Plays 5 Read online

  Septimus I’m afraid I have no knowledge of what has occurred.

  Lady Croom Your trollop was discovered in Lord Byron’s room.

  Septimus Ah. Discovered by Mr Chater?

  Lady Croom Who else?

  Septimus I am very sorry, madam, for having used your kindness to bring my unworthy friend to your notice. He will have to give an account of himself to me, you may be sure.

  Before Lady Croom can respond to this threat, Jellaby enters the room with her ‘infusion’. This is quite an elaborate affair: a pewter tray on small feet on which there is a kettle suspended over a spirit lamp. There is a cup and saucer and the silver ‘basket’ containing the dry leaves for the tea. Jellaby places the tray on the table and is about to offer further assistance with it.

  Lady Croom I will do it.

  Jellaby Yes, my lady. (to Septimus) Lord Byron left a letter for you with the valet, sir.

  Septimus Thank you.

  Septimus takes the letter off the tray. Jellaby prepares to leave. Lady Croom eyes the letter.

  Lady Croom When did he do so?

  Jellaby As he was leaving, your ladyship.

  Jellaby leaves. Septimus puts the letter into his pocket.

  Septimus Allow me.

  Since she does not object, he pours a cup of tea for her. She accepts it.

  Lady Croom I do not know if it is proper for you to receive a letter written in my house from someone not welcome in it.

  Septimus Very improper, I agree. Lord Byron’s want of delicacy is a grief to his friends, among whom I no longer count myself. I will not read his letter until I have followed him through the gates.

  She considers that for a moment.

  Lady Croom That may excuse the reading but not the writing.

  Septimus Your ladyship should have lived in the Athens of Pericles! The philosophers would have fought the sculptors for your idle hour!

  Lady Croom (protesting) Oh, really! … (protesting less) Oh really …

  Septimus has taken Byron’s letter from his pocket and is now setting fire to a corner of it using the little flame from the spirit lamp.

  Oh … really …

  The paper blazes in Septimus’s hand and he drops it and lets it burn out on the metal tray.

  Septimus Now there’s a thing – a letter from Lord Byron never to be read by a living soul. I will take my leave, madam, at the time of your desiring it.

  Lady Croom To the Indies?

  Septimus The Indies! Why?

  Lady Croom To follow the Chater, of course. She did not tell you?

  Septimus She did not exchange half-a-dozen words with me.

  Lady Croom I expect she did not like to waste the time. The Chater sails with Captain Brice.

  Septimus Ah. As a member of the crew?

  Lady Croom No, as wife to Mr Chater, plant-gatherer to my brother’s expedition.

  Septimus I knew he was no poet. I did not know it was botany under the false colours.

  Lady Croom He is no more a botanist. My brother paid fifty pounds to have him published, and he will pay a hundred and fifty to have Mr Chater picking flowers in the Indies for a year while the wife plays mistress of the Captain’s quarters. Captain Brice has fixed his passion on Mrs Chater, and to take her on voyage he has not scrupled to deceive the Admiralty, the Linnean Society and Sir Joseph Banks, botanist to His Majesty at Kew.

  Septimus Her passion is not as fixed as his.

  Lady Croom It is a defect of God’s humour that he directs our hearts everywhere but to those who have a right to them.

  Septimus Indeed, madam. (Pause.) But is Mr Chater deceived?

  Lady Croom He insists on it, and finds the proof of his wife’s virtue in his eagerness to defend it. Captain Brice is not deceived but cannot help himself. He would die for her.

  Septimus I think, my lady, he would have Mr Chater die for her.

  Lady Croom Indeed, I never knew a woman worth the duel, or the other way about. Your letter to me goes very ill with your conduct to Mrs Chater, Mr Hodge. I have had experience of being betrayed before the ink is dry, but to be betrayed before the pen is even dipped, and with the village noticeboard, what am I to think of such a performance?

  Septimus My lady, I was alone with my thoughts in the gazebo, when Mrs Chater ran me to ground, and I being in such a passion, in an agony of unrelieved desire –

  Lady Croom Oh …!

  Septimus – I thought in my madness that the Chater with her skirts over her head would give me the momentary illusion of the happiness to which I dared not put a face.

  Pause.

  Lady Croom I do not know when I have received a more unusual compliment, Mr Hodge. I hope I am more than a match for Mrs Chater with her head in a bucket. Does she wear drawers?

  Septimus She does.

  Lady Croom Yes, I have heard that drawers are being worn now. It is unnatural for women to be got up like jockeys. I cannot approve. (She turns with a whirl of skirts and moves to leave.) I know nothing of Pericles or the Athenian philosophers. I can spare them an hour, in my sitting room when I have bathed. Seven o’clock. Bring a book.

  She goes out. Septimus picks up the two letters, the ones he wrote, and starts to burn them in the flame of the spirit lamp.

  SCENE SEVEN

  Valentine and Chloë are at the table. Gus is in the room.

  Chloë is reading from two Saturday newspapers. She is wearing workaday period clothes, a Regency dress, no hat.

  Valentine is pecking at a portable computer. He is wearing unkempt Regency clothes, too.

  The clothes have evidently come from a large wicker laundry hamper, from which Gus is producing more clothes to try on himself. He finds a Regency coat and starts putting it on.

  The objects on the table now include two geometrical solids, pyramid and cone, about twenty inches high, of the type used in a drawing lesson; and a pot of dwarf dahlias (which do not look like modern dahlias).

  Chloë ‘Even in Arcadia – Sex, Literature and Death at Sidley Park’. Picture of Byron.

  Valentine Not of Bernard?

  Chloë ‘Byron Fought Fatal Duel, Says Don’… Valentine, do you think I’m the first person to think of this?

  Valentine No.

  Chloë I haven’t said yet. The future is all programmed like a computer – that’s a proper theory, isn’t it?

  Valentine The deterministic universe, yes.

  Chloë Right. Because everything including us is just a lot of atoms bouncing off each other like billiard balls.

  Valentine Yes. There was someone, forget his name, 1820s, who pointed out that from Newton’s laws you could predict everything to come – I mean, you’d need a computer as big as the universe but the formula would exist.

  Chloë But it doesn’t work, does it?

  Valentine No. It turns out the maths is different.

  Chloë No, it’s all because of sex.

  Valentine Really?

  Chloë That’s what I think. The universe is deterministic all right, just like Newton said, I mean it’s trying to be, but the only thing going wrong is people fancying people who aren’t supposed to be in that part of the plan.

  Valentine Ah. The attraction that Newton left out. All the way back to the apple in the garden. Yes. (Pause.) Yes, I think you’re the first person to think of this.

  Hannah enters, carrying a tabloid paper, and a mug of tea.

  Hannah Have you seen this? ‘Bonking Byron Shot Poet’.

  Chloë (pleased) Let’s see.

  Hannah gives her the paper, smiles at Gus.

  Valentine He’s done awfully well, hasn’t he? How did they all know?

  Hannah Don’t be ridiculous. (to Chloë) Your father wants it back.

  Chloë All right.

  Hannah What a fool.

  Chloë Jealous. I think it’s brilliant. (She gets up to go. To Gus) Yes, that’s perfect, but not with trainers. Come on, I’ll lend you a pair of flatties, they’ll look period on you –

  Hannah H
ello, Gus. You all look so romantic.

  Gus following Chloë out, hesitates, smiles at her.

  Chloë (pointedly) Are you coming?

  She holds the door for Gus and follows him out, leaving a sense of her disapproval behind her.

  Hannah The important thing is not to give two monkeys for what young people think about you. (She goes to look at the other newspapers.)

  Valentine (anxiously) You don’t think she’s getting a thing about Bernard, do you?

  Hannah I wouldn’t worry about Chloë, she’s old enough to vote on her back. ‘Byron Fought Fatal Duel, Says Don’. Or rather – (sceptically) ‘Says Don!’

  Valentine It may all prove to be true.

  Hannah It can’t prove to be true, it can only not prove to be false yet.

  Valentine (pleased) Just like science.

  Hannah If Bernard can stay ahead of getting the rug pulled till he’s dead, he’ll be a success.

  Valentine Just like science … The ultimate fear is of posterity …

  Hannah Personally I don’t think it’ll take that long.

  Valentine … and then there’s the afterlife. An afterlife would be a mixed blessing. ‘Ah – Bernard Nightingale, I don’t believe you know Lord Byron.’ It must be heaven up there.

  Hannah You can’t believe in an afterlife, Valentine.

  Valentine Oh, you’re going to disappoint me at last.

  Hannah Am I? Why?

  Valentine Science and religion.

  Hannah No, no, been there, done that, boring.

  Valentine Oh, Hannah. Fiancée. Have pity. Can’t we have a trial marriage and I’ll call it off in the morning?

  Hannah (amused) I don’t know when I’ve received a more unusual proposal.

  Valentine (interested) Have you had many?

  Hannah That would be telling.

  Valentine Well, why not? Your classical reserve is only a mannerism; and neurotic.

  Hannah Do you want the room?

  Valentine You get nothing if you give nothing.

  Hannah I ask nothing.

  Valentine No, stay.

  Valentine resumes work at his computer. Hannah establishes herself among her references at ‘her’ end of the table. She has a stack of pocket-sized volumes, Lady Groom’s ‘garden books’.

  Hannah What are you doing? Valentine?

  Valentine The set of points on a complex plane made by –

  Hannah Is it the grouse?

  Valentine Oh, the grouse. The damned grouse.

  Hannah You mustn’t give up.

  Valentine Why? Didn’t you agree with Bernard?

  Hannah Oh, that. It’s all trivial – your grouse, my hermit, Bernard’s Byron. Comparing what we’re looking for misses the point. It’s wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we’re going out the way we came in. That’s why you can’t believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final. (She looks over Valentine’s shoulder at the computer screen. Reacting) Oh!, but … how beautiful!

  Valentine The Coverly set.

  Hannah The Coverly set! My goodness, Valentine!

  Valentine Lend me a finger. (He takes her finger and presses one of the computer keys several times.) See? In an ocean of ashes, islands of order. Patterns making themselves out of nothing. I can’t show you how deep it goes. Each picture is a detail of the previous one, blown up. And so on. For ever. Pretty nice, eh?

  Hannah Is it important?

  Valentine Interesting. Publishable.

  Hannah Well done!

  Valentine Not me. It’s Thomasina’s. I just pushed her equations through the computer a few million times further than she managed to do with her pencil.

  From the old portfolio he takes Thomasina’s lesson book and gives it to Hannah. The piano starts to be heard.

  You can have it back now.

  Hannah What does it mean?

  Valentine Not what you’d like it to.

  Hannah Why not?

  Valentine Well, for one thing, she’d be famous.

  Hannah No, she wouldn’t. She was dead before she had time to be famous …

  Valentine She died?

  Hannah … burned to death.

  Valentine (realizing) Oh … the girl who died in the fire!

  Hannah The night before her seventeenth birthday. You can see where the dormer doesn’t match. That was her bedroom under the roof. There’s a memorial in the Park.

  Valentine (irritated) I know – it’s my house.

  Valentine turns his attention back to his computer. Hannah goes back to her chair. She looks through the lesson book.

  Hannah Val, Septimus was her tutor – he and Thomasina would have –

  Valentine You do yours.

  Pause. Two researchers.

  Lord Augustus, fifteen years old, wearing clothes of 1812, bursts in through the non-music room door. He is laughing. He dives under the table. He is chased into the room by Thomasina, aged sixteen and furious. She spots Augustus immediately.

  Thomasina You swore! You crossed your heart!

  Augustus scampers out from under the table and Thomasina chases him around it.

  Augustus I’ll tell mama! I’ll tell mama!

  Thomasina You beast!

  She catches Augustus as Septimus enters from the other door, carrying a book, a decanter and a glass, and his portfolio.

  Septimus Hush! What is this? My lord! Order, order!

  Thomasina and Augustus separate.

  I am obliged.

  Septimus goes to his place at the table. He pours himself a glass of wine.

  Augustus Well, good day to you, Mr Hodge!

  He is smirking about something. Thomasina dutifully picks up a drawing book and settles down to draw the geometrical solids. Septimus opens his portfolio.

  Septimus Will you join us this morning, Lord Augustus? We have our drawing lesson.

  Augustus I am a master of it at Eton, Mr Hodge, but we only draw naked women.

  Septimus You may work from memory.

  Thomasina Disgusting!

  Septimus We will have silence now, if you please.

  From the portfolio Septimus takes Thomasina’s lesson book and tosses it to her; returning homework. She snatches it and opens it.

  Thomasina No marks?! Did you not like my rabbit equation?

  Septimus I saw no resemblance to a rabbit.

  Thomasina It eats its own progeny.

  Septimus (pause) I did not see that.

  He extends his hand for the lesson book. She returns it to him.

  Thomasina I have not room to extend it.

  Septimus and Hannah turn the pages doubled by time. Augustus indolently starts to draw the models.

  Hannah Do you mean the world is saved after all?

  Valentine No, it’s still doomed. But if this is how it started, perhaps it’s how the next one will come.

  Hannah From good English algebra?

  Septimus It will go to infinity or zero, or nonsense.

  Thomasina No, if you set apart the minus roots they square back to sense.

  Septimus turns the pages. Thomasina starts drawing the models.

  Hannah closes the lesson book and turns her attention to her stack of ‘garden books’.

  Valentine Listen – you know your tea’s getting cold.

  Hannah I like it cold.

  Valentine (ignoring that) I’m telling you something. Your tea gets cold by itself, it doesn’t get hot by itself. Do you think that’s odd?

  Hannah No.

  Valentine Well, it is odd. Heat goes to cold. It’s a one-way street. Your tea will end up at room temperature. What’s happening to your tea is happening to everything everywhere. The sun and the stars. It’ll take a while but we�
�re all going to end up at room temperature. When your hermit set up shop nobody understood this. But let’s say you’re right, in 18-whatever nobody knew more about heat than this scribbling nutter living in a hovel in Derbyshire.

  Hannah He was at Cambridge – a scientist.

  Valentine Say he was. I’m not arguing. And the girl was his pupil, she had a genius for her tutor.

  Hannah Or the other way round.

  Valentine Anything you like. But not this! Whatever he thought he was doing to save the world with good English algebra it wasn’t this!

  Hannah Why? Because they didn’t have calculators?

  Valentine No. Yes. Because there’s an order things can’t happen in. You can’t open a door till there’s a house.

  Hannah I thought that’s what genius was.

  Valentine Only for lunatics and poets.

  Pause.

  Hannah

  ‘I had a dream which was not all a dream.

  The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars

  Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

  Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

  Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air …’

  Valentine Your own?

  Hannah Byron.

  Pause. Two researchers again.

  Thomasina Septimus, do you think that I will marry Lord Byron?

  Augustus Who is he?

  Thomasina He is the author of ‘Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage’, the most poetical and pathetic and bravest hero of any book I ever read before, and the most modern and the handsomest, for Harold is Lord Byron himself to those who know him, like myself and Septimus. Well, Septimus?

  Septimus (absorbed) No.

  Then he puts her lesson book away into the portfolio and picks up his own book to read.

  Thomasina Why not?

  Septimus For one thing, he is not aware of your existence.

  Thomasina We exchanged many significant glances when he was at Sidley Park. I do wonder that he has been home almost a year from his adventures and has not written to me once.

  Septimus It is indeed improbable, my lady.

  Augustus Lord Byron?! – he claimed my hare, although my shot was the earlier! He said I missed by a hare’s breadth. His conversation was very facetious. But I think Lord Byron will not marry you, Thom, for he was only lame and not blind.