Brian Friel Plays 2

by Brian Friel

Maggie How are there –? Of course – the soldier up the sycamore! Not a great larder but a nice challenge to someone like myself. Right. My suggestion is … Eggs Ballybeg; in other words scrambled and served on lightly toasted caraway-seed bread. Followed – for those so inclined – by one magnificent Wild Woodbine. Everybody happy?

  Chris Excellent, Margaret!

  Maggie Settled.

  Rose has taken off her shoe and is examining it carefully.

  Agnes We’ll go and pick some more bilberries next Sunday, Rosie.

  Rose All right.

  Agnes Remember the cans you had? You had your own two cans – remember? Did you take them with you?

  Rose Where to, Aggie?

  Agnes Into the town … wherever you went …

  Rose I hid them at the quarry behind a stone wall. They’re safe there. I’ll go back and pick them up later this evening. Does anybody know where my overall is?

  Maggie It’s lying across your bed. And you’d need to bring some turf in, Rosie.

  Rose I’ll change first, Maggie.

  Maggie Be quick about it.

  Chris How many pieces of toast do you want?

  Maggie All that loaf. And go easy on the butter – that’s all we have. Now. Parsley. And just a whiff of basil. I don’t want you to be too optimistic, girls, but you should know I feel very creative this evening.

  Rose moves towards the bedroom door. Just as she is about to exit:

  Kate I want to know where you have been, Rose.

  Rose stops. Pause.

  You have been gone for the entire afternoon. I want you to tell me where you’ve been.

  Agnes Later, Kate; after –

  Kate Where have you been for the past three hours?

  Rose (inaudible) Lough Anna.

  Kate I didn’t hear what you said, Rose.

  Rose Lough Anna.

  Chris Kate, just leave –

  Kate You walked from the quarry to Lough Anna?

  Rose Yes.

  Kate Did you meet somebody there?

  Rose Yes.

  Kate Had you arranged to meet somebody there?

  Rose I had arranged to meet Danny Bradley there, Kate. He brought me out in his father’s blue boat, (to Maggie) I don’t want anything to eat, Maggie. I brought a bottle of milk and a packet of chocolate biscuits with me and we had a picnic on the lake. (to Agnes) Then the two of us went up through the back hills. He showed me what was left of the Lughnasa fires. A few of them are still burning away up there. (to Kate) We passed young Sweeney’s house – you know, the boy who got burned, the boy you said was dying. Well, he’s on the mend, Danny says. His legs will be scarred but he’ll be all right. (to all) It’s a very peaceful place up there. There was nobody there but Danny and me. (to Agnes) He calls me his Rosebud, Aggie. I told you that before, didn’t I? (to all) Then he walked me down as far as the workhouse gate and I came on home by myself. (to Kate) And that’s all I’m going to tell you. (to all) That’s all any of you are going to hear.

  She exits, her shoes in one hand, the poppy in the other. Michael enters.

  Kate What has happened to this house? Mother of God, will we ever be able to lift our heads ever again …?

  Pause.

  Michael The following night Vera McLaughlin arrived and explained to Agnes and Rose why she couldn’t buy their hand-knitted gloves any more. Most of her home knitters were already working in the new factory and she advised Agnes and Rose to apply immediately. The Industrial Revolution had finally caught up with Ballybeg.

  They didn’t apply, even though they had no other means of making a living, and they never discussed their situation with their sisters. Perhaps Agnes made the decision for both of them because she knew Rose wouldn’t have got work there anyway. Or perhaps, as Kate believed, because Agnes was too notionate to work in a factory. Or perhaps the two of them just wanted … away.

  Anyhow, on my first day back at school, when we came into the kitchen for breakfast, there was a note propped up against the milk jug: ‘We are gone for good. This is best for all. Do not try to find us.’ It was written in Agnes’s resolute hand.

  Of course they did try to find them. So did the police. So did our neighbours who had a huge network of relatives all over England and America. But they had vanished without trace. And by the time I tracked them down – twenty-five years later, in London – Agnes was dead and Rose was dying in a hospice for the destitute in Southwark.

  The scraps of information I gathered about their lives during those missing years were too sparse to be coherent. They had moved about a lot. They had worked as cleaning women in public toilets, in factories, in the Underground. Then, when Rose could no longer get work, Agnes tried to support them both – but couldn’t. From then on, I gathered, they gave up. They took to drink; slept in parks, in doorways, on the Thames Embankment. Then Agnes died of exposure. And two days after I found Rose in that grim hospice – she didn’t recognize me, of course – she died in her sleep.

  Father Jack’s health improved quickly and he soon recovered his full vocabulary and all his old bounce and vigour. But he didn’t say Mass that following Monday. In fact he never said Mass again. And the neighbours stopped enquiring about him. And his name never again appeared in the Donegal Enquirer. And of course there was never a civic reception with bands and flags and speeches.

  But he never lost his determination to return to Uganda and he still talked passionately about his life with the lepers there. And each new anecdote contained more revelations. And each new revelation startled – shocked – stunned poor Aunt Kate. Until finally she hit on a phrase that appeased her: ‘his own distinctive spiritual search’. ‘Leaping around a fire and offering a little hen to Uka or Ito or whoever is not religion as I was taught it and indeed know it,’ she would say with a defiant toss of her head. ‘But then Jack must make his own distinctive search.’ And when he died suddenly of a heart attack – within a year of his homecoming, on the very eve of the following Lá Lughnasa – my mother and Maggie mourned him sorely. But for months Kate was inconsolable.

  My father sailed for Spain that Saturday. The last I saw of him was dancing down the lane in imitation of Fred Astaire, swinging his walking stick, Uncle Jack’s ceremonial tricorn at a jaunty angle over his left eye. When he got to the main road he stopped and turned and with both hands blew a dozen theatrical kisses back to Mother and me.

  He was wounded in Barcelona – he fell off his motor bike – so that for the rest of his life he walked with a limp. The limp wasn’t disabling but it put an end to his dancing days; and that really distressed him. Even the role of maimed veteran, which he loved, could never compensate for that.

  He still visited us occasionally, perhaps once a year. Each time he was on the brink of a new career. And each time he proposed to Mother and promised me a new bike. Then the war came in 1939; his visits became more infrequent; and finally he stopped coming altogether.

  Sometime in the mid-fifties I got a letter from a tiny village in the south of Wales; a curt note from a young man of my own age and also called Michael Evans. He had found my name and address among the belongings of his father, Gerry Evans. He introduced himself as my half-brother and he wanted me to know that Gerry Evans, the father we shared, had died peacefully in the family home the previous week. Throughout his final illness he was nursed by his wife and his three grown children who all lived and worked in the village.

  My mother never knew of that letter. I decided to tell her – decided not to – vacillated for years as my father would have done; and eventually, rightly or wrongly, kept the information to myself.

  Maggie, Chris, Kate and Agnes now resume their tasks.

  Chris Well, at least that’s good news.

  Maggie What’s that?

  Chris That the young Sweeney boy from the back hills is going to live.

  Maggie Good news indeed.

  Chris goes to the door and calls:

  Chris Michael! Where are you? We need some turf brough
t in!

  She now goes outside and calls up to Gerry. Michael exits.

  Are you still up there?

  Gerry (off) Don’t stand there. I might fall on top of you.

  Chris Have you any idea what you’re doing?

  Gerry (off) Come on up here to me.

  Chris I’m sure I will.

  Gerry (off) We never made love on top of a sycamore tree.

  She looks quickly around: did her sisters hear that?

  Chris If you fall and break your neck it’ll be too good for you. (She goes inside.) Nobody can vanish quicker than that Michael fellow when you need him.

  Maggie (to Agnes) I had a brilliant idea when I woke up this morning, Aggie. I thought to myself: what is it that Ballybeg badly needs and that Ballybeg hasn’t got?

  Agnes A riddle. Give up.

  Maggie A dressmaker! So why doesn’t Agnes Mundy who has such clever hands, why doesn’t she dressmake?

  Agnes Clever hands!

  Maggie looks around for her cigarettes.

  Maggie She’d get a pile of work. They’d come to her from far and wide. She’d make a fortune.

  Agnes Some fortune in Ballybeg.

  Maggie And not only would the work be interesting but she wouldn’t be ruining her eyes staring at grey wool eight hours a day. Did you notice how Rosie squints at things now? It’s the job for you, Aggie; I’m telling you. Ah, holy God, girls, don’t tell me I’m out of fags! How could that have happened?

  Chris goes to the mantelpiece and produces a single cigarette.

  Chrissie, you are one genius. Look, Kate. (scowls) Misery. (Lights cigarette.) Happiness! Want a drag?

  Kate What’s keeping those wonderful Eggs Ballybeg?

  Maggie If I had to choose between one Wild Woodbine and a man of – say – fifty-two – widower – plump, what would I do, Kate? I’d take fatso, wouldn’t I? God, I really am getting desperate.

  Jack enters through the garden.

  Maybe I should go to Ryanga with you, Jack.

  Jack I know you won’t but I know you’d love it.

  Maggie Could you guarantee a man for each of us?

  Jack I couldn’t promise four men but I should be able to get one husband for all of you.

  Maggie Would we settle for that?

  Chris One between the four of us?

  Jack That’s our system and it works very well. One of you would be his principal wife and live with him in his largest hut –

  Maggie That’d be you, Kate.

  Kate Stop that, Maggie!

  Jack And the other three of you he’d keep in his enclosure. It would be like living on the same small farm.

  Maggie Snug enough, girls, isn’t it? (to Jack) And what would be – what sort of duties would we have?

  Jack Cooking, sewing, helping with the crops, washing – the usual housekeeping tasks.

  Maggie Sure that’s what we do anyway.

  Jack And looking after his children.

  Maggie That he’d have by Kate.

  Kate Maggie!

  Jack By all four of you! And what’s so efficient about that system is that the husband and his wives and his children make up a small commune where everybody helps everybody else and cares for them. I’m completely in favour of it.

  Kate It may be efficient and you may be in favour of it, Jack, but I don’t think it’s what Pope Pius XI considers to be the holy sacrament of matrimony. And it might be better for you if you paid just a bit more attention to our Holy Father and a bit less to the Great Goddess … Iggie.

  Music of ‘Anything Goes’ very softly on the radio.

  Chris Listen.

  Maggie And they have hens there, too, Jack?

  Jack We’re overrun with hens.

  Maggie Don’t dismiss it, girls. It has its points. Would you be game, Kate?

  Kate Would you give my head peace, Maggie.

  Chris Gerry has it going!

  Maggie Tell me this, Jack: what’s the Swahili for ‘tchook-tchook-tchook-tchook-tchook’?

  Jack You’d love the climate, too, Kate.

  Kate I’m not listening to a word you’re saying.

  Gerry runs on.

  Gerry Well? Any good?

  Chris Listen.

  Gerry Aha. Leave it to the expert.

  Jack I have something for you, Gerry.

  Gerry What’s that?

  Jack The plumed hat – the ceremonial hat – remember? We agreed to swap. With you in a second. (He goes to his bedroom.)

  Maggie Good work, Gerry.

  Gerry Thought it might be the aerial. That’s the end of your troubles. (Listens. Sings a line of the song.) Dance with me, Agnes.

  Agnes Have a bit of sense, Gerry Evans.

  Gerry Dance with me. Please. Come on.

  Maggie Dance with him, Aggie.

  Gerry (sings)

  ‘In olden times a glimpse of stocking

  Was looked on as something shocking –’

  Give me your hand.

  Maggie Go on, Aggie.

  Agnes Who wants to dance at this time of –

  Gerry pulls her to her feet and takes her in his arms.

  Gerry (sings)

  ‘… anything goes.

  Good authors, too, who once knew better words

  Now only use four-letter words

  Writing prose,

  Anything goes …’

  Bring up the sound. With style and with easy elegance they dance once around the kitchen and then out to the garden – Gerry singing the words directly to her face:

  ‘If driving fast cars you like,

  If low bars you like,

  If old hymns you like,

  If bare limbs you like,

  If Mae West you like,

  Or me undressed you like,

  Why, nobody will oppose.

  When ev’ry night, the set that’s smart is in-

  truding in nudist parties in

  Studios,

  Anything goes …’

  They are now in the far corner of the garden.

  You’re a great dancer, Aggie.

  Agnes No, I’m not.

  Gerry You’re a superb dancer.

  Agnes No, I’m not.

  Gerry You should be a professional dancer.

  Agnes Too late for that.

  Gerry You could teach dancing in Ballybeg.

  Agnes That’s all they need.

  Gerry Maybe it is!

  He bends down and kisses her on the forehead. All this is seen – but not heard – by Chris at the kitchen window. Immediately after this kiss Gerry bursts into song again, turns Agnes four or five times very rapidly and dances her back to the kitchen.

  There you are. Safe and sound.

  Maggie I wish to God I could dance like you, Aggie.

  Agnes I haven’t a breath.

  Gerry Doesn’t she dance elegantly?

  Maggie Always did, our Aggie.

  Gerry Unbelievable. Now, Chrissie – you and I.

  Chris (sharply) Not now. I wonder where Michael’s got to?

  Gerry Come on, Chrissie. Once round the floor.

  Chris Not now, I said. Are you thick?

  Maggie I’ll dance with you, Gerry! (She kicks her wellingtons off.) Do you want to see real class?

  Gerry Certainly do, Maggie.

  Maggie Stand back there, girls. Shirley Temple needs a lot of space.

  Gerry Wow-wow-wow-wow!

  Maggie Hold me close, Gerry. The old legs aren’t too reliable.

  She and Gerry sing and dance:

  ‘In olden times a glimpse of stocking

  Was looked on as something shocking

  But now –’

  Chris suddenly turns the radio off.

  Chris Sick of that damned thing.

  Gerry What happened?

  Maggie What are you at there, Chrissie?

  Chris We’re only wasting the battery and we won’t get a new one until the weekend.

  Maggie It wasn’t to be, Gerry. But there’ll be a
nother day.

  Gerry That’s a promise, Maggie. (He goes to Chris at the radio.) Not a bad little set, that.

  Kate Peace, thanks be to God! D’you know what that thing has done? Killed all Christian conversation in this country.

  Chris (to Agnes, icily) Vera McLaughlin’s calling here tomorrow. She wants to talk to you and Rose.

  Agnes What about?

  Kate (quickly) I didn’t tell you, did I? – her daughter’s got engaged!

  Maggie Which of them?

  Kate ‘The harvest dance is going to be just supreme this year, Miss Mundy’ – that wee brat!

  Maggie Sophia. Is she not still at school?

  Kate Left last year. She’s fifteen. And the lucky man is sixteen.

  Maggie Holy God. We may pack it in, girls.

  Kate It’s indecent, I’m telling you. Fifteen and sixteen! Don’t tell me that’s not totally improper. It’s the poor mother I feel sorry for.

  Agnes What does she want to talk to us about?

  Chris (relenting) Something about wool. Didn’t sound important. She probably won’t call at all. (She turns the radio on again. No sound. To Maggie) Go ahead and dance, you two.

  Maggie Artistes like Margaret Mundy can’t perform on demand, Chrissie. We need to be in touch with other forces first, don’t we, Gerry?

  Gerry Absolutely. Why is there no sound?

  Kate Maggie, are we never going to eat?

  Maggie Indeed we are – outside in the garden! Eggs Ballybeg al fresco. Lughnasa’s almost over, girls. There aren’t going to be many warm evenings left.

  Kate Good idea, Maggie.

  Agnes I’ll get the cups and plates.

  Gerry (with Chris at radio) Are you all right?

  Chris It’s not gone again, is it?

  Gerry Have I done something wrong?

  Chris I switched it on again – that’s all I did.

  Maggie Take out those chairs, Gerry.

  Gerry What about the table?

  Maggie We’ll just spread a cloth on the ground.

  Maggie exits with the cloth which she spreads in the middle of the garden. Gerry kisses Chris lightly on the back of the neck.

  Gerry At least we know it’s not the aerial.

  Chris According to you.

  Gerry And if it’s not the aerial the next thing to check is the ignition.

  Chris Ignition! Listen to that bluffer!