by Tom Stoppard
(She settles down to drawing the diagram which is to be the third item in the
surviving portfolio.)
Lady Croom: Mr Noakes!
Noakes: Your ladyship -
Lady Croom: What have you done to me!
Noakes: Everything is satisfactory, I assure you. A little behind, to be sure, but my dam will be repaired within the month -
Lady Croom: (Banging the table) Hush! (In the silence, the steam engine thumps in the distance.) Can you hear, Mr Noakes?
Noakes: (Pleased and proud) The Improved Newcomen steam pump - the only one
in England!
Lady Croom: That is what I object to. If everybody had his own I would bear my
portion of the agony without complaint. But to have been singled out by the only
Improved Newcomen steam pump in England, this is hard, sir, this is not to be
borne.
Noakes: Your lady-
Lady Croom: And for what? My lake is drained to a ditch for no purpose I can
understand, unless it be that snipe and curlew have deserted three counties so that
they may be shot in our swamp. What you painted as forest is a mean plantation,
your greenery is mud, your waterfall is wet mud, and your mount is an opencast
mine for the mud that was lacking in the dell. (Pointing through the window.) What is that cowshed?
Noakes: The hermitage, my lady?
Lady Croom: It is a cowshed.
Noakes: Madam, it is, I assure you, a very habitable cottage,
85
properly founded and drained, two rooms and a closet under a slate roof and a stone
chimney -
Lady Croom: And who is to live in it?
Noakes: Why, the hermit.
Lady Croom: Where is he?
Noakes: Madam?
Lady Croom: You surely do not supply a hermitage without a hermit?
Noakes: Indeed, madam-
Lady Croom: Come, come, Mr Noakes. If I am promised a fountain I expect it to come with water. What hermits do you have?
Noakes: I have no hermits, my lady.
Lady Croom: Not one? I am speechless.
Noakes: I am sure a hermit can be found. One could advertise.
Lady Croom: Advertise?
Noakes: In the newspapers.
Lady Croom: But surely a hermit who takes a newspaper is not a hermit in whom
one can have complete confidence.
Noakes: I do not know what to suggest, my lady.
Septimus: Is there room for a piano?
Noakes: (Baffled) A piano?
Lady Croom: We are intruding here - this will not do, Mr Hodge. Evidently,
nothing is being learned. (To Noakes) Come along, sir!
Thomasina: Mr Noakes - bad news from Paris!
Noakes: Is it the Emperor Napoleon?
Thomasina: No. (She tears the page off her drawing block with her 'diagram' on
it.) It concerns your heat engine. Improve it as you will, you can never get out of it what you put in. It repays eleven pence in the shilling at most. The penny is for this
author's thoughts. (She gives the diagram to Septimus who looks at it.)
Noakes: (Baffled again) Thank you, my lady.
(Noakes goes out into the garden.)
Lady Croom: (To Septimus) Do you understand her?
Septimus: No.
Lady Croom: Then this business is over. I was married at
86
seventeen. Ce soir il faut qu'on parle francais,je te demande, Thomasina, as a courtesy to the Count. Wear your green velvet, please, I will send Briggs to do your
hair. Sixteen and eleven months . . .! (She follows Noakes out of view.)
Thomasina: Lord Byron was with a lady?
Septimus: Yes.
Thomasina: Huh!
(Now Septimus retrieves his book from Thomasina. He turns the pages, and also
continues to study Thomasina's diagram. He strokes the tortoise absently as he
reads, Thomasina takes up pencil and paper and starts to draw Septimus with
Plautus.)
Septimus: Why does it mean Mr Noakes's engine pays eleven pence in the shilling?
Where does he say it?
Thomasina: Nowhere. I noticed it by the way. I cannot remember now.
Septimus: Nor is he interested by determinism -
Thomasina: Oh . .. yes. Newton's equations go forwards and backwards, they do
not care which way. But the heat equation cares very much, it goes only one way.
That is the reason Mr Noakes's engine cannot give the power to drive Mr Noakes's
engine.
Septimus: Everybody knows that.
Thomasina: Yes, Septimus, they know it about engines!
Septimus: (Pause. He looks at his watch.) A quarter to twelve. For your essay this week, explicate your diagram.
Thomasina: I cannot. I do not know the mathematics.
Septimus: Without mathematics, then.
(Thomasina has continued to draw. She tears the top page from her drawing pad
and gives it to Septimus.)
Thomasina: There. I have made a drawing of you and Plautus.
Septimus: (Looking at it) Excellent likeness. Not so good of me. (Thomasina
laughs, and leaves the room. Augustus appears at the garden door. His manner
cautious and diffident. Septimus does not notice him for a moment. Septimus gathers his papers together.)
Augustus: Sir .. .
Septimus: My lord . . . ?
87
Augustus: I gave you offence, sir, and I am sorry for it.
Septimus: I took none, my lord, but you are kind to mention it.
Augustus: I would like to ask you a question, Mr Hodge. (Pause.) You have an
elder brother, I dare say, being a Septimus?
Septimus: Yes, my lord. He lives in London. He is the editor of a newspaper,
the Piccadilly Recreation. (Pause.) Was that your question?
(Augustus, evidently embarrassed about something, picks up the drawing of
Septimus.)
Augustus: No. Oh ... it is you? ... I would like to keep it. (Septimus inclines his
head in assent.) There are things a fellow cannot ask his friends. Carnal things. My sister has told me ... my sister believes such things as I cannot, I assure you, bring
myself to repeat.
Septimus: You must not repeat them, then. The walk between here and dinner will
suffice to put us straight, if we stroll by the garden. It is an easy business. And then
I must rely on you to correct your sister's state of ignorance.
(A commotion is heard outside - Bernard's loud voice in a sort of agony.)
Bernard: (outside the door) Oh no - no - no - oh, bloody hell! -
Augustus: Thank you, Mr Hodge, I will.
(Taking the drawing with him, Augustus allows himself to be shown out through the
garden door, and Septimus follows him. Bernard enters the room, through the door
Hannah left by. Valentine comes in with him, leaving the door open and they are
followed by Hannah who is holding the 'garden book'.)
Bernard: Oh, no - no -
Hannah: I'm sorry, Bernard.
Bernard: Fucked by a dahlia! Do you think? Is it open and shut? Am I fucked?
What does it really amount to? When all's said and done? Am I fucked? What
do you think, Valentine? Tell me the truth.
Valentine: You're fucked.
Bernard: Oh God! Does it mean that?
Hannah: Yes, Bernard, it does.
88
Bernard: I'm not sure. Show me where it says. I want to see it. No - read it - no,
wait. . . (Bernard sits at the table. He prepares to listen as though listening were an
oriental art.) Right.
Hannah: (Reading) 'October 1st, 1810. Today under the direction of Mr No
akes, a
parterre was dug on the south lawn and will be a handsome show next year, a
consolation for the picturesque catastrophe of the second and third distances. The
dahlia having propagated under glass with no ill effect from the sea voyage, is
named by Captain Brice 'Charity' for his bride, though the honour properly belongs
to the husband who exchanged beds with my dahlia, and an English summer for
everlasting night in the Indies.' (Pause.)
Bernard: Well it's so round the houses, isn't it? Who's to say what it means?
Hannah: (Patiently) It means that Ezra Chater of the Sidley Park connection is the
same Chater who described a dwarf dahlia in Martinique in 1810 and died there, of
a monkey bite.
Bernard: (Wildly) Ezra wasn't a botanist! He was a poet!
Hannah: He was not much of either, but he was both.
Valentine: It's not a disaster.
Bernard: Of course it's a disaster! I was on 'The Breakfast Hour'!
Valentine: It doesn't mean Byron didn't fight a duel, it only means Chater wasn't
killed in it.
Bernard: Oh, pull yourself together! - do you think I'd have been on 'The Breakfast
Hour' if Byron had missed!
Hannah: Calm down, Bernard. Valentine's right.
Bernard: (Grasping at straws) Do you think so? You mean the Piccadilly reviews?
Yes, two completely unknown Byron essays - and my discovery of the lines he
added to 'English Bards'. That counts for something.
Hannah: (Tactfully) Very possible - persuasive, indeed.
Bernard: Oh, bugger persuasive! I've proved Byron was here and as far as I'm
concerned he wrote those lines as sure as he shot that hare. If only I hadn't
somehow . . . made it all
89
about killing Chater. Why didn't you stop me?! It's bound to get out, you know -!
mean this - this gloss on my discovery - I mean how long do you think it'll be
before some botanical pedant blows the whistle on me?
Hannah: The day after tomorrow. A letter in The Times,
Bernard: You wouldn't.
Hannah: It's a dirty job but somebody -
Bernard: Darling. Sorry. Hannah-
Hannah: - and, after all, it is my discovery.
Bernard: Hannah.
Hannah: Bernard.
Bernard: Hannah.
Hannah: Oh, shut up. It'll be very short, very dry, absolutely gloat-free. Would you
rather it were one of your friends?
Bernard: (Fervently) Oh God, no!
Hannah: And then in your letter to The Times-
Bernard: Mine?
Hannah: Well, of course. Dignified congratulations to a colleague, in the language
of scholars, I trust.
Bernard: Oh, eat shit, you mean?
Hannah: Think of it as a breakthrough in dahlia studies.
(Chloe hurries in from the garden.)
Chloe: Why aren't you coming?! - Bernard! And you're not dressed! How long
have you been back?
(Bernard looks at her and then at Valentine and realizes for the first time that
Valentine is unusually dressed.)
Bernard: Why are you wearing those clothes?
Chloe: Do be quick! (She is already digging into the basket and producing odd
garments for Bernard.) Just put anything on. We're all being photographed. Except Hannah.
Hannah: I'll come and watch.
(Valentine and Chloe help Bernard into a decorative coat and fix a lace collar
round his neck.)
Chloe: (To Hannah) Mummy says have you got the theodolite?
Valentine: What are you supposed to be, Chlo? Bo-Peep?
Chloe: Jane Austen!
90
Valentine: Of course.
Hannah: (To Chloe) Oh - it's in the hermitage! Sorry.
Bernard: I thought it wasn't till this evening. What photograph?
Chloe: The local paper of course - they always come before we start. We want a
good crowd of us - Gus looks gorgeous -
Bernard: (Aghast) The newspaper! (He grabs something like a bishop's mitre from the basket and pulls it down completely over his face.) (Muffled) I'm ready! (And he staggers out with Valentine and Chloe, followed by Hannah.
A light change to evening. The paper lanterns outside begin to glow. Piano music
from the next room.
Septimus enters with an oil lamp. He carries Thomasina's algebra primer, and also her essay on loose sheen. He settles down to read at the table. It is nearly dark
outside, despite the lanterns.
Thomasina enters, in a nightgown and barefoot, holding a candlestick. Her manner
is secretive and excited.)
Septimus: My lady! What is it?
Thomasina: Septimus! Shush! (She closes the door quietly.) Now is our chance!
Septimus: For what, dear God?
(She blows out the candle and puts the candlestick on the table.)
Thomasina: Do not act the innocent! Tomorrow I will be seventeen! (She kisses
Septimus on the mouth.) There!
Septimus: Dear Christ!
Thomasina: Now you must show me, you are paid in advance.
Septimus: (Understanding) Oh!
Thomasina: The Count plays for us, it is God-given! I cannot be seventeen and not
waltz.
Septimus: But your mother -
Thomasina: While she swoons, we can dance. The house is all abed. I heard the
Broadwood. Oh, Septimus, teach me now!
91
Septimus: Hush! I cannot now!
Thomasina: Indeed you can, and I am come barefoot so mind my toes.
Septimus: I cannot because it is not a waltz.
Thomasina: It is not?
Septimus: No, it is too slow for waltzing.
Thomasina: Oh! Then we will wait for him to play quickly.
Septimus: My lady -
Thomasina: Mr Hodge! (She takes a chair next to him and looks at his work.) Are you reading my essay? Why do you work here so late?
Septimus: To save my candles.
Thomasina: You have my old primer.
Septimus: It is mine again. You should not have written in it.
(She takes it, looks at the open page.)
Thomasina: It was a joke.
Septimus: It will make me mad as you promised. Sit over there. You will have us in
disgrace.
(Thomasina gets up and goes to the furthest chair.)
Thomasina: If mama comes I will tell her we only met to kiss, not to waltz.
Septimus: Silence or bed.
Thomasina: Silence!
(Septimus pours himself some more wine. He continues to read her essay. The
music changes to party music from the marquee. And there are fireworks - small
against the sky, distant flares of light like exploding meteors. Hannah enters. She
has dressed for the party. The difference is not, however, dramatic. She closes the
door and crosses to leave by the garden door. But as she gets there, Valentine is
entering. He has a glass of wine in his hand.)
Hannah: Oh . . .
(But Valentine merely brushes past her, intent on something, and half-drunk.)
Valentine: (To her) Got it!
(He goes straight to the table and roots about in what is now a
92
considerable mess of papers, books and objects. Hannah turns back, puzzled by his
manner. He finds what he has been looking for - the 'diagram'. Meanwhile,
Septimus reading Thomasina's essay, also studies the diagram. Septimus and
Valentine study the diagram doubled by time.)
Valentine: It's heat.
Hannah: Are you tight, Val?
; Valentine: It's a diagram of heat exchange.
Septimus: So, we are all doomed!
Thomasina: (Cheerfully) Yes.
Valentine: Like a steam engine, you see - (Hannah fills Septimus's glass from the
same decanter, and sips from it.) She didn't have the maths, not remotely. She saw
what things meant, way ahead, like seeing a picture.
Septimus: This is not science. This is story-telling.
Thomasina: Is it a waltz now?
Septimus: No.
(The music is still modern.)
Valentine: Like a film.
Hannah: What did she see?
Valentine: That you can't run the film backwards. Heat was the first thing which
didn't work that way. Not like Newton. A film of a pendulum, or a ball falling
through the air - backwards, it looks the same.
Hannah: The ball would be going the wrong way.
Valentine: You'd have to know that. But with heat - friction - a ball breaking a
window -
Hannah: Yes.
Valentine: It won't work backwards.
Hannah: Who thought it did?
Valentine: She saw why. You can put back the bits of glass but you can't collect up
the heat of the smash. It's gone.
Septimus: So the Improved Newtonian Universe must cease and grow cold. Dear
me.
93
Valentine: The heat goes into the mix.
(He gestures to indicate the air in the room, in the uni verse.)
Thomasina: Yes, we must hurry if we are going to dance.
Valentine: And everything is mixing the same way, all the time, irreversibly. . .
Septimus: Oh, we have time, I think.
Valentine: . . . till there's no time left. That's what time means.
Septimus: When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the meaning, we will
be alone, on an empty shore.
Thomasina: Then we will dance. Is this a waltz?
Septimus: It will serve. (He stands up.)
Thomasina: (Jumping up) Goody!
(Septimus takes her in his arms carefully and the waltz lesson, to the music from
the marquee, begins. Bernard, in unconvincing Regency dress, enters carrying a
bottle.)
Bernard: Don't mind me, I left my jacket...
(He heads for the area of the wicker basket.)
Valentine: Are you leaving?
(Bernard is stripping off his period coat. He is wearing his own trousers, tucked
into knee socks and his own shirt.)
Bernard: Yes, I'm afraid so.
Hannah: What's up, Bernard?
Bernard: Nothing I can go into -
Valentine: Should I go?
Bernard: No, I'm going!
