Plays 5 Read online

  Valentine Actually, Bernard, as a scientist, your theory is incomplete.

  Bernard But I’m not a scientist.

  Valentine (patiently) No, as a scientist –

  Bernard (beginning to shout) I have yet to hear a proper argument.

  Hannah Nobody would kill a man and then pan his book. I mean, not in that order. So he must have borrowed the book, written the review, posted it, seduced Mrs Chater, fought a duel and departed, all in the space of two or three days. Who would do that?

  Bernard Byron.

  Hannah It’s hopeless.

  Bernard You’ve never understood him, as you’ve shown in your novelette.

  Hannah In my what?

  Bernard Oh, sorry – did you think it was a work of historical revisionism? Byron the spoilt child promoted beyond his gifts by the spirit of the age! And Caroline the closet intellectual shafted by a male society!

  Valentine I read that somewhere –

  Hannah It’s his review.

  Bernard And bloody well said, too!

  Things are turning a little ugly and Bernard seems in a mood to push them that way.

  You got them backwards, darling. Caroline was Romantic waffle on wheels with no talent, and Byron was an eighteenth-century Rationalist touched by genius. And he killed Chater.

  Hannah (pause) If it’s not too late to change my mind, I’d like you to go ahead.

  Bernard I intend to. Look to the mote in your own eye! – you even had the wrong bloke on the dust-jacket!

  Hannah Dust-jacket?

  Valentine What about my computer model? Aren’t you going to mention it?

  Bernard It’s inconclusive.

  Valentine (to Hannah) The Piccadilly reviews aren’t a very good fit with Byron’s other reviews, you see.

  Hannah (to Bernard) What do you mean, the wrong bloke?

  Bernard (ignoring her) The other reviews aren’t a very good fit for each other, are they?

  Valentine No, but differently. The parameters –

  Bernard (jeering) Parameters! You can’t stick Byron’s head in your laptop! Genius isn’t like your average grouse.

  Valentine (casually) Well, it’s all trivial anyway.

  Bernard What is?

  Valentine Who wrote what when …

  Bernard Trivial?

  Valentine Personalities.

  Bernard I’m sorry – did you say trivial?

  Valentine It’s a technical term.

  Bernard Not where I come from, it isn’t.

  Valentine The questions you’re asking don’t matter, you see. It’s like arguing who got there first with the calculus. The English say Newton, the Germans say Leibnitz. But it doesn’t matter. Personalities. What matters is the calculus. Scientific progress. Knowledge.

  Bernard Really? Why?

  Valentine Why what?

  Bernard Why does scientific progress matter more than personalities?

  Valentine Is he serious?

  Hannah No, he’s trivial. Bernard –

  Valentine (interrupting, to Bernard) Do yourself a favour, you’re on a loser.

  Bernard Oh, you’re going to zap me with penicillin and pesticides. Spare me that and I’ll spare you the bomb and aerosols. But don’t confuse progress with perfectibility. A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need. There’s no rush for Isaac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotle’s cosmos. Personally, I preferred it. Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God’s crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can’t think of anything more trivial than the speed of light. Quarks, quasars – big bangs, black holes – who gives a shit? How did you people con us out of all that status? All that money? And why are you so pleased with yourselves?

  Chloë Are you against penicillin, Bernard?

  Bernard Don’t feed the animals. (back to Valentine) I’d push the lot of you over a cliff myself. Except the one in the wheelchair, I think I’d lose the sympathy vote before people had time to think it through.

  Hannah (loudly) What the hell do you mean, the dust-jacket?

  Bernard (ignoring her) If knowledge isn’t self-knowledge it isn’t doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing ‘When Father Painted the Parlour’? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you. ‘She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that’s best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.’ There you are, he wrote it after coming home from a party. (with offensive politeness) What is it that you’re doing with grouse, Valentine, I’d love to know?

  Valentine stands up and it is suddenly apparent that he is shaking and close to tears.

  Valentine (to Chloë) He’s not against penicillin, and he knows I’m not against poetry. (to Bernard) I’ve given up on the grouse.

  Hannah You haven’t, Valentine!

  Valentine (leaving) I can’t do it.

  Hannah Why?

  Valentine Too much noise. There’s just too much bloody noise!

  On which, Valentine leaves the room. Chloë, upset and in tears, jumps up and briefly pummels Bernard ineffectually with her fists.

  Chloë You bastard, Bernard!

  She follows Valentine out and is followed at a run by Gus. Pause.

  Hannah Well, I think that’s everybody. You can leave now, give Lightning a kick on your way out.

  Bernard Yes, I’m sorry about that. It’s no fun when it’s not among pros, is it?

  Hannah No.

  Bernard Oh, well … (He begins to put his lecture sheets away in his briefcase, and is thus reminded …) Do you want to know about your book jacket? ‘Lord Byron and Caroline Lamb at the Royal Academy’? Ink study by Henry Fuseli?

  Hannah What about it?

  Bernard It’s not them.

  Hannah (she explodes) Who says!?

  Bernard brings the Byron Society Journal from his briefcase.

  Bernard This Fuseli expert in the Byron Society Journal. They sent me the latest … as a distinguished guest speaker.

  Hannah But of course it’s them! Everyone knows –

  Bernard Popular tradition only. (He is finding the place in the journal.) Here we are. ‘No earlier than 1820’. He’s analysed it. (Offers it to her.) Read at your leisure.

  Hannah (she sounds like Bernard jeering) Analysed it?

  Bernard Charming sketch, of course, but Byron was in Italy …

  Hannah But, Bernard – I know it’s them.

  Bernard How?

  Hannah How? It just is. ‘Analysed it’, my big toe!

  Bernard Language!

  Hannah He’s wrong.

  Bernard Oh, gut instinct, you mean?

  Hannah (flatly) He’s wrong.

  Bernard snaps shut his briefcase.

  Bernard Well, it’s all trivial, isn’t it? Why don’t you come?

  Hannah Where?

  Bernard With me.

  Hannah To London? What for?

  Bernard What for.

  Hannah Oh, your lecture.

  Bernard No, no, bugger that. Sex.

  Hannah Oh … No. Thanks … (then, protesting) Bernard!

  Bernard You should try it. It’s very underrated.

  Hannah Nothing against it.

  Bernard Yes, you have. You should let yourself go a bit. You might have written a better book. Or at any rate the right book.

  Hannah Sex and literature. Literature and sex. Your conversation, left to itself, doesn’t have many places to go. Like two marbles rolling around a pudding basin. One of them is always sex.

  Bernard Ah well, yes. Men all over.

  Hannah No doubt. Einstein – relativity and sex. Chippendale – sex and furniture. Galileo – ‘Did the earth move?’ What the hell is it with you people? Chaps sometimes wanted to marry me, and I don’t know a worse bargain. Available sex against not being allowed to fart in bed. What do you mean the right book?

  Bernard It takes a romantic to make a heroine of Caroline Lamb. You were cut
out for Byron.

  Pause.

  Hannah So, cheerio.

  Bernard Oh, I’m coming back for the dance, you know. Chloë asked me.

  Hannah She meant well, but I don’t dance.

  Bernard No, no – I’m going with her.

  Hannah Oh, I see. I don’t, actually.

  Bernard I’m her date. Sub rosa. Don’t tell Mother.

  Hannah She doesn’t want her mother to know?

  Bernard No – I don’t want her mother to know. This is my first experience of the landed aristocracy. I tell you, I’m boggle-eyed.

  Hannah Bernard! – you haven’t seduced that girl?

  Bernard Seduced her? Every time I turned round she was up a library ladder. In the end I gave in. That reminds me – I spotted something between her legs that made me think of you. (He instantly receives a sharp stinging slap on the face but manages to remain completely unperturbed by it. He is already producing from his pocket a small book. His voice has hardly hesitated.) The Peaks Traveller and Gazetteer – James Godolphin 1832 – unillustrated, I’m afraid. (He has opened the book to a marked place.) ‘Sidley Park in Derbyshire, property of the Earl of Croom …’

  Hannah (numbly) The world is going to hell in a hand-cart.

  Bernard ‘Five hundred acres including forty of lake – the Park by Brown and Noakes has pleasing features in the horrid style – viaduct, grotto, etc – a hermitage occupied by a lunatic since twenty years without discourse or companion save for a pet tortoise, Plautus by name, which he suffers children to touch on request.’ (He holds out the book for her.) A tortoise. They must be a feature.

  After a moment Hannah takes the book.

  Hannah Thank you.

  Valentine comes to the door.

  Valentine The station taxi is at the front …

  Bernard Yes … thanks … Oh – did Peacock come up trumps?

  Hannah For some.

  Bernard Hermit’s name and cv? (He picks up and glances at the Peacock letter.) ‘My dear Thackeray …’ God, I’m good. (He puts the letter down.) Well, wish me luck – (vaguely to Valentine) Sorry about … you know … (and to Hannah) and about your …

  Valentine Piss off, Bernard.

  Bernard Right. (He goes.)

  Hannah Don’t let Bernard get to you. It’s only performance art, you know. Rhetoric. They used to teach it in ancient times, like PT. It’s not about being right, they had philosophy for that. Rhetoric was their chat show. Bernard’s indignation is a sort of aerobics for when he gets on television.

  Valentine I don’t care to be rubbished by the dustbin man. (He has been looking at the letter.) The what of the lunatic?

  Hannah reclaims the letter and reads it for him.

  Hannah ‘The testament of the lunatic serves as a caution against French fashion … for it was Frenchified mathematick that brought him to the melancholy certitude of a world without light or life … as a wooden stove that must consume itself until ash and stove are as one, and heat is gone from the earth.’

  Valentine (amused, surprised) Huh!

  Hannah ‘He died aged two score years and seven, hoary as Job and meagre as a cabbage-stalk, the proof of his prediction even yet unyielding to his labours for the restitution of hope through good English algebra.’

  Valentine That’s it?

  Hannah (nods) Is there anything in it?

  Valentine In what? We are all doomed? (casually) Oh yes, sure – it’s called the second law of thermodynamics.

  Hannah Was it known about?

  Valentine By poets and lunatics from time immemorial.

  Hannah Seriously.

  Valentine No.

  Hannah Is it anything to do with … you know, Thomasina’s discovery?

  Valentine She didn’t discover anything.

  Hannah Her lesson book.

  Valentine No.

  Hannah A coincidence, then?

  Valentine What is?

  Hannah (reading) ‘He died aged two score years and seven.’ That was in 1834. So he was born in 1787. So was the tutor. He says so in his letter to Lord Croom when he recommended himself for the job: ‘Date of birth – 1787.’ The hermit was born in the same year as Septimus Hodge.

  Valentine (pause) Did Bernard bite you in the leg?

  Hannah Don’t you see? I thought my hermit was a perfect symbol. An idiot in the landscape. But this is better. The Age of Enlightenment banished into the Romantic wilderness! The genius of Sidley Park living on in a hermit’s hut!

  Valentine You don’t know that.

  Hannah Oh, but I do. I do. Somewhere there will be something … if only I can find it.

  SCENE SIX

  The room is empty.

  A reprise: early morning – a distant pistol shot – the sound of the crows.

  Jellaby enters the dawn-dark room with a lamp. He goes to the windows and looks out. He sees something. He returns to put the lamp on the table, and then opens one of the french windows and steps outside.

  Jellaby (outside) Mr Hodge!

  Septimus comes in, followed by Jellaby, who closes the garden door. Septimus is wearing a greatcoat.

  Septimus Thank you, Jellaby. I was expecting to be locked out. What time is it?

  Jellaby Half past five.

  Septimus That is what I have. Well! – what a bracing experience! (He produces two pistols from inside his coat and places them on the table.) The dawn, you know. Unexpectedly lively. Fishes, birds, frogs … rabbits … (He produces a dead rabbit from inside his coat.) and very beautiful. If only it did not occur so early in the day. I have brought Lady Thomasina a rabbit. Will you take it?

  Jellaby It’s dead.

  Septimus Yes. Lady Thomasina loves a rabbit pie.

  Jellaby takes the rabbit without enthusiasm. There is a little blood on it.

  Jellaby You were missed, Mr Hodge.

  Septimus I decided to sleep last night in the boat-house. Did I see a carriage leaving the Park?

  Jellaby Captain Brice’s carriage, with Mr and Mrs Chater also.

  Septimus Gone?!

  Jellaby Yes, sir. And Lord Byron’s horse was brought round at four o’clock.

  Septimus Lord Byron too!

  Jellaby Yes, sir. The house has been up and hopping.

  Septimus But I have his rabbit pistols! What am I to do with his rabbit pistols?

  Jellaby You were looked for in your room.

  Septimus By whom?

  Jellaby By her ladyship.

  Septimus In my room?

  Jellaby I will tell her ladyship you are returned. (He starts to leave.)

  Septimus Jellaby! Did Lord Byron leave a book for me?

  Jellaby A book?

  Septimus He had the loan of a book from me.

  Jellaby His lordship left nothing in his room, sir, not a coin.

  Septimus Oh. Well, I’m sure he would have left a coin if he’d had one. Jellaby – here is a half-guinea for you.

  Jellaby Thank you very much, sir.

  Septimus What has occurred?

  Jellaby The servants are told nothing, sir.

  Septimus Come, come, does a half-guinea buy nothing any more?

  Jellaby (sighs) Her ladyship encountered Mrs Chater during the night.

  Septimus Where?

  Jellaby On the threshold of Lord Byron’s room.

  Septimus Ah. Which one was leaving and which entering?

  Jellaby Mrs Chater was leaving Lord Byron’s room.

  Septimus And where was Mr Chater?

  Jellaby Mr Chater and Captain Brice were drinking cherry brandy. They had the footman to keep the fire up until three o’clock. There was a loud altercation upstairs, and –

  Lady Croom enters the room.

  Lady Croom Well, Mr Hodge.

  Septimus My lady.

  Lady Croom All this to shoot a hare?

  Septimus A rabbit.

  She gives him one of her looks.

  No, indeed, a hare, though very rabbit-like –

  Jellaby is about to leav
e.

  Lady Croom My infusion.

  Jellaby Yes, my lady.

  He leaves. Lady Croom is carrying two letters. We have not seen them before. Each has an envelope which has been opened. She flings them on the table.

  Lady Croom How dare you!

  Septimus I cannot be called to account for what was written in private and read without regard to propriety.

  Lady Croom Addressed to me!

  Septimus Left in my room, in the event of my death –

  Lady Croom Pah! – what earthly use is a love letter from beyond the grave?

  Septimus As much, surely, as from this side of it. The second letter, however, was not addressed to your ladyship.

  Lady Croom I have a mother’s right to open a letter addressed by you to my daughter, whether in the event of your life, your death, or your imbecility. What do you mean by writing to her of rice pudding when she has just suffered the shock of violent death in our midst?

  Septimus Whose death?

  Lady Croom Yours, you wretch!

  Septimus Yes, I see.

  Lady Croom I do not know which is the madder of your ravings. One envelope full of rice pudding, the other of the most insolent familiarities regarding several parts of my body, but have no doubt which is the more intolerable to me.

  Septimus Which?

  Lady Croom Oh, aren’t we saucy when our bags are packed! Your friend has gone before you, and I have despatched the harlot Chater and her husband – and also my brother for bringing them here. Such is the sentence, you see, for choosing unwisely in your acquaintance. Banishment. Lord Byron is a rake and a hypocrite, and the sooner he sails for the Levant the sooner he will find society congenial to his character.

  Septimus It has been a night of reckoning.

  Lady Croom Indeed I wish it had passed uneventfully with you and Mr Chater shooting each other with the decorum due to a civilized house. You have no secrets left, Mr Hodge. They spilled out between shrieks and oaths and tears. It is fortunate that a lifetime’s devotion to the sporting gun has halved my husband’s hearing to the ear he sleeps on.