Brian Friel Plays 1

by Brian Friel

  TOM: A bit to the left.

  FRANK: Here?

  TOM: That’s the right.

  FRANK: It’s my left.

  TOM: No wonder you could never march!

  TINA: What about me?

  TOM: Fine where you are.

  MIRIAM: Not a word – the cap’s still over the lens.

  HELEN: It’s not!

  TOM: You’re quite right – so it is! (Takes it off.) That’ll be a help.

  MIRIAM: Maybe – maybe.

  TOM: A little tighter in, Helen, please. Good, good. At ease, Frank.

  FRANK: I am at ease.

  TOM: Are you? Look at me. Big smile, everybody.

  (The group is facing almost straight out. ANNA in a long dressing – gown comes downstairs and into the living – room. She looks around.)

  ANNA: (Softly) Frank? (She looks out, sees the photographing, stands watching.)

  TINA: Cheese – isn’t that what you say?

  HELEN: Noblesse oblige.

  MIRIAM: Oh, very posh. Is that a London one?

  ANNA: (More loudly) Frank!

  FRANK: Come on, Tom. Get a move on.

  SIR: ‘She calls Frank twice. But Frank does not hear her. And she goes back to her room and cries.’

  TOM: Little tighter in, love.

  TINA: Me?

  TOM: No, Miriam. Tight in – perfect!

  ANNA: Look at them – tight – tight – tight – arms around one another – smiling. No, I won’t go back to my room and cry. I’ll tell them now!

  (SIR gets quickly to his feet and goes to ANNA)

  SIR: They won’t hear you now.

  ANNA: They will! They will!

  SIR: Anna, believe me –

  (She rushes away from him and out to the garden where she stands facing the group. SIR looks on patiently. She is almost hysterical.)

  TOM: Frank.

  FRANK: What?

  TOM: This way.

  FRANK: I’m glaring at you, for God’s sake!

  TOM: That’s what I’m saying. Will you stop it!

  Now – terrific – Commandant Butler and his beautiful family.

  MIRIAM: He really means me.

  ANNA: (Trying to control herself) Listen to me, all of you. You, too, Chaplain.

  MIRIAM: No film in the camera.

  TINA: I’m going to laugh.

  ANNA: When you were away, all those months I was left alone here –

  TOM: Great – don’t move – terrific. And another.

  ANNA: Listen to me, Frank!

  FRANK: (To TOM) No, no, no, no.

  TOM: One more – just one more – that’s all.

  ANNA: I had an affair with your son, Ben – with your brother, Ben! An affair – an affair – d’you hear!

  TOM: Even closer together.

  MIRIAM: Thanks be to God Charlie isn’t watching this caper.

  ANNA: An affair, d’you hear – out of loneliness, out of despair, out of hate! And everybody in the camp knows – everybody except the Butlers!

  (TINA can control her laughter no longer – she explodes.)

  TOM: Terrific, Tina! Everybody join in!

  (The laughter is infectious. They laugh so much we can hardly hear what they are saying.)

  MIRIAM: Noblesse oblige!

  TOM: Lovely, Frank.

  HELEN: Is there really no film in it?

  TINA: Hold me up! Hold me up!

  TOM: (Clicking, clicking) Terrific, terrific! Stay where you are!

  (ANNA is staring at the others as if she had came out of a dream. SIR goes to her and takes her arm, leading her off.)

  SIR: I told you, didn’t I? ‘Frank does not hear her and she goes back to her room and cries.’

  ANNA: (Crying) It wasn’t despair.

  SIR: I know.

  ANNA: And it wasn’t hate – no, not hate for him.

  SIR: You’ll tell us later.

  ANNA: It wasn’t even loneliness –

  SIR: Later – later – you’ll do it later exactly as it’s here. Now go back to your room.

  ANNA: I’m sorry.

  SIR: No harm done.

  ANNA: Did I mess it all up?

  SIR: You shuffled the pages a bit – that’s all. But nothing’s changed.

  (Throughout this ANNA – SIR exchange the others have stood with frozen smiles. Now that ANNA has gone off they are released again.)

  TOM: There! Thank you – thank you – thank you.

  FRANK: Right – off we go, Tom. Let’s move – let’s move.

  (FRANK goes into the house and hall. The others drift into the living-room.)

  TOM: (Camera) Can I leave this here?

  TINA: I’ll look after it.

  HELEN: When will we get copies?

  MIRIAM: Have you never seen his pictures?

  FRANK: (Calling upstairs) Anna! We’re all set.

  MIRIAM: If you get a word with the Taoiseach, Father, tell him we’re still waiting for the sewage out at Killclooney.

  TOM: The very first thing I’ll say to him.

  MIRIAM: Just to give him an appetite.

  (ANNA comes downstairs. FRANK stands at the bottom with his hands outstretched.)

  FRANK: Beautiful.

  ANNA: I’m nervous, Frank.

  FRANK: You are beautiful. (Calls) Look! Everybody look! Look what I’m bringing to the reception!

  (The others move out to the hallway.)

  TOM: Terrific, Anna, terrific!

  FRANK: And look – look – (jewellery). And this, isn’t this elegant (Dress)?

  ANNA: Frank, I –

  FRANK: And what about that (hair)? Your handiwork, isn’t it, Helen?

  HELEN: You’re going to be late, Father.

  FRANK: Let them wait.

  ANNA: Please, Frank.

  FRANK: All in all – beautiful!

  ANNA: Please –

  FRANK: And she says she’s nervous! My darling, they’ll never have seen a sight like it in the mess – in any mess – in all their puny lives. (Briskly) We’re away. Don’t wait up for me.

  (BEN enters left. Very diffident, very hesitant, as if he might turn and run away. He looks into the living-room – but the others have now moved out to the front of the house.)

  TOM: We’re off. God bless.

  (They are all off stage now – except HELEN, who is standing at the front door.)

  FRANK: Are we taking my car or yours?

  TOM: It doesn’t matter – either.

  TINA: Take your own, Daddy.

  (The car moves off. We hear TINA and MIRIAM calling goodbyes. HELEN waves from the door. BEN moves closer to the home. HELEN turns and comes into the living-room.)

  SIR: ‘Benedict Butler – Ben – twenty – four years of age. Only son of Frank and Louise. His father wanted him to go for a commission, but his mother wanted him to be a doctor. Was a first – year medical student at University College, Dublin, when his mother died.’

  BEN: (Softly) Helen.

  (HELEN is standing looking at the photographs on the mantelpiece. She has her back to him.)

  SIR: ‘Shortly after her death his health broke down and he never went back to college. Now fully recovered; the only after-effect being a stammer which afflicts him occasionally when he is tense.’

  BEN: Helen.

  SIR: ‘As he looks into the living-room he imagines for a second that the figure at the mantelpiece is his mother.’

  BEN: She had her back to me. She didn’t hear me. And I stood outside in the garden and just watched her.

  Everything – her hair, her neck, her shoulders, the way she moved her arms – precisely as I remembered.

  (HELEN is now fingering the glass ornament.)

  Not a sound except the tap – tap – tap of her stick as she moved about. And for a second my heart expanded with an immense remembered love for her, and then at once shrank in terror of her. And then suddenly she turned and came towards the open door, and I saw it wasn’t – it

  w-w-w-wasn’t –

  (HELEN
has turned and has moved to the open door. She is startled to see a man staring in at her.)

  HELEN: Who –? (Loud) Ben!

  (He responds as if someone – a stranger – had called him.)

  BEN: (Quickly, confined) Yes? Yes?

  (HELEN runs out and throws her arms around him.)

  SIR: (Rising) Thank you. (Claps his hands twice to interrupt the action.) That’s fine – that’s fine. We’re moving along very nicely. (Sees that BEN and HELEN are still locked in an embrace.)

  SIR: Thank you.

  (They separate.)

  Yes, very nicely indeed.

  (As soon as he claps his hands, TINA, ANNA, FRANK and TOM appear.)

  Now, we’ll leave it there, I think, and move straight on to the point when –

  ANNA: ‘The point of no return’.

  SIR: The –?

  ANNA: It’s your phrase; you used it to Father Tom.

  SIR: ‘The point of no return’ – you’re quite right; so I did. Wasn’t that very histrionic of me! Oh, no; heavens, no. We’re nowhere near that – that decisive point yet.

  ANNA: Then let’s skip all the rest and go straight to it.

  SIR: You’ve already been naughty and attempted that, Anna!

  ANNA: Because it’s the essence of it all, isn’t it?

  SIR: Well, of course we can do that. But if we do, then we’re bypassing all that period when different decisions might have been made. Because at the point we’ve arrived at now, many different conclusions would have been possible if certain things had been said or done or left unsaid and undone. And at this point it did occur to many of you to say certain things or to omit saying certain things. And it is the memory of those lost possibilities that has exercised you endlessly since and has kept bringing you back here, isn’t that so?

  TOM: I’m sure he’s right.

  SIR: For example, Helen, you did think of spending the night with Charlie and Miriam.

  HELEN: We’ve already been over all that.

  SIR: We have indeed. And what you said was, ‘No, I’ll see it through.’

  HELEN: Yes, I stayed; and I saw it through; and I didn’t survive the test. And I’ve cracked up three times since. Now are you content?

  SIR: It’s your content we’re talking about. And Ben, at this point you still had time to join your friends on the salmon boat.

  BEN: Am I complaining? Am I?

  SIR: But the thought did occur to you. And they didn’t set out for – what? – another hour at least. So if you would like to explore that area of –

  BEN: Just stick to the f-f-f-facts.

  SIR: But that is a fact. And every time you get drunk, it’s the one thing you keep talking about.

  BEN: What happened happened. Leave it at that.

  SIR: As you wish. As for yourself, Anna, you could have resolved – sitting up at that top table in the mess – bored by the talk around you – you could still have resolved to live with your secret –

  ANNA: ‘Live with my secret’! For God’s sake!

  SIR: Be fair, Anna. You did think of it. In which case Frank’s life would have stayed reasonably intact. Oh, there were many, many options still open at this stage.

  TOM: I agree completely.

  (TOM is ignored.)

  TINA: For me, too?

  SIR: Not for you Tina, I’m afraid. You had no choice. That night you were faced with the inevitability of growing up. But that’s all – well, almost all.

  TOM: He’s absolutely right – about the rest of us, I mean.

  (No one listens to him, either here or later when he preaches.)

  SIR: As for yourself, Frank –

  (FRANK holds up his hands.)

  FRANK: You’re in command, Sir.

  SIR: At this point, indeed at any point, you could well have –

  FRANK: Please – please. I did what I had to do. There was no alternative for me. None. What I had to do was absolutely clear – cut. There was never any doubt in my mind.

  SIR: I’m afraid that’s true, Frank.

  FRANK: So carry on as you think best, Sir. I’m in your hands.

  SIR: Very well. Let’s proceed. Let’s leap ahead to – yes, several hours later.

  TOM: Our options are still open – he’s perfectly right.

  SIR: And for this episode I think I need only Helen and Ben and Tina.

  TOM: I’m not a sermonizing kind of fellow – good Lord, you know me better than that –

  (The others begin to drift away, each encased in his privacy.) – but I’ve got to speak what I know to be true, and that is that grace is available to each and every one of us if we just ask God for it –

  SIR: Yes – here we are.

  TOM: – which is really the Christian way of saying that our options are always open. Because that is the enormous gift that Christ purchased for us – the availability of choice and our freedom to choose.

  (He stops and looks around. SIR is poised with his finger on his ledger – he has all the time in the world. ANNA and FRANK have gone. HELEN, BEN and TINA have not heard a word he has said. His rally falters.)

  So that what I’m saying is – is that at this point there isn’t necessarily an incompatability between your attitude, Sir and my own –

  SIR: Good. ‘It is 1.45 a.m. and –’

  TOM: And, Sir.

  (SIR looks at him.)

  (Forced roguishness) Keep watching – you’re going to be surprised.

  (He leaves.)

  SIR: ‘It is 1.45 a.m. and Miriam and Charlie are at home, in bed. Charlie is sleeping. Miriam is staring at the ceiling. In the camp the reception is just over. Frank Butler and the Minister of Defence and the Chief of Staff are standing in a corner, conversing privately. Father Tom is in the car park, searching his pockets for car keys. Anna is standing alone at the mess waiting for Frank. In the Butler living – room –’

  (He breaks off because his eye catches CHARLIE, dressed as usual, tiptoeing across the stage. CHARLIE senses the silence, smiles at SIR, touches his forehead with his index finger.)

  CHARLIE: (Confidentially) Carry on – pay no attention to me – I’ll just nip over here – look on from that corner.

  (He begins walking again.)

  SIR: I’m sorry.

  CHARLIE: Fascinating to watch people – observe them, you know – just like in the courts – as long as you’re not involved yourself – how the other half lives sort of thing.

  SIR: It is 1.45 a.m. You arrived at 11.30 and left with Miriam.

  CHARLIE: Honest to God, you won’t hear a cheep out of –

  SIR: You’re at home in bed. You’re asleep and Miriam’s awake.

  CHARLIE: I know the reason for that! If she’s sleeping she can’t think. (Pause.) I mean to say – if she’s thinking she can’t sleep. (Begins moving.) Just for this next piece –

  SIR: Good night, Charlie.

  (CHARLIE Stops.)

  Good night.

  (CHARLIE looks at him, sees he is adamant, and leaves.)

  ‘In the Butler living-room the doors and windows are wide open because the night is sultry. Helen and Ben have a few drinks together.’

  I’ll leave it to yourselves.

  (He retires to his stool. The lights change. The lights from the living-room spill out to the garden. BEN and HELEN are slightly intoxicated and completely relaxed. This must not be played as a drunk scene, but lightly, full of laughter. BEN is striding about with a glass in his hand, a cigarette in his mouth. The diffident, uncertain BEN is suddenly voluble. The scene is played in almost constant movement – around the living-room, out in the garden, around the garden. Wherever BEN and HELEN go, TINA follows. But their accord, their intimacy, excludes her.)

  BEN: Follow behind me, keep me in sight, and I’ll lead you there.

  HELEN: I’m on your heels.

  BEN: Right. Do you happen to remember a place by the name of Carrickfad?

  HELEN: Carrickfad! Do I remember Carrickfad!

  BEN: Good. So you pass Carrickf
ad. Turn right at the old coastguard station. Pass the old lime kiln. Pass the old rectory.

  HELEN: Ruins – ruins – ruins!

  BEN: Cross the wooden bridge and straight down that track until you come to the ring fort –

  HELEN: On your left when you’re facing the sea.

  BEN: Turn left there, carry on for three-quarters of a mile until you come to the sand dunes –

  HELEN: In Culhame.

  BEN: Culhame is correct. But you have still to find my hermitage. Now, when you get to the foot of the sand hills, you stop, face north-north-west and look straight ahead; and if you’ve very good eyesight you’ll see rising out of the bent the roof of a little blue caravan.

  HELEN: (To TINA) ‘A secret place’, he says!

  BEN: And there I can be consulted any morning between the hours of nine and eleven, except on those occasions when I’m off lecturing.

  (He goes out to the garden. HELEN follows. Then TINA.)

  HELEN: Secret! I could make my way there now – in the dark!

  TINA: I was never there.

  HELEN: Didn’t we spend every Sunday in the summer sliding down those same dunes!

  TINA: Had you great fun?

  BEN: And when I’m travelling abroad I can usually be contacted at the nearest Salvation Army hostel. You know, we old army types – a great freemasonry. (Calls in the direction of camp.) My greetings, Chief of Staff, Adjutant General and Quartermaster General! God bless you, Number One Army Band!

  HELEN: They’ve left hours ago, clown!

  BEN: And warmest wishes to you, magazine, parade square and flagpole!

  HELEN: D’you remember the day the two of us climbed up on to the roof of the old coastguard station?

  BEN: A mad, mad pair!

  TINA: Was Miriam with you?

  BEN: Mad!

  HELEN: She went to the top of the walls but didn’t go up on to the roof.

  TINA: And what happened?

  HELEN: (To BEN) Tell her what happened!

  BEN: What happened was that we were stuck up there for six hours.

  HELEN: Right!

  BEN: The pair of us clinging to two charred rafters.

  HELEN: Remember them groaning!

  BEN: Rigid with fright – couldn’t move either forward or back in case they’d snap.

  HELEN: Mother calling up, ‘Don’t wriggle, Ben. Don’t wriggle!’

  BEN: I was shaking with cold. And if I opened my eyes I could see Father directly below me. And cute enough, I remember thinking: if the rafter does snap, he’ll break my fall.