The Peach Season

by Debra Oswald

  SHEENA drags KIERAN away, whispering to him sternly. KIERAN keeps smiling, eyes fixed on ZOE.

  CELIA enters with an armload of bedding.

  CELIA: [to ZOE] Ah, you’re awake, Sleeping Beauty. You still look a bit sleepy.

  ZOE: I thought, ‘I’ll close my eyes for one second’, then I flaked.

  CELIA: You worked hard this morning.

  ZOE: I jerked awake. Realised I’d dribbled a bit on the couch… errgh.

  CELIA: Errgh, yeah. I hate that feeling. [To KIERAN] How are you getting on?

  KIERAN: Heaps good. Tasted a sample of your peaches. Awesome.

  CELIA: Thanks. Kieran, this is my daughter—

  KIERAN: Zoe.

  The way KIERAN says her name makes ZOE start.

  ZOE: We—uh—met a second ago.

  CELIA: Oh. Right. Great.

  DOROTHY: [handing CELIA the picking bag] I can’t move the bloody bastard strap.

  CELIA: It’s tricky, this one. [To KIERAN and SHEENA] Can I show you how we use these?

  While DOROTHY addresses the audience, CELIA demonstrates to KIERAN and SHEENA how to fill a picking bag with peaches, then release the bottom of the cloth bag so the peaches roll gently into a bin. ZOE makes a show of being busy with something but she sneaks looks at KIERAN.

  DOROTHY: [to the audience] When Celia came to this farm with baby Zoe, the story went whoosh around the district about Celia’s husband. He was buying milk at a service station—this is in the city, before Celia came here, when Celia was pregnant with Zoe. There was a robbery at the service station. With a gun. Celia’s husband, standing by the fridges, was killed. So. Celia bought this farm. People around here thought she was crazy. ‘She can’t run the place on her own.’ But I saw Celia was a strong woman. Robust.

  JOE enters.

  JOE: Zoe. G’day. Didn’t see you there. All done with school for the year?

  ZOE: Yep. Eight weeks off. They design the school terms around the picking season, so I’m here and Mum can work me like a slave.

  CELIA pretends to lash ZOE who cowers like a beaten slave. ZOE loses her balance, laughs. CELIA catches her fall.

  JOE: [to DOROTHY] I’ll drop by again this week. So if there’s anything you want from town—

  DOROTHY: I say again—you don’t have to come out here and check on me.

  JOE exchanges a look with CELIA—both of them are used to DOROTHY. DOROTHY sidles across to KIERAN and SHEENA and in a whisper designed to be audible:

  He would do better to be checking on his marriage.

  CELIA: How’s Fiona?

  JOE: Good, thanks. Yeah, she’s powering along.

  DOROTHY: [to KIERAN and SHEENA] Fiona is the mean-spirited harpy who trapped my son in a marriage with no joy. And who has turned his two children into nasty little snobs who don’t respect their own father.

  JOE: [to CELIA] I got those photos printed up for you.

  JOE and CELIA move away from the others to get the photos out of JOE’s suit coat.

  Snaps from Zoe’s sixteenth.

  CELIA flips through the photos.

  CELIA: Thanks for these. Oh—Zoe looks beautiful in this one.

  JOE: You both do.

  CELIA: Oh, no.

  JOE: Yes.

  CELIA laughs, embarrassed.

  CELIA: You know, I’ve got photos your dad took of us years ago—me with Zoe in the baby backpack.

  She watches JOE looking at the photos.

  How are you, Joe?

  JOE: Fine.

  CELIA: I hope you’d tell me if you weren’t fine.

  JOE: Oh… you know, it’s difficult… it’s never a simple thing.

  CELIA: I understand.

  JOE: I’m just trying to do the right thing by everyone. But sometimes

  I wonder if—

  JOE’s mobile phone rings. He apologises to CELIA, then walks away to have a conversation. CELIA rejoins the others.

  DOROTHY: [to KIERAN and SHEENA] That will be her. Fiona. She rings him constantly on the infernal machine. It’s her surveillance system. To make sure he’s not having any fun.

  CELIA suppresses a smile and gives DOROTHY a stern look.

  CELIA: Dorothy.

  KIERAN: Joe’s, like, a lawyer or something?

  DOROTHY: Solicitor. Very boring, if you ask me. But safe, I suppose. Josef and Fiona—they don’t have sex. You can tell when a couple is not having enough sex. The way their bodies are with each other in a room. To live alone and have no sex, that’s bad enough. But to be married and have no sex—that corrodes a person’s insides eventually and then—

  DOROTHY shuts up when JOE finishes his call.

  JOE: Was my mother saying appalling things?

  CELIA: Appalling beyond description. I’ll see what we’ve got that’s cold to drink—

  JOE: Uh, no, can’t stay. Better head straight back into town.

  DOROTHY: Ah. Fiona’s radar is warning her that Josef might be having a pleasant time.

  JOE: Mum. At least do it so I can’t hear.

  DOROTHY presses her lips together and puts her hands up—an innocent party.

  See you Wednesday. [To SHEENA and KIERAN] Good luck with the picking work.

  KIERAN: Thanks, Joe mate.

  SHEENA: Uh—yeah—y’know, thanks and everything.

  CELIA walks a little way with JOE.

  JOE: Give me a yell if you’re worried at all or if—

  CELIA: Ah, we’ll be sweet. Look after yourself, Joe.

  As DOROTHY watches JOE go, she addresses the audience.

  DOROTHY: [to the audience] Who your child marries—there’s nothing you can do about that. Hope for the best. And if the best doesn’t happen—if, for example, your son marries Fiona—you can only sigh and keep your mouth shut.

  CELIA: [to KIERAN and SHEENA] Getting the hang of the bags?

  KIERAN: Reckon we are. I’m totally amped about this picking thing. Do we start right now?

  CELIA: We’ll lose the light soon. Best if we start picking first thing tomorrow.

  DOROTHY: [to CELIA] And best if you ring the markets quick smart.

  CELIA: Yeah. Let them know they’ll be getting some peaches from me.

  CELIA goes inside.

  SHEENA: Kieran. Let’s get scrubbing.

  SHEENA indicates the cleaning gear, bedding, etc.

  KIERAN: Oh. Right. Yeah.

  KIERAN picks up an armload of stuff and follows SHEENA. But he walks backwards so he can keep looking at ZOE. He stumbles and falls, whooping with laughter. ZOE laughs. SHEENA gathers up the gear KIERAN has sent flying everywhere.

  SHEENA: Sorry about this. Kieran’s a bit of a—

  KIERAN: A bit of a clueless fuckwit.

  ZOE hands KIERAN some of the stuff he dropped.

  Ta.

  SHEENA stalks off. KIERAN hurries after her, smiling at ZOE.

  CELIA: [offstage] Zoe!

  ZOE: Coming!

  ZOE runs inside. DOROTHY exits as the daylight fades.

  SCENE TWO

  Evening.

  CELIA is still working around the packing shed. SHEENA walks up from the shack with cleaning gear.

  CELIA: How you going? Is it fit to live in?

  SHEENA: It’ll do us. So guess I’ll see you, um—

  CELIA: Have you and Kieran been on the road a fair while?

  SHEENA immediately becomes defensive.

  SHEENA: Couple of months.

  CELIA: You headed somewhere in particular?

  SHEENA: What?

  CELIA: Just wondering what you’re—

  SHEENA: Why? I mean, does it matter?

  CELIA: No, I’m sorry. Didn’t mean to be nosey. It’s none of my—

  SHEENA: We’re not gonna rob you or anything.

  CELIA: Christ, I wasn’t meaning—

  SHEENA: Kieran and me want to earn some money and then move on.

  CELIA: Of course. I was only—

  SHEENA: I know my brother comes across a bit weird.

  CEL
IA: Brother?

  SHEENA: Well, half-brother.

  CELIA: Oh.

  SHEENA: I mean, if you got a problem with us being here—

  CELIA: Sorry… I thought you and Kieran were together.

  SHEENA: Together together? A couple? Kieran’s eighteen. I’m twenty-five.

  CELIA: [with a laugh] God, sorry, Sheena. I figured you must like younger men.

  SHEENA: Uh, no.

  CELIA: Sorry. My mistake.

  SHEENA, aware she’s been rude, tries to sound cheerful.

  SHEENA: What time do you want us to start?

  CELIA: Soon as there’s enough light to see the fruit. Five okay? I’ll honk the horn on the ute.

  SHEENA: Whatever. So… um… thanks. Goodnight.

  SHEENA heads off to the shack.

  ZOE emerges from the house. She holds a drink full of ice cubes and rolls the icy glass across her face.

  CELIA: First stinking hot day really knocks you round.

  ZOE: This is my new method to cool my brain down.

  CELIA: Give us a go.

  ZOE holds the glass to CELIA’s cheek.

  Yeah, that works. She’s a prickly one. Sheena.

  ZOE: Bit old for the guy, isn’t she?

  CELIA: Ah, see, we were both wrong. They’re half-brother and sister.

  ZOE: Oh. That fits.

  CELIA: Hope I haven’t made a mistake having them here.

  ZOE: Why?

  CELIA: Well, they seem sort of—

  ZOE: What, you’re into judging them already?

  CELIA: No. No. Well, a bit maybe.

  ZOE: More than a bit.

  CELIA: It’s a matter of trying to read people. Hope they’ll be okay in that musty old shack.

  She looks at ZOE staring down at the shack.

  What are you thinking about?

  ZOE smiles and shrugs.

  Come and watch a bit of crap telly with me—for the fifteen minutes before I sink into a coma.

  ZOE: Might muck around on the net for a while.

  CELIA: Oh. Okay.

  ZOE: See you at dawn.

  ZOE and CELIA exit.

  SCENE THREE

  Outside the shack. Night.

  KIERAN flops onto the ground, exuberant about being exhausted.

  KIERAN: Finished! Our little cubby’s cleaner and nicer than any place I’ve ever lived.

  SHEENA follows him outside. KIERAN leaps to his feet, hyper.

  Check out those peach trees—whap, whap, whap—all in rows. Growing food. What a top thing. I could do this. Grow stuff. What do you reckon it’d cost to buy a place like this?

  SHEENA: Oh right, and where would you get the money?

  KIERAN: I’m just saying, if you could, if you could, be awesome.

  SHEENA: Kieran. Don’t get carried away. We only just got you—

  KIERAN: Yeah, I’m too useless to run a farm.

  SHEENA: I’m not saying that.

  KIERAN: What do you reckon about Zoe?

  SHEENA: Bit up herself.

  KIERAN: You reckon? I didn’t think up herself. She’s really—ah—what’s the word…? [He whacks at head to clear it.] Wish my brain would work… Zoe seems really—Why won’t my brain work?

  SHEENA: Kieran. Go to bed. You and me are gonna work our guts out tomorrow. More peaches we pick, sooner we get the car back.

  KIERAN: That’s the plan. Thanks, Sheena. Have I said thanks?

  SHEENA: About four thousand million times.

  KIERAN: Yeah. Ha! But I mean it.

  SHEENA: Sleep. Now.

  KIERAN salutes, then darts forward to squeeze her, laughing. Then he dashes inside, leaving SHEENA on her own.

  DOROTHY appears in her dressing-gown and gumboots.

  DOROTHY: [to the audience] For some people, the sweet blessing of sleep comes easily.

  SHEENA is startled to see DOROTHY wandering about. SHEENA nods hello, trying to be polite.

  [To SHEENA] But some of us, we’re awake half the night, churning things around in the mind.

  SHEENA: Sorry?

  DOROTHY: I’m muttering about myself like a mad, old chicken.

  SHEENA: Oh.

  SHEENA waits for DOROTHY to leave. DOROTHY doesn’t leave.

  DOROTHY: The boy—he’s already asleep?

  SHEENA: Kieran… oh, yeah. Deep asleep in thirty seconds. Like a baby.

  DOROTHY: Ah, lucky. He’s not kept awake with worries.

  SHEENA: No way.

  DOROTHY: He doesn’t hold a thought in his head for very long.

  SHEENA: Ten seconds tops.

  DOROTHY: You have to do the thinking and worrying for him.

  SHEENA: Yep. Lucky Sheena.

  DOROTHY: He’s impulsive. A little foolish sometimes.

  SHEENA: A total bloody idiot sometimes.

  DOROTHY: But no nasty bones in his body.

  SHEENA: No. Compared to my other maggot brothers. Compared to me.

  She feels DOROTHY looking at her, curious.

  We grew up in the same hopeless, joke house with the same custard-brained mother, but we got different fathers. Kieran’s a good kid—not what he does, but in his heart. You don’t see that in many people.

  DOROTHY: So you don’t want to see it get poisoned.

  SHEENA: Which can happen to a guy like Kieran.

  DOROTHY: He’s got no protective coating.

  SHEENA: He gets sucked in by the wrong people. Gets himself in a mess.

  DOROTHY: In a mess?

  SHEENA shrugs, clams up.

  SHEENA: He’s got me to look out for him, now.

  DOROTHY nods. SHEENA’s tone is sharp—the subject is closed.

  SHEENA makes a move to leave.

  Anyway—umm—I’d better—

  DOROTHY: Some nights, you wish you could have amnesia—wipe the mind clean, forget the worries.

  SHEENA shrugs, won’t make eye contact.

  I’m talking about myself again.

  SHEENA meets DOROTHY’s gaze, then quickly turns away.

  SHEENA: I better get to bed.

  DOROTHY: Oh. Yes. Sleep well.

  SHEENA exits quickly.

  [To the audience] When you’re an old crone, you hardly don’t sleep at all. So me—the Queen of the Night—I see the light come on up the hill in the smallest hours.

  CELIA emerges from her house, yanking on a dressing-gown. When she sees DOROTHY they exchange a smile. This is a familiar night-time ritual for them.

  CELIA: I’m all right in the daytime, y’know.

  DOROTHY: In daylight, your thoughts are busy with the thousand jobs that need doing.

  CELIA: I know I’m an anxious person.

  DOROTHY: But on the normal scale.

  CELIA: Well, at the anxious end of normal.

  DOROTHY: Okay.

  They smile.

  CELIA: But two in the morning I wake up and—oh…

  DOROTHY: The dangers are there.

  CELIA: They ooze up while I’m asleep until my brain is awash with panic.

  DOROTHY: Always about Zoe.

  CELIA nods.

  CELIA: The world is a dangerous place. Most people have the luxury of ignoring that.

  DOROTHY: But some of us don’t.

  CELIA: No. When Zoe was born, they put her on my chest and she looked me straight in the eye. The challenge was there. I must protect this person.

  DOROTHY: But you never cotton-woolled Zoe.

  CELIA: As an act of will. I never wanted to infect her with the fears.

  DOROTHY: You let her run.

  CELIA: I watched her climb trees and dive off highboards.

  DOROTHY: But now she’s older, it’s more difficult.

  CELIA: Now there’s so much… At night, terrifying thoughts—toxic residue—it silts up in here.

  DOROTHY: You repeat these thoughts over and over.

  CELIA: A quarter of all road fatalities are in the fifteen- to twenty-year-old age group. Many girls contract human papilloma virus during their first sexual
experience. Youth suicide—increased thirty-five per cent over the last ten years. The average age of first heroin use has dropped from twenty to sixteen.

  DOROTHY: So many terrifying numbers.

  CELIA: If I list them, meditate on them, they won’t happen. I know that’s crazy.

  DOROTHY: Crazy, yes, but—

  DOROTHY shrugs—what can you do?

  CELIA: Night-worrying—it’s the mother’s voodoo. So in the daytime I can be normal and sturdy and get on with things.

  DOROTHY smiles, strokes CELIA’s head.

  DOROTHY: Try to a get couple of hours sleep now.

  CELIA heads back inside the house.

  [To the audience] This is the trade Celia has made. She spends the night in this dark place so in the day, she can face the world.

  SCENE FOUR

  Feeble dawn light.

  CELIA is already briskly moving about, working. KIERAN bounds up from the shack.

  DOROTHY: [to the audience] Pickers start early—before the heat of the day—to get the peaches into the coolroom. Warm fruit doesn’t handle or travel so good.

  KIERAN: This is the absolute best time of the day, doncha reckon, Sheena? Magical.

  SHEENA, stumbling blearily behind him, is not convinced.

  I’ve stayed awake until dawn but I’ve never, like, approached it from this angle.

  SHEENA: Kieran.

  KIERAN dutifully shuts up. CELIA brings out the picking gear.

  CELIA: Sorry about honking the horn. Bit brutal, I know.

  ZOE enters. KIERAN leaps across to her.

  KIERAN: Zoe. Hi.

  ZOE: Hi.

  KIERAN doesn’t take his eyes off her. ZOE is unnerved by his staring—but she likes it too.

  CELIA tosses KIERAN and SHEENA some battered straw hats.

  CELIA: Gets blistering hot out there.

  DOROTHY: So the more you pick in the cool of the day the better.

  CELIA: A steady working pace is the go.

  SHEENA: Hear that, Kieran? Steady working.

  KIERAN: You watch me. I’m gonna be so good, you’ll be going, ‘Is that Kieran? It can’t be! That sensible, hardworking legend of a guy can’t be my basket-case little brother!’

  ZOE smiles. She knows he’s showing off for her.

  CELIA: Okay. This week, we’ll pick the Red Havens—this section here. As CELIA explains, KIERAN picks up the peaches, squints at the colours, sniffs them, brushes the furry skin against his cheek. SHEENA flashes him a warning look—you look weird.