Plays 5 Read online

  Bernard Christ, what do you want?

  Hannah Proof.

  Valentine Quite right. Who are you talking about?

  Bernard Proof? Proof? You’d have to be there, you silly bitch!

  Valentine (mildly) I say, you’re speaking of my fiancée.

  Hannah Especially when I have a present for you. Guess what I found, (producing the present for Bernard) Lady Croom writing from London to her husband. Her brother, Captain Brice, married a Mrs Chater. In other words, one might assume, a widow.

  Bernard looks at the letter.

  Bernard I said he was dead. What year? 1810! Oh my God, 1810! Well done, Hannah! Are you going to tell me it’s a different Mrs Chater?

  Hannah Oh no. It’s her all right. Note her Christian name.

  Bernard Charity. Charity … ‘Deny what cannot be proven for Charity’s sake!’

  Hannah Don’t kiss me!

  Valentine She won’t let anyone kiss her.

  Bernard You see! They wrote – they scribbled – they put it on paper. It was their employment. Their diversion. Paper is what they had. And there’ll be more. There is always more. We can find it!

  Hannah Such passion. First Valentine, now you. It’s moving.

  Bernard The aristocratic friend of the tutor – under the same roof as the poor sod whose book he savaged – the first thing he does is seduce Chater’s wife. All is discovered. There is a duel. Chater dead, Byron fled! P.S. guess what?, the widow married her ladyship’s brother! Do you honestly think no one wrote a word? How could they not! It dropped from sight but we will write it again!

  Hannah You can, Bernard. I’m not going to take any credit, I haven’t done anything.

  The same thought has clearly occurred to Bernard. He becomes instantly po-faced.

  Bernard Well, that’s – very fair – generous –

  Hannah Prudent. Chater could have died of anything, anywhere.

  The po-face is forgotten.

  Bernard But he fought a duel with Byron!

  Hannah You haven’t established it was fought. You haven’t established it was Byron. For God’s sake, Bernard, you haven’t established Byron was even here!

  Bernard I’ll tell you your problem. No guts.

  Hannah Really?

  Bernard By which I mean a visceral belief in yourself. Gut instinct. The part of you which doesn’t reason. The certainty for which there is no back-reference. Because time is reversed. Tock, tick goes the universe and then recovers itself, but it was enough, you were in there and you bloody know.

  Valentine Are you talking about Lord Byron, the poet?

  Bernard No, you fucking idiot, we’re talking about Lord Byron the chartered accountant.

  Valentine (unoffended) Oh well, he was here all right, the poet.

  Silence.

  Hannah How do you know?

  Valentine He’s in the game book. I think he shot a hare. I read through the whole lot once when I had mumps – some quite interesting people –

  Hannah Where’s the book?

  Valentine It’s not one I’m using – too early, of course –

  Hannah 1809.

  Valentine They’ve always been in the commode. Ask Chloë.

  Hannah looks to Bernard. Bernard has been silent because he has been incapable of speech. He seems to have gone into a trance, in which only his mouth tries to work. Hannah steps over to him and gives him a demure kiss on the cheek. It works. Bernard lurches out into the garden and can be heard croaking for ‘Chloë … Chloë!’

  Valentine My mother’s lent him her bicycle. Lending one’s bicycle is a form of safe sex, possibly the safest there is. My mother is in a flutter about Bernard, and he’s no fool. He gave her a first edition of Horace Walpole, and now she’s lent him her bicycle. (He gathers up the three items [the primer, the lesson book and the diagram] and puts them into the portfolio.) Can I keep these for a while?

  Hannah Yes, of course.

  The piano stops. Gus enters hesitantly from the music room.

  Valentine (to Gus) Yes, finished … coming now. (to Hannah) I’m trying to work out the diagram.

  Gus nods and smiles, at Hannah too, but she is preoccupied.

  Hannah What I don’t understand is … why nobody did this feedback thing before – it’s not like relativity, you don’t have to be Einstein.

  Valentine You couldn’t see to look before. The electronic calculator was what the telescope was for Galileo.

  Hannah Calculator?

  Valentine There wasn’t enough time before. There weren’t enough pencils! (He flourishes Thomasina’s lesson book.) This took her I don’t know how many days and she hasn’t scratched the paintwork. Now she’d only have to press a button, the same button over and over. Iteration. A few minutes. And what I’ve done in a couple of months, with only a pencil the calculations would take me the rest of my life to do again – thousands of pages – tens of thousands! And so boring!

  Hannah Do you mean –?

  She stops because Gus is plucking Valentine’s sleeve.

  Do you mean –?

  Valentine All right, Gus, I’m coming.

  Hannah Do you mean that was the only problem? Enough time? And paper? And the boredom?

  Valentine We’re going to get out the dressing-up box.

  Hannah (driven to raising her voice) Val! Is that what you’re saying?

  Valentine (surprised by her. Mildly) No, I’m saying you’d have to have a reason for doing it.

  Gus runs out of the room, upset.

  (Apologetically) He hates people shouting.

  Hannah I’m sorry.

  Valentine starts to follow Gus.

  But anything else?

  Valentine Well, the other thing is, you’d have to be insane.

  Valentine leaves.

  Hannah stays thoughtful. After a moment, she turns to the table and picks up the Cornhill Magazine. She looks into it briefly, then closes it, and leaves the room, taking the magazine with her.

  The empty room.

  The light changes to early morning. From a long way off, there is a pistol shot. A moment later there is the cry of dozens of crows disturbed from the unseen trees.

  Act Two

  SCENE FIVE

  Bernard is pacing around, reading aloud from a handful of typed sheets, Valentine, Chloë and Gus are his audience. Gus sits somewhat apart, perhaps less attentive. Valentine has his tortoise and is eating a sandwich from which he extracts shreds of lettuce to offer the tortoise.

  Bernard ‘Did it happen? Could it happen?

  ‘Undoubtedly it could. Only three years earlier the Irish poet Tom Moore appeared on the field of combat to avenge a review by Jeffrey of the Edinburgh. These affairs were seldom fatal and sometimes farcical but, potentially, the duellist stood in respect to the law no differently from a murderer. As for the murderee, a minor poet like Ezra Chater could go to his death in a Derbyshire glade as unmissed and unremembered as his contemporary and namesake, the minor botanist who died in the forests of the West Indies, lost to history like the monkey that bit him. On April 16th 1809, a few days after he left Sidley Park, Byron wrote to his solicitor John Hanson: “If the consequences of my leaving England were ten times as ruinous as you describe, I have no alternative; there are circumstances which render it absolutely indispensable, and quit the country I must immediately.” To which, the editor’s note in the Collected Letters reads as follows: “What Byron’s urgent reasons for leaving England were at this time has never been revealed.” The letter was written from the family seat, Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire. A long day’s ride to the north-west lay Sidley Park, the estate of the Coverlys – a far grander family, raised by Charles II to the Earldom of Croom …’

  Hannah enters briskly, a piece of paper in her hand.

  Hannah Bernard …! Val …

  Bernard Do you mind?

  Hannah puts her piece of paper down in front of Valentine.

  Chloë (angrily) Hannah!

  Hannah What?
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br />   Chloë She’s so rude!

  Hannah (taken aback) What? Am I?

  Valentine Bernard’s reading us his lecture.

  Hannah Yes, I know, (then recollecting herself) Yes – yes – that was rude. I’m sorry, Bernard.

  Valentine (with the piece of paper) What is this?

  Hannah (to Bernard) Spot on – the India Office Library. (to Valentine) Peacock’s letter in holograph, I got a copy sent –

  Chloë Hannah! Shut up!

  Hannah (sitting down) Yes, sorry.

  Bernard It’s all right, I’ll read it to myself.

  Chloë No.

  Hannah reaches for the Peacock letter and takes it back.

  Hannah Go on, Bernard. Have I missed anything? Sorry.

  Bernard stares at her balefully but then continues to read.

  Bernard ‘The Byrons of Newstead in 1809 comprised an eccentric widow and her undistinguished son, the “lame brat”, who until the age of ten when he came into the title, had been carted about the country from lodging to lodging by his vulgar hectoring monster of a mother –’

  Hannah’s hand has gone up.

  – overruled – ‘and who four months past his twenty-first birthday was master of nothing but his debts and his genius. Between the Byrons and the Coverlys there was no social equality and none to be expected. The connection, undisclosed to posterity until now, was with Septimus Hodge, Byron’s friend at Harrow and Trinity College –’

  Hannah’s hand goes up again.

  – sustained – (He makes an instant correction with a silver pencil.) ‘Byron’s contemporary at Harrow and Trinity College, and now tutor in residence to the Croom daughter, Thomasina Coverly. Byron’s letters tell us where he was on April 8th and on April 12th. He was at Newstead. But on the 10th he was at Sidley Park, as attested by the game book preserved there: “April 10th 1809 – forenoon. High cloud, dry, and sun between times, wind south-easterly. Self – Augustus – Lord Byron. Fourteen pigeon, one hare (Lord B.).” But, as we know now, the drama of life and death at Sidley Park was not about pigeons but about sex and literature.’

  Valentine Unless you were the pigeon.

  Bernard I don’t have to do this. I’m paying you a compliment.

  Chloë Ignore him, Bernard – go on, get to the duel.

  Bernard Hannah’s not even paying attention.

  Hannah Yes I am, it’s all going in. I often work with the radio on.

  Bernard Oh thanks!

  Hannah Is there much more?

  Chloë Hannah!

  Hannah No, it’s fascinating. I just wondered how much more there was. I need to ask Valentine about this (letter) – sorry, Bernard, go on, this will keep.

  Valentine Yes – sorry, Bernard.

  Chloë Please, Bernard!

  Bernard Where was I?

  Valentine Pigeons.

  Chloë Sex.

  Hannah Literature.

  Bernard Life and death. Right. ‘Nothing could be more eloquent of that than the three documents I have quoted: the terse demand to settle a matter in private; the desperate scribble of “my husband has sent for pistols” and on April 11th, the gauntlet thrown down by the aggrieved and cuckolded author Ezra Chater. The covers have not survived. What is certain is that all three letters were in Byron’s possession when his books were sold in 1816 – preserved in the pages of ‘The Couch of Eros’ which seven years earlier at Sidley Park Byron had borrowed from Septimus Hodge.’

  Hannah Borrowed?

  Bernard I will be taking questions at the end. Constructive comments will be welcome. Which is indeed my reason for trying out in the provinces before my London opening under the auspices of the Byron Society prior to publication. By the way, Valentine, do you want a credit? – ‘the game book recently discovered by.’?

  Valentine It was never lost, Bernard.

  Bernard ‘As recently pointed out by.’ I don’t normally like giving credit where it’s due, but with scholarly articles as with divorce, there is a certain cachet in citing a member of the aristocracy. I’ll pop it in ad lib for the lecture, and give you a mention in the press release. How’s that?

  Valentine Very kind.

  Hannah Press release? What happened to the Journal of English Studies?

  Bernard That comes later with the apparatus, and in the recognized tone – very dry, very modest, absolutely gloat-free, and yet unmistakably ‘Eat your heart out, you dozy bastards’. But first, it’s ‘Media Don, book early to avoid disappointment’. Where was I?

  Valentine Game book.

  Chloë Eros.

  Hannah Borrowed.

  Bernard Right. ‘– borrowed from Septimus Hodge. Is it conceivable that the letters were already in the book when Byron borrowed it?’

  Valentine Yes.

  Chloë Shut up, Val.

  Valentine Well, it’s conceivable.

  Bernard ‘Is it likely that Hodge would have lent Byron the book without first removing the three private letters?’

  Valentine Look, sorry – I only meant, Byron could have borrowed the book without asking.

  Hannah That’s true.

  Bernard Then why wouldn’t Hodge get them back?

  Hannah I don’t know, I wasn’t there.

  Bernard That’s right, you bloody weren’t.

  Chloë Go on, Bernard.

  Bernard ‘It is the third document, the challenge itself, that convinces. Chater “as a man and a poet”, points the finger at his “slanderer in the press”. Neither as a man nor a poet did Ezra Chater cut such a figure as to be habitually slandered or even mentioned in the press. It is surely indisputable that the slander was the review of ‘The Maid of Turkey’ in the Piccadilly Recreation, Did Septimus Hodge have any connection with the London periodicals? No. Did Byron? Yes! He had reviewed Wordsworth two years earlier, he was to review Spencer two years later. And do we have any clue as to Byron’s opinion of Chater the poet? Yes! Who but Byron could have written the four lines pencilled into Lady Croom’s copy of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers’ –

  Hannah Almost anybody.

  Bernard Darling –

  Hannah Don’t call me darling.

  Bernard Dickhead, then, is it likely that the man Chater calls his friend Septimus Hodge is the same man who screwed his wife and kicked the shit out of his last book?

  Hannah Put it like that, almost certain.

  Chloë (earnestly) You’ve been deeply wounded in the past, haven’t you, Hannah?

  Hannah Nothing compared to listening to this. Why is there nothing in Byron’s letters about the Piccadilly reviews?

  Bernard Exactly. Because he killed the author.

  Hannah But the first one, ‘The Maid of Turkey’, was the year before. Was he clairvoyant?

  Chloë Letters get lost.

  Bernard Thank you! Exactly! There is a platonic letter which confirms everything – lost but ineradicable, like radio voices rippling through the universe for all eternity. ‘My dear Hodge – here I am in Albania and you’re the only person in the whole world who knows why. Poor C! I never wished him any harm – except in the Piccadilly, of course – it was the woman who bade me eat, dear Hodge! – what a tragic business, but thank God it ended well for poetry. Yours ever, B. –

  PS. Burn this.’

  Valentine How did Chater find out the reviewer was Byron?

  Bernard (irritated) I don’t know, I wasn’t there, was I? (Pause. To Hannah) You wish to say something?

  Hannah Moi?

  Chloë I know. Byron told Mrs Chater in bed. Next day he dumped her so she grassed on him, and pleaded date rape.

  Bernard (fastidiously) Date rape? What do you mean, date rape?

  Hannah April the tenth.

  Bernard cracks. Everything becomes loud and overlapped as Bernard threatens to walk out and is cajoled into continuing.

  Bernard Right! – forget it!

  Hannah Sorry –

  Bernard No – I’ve had nothing but sarcasm and childish interruptions –

&n
bsp; Valentine What did I do?

  Bernard No credit for probably the most sensational literary discovery of the century –

  Chloë I think you’re jolly unfair – they’re jealous, Bernard –

  Hannah I won’t say another word –

  Valentine Yes, go on, Bernard – we promise.

  Bernard (finally) Well, only if you stop feeding tortoises!

  Valentine Well, it’s his lunch time.

  Bernard And on condition that I am afforded the common courtesy of a scholar among scholars –

  Hannah Absolutely mum till you’re finished –

  Bernard After which, any comments are to be couched in terms of accepted academic –

  Hannah Dignity – you’re right, Bernard.

  Bernard – respect.

  Hannah Respect. Absolutely. The language of scholars. Count on it.

  Having made a great show of putting his pages away, Bernard reassembles them and finds his place, glancing suspiciously at the other three for signs of levity.

  Bernard Last paragraph. ‘Without question, Ezra Chater issued a challenge to somebody. If a duel was fought in the dawn mist of Sidley Park in April 1809, his opponent, on the evidence, was a critic with a gift for ridicule and a taste for seduction. Do we need to look far? Without question, Mrs Chater was a widow by 1810. If we seek the occasion of Ezra Chater’s early and unrecorded death, do we need to look far? Without question, Lord Byron, in the very season of his emergence as a literary figure, quit the country in a cloud of panic and mystery, and stayed abroad for two years at a time when Continental travel was unusual and dangerous. If we seek his reason – do we need to look far?’

  No mean performer, he is pleased with the effect of his peroration. There is a significant silence.

  Hannah Bollocks.

  Chloë Well, I think it’s true.

  Hannah You’ve left out everything which doesn’t fit. Byron had been banging on for months about leaving England – there’s a letter in February –

  Bernard But he didn’t go, did he?

  Hannah And then he didn’t sail until the beginning of July!

  Bernard Everything moved more slowly then. Time was different. He was two weeks in Falmouth waiting for wind or something –

  Hannah Bernard, I don’t know why I’m bothering – you’re arrogant, greedy and reckless. You’ve gone from a glint in your eye to a sure thing in a hop, skip and a jump. You deserve what you get and I think you’re mad. But I can’t help myself, you’re like some exasperating child pedalling its tricycle towards the edge of a cliff, and I have to do something. So listen to me. If Byron killed Chater in a duel I’m Marie of Romania. You’ll end up with so much fame you won’t leave the house without a paper bag over your head.