Brian Friel Plays 1

by Brian Friel

  And I’m still only getting over all that when this copper comes up here one morning while I’m shaving and I opens the door and he asks me my name and I tell him and then he says I’m to go to Paddington with him rightaway to …

  (He stops suddenly and stares for a long time at the audience. Then:–) Tell you what – why don’t I go back twelve months and tell you first about that night in Ballybeg? Why don’t I do that? Why not? (He gets another bottle, opens it, pours it.) It was the last day of August and we crossed from Stranraer to Larne and drove through the night to County Donegal. And there we got lodgings in a pub, a lounge bar, really, outside a village called Ballybeg, not far from Donegal Town.

  (He takes a drink and leaves the glass down. Pause.) You see that night in that pub in Ballybeg? You know how I spent that night? I spent the whole of that night just watching them. Mr and Mrs Frank Hardy. Side by side. Together in Ireland. At home in Ireland. Easy; relaxed; chatting; laughing. And it was like as if I was seeing them for the first time in years and years – no! not seeing them but remembering them Funny thing that, wasn’t it? I’m not saying they were strangers to me – strangers! I mean, Frank and Gracie, how could they be strangers to me! – but it was like as if I was seeing them as they were once, as they might have been all the time – like if there was never none of the bitterness and the fighting and the wettings and the bloody van and the smell of the primus stove and the bills and the booze and the dirty halls and that hassle that we never seemed to be able to rise above. Like away from all that, all that stuff cut out, this is what they could be.

  And there they were, the centre of that big circle round that big lounge, everybody wanting to talk to them, them talking to everybody, now and then exchanging an odd private word between themselves, now and then even touching each other very easy and very casual.

  And she was sitting forward in this armchair. And she was all animation and having a word with everybody and laughing all the time. And she was wearing this red dress. And her hair it was tied back with a black ribbon. And how can I tell you how fantastic she looked?

  And then sometime around midnight someone said, ‘Why don’t you sing us a song, Gracie?’ And as natural as you like, as if she done it every day of the week, she stood up and she sang an Irish song called ‘Believe me if all those endearing young charms/Which I gaze on so fondly today’ – Christ, I don’t mean that’s the title; that’s the whole first verse for Christ’s sake. And it wasn’t that she was a sensational singer – no, no, she wasn’t. I mean she had this kind of very light, wavery kind of voice – you know, like the voice of a kid of ten or eleven. But she stands up there in that Irish pub, in that red dress and with her hair all back from her face; and she’s looking at him as she’s singing; and we’re all looking at her; and the song – it sort of comes out of her very simple and very sweet, like in a way not as if she’s performing but as if the song’s just sort of rising out of her by itself. And I’m sitting there just outside the circle, sitting there very quiet, very still. And I’m saying to myself. ‘O Jesus, Teddy boy … Oh my Jesus … What are you going to do?’

  And then I looks over at Frank – I mean I just happen to look over, you know the way you do – and there he is, gazing across at me. And the way he’s gazing at me and the look he has on his face is exactly the way he looks into somebody he knows he’s going to cure. I don’t know – it’s a hard thing to explain if you’ve never seen it. It’s a very serious look and it’s a very compassionate look. It’s a look that says two things. It says: No need to speak – I know exactly what the trouble is. And at the same time it says: I am now going to cure you of that trouble. That’s the look he gave me. He held me in that look for – what? – thirty seconds. And then he turned away from me and looked at her – sort of directed his look towards her so that I had to look at her too. And suddenly she is this terrific woman that of course I love very much, married to this man that I love very much – love maybe even more. But that’s all. Nothing more. That’s all. And that’s enough.

  And for the first time in twenty years I was so content – so content, dear heart, do you know what I done? I got drunk in celebration – slowly, deliberately, happily slewed! And someone must have carried me upstairs to bed because the next thing I know Gracie’s hammering on my chest and shouting and sobbing, ‘Get up, Teddy! Get up! Something terrible has happened! Something horrible!’

  (Lang pause as he goes and gets another beer.)

  But I was telling you about the poster and how it’s lying on the street outside Gracie’s digs. That’s it. How I’ve just come from Paddington and how the copper he’s given me her address. That’s right – I’ve told you all that. Or to go back to the morning of that same day – twelve months exactly after that night in Ballybeg.

  Okay. I’m shaving. Knock at the door. This copper. Asks me my name. I tell him. Asks me to come with him to the morgue in Paddington to identify a body. What body? Body of a lady. And I say what lady? And he says a Mrs Grace Hardy. And I say come off it, she’s in Ireland, that’s where I left her. And he says you must be mistaken, she’s been in London for the past four months, living in digs in number 27 Limewood Avenue. Limewood Avenue! I mean this here is Limewood Grove! Limewood Avenue’s just four streets away. And I say she’s there now, is she? And he says no, she’s dead, she’s in the morgue. And I say you must be wrong, copper. And he says no mistake, she’s dead, from an overdose of sleeping-tablets, and would I come with him please and make a formal identification.

  So the copper he brought me in a van to Paddington – you know, just like our van; only his van I’m sure it’s taxed and insured. But it’s the same inside: two seats in the front, me driving, her beside me, and Frank in the back all hunched up with the bottle between his legs. And there she was. Gracie all right. Looking very beautiful. Oh my dear I can’t tell you how beautiful she looked.

  And the copper he said, ‘Is that Grace Hardy?’ ‘It is,’ I said. ‘Did you know her well?’ ‘Oh, yes,’ I said, ‘a professional relationship going back twenty-odd years.’ ’Cause that’s what it was, wasn’t it, a professional relationship? Well it certainly wasn’t nothing more than that, I mean, was it?

  (He stands for some seconds just looking at the audience. Then he does not see them any more. He sits on his chair and puts on the record. After the first few lines fade rapidly to black.)

  PART FOUR

  FRANK

  FRANK

  The poster is gone. The set is empty except for the single chair across which lies Frank’s coat exactly as he left it in Part One.

  We discover FRANK standing down stage left, where we left him.

  In this final section FRANK is slightly less aloof, not quite as detached as in Part One. To describe him now as agitated would be a gross exaggeration. But there should be tenuous evidence of a slightly heightened pulse-rate, of something approximating to excitement in him, perhaps in the way his mind leaps without apparent connection from thought to thought; and his physical movements are just a shade sharper.

  FRANK: (Eyes shut)

  Aberarder, Kinlochbervie,

  Aberayron, Kinlochbervie,

  Invergordon, Kinlochbervie … in Sutherland,

  in the north of Scotland …

  (He opens his eyes. A very brief pause. Then recovering quickly)

  But I’ve told you all that, haven’t I? – how we were holidaying in Kinlochbervie when I got word that my mother had died? Yes, of course I have. I’ve told you all that. (Begins moving.) A picturesque little place, very quiet, very beautiful, looking across to the Isle of Lewis … about as far north as you can go in … in Scotland …

  (He keeps moving. As he does he searches his pockets. Produces a newspaper clipping, very tattered, very faded.)

  I carried this around with me for years. A clipping from the West Glamorgan Chronicle. ‘A truly remarkable event took place in the old Methodist church in Llanblethian on the night of December 21st last when an itinerant Irish faith hea
ler called Francis Harding …’ For some reason they never seemed to – (He shrugs in dismissal) ‘… cured ten local people of a variety of complaints ranging from blindness to polio. Whether these very astonishing cures were effected by autosuggestion or whether Mr Harding is indeed the possessor of some extra-terrestrial power …’ Nice word that. ‘… we are not as yet in a position to adjudicate. But our preliminary investigations would indicate that something of highly unusual proportions took place that night in Llanblethian.’

  ‘Unusual proportions’ … (Short laugh.)

  Never knew why I kept it for so long. Its testimony? I don’t think so. Its reassurance? No, not that. Maybe, I think … maybe just as an identification. Yes, I think that’s why I kept it. It identified me – even though it got my name wrong.

  Yes, that was a strange night. One of those rare nights when I could – when I could have moved mountains. Ten people – one after the other. And only one of them came back to thank me – an old farmer who was lame. I remember saying to Gracie the next day, ‘Where are the other nine?’ – in fun, of course; of course in fun. But she chose to misunderstand me and that led to another row.

  Yes; carried it for years; until we came back to Ireland. And that night in that pub in Ballybeg I crumpled it up (He does this now) and threw it away.

  I never met her father, the judge. Shortly after Gracie and I ran off together, he wrote me a letter; but I never met him. He said in it – the only part I remember – he used the phrase ‘implicating my only child in your career of chicanery’. And I remember being angry and throwing the letter to her; and I remember her reading that line aloud and collapsing on the bed with laughing and kicking her heels in the air and repeating the phrase over and over again – I suppose to demonstrate her absolute loyalty to me. And I remember thinking how young she did look and how cruel her laughter at him was. Because by then my anger against him had died and I had some envy of the man who could use the word ‘chicanery’ with such confidence.

  I would have liked to have had a child. But she was barren. And anyhow the life we led wouldn’t have been suitable. And he might have had the gift. And he might have handled it better than I did. I wouldn’t have asked for anything from him – love, affection, respect – nothing like that. But I would have got pleasure just in looking at him. Yes. A child would have been something. What is a piece of paper? Or those odd moments of awe, of gratitude, of adoration? Nothing, nothing, nothing …

  (Looking around) It was always like this – shabby, shabby, bleak, derelict. We never got that summons to Teddy’s royal palace; not even to a suburban drawing-room. And it would have been interesting to have been just once – not for the pretensions, no, no, but to discover was it possible in conditions other than these, just for the confirmation that this despair, this surrender wasn’t its own healing. Yes, that would have been interesting.

  And yet … and yet …

  (Suddenly, rapidly) Not for a second, not for a single second was I disarmed by the warmth and the camaraderie and the deference and the joviality and the joy and the effusion of that home-coming welcome that night in that pub in Ballybeg. No, not for a second. Of course I responded to it. Naturally I responded to it. And yes, the thought did cross my mind that at long last is there going to be – what? – a fulfilment, an integration, a full blossoming? Yes, that thought occurred to me. But the moment that boy Donal threatened me with his damned twisted finger, that illusion quickly vanished. And I knew, I knew instinctively why I was being hosted.

  Aberarder, Kinlochbervie,

  Aberayron, Kinlochbervie,

  Invergordon, Kinlochbervie …

  Where had we got to? Ah, yes – Teddy had been put to bed and Gracie had finished her housekeeping – I could hear her moving about upstairs; and the wedding guests had gone to get McGarvey. Only the landlord and myself in that huge, garish lounge.

  I walked around it for a time.

  I thought of Teddy asleep upstairs, at peace and reconciled at last. And I wondered had I held on to him out of selfishness, should I have attempted to release him years ago. But I thought – no; his passion was a sustaining one. And maybe, indeed, maybe I had impoverished him now.

  And I thought of Gracie’s mother and the one time we met, in Dublin, on her way back to hospital. We were in a restaurant together, the three of us, Gracie and she and I; and she never spoke until Gracie had gone off to pay the bill and then she said, ‘I suffer from nerves, you know,’ her face slightly averted from me but looking directly at me at the same time and smiling at me. I said I knew. I was afraid she was going to ask me for help. ‘What do you make of that?’ I said I was sure she would get better this time. ‘You know, there are worse things‚’ she said. I said I knew that. ‘Much, much worse,’ she went on and she was almost happy-looking now. ‘Look at her father – he is obsessed with order. That’s worse.’ I suppose so, I said. ‘And Grace – she wants devotion, and that’s worse still.’ ‘Is it?’ I asked. ‘And what do you want?’ And before I could answer, Gracie came back, and the smile vanished, and the head dropped. And that was all. No request for help. And I never heard her voice again.

  And I remembered – suddenly, for no reason at all – the day my father took me with him to the horse fair in Ballinasloe. And the only incident I remembered was that afternoon, in a pub. And a friend of my father’s, Eamon Boyle, was with us; and the two men were slightly drunk. And Boyle put his hand on my head and said to my father, ‘And what’s this young man going to be, Frank?’ And my father opened his mouth and laughed and said, ‘Be Jaysus, Boyle, it’ll be hard for him to beat his aul fella!’ And for the first time. I saw his mouth was filled with rotten teeth. And I remember being ashamed in case Boyle had seen them, too. Just a haphazard memory. Silly. Nothing to it. But for some reason it came back to me that night.

  And I thought of the first big row Grace and I had. I don’t know what it was about. But I know we were in Norfolk at the time, living in a converted byre. And she was kneeling in front of the grate, trying to kindle some wet timber; and I can’t remember what I said but I remembered her reply; and what she said was: ‘If you leave me, Frank, I’ll kill myself.’ And it wasn’t that she was demented – in fact she was almost calm, and smiling. But whatever way she looked straight at me, without fully facing me, I recognized then for the first time that there was more of her mother than her father in her; and I realized that I would have to be with her until the very end.

  (He walks up stage. Pause) I must have walked that floor for a couple of hours. And all the time the landlord never moved from behind the bar. He hadn’t spoken since the wedding guests left. He wouldn’t even look at me. I think he hated me. I know he did. I asked him for a last drink. Then he spoke in a rush: ‘Get to hell out of here before they come back, Mister! I know them fellas – savage bloody men. And there’s nothing you can do for McGarvey – nothing nobody can do for McGarvey. You know that.’ ‘I know that,’ I said. ‘But if you do nothing for him, Mister, they’ll kill you. I know them. They’ll kill you.’ ‘I know that, too,’ I said. But he rushed into a back room.

  I poured a drink for myself. A small Irish with an equal amount of water. The thought occurred to me to get drunk but I dismissed it as … inappropriate. Then I heard the car return and stop outside. A silence. Then Donal’s head round the door.

  ‘McGarvey’s here. But he’s shy about coming in. Come you out. They’re waiting for you out there in the yard.’

  ‘Coming,’ I said.

  (He puts on the hat and overcoat and buttons it slowly. When that is done he goes on.)

  There were two yards in fact. The first one I went into – it was immediately behind the lounge – it was a tiny area, partially covered, dark, cluttered with barrels and boxes of empties and smelling of stale beer and toilets. I knew that wasn’t it.

  Then I found a wooden door. I passed through that and there was the other, the large yard. And I knew it at once.

  I would like to describe that
yard to you.

  It was a September morning, just after dawn. The sky was orange and everything glowed with a soft radiance – as if each detail of the scene had its own self-awareness and was satisfied with itself.

  The yard was a perfect square enclosed by the back of the building and three high walls. And the wall facing me as I walked out was breached by an arched entrance.

  Almost in the centre of the square but a little to my left was a tractor and a trailer. In the back of the trailer were four implements: there was an axe and there was a crowbar and there was a mallet and there was a hay-fork. They were resting against the side of the trailer.

  In the corners facing me and within the walls were two mature birch trees and the wind was sufficient to move them.

  The ground was cobbled but pleasant to walk on because the cobbles were smooth with use.

  And I walked across that yard, over those worn cobbles, towards the arched entrance, because framed in it, you would think posed symmetrically, were the four wedding guests; and in front of them, in his wheelchair, McGarvey.

  The four looked … diminished in that dawn light; their faces whiter; their carnations chaste against the black suits. Ned was on the left of the line, Donal on the right, and the other two, whose names I never knew, between them.

  And McGarvey. Of course, McGarvey. More shrunken than I had thought. And younger. His hands folded patiently on his knees; his feet turned in, his head slightly to the side. A figure of infinite patience, of profound resignation, you would imagine. Not a hint of savagery. And Ned’s left hand protectively on his shoulder.

  And although I knew that nothing was going to happen, nothing at all, I walked across the yard towards them. And as I walked I became possessed of a strange and trembling intimation: that the whole corporeal world – the cobbles, the trees, the sky, those four malign implements – somehow they had shed their physical reality and had become mere imaginings, and that in all existence there was only myself and the wedding guests. And that intimation in turn gave way to a stronger sense: that even we had ceased to be physical and existed only in spirit, only in the need we had for each other.