It quarrels with the air. What book is it? I love brilliant women.

  CECILIA: Mine.

  KING HENRY: Speak some. I love learning from a woman’s mouth. Men detest intelligence in skirt but I swell on it. (Pause. With calculation.)

  CECILIA: Sum – in – caelo – magister – (Pause.)

  KING HENRY: In Heaven, are you? Why?

  CECILIA: Because you’re God. Why else? (She stares at him.) How fast I’m breathing, I – (She closes her eyes.)

  KING HENRY: Don’t come near me…

  CECILIA: No.

  KING HENRY: Because I’m savage.

  CECILIA: Yes.

  KING HENRY: So savage.

  CECILIA: I know, yes. (Pause.) How could I anyway, when you are murdering my father?

  KING HENRY: TRYING TO SAVE HIM BY FLIRTATION!

  CECILIA: No –

  KING HENRY: HENRY LIKES SKIRT SO YOU HAVE HEARD –

  CECILIA: No –

  KING HENRY: I HATE TO BE USED, I SQUIRM TO BE USED.

  CECILIA: No, I promise –

  KING HENRY: I WON’T HAVE MY SEX WRUNG FOR NOTHING, DEATH THAT WAY, SEE! NEVER! (She trembles, her eyes still closed. HENRY rests, also trembling, against a bench. Pause.) They use me, but I can chop skirt also… (Pause.)

  CECILIA: I want him dead. (He looks at her.) I never said those words before. Or thought them, either. But I want it. Do it, or I think I will become so shrunk and mad. If I’m not so already… (He looks at her a long time, then turns and retires the way he came, watched by her.)

  SCENE 10

  The rustic prison, where MORE lies on a canvas bed, THE SERVANT beside him.

  MORE: I tell you terrible things. These things I could not tell my wife.

  THE SERVANT: The servant has her uses.

  MORE: Promise you’re illiterate!

  THE SERVANT: I swear! The whole house knows it.

  (He looks at her.)

  MORE: I want to die. I passionately want it.

  THE SERVANT: That’s good, because –

  MORE: I have created myself, and I am sick with my creation.

  THE SERVANT: Create another. (He looks at her.)

  MORE: How?

  THE SERVANT: Pack a sandwich. Walk out the gate. Walk till you find a hag in a turf house. Live with her. Spit in the fire and kick the mangey mongrel. (Pause.)

  MORE: You see, even you, a criminal’s discard, thinks life’s a brimming basket!
Dip! Dip! If you do not like your life, pluck out another! THERE IS NO OTHER. (Pause.) I thought I was a hermit, and I thought I was a courtier, and ached to know which was my proper self. BOTH, came the answer. I thought I was a misanthrope. I thought I was a humanist, and ached to know which one was false. NEITHER, came the answer. (She stares at him.) Do you understand me? You look with unfathoming eyes, I could as well address the blanket. Don’t you see? I have yanked the tongues from hypocrites while writing poems on the brotherhood of man. BOTH! NEITHER! (Pause.) Which road, anyway? Which hag?

  (He laughs long, absurdly. The door of the prison opens and CECILIA enters. His eyes find her.)

  CECILIA: (Extending a hand.) Come and practise death with me. (He stares.) Come. Practise death with me…

  SCENE 11

  A wide sunken lawn in winter, snow covered. CECILIA and MORE at the edge. Their breath is visible in the cold air. MORE seizes CECILIA’s hands, and she leads him, staggering, over the snow.

  CECILIA: (Aside.) And it was Death that governed Brutopia, His imminence was everywhere proclaimed, so the old men, by their proximity to Him, had most respect, and the young were pitied and their shallowness bewailed…

  MORE and CECILIA, unbalanced, revolve in a wide, comic and pathetic promenade, MORE’s eyes fixed on the sky, silently. From a concealed place on the perimeter, BERTRAND sees. CECILIA leads MORE to the edge, and relinquishes him. She goes. He looks about him.

  MORE: Meg! (He staggers to his feet.) Alice! (MEG comes behind ALICE, who is watching from a different part, also concealed.)

  MEG: He’s calling you.

  ALICE: Yes. (She doesn’t move. MORE proclaims.)

  MORE: It’s perfectly true the life of the genius is beset with pains, it is true betrayal is his destiny, and what is destined must be loved, and is not bitter, no, not bitter, but DID ANYBODY WANT ME, oh, admire me, yes, lap my brains, but WANT ME, copy, yes, and quote, but WANT IN NAKEDNESS? IN DIRTY SKIN AND BONE? (He tears his shirt off, dragging it over his head.)

  ALICE: Oh, God…

  MORE: Who did? Or called me beautiful? NOT MY THOUGHTS NO, NOT MY HARMONIES, BUT THIS! (Pause. His eyes search.) ANYONE!

  BERTRAND: (Catching ALICE’s eye.) Get him in, shall I?

  ALICE: I will. (She appears on the perimeter.) Oh, there you are!

  MORE: SHUDDUP.

  ALICE: We were thinking cocoa would be –