The Peach Season

by Debra Oswald

  Start today with a colour pick—taking peaches coloured from this to, say, this—[She holds up examples of fruit.] After the colour pick, we do the strip pick: take off whatever fruit’s left.

  SHEENA, noticing KIERAN is staring at ZOE, thumps him.

  Let’s get cracking.

  As DOROTHY talks to the audience, the light intensifies to the full glare of summer sun.

  SHEENA and KIERAN work picking peaches, emptying the picking bags into a bin. CELIA dashes to and from the shed, checking progress, giving hints and instructions.

  DOROTHY: [to the audience] Any fair person would say they were good workers. By the second day, they were bringing in the fruit at a decent rate. The boy—he was clowning around one minute, working fast like a crazy person the next minute. But added together, he picked the same amount as a good picker.

  KIERAN leaps about, hyperactive, trying to make SHEENA smile.

  SHEENA: Just get on with it.

  KIERAN: Check out the face. Ouch. Who could ever make Mrs Crankypants smile?

  SHEENA: Kieran. I said—

  Something about his face makes her relent and she smiles.

  KIERAN: Ah ha! Ha!

  He dances triumphantly, juggling fruit. He hears ZOE laugh and spins around to see her watching him.

  CELIA comes down from the shed and chucks water bottles to KIERAN and SHEENA. They stop work to guzzle water.

  Thanks heaps for this.

  CELIA: You need to keep the water up.

  KIERAN: Reckon. Feel like my guts, my liver, my entire insides, have melted and sweated right out of me.

  CELIA: You’re going really well.

  KIERAN: Yeah? Well, it’s fun.

  CELIA: So, Kieran, you would’ve finished school—what, last year, I guess.

  KIERAN: Oh, well, not exactly.

  CELIA: Did you leave early?

  KIERAN: Kind of.

  CELIA: You guys are exploring the country a bit, are you?

  KIERAN: I guess. Is that what we’re doing, Sheena?

  CELIA: Is there a time frame? I mean, have you got plans for after—?

  KIERAN: Oh, well… see, things got a bit messy and Sheena thought—

  SHEENA: Shouldn’t we get back to work?

  KIERAN smiles to CELIA and then throws himself back into work. As CELIA goes, she passes ZOE.

  CELIA: Hey, gorgeous.

  ZOE: I’ll do some picking, too.

  CELIA: I need you in the shed.

  ZOE: You and Dorothy can handle the packing. How else are we going to get the fruit in fast enough?

  CELIA watches ZOE head across to the pickers, then exits.

  ZOE starts picking. As DOROTHY speaks, we see KIERAN and ZOE talking, with ZOE growing in confidence.

  DOROTHY: [to the audience] Zoe was always a chatterbox—to me, to her Mum, to Sandor before he died. Every detail about what she did, what she saw, would come tumbling out of her mouth. Lately, not so chatty. She’s on the internet or off with her own secret thoughts. But with this boy, by the end of the first week, it was yabber, yabber, yabber.

  We tune in to ZOE and KIERAN’s conversation:

  ZOE: The thing you have to know about me is that I’m socially retarded.

  KIERAN: [with a laugh] What?

  ZOE: Let me explain how it works. I go to a catholic girls’ school way down near the border. A total of two and a half hours a day on a bus with a few old ladies going to the podiatrist to get their toenails scraped out. School, bus, home, weekends helping out round here. That’s it. Goody-goody daughter, whether I like it or not. I live in protective custody.

  KIERAN: Yeah? Your Mum seems—

  ZOE: Mum believes in openness. I’ve always had lots of information about sex, drugs, whatever. She doesn’t have to forbid me to do anything. I don’t ask.

  KIERAN: I don’t get it.

  ZOE: She does it by emotional blackmail. I can hear the worry clunking round in her brain even though she tries to hide it. What happened to my dad, that’s—

  KIERAN: That was such a terrible, rank thing. Your dad was just standing there, buying milk and—bang—some psycho shoots him.

  ZOE: It’s there in her mind: ‘People go off in the morning and then never come home’. I missed the bus once and didn’t phone. When I got home, she tried to sound reasonable, but I saw the panic on her face. I never want to see that face so I don’t do anything. That’s how she keeps me locked up in protective custody. That’s how you end up a sixteen-year-old who’s done fucking nothing. That is, you end up socially retarded.

  KIERAN is staring at her.

  What?

  KIERAN smiles then shakes his head.

  I talk too much. Sorry.

  KIERAN: No, no. I like it. I don’t get all the things you say but the bits I do get, I like a lot.

  We see or hear CELIA yell from the packing shed.

  CELIA: [offstage, calling] Zoe! Can you take over in the shed while I make some calls?

  ZOE: Coming!

  ZOE runs off towards the shed.

  DOROTHY: [to the audience] By the end of the second week, Zoe developed some kind of hearing problem. She didn’t hear Celia call her many of the times. So the talking went on. And—oh—the flirting went on.

  ZOE runs back down with food and sets it down in a shady spot. KIERAN hurls himself on the ground at ZOE’s feet like an enthusiastic puppy.

  KIERAN: I’ve still got shocking pain in the guts.

  SHEENA finishes work and makes her way over to them.

  SHEENA: Your own stupid fault.

  ZOE: How many peaches did you eat last night?

  KIERAN: Ohhh, lost count after the first five or six. Chucked up one lot, ate some more.

  KIERAN and ZOE are attentive with each over the food—breaking pieces off and offering them, taking any excuse to touch each other’s hands, etc.

  DOROTHY: [to the audience] It was sweet to see it. Even the sour one, the sister, loosened up a little.

  SHEENA sits near the other two as they all eat.

  ZOE: I still want to know how you guys ended up here.

  SHEENA: This is where my car broke down.

  ZOE: No, I mean, where you were going to?

  KIERAN: We weren’t going to anywhere. It was—

  SHEENA flashes him her fiercest warning look.

  Nah, I want to tell.

  SHEENA: Kieran.

  KIERAN: Sheena, Sheena, you gotta let me explain. To Zoe. Come on.

  SHEENA: Tell her about what exactly?

  KIERAN: About when you found me.

  SHEENA: Just about that day? Okay.

  KIERAN: Few months ago—

  SHEENA: When I wasn’t around. Tell her that.

  KIERAN: Yeah, get this: Sheena moved up the Gold Coast. To be with this guy who—

  SHEENA: Let’s just say he turned out to be a dickless wonder.

  KIERAN: Sheena picks the biggest dropkicks. She—

  SHEENA throws him a look—shut up.

  So. Sheena ended up back in Sydney.

  SHEENA: First thing I asked Mum was, ‘Where’s Kieran?’ She goes—

  KIERAN: ‘He’s been staying at his mate Mick’s place.’

  SHEENA: ‘Which Mick? Brain-dead Mick Fraser or Mick the toxic little scumbag?’ And Mum fluttered her eyelids down.

  KIERAN: [demonstrating] Like this.

  SHEENA: Like she’s too tired.

  KIERAN: It’s all too much for her.

  SHEENA: Which it is.

  KIERAN: Sheena gunned it round to Scumbag Mick’s place.

  SHEENA: I could smell the house from two doors down. So much blood in the living room, I thought someone had been killed there.

  ZOE: What was the blood from?

  SHEENA: Those geniuses got hold of industrial quantities of K.

  ZOE: That’s ketamine, isn’t it? I read stuff on the net. Ketamine’s actually a horse anaesthetic.

  SHEENA: Yeah, well, if a human being overdoes it, binges, their feet and hands go
numb. So they don’t feel any pain. There was broken glass on the floor—

  ZOE: Because—?

  SHEENA: Accidents with bottles no one cleaned up. These morons didn’t realise they were cutting their feet up.

  ZOE: So they tracked blood all over.

  SHEENA: The K wasn’t what worried me.

  KIERAN: Sheena thinks Mick is a dangerous guy.

  SHEENA: A scaly, little toad and a psycho. The kind of genius who holds a shotgun to a mate’s head as a joke.

  KIERAN: That was only one time. Oh… well, twice but—

  SHEENA: Mick’d gone into business for himself since I’d been away.

  KIERAN: Dealing crystal.

  SHEENA: He got Kieran frying his brains plus using him as a runner.

  Mick’s in business with bikers.

  KIERAN: Those guys are pretty big in the crystal business.

  SHEENA: Mick was boasting to me how he’s got a fucking shotgun in the house.

  KIERAN: In case his business associates get unhappy about anything.

  SHEENA: Don’t have to be Mystic Sheena to see someone’s gonna go to jail or end up dead. And chances are it’s going to be my gullible little brother.

  KIERAN strikes a pose for ZOE who laughs.

  I found Kieran in a corner.

  KIERAN: Away with the pixies down a K-hole.

  ZOE: So what did you do?

  SHEENA: Dragged Kieran out the door, feet cut up to buggery. Shoved him in the back seat of my car.

  KIERAN: Me too out of it to know what was going on.

  SHEENA: Then I drove. As far away from Mick and Sydney as I could get. Kieran slept the first ten hours.

  ZOE: But when he woke up, what did he—?

  SHEENA: Started whining.

  KIERAN: [sending himself up] ‘My feet hurt—ow, ow ow!’

  SHEENA: I bandaged up the cuts on his feet.

  KIERAN: ‘Where are you taking me? You’re not the boss of me.’

  ZOE: Why didn’t you just run off?

  KIERAN: I tried.

  SHEENA: His feet were so cut up to begin with, he couldn’t walk properly.

  KIERAN: I was her prisoner in the back seat of the car. ‘You’re kidnapping me. This is an actual crime, y’know.’

  SHEENA: Driving me mental.

  KIERAN: So you know what she did? Pulled up outside a police station and she goes:

  SHEENA: ‘Okay then, pop inside and tell them I’m kidnapping you.’

  KIERAN shrugs and grins to ZOE—what could he do?

  ZOE: But once your feet healed up, why didn’t you take off then?

  SHEENA: We’d been away from those deadheads long enough for Kieran to think straight. Now he needs to stay away from trouble long enough to grow a brain in his thick skull. [Getting to her feet] Lunchbreak’s over. Back to work.

  KIERAN: Gimme one more sec off my sore feet.

  SHEENA goes back to picking.

  ZOE: Do you mind her bossing you around?

  KIERAN: Oh, she doesn’t always boss me around.

  SHEENA: Kieran! You said one sec. Get over here! Now!

  KIERAN: She looked after me even when I was in kindy. If some kid monstered me, Sheena’d belt across the playground like Super Sister and yank their arms behind their backs. It was like having my own bouncer. I don’t know why she picked me—out of all us brothers. I mean… we were all clueless.

  SHEENA: Kieran! No one’s paying you to sit on your fucking arse!

  KIERAN: She’s a good person Sheena. She deserves better than she gets.

  ZOE watches him carefully, even more smitten.

  KIERAN and SHEENA continue picking as the light fades to evening.

  DOROTHY: [to the audience] Hot days. Forty-one degrees. Not so bad for the peaches in the coolroom. But the people picking the peaches—no coolroom for them. Even in the evening, still sweltering hot.

  KIERAN and SHEENA take off their picking bags as ZOE comes over with water bottles. KIERAN dribbles water over his face and head. He pulls at his aching shoulders, groans.

  SHEENA: I told you to take it easy with that high-up stuff.

  KIERAN: I like it, though. I can locate all these muscles exactly—because they’re aching. I can imagine my insides like one of those charts at the doctor’s—y’know, with the man’s skin taken off so you can see the red, stripy muscles wrapping and crossing over his body. How wild is that!

  ZOE laughs.

  SHEENA: Shower. I’m not sleeping in that sauna of a shed with you all stinky and cheesy.

  KIERAN: I love you too, Sheena. Might sleep out under the stars tonight.

  SHEENA: Mozzies’d eat you alive.

  KIERAN: Yeah? There goes that idea.

  SHEENA: Well, you better—

  KIERAN: Yeah, I’ll be down in a sec.

  Reluctantly SHEENA exits.

  ZOE: Sheena’s shitty with you. Because of me.

  KIERAN: She’s worried that you’re after me to steal all my money.

  ZOE: And she’s worried that you’re immature and silly.

  KIERAN and ZOE nod, mock grave, until KIERAN squirts her with water. ZOE squirts him back, laughing wildly, until they collapse onto their backs, breathless.

  KIERAN: What are you thinking this nano-second?

  ZOE: About how I think about things too much. Like, in my imagination I watch myself doing something before I do it and then I don’t end up doing anything. I wish I could just—[closing her eyes, flinging her arms out expansively]—blaagghh—throw myself into things before I even—You think I’m a fruit loop.

  KIERAN: No, no, you’re—uh—uh—uh—

  ZOE: [with a laugh] Are you having a seizure?

  KIERAN: I’ve gotta find exactly the right word. Ah! Yeah! You’re spectacular.

  ZOE: Shut up. You’re taking the piss out of me.

  KIERAN: Don’t knock my word—I had to dig around in my scrambled brain to find that word. Spectacular.

  ZOE: A spectacularly sad case, you mean.

  KIERAN: Fuck me dead, you’re beautiful.

  That sucks the breath out of ZOE and she shuts up. KIERAN leans right over her but hesitates, waiting for permission. She reaches up to him and they kiss, tentative at first and then passionate.

  CELIA: Zoe! Where are you?

  ZOE scrambles to her feet and runs off.

  SCENE FIVE

  Bright sunlight.

  KIERAN, SHEENA and ZOE are picking. CELIA collects bins.

  As they work, KIERAN and ZOE can’t keep their hands off each other—kissing, laughing, whispering, in their own world.

  DOROTHY: [to the audience] I think we have a choice—how to look at it. ‘Oh, those young lovers are too immature and foolish.’ Or we can look with bitter eyes—‘How dare those young people have such rapture’. I’m selfish. I feed off the energy that radiates out from their passion. I’m a geriatric vampire. When you have seen many bad things in a life, you yearn to see good things.

  CELIA comes over to SHEENA.

  CELIA: Has Kieran had a serious girlfriend before now or—?

  SHEENA: If you’re trying to pump me for information, forget it. Kieran’s not telling me anything you can’t see with your own eyes.

  CELIA: I’m just trying to get a sense of—

  SHEENA: They’re not fucking on Kieran’s bed, if that’s what you want to know.

  CELIA: Fair enough, Sheena. I don’t think it’s so weird for me to be concerned about—

  SHEENA: Hey. No offence to your daughter, but I’m not too stoked about this either, okay?

  CELIA: Why do you say that?

  SHEENA: Look, Kieran got himself in some trouble in Sydney so I’m—

  CELIA: Trouble?

  SHEENA: I’m just trying to keep him settled and this doesn’t help.

  SHEENA heads back to work.

  DOROTHY: [yelling to someone offstage] Are you here to check on me?

  I’m okay.

  JOE enters and gives DOROTHY a kiss. She grabs his face to sc
rutinise it.

  Show me your eyeballs. You have a deficiency.

  JOE: What is it this week, Mum? Vitamin B? E?

  DOROTHY: A deficiency of the spirit.

  JOE smiles, long-suffering. He shouts ‘G’day’ to KIERAN, SHEENA and ZOE as he walks over to CELIA.

  JOE: They seem to be moving through the pick okay.

  CELIA: We’re getting there.

  JOE witnesses a burst of pashing between KIERAN and ZOE.

  JOE: Oh.

  CELIA: Yeah.

  The two of them watch for a moment.

  CELIA: Kieran’s been in some kind of trouble.

  JOE: Like what?

  CELIA: The sister just said ‘trouble’. That’s why they’re on the road. Kieran calls himself a ‘fuck-up’. I know you’ll think I’m neurotic, but I’m worried that—

  JOE: Hey, no reason to panic. You don’t know if he’s—

  CELIA: If he’s in trouble with the police, would you be able to ask around and find out?

  JOE: Well, in theory, yeah, but—

  CELIA: Please, Joe. I’ve got nothing against this kid, but I’ve got them staying on the place.

  JOE: I’m sorry if bringing them here was a mistake.

  CELIA: No, you saved our skin last month, bringing them. I just need to know whether I should worry. Can you find out? Please.

  JOE: Even if Kieran’s been a bit wild, a lot of kids go through that. I mean, didn’t you have some wild times?

  CELIA: Exactly. It was only dumb luck I didn’t die in a car with some drunk fuckwit.

  JOE: And the reality is most kids don’t die.

  CELIA: But some do.

  JOE: You can’t worldproof her.

  CELIA: Why can’t I pick out a path for my child through the minefield if that means she—?

  JOE: You can’t limit the natural kind of—the natural sort of—

  CELIA: You wouldn’t let nature take its course if a wild dog leapt into a baby’s cot.

  JOE: No, but a small baby isn’t the—

  CELIA: Isn’t the same as a sixteen-year-old. I know. But what if he drives her into a tree? What if he breaks her heart so utterly it’s mangled forever? What if he drags her down into a world where—I don’t know—a world where—

  JOE’s mobile rings. He looks at the caller ID grimly.

  CELIA: Answer it. I’m just—I’m okay.

  JOE: Sorry. Don’t worry so much, Celia. See how things go. [He walks away, talking on the phone.] Fiona, hi. I’m—[Pause.] Yeah, sorry, the meeting this arvo took longer than—[Pause.] I said I’m sorry. [Pause.] On my way now.