The second act picks up the last moments of the first. The alarm is still ringing. NURSE PLIMPTON (Carol Ennis) has just been killed. DR FARQUHAR (Easterman) is talking on the telephone.
FARQUHAR: My security clearance is twenty-nine. My labrador’s name is Reginald.
Even here there are subtle differences. The security clearance number has changed. And as the alarm stops ringing and the flashing lights stop, we can see (but might not notice) that more changes have been made to the set and to the costumes of both FARQUHAR and STYLER.
It’s time to start work on Chapter Two.
STYLER: (Total panic.) Jesus Christ! Oh Jesus…
STYLER — impeded by the strait-jacket — lurches to his feet and runs over to the door through which PLIMPTON made her entrances. He tries to open it, turning round and scrabbling with his hands. FARQUHAR watches him. Then…
FARQUHAR: I don’t think you’re thinking this quite through.
STYLER twists round to protect himself as FARQUHAR approaches slowly.
STYLER: Get away from me! Just get away from me! Get away!
FARQUHAR: Even assuming you could get that door open, which I very much doubt, you wouldn’t get very far. It’s a cupboard.
STYLER runs over to the other door.
STYLER: (Shouting.) Help me somebody! Help me somebody, please.
FARQUHAR: There’s nobody in the building who can help you. There’s nobody in the building you’d want to help you. How about Borson? Why don’t you ask Borson for help? I’m sure he’ll be happy to supply you with a little mouth-to-mouth.
STYLER: Oh God!
STYLER sinks to his knees and tries to get out of the straitjacket.
FARQUHAR: What are you doing?
STYLER: Let me go, please. Please, let me go.
FARQUHAR: You want to go?
STYLER: Yes!
FARQUHAR: But you’ve come all this way. You drove three and a half hours up the motorway just to see me.
STYLER: I came to see Dr Farquhar.
FARQUHAR: (Pointing at the skeleton.) There he is.
STYLER: (Slumps to the floor, moaning.) No…
FARQUHAR: This is very sad.
STYLER: Please don’t hurt me!
FARQUHAR: (Angry.) Stop saying that! What do you think I am?
STYLER: I know what you are. I know what you are. You’re…
FARQUHAR: Go on.
STYLER: You’re Easterman.
FARQUHAR: Yes.
STYLER: You’re going to kill me.
STYLER: You killed Nurse…Dr Ennis.
FARQUHAR: That was self-defence.
STYLER: (Hysterical.) Self-defence? How can it…? What do you mean? Self-defence?
FARQUHAR: She hit me first. Do you want me to help you into a chair?
STYLER: No.
FARQUHAR: (Approaching him.) You’d be more comfortable…
STYLER: Keep away from me!
FARQUHAR: I didn’t mean to kill her. But then of course, if I were responsible for my actions, I wouldn’t be here, would I?
STYLER: Easterman…
FARQUHAR: Yes.
STYLER: Listen to me.
FARQUHAR: I’m all ears.
STYLER: (Getting up.) Take this off. Please. Take off this strait-jacket and let me go. I promise you, I won’t tell anyone. Nobody needs to know I was ever here. Let me go and I’ll go home and leave you to whatever it is you want to do. I promise.
FARQUHAR: You want me to let you go?
STYLER: Please.
FARQUHAR: And you won’t tell anyone?
STYLER: I promise.
FARQUHAR: Do you think I’m mad? I mean, do you think I’m crazy? I let you go and you really just forget the whole thing happened?
STYLER: Yes!
FARQUHAR: No.
STYLER: Then what are you going to do with me?
FARQUHAR: What am I going to do with you? (Pause.) It’s bizarre, isn’t it. When I first saw you here in this room, I had no idea who you were. You see, it was three weeks ago that we took over Fairfields. Did she tell you…Dr Ennis?
STYLER: She told me, yes.
FARQUHAR: It started right here in this office…just the three of us, Dr Ennis, Dr Farquhar and me. In psychodrama. You have no idea how much I used to dread those bloody sessions. The warm-up. The action. The journey through the spiral. It was so embarrassing! I mean, they wanted emotions. It all had to be out there. ‘Why did you kill your father?’ (Another voice.) ‘My God! I didn’t know I had killed my father!’ (Third voice.) ‘You did kill him and I should know because I am your father.’ The whole thing was absurd — and since we’ve been talking about Laing I should say I use the word entirely in the non-existential sense. I can’t help thinking that the world of psychiatry will be better off without them Doctors Ennis and Farquhar. What they were trying to do here was so obviously idiotic that only the most highly qualified and respected psychiatrists would be unable to see it.
STYLER: Was that why you killed them?
FARQUHAR: I killed them because the opportunity presented itself. We massacred the entire staff apart from one or two whom we kept for recreational purposes. I hope you noticed the ‘whom’ by the way. As my potential biographer I’d like you to know that I’m a stickler for good grammar. Who and whom…you know the difference?
STYLER: Yes. Yes, of course.
FARQUHAR: Well, that’s reassuring. Anyway, we butchered the staff, quite literally in one or two cases I’m afraid. (Gesturing at the skeleton.)
STYLER: Oh God. I’m going to be sick again…
FARQUHAR: Why don’t you sit down?
STYLER: No!
FARQUHAR: You’ll feel better sitting down.
STYLER: No…
FARQUHAR: (A scream.) Sit down!
STYLER is shaken out of his nausea. He sits down. FARQUHAR continues his explanation as though nothing has happened.
Well, as soon as things had quietened down, I took over the running of Fairfields, working out of Dr Farquhar’s office. My immediate concern was to make sure that what had happened here remained, at least for as long as possible, our own little secret…and that proved to be somewhat easier than I had thought. We are, after all, in a very secluded corner of Suffolk, if indeed that most ill-defined of English counties can be said to have corners.
STYLER: I should never have come.
FARQUHAR: From the moment I saw you, all I wanted to do was to get you to leave. I tried to make you go, but you wouldn’t listen.
STYLER: I want to go now.
FARQUHAR: Of course you want to go now. But now I’m actually quite glad you’ve stayed. And you know what it was that changed my mind? (Pause.) Your book.
FARQUHAR: Call it vanity, if you like. The vanity of being published. The fact that you wanted to write about me. Not Borson. Or Morgenstein or any of the rest of them. Me! I was flattered. I admit it. I was interested in your book.
STYLER: I still want to write it.
FARQUHAR: Really?
STYLER: (Grasping at straws.) I can still write it. If you don’t hurt me.
FARQUHAR: I would have thought you’d write with a great deal more conviction if I did hurt you. It would certainly help sales.
STYLER: No…
FARQUHAR: ‘Mark Styler, best-selling author of Serial Chiller and its sequel, the even more fatuously titled Bloodbath was tortured by his next book…Easterman: the York Minster Monster and quite literally so by its subject. This can be discerned from the growing incoherence of each chapter culminating in the short sentences of the final paragraphs written, it is believed, by the writer using a pen held in his toes, following the loss of all his fingers…’
STYLER: Oh no.
FARQUHAR: ‘…and indeed hands…’
STYLER: Please…
STYLER sobs uncontrollably. FARQUHAR watches him.
FARQUHAR: I was only joking.
STYLER: What?
FARQUHAR: You’re safe.
STYLER: Safe.
FARQUHAR: In my hands. But that’s the point I’m trying to make right now. How safe would I be in yours?
STYLER: What?
FARQUHAR: If you were going to write a book about me, and perhaps you may still write a book about me, what would you put in it? That’s what I want to know. I want to get inside your head, not because I’m interested in you — I’m not — but because I’m interested in just how and why you’re interested in me.
STYLER: I was going to tell your story.
FARQUHAR: Yes. But my story according to who?
STYLER: You mean — ‘to whom’.
FARQUHAR: (Furious.) Don’t play the pedant with me, you little shit! (Pause.) You were going to write what you thought of me, not what I am. Those are two quite separate things.
STYLER: I would have been fair.
FARQUHAR: Oh yes?
STYLER: Yes. I swear. I wanted to understand you, to know why you did…what you did. If you’d read my other books…
FARQUHAR: I haven’t.
STYLER: …you’d know. I mean, look at Chikatilo. Even him. I tried to be sympathetic.
FARQUHAR: What was the title once again? The True Story of a Monster in the Ukraine. That’s not what I’d call sympathetic.
STYLER: That wasn’t me. That was the publishers. They wanted the book to sell. They liked the word ‘monster’. But I never thought that. I never used the word. Not once…
FARQUHAR: You used it about me.
STYLER: No.
FARQUHAR: When you were talking ‘Dr Farquhar’. ‘What turned this golden boy into this revolting monster?’ Those were your exact words.
STYLER: I said that?
FARQUHAR: You also said I was homosexual.
STYLER: (Remembering.) Oh shit…
FARQUHAR: A repressed, mother-dominated homosexual. That was what your deeply profound and incisive view of my life amounted to. That was your opinion and you were going to shout it out from every W H Smith in the country.
STYLER: No…
FARQUHAR: What? I misheard you, did I?
STYLER: No. But…it was just a theory. (Quickly.) I can see it was wrong now. I don’t think that any more.
FARQUHAR: (Effeminate.) Oh? What makes you think it was wrong?
STYLER: Please…
FARQUHAR: Easterman — the novel. The story of a pathetic nancy boy who killed fourteen men and five women — five women, thank you very much — simply because he was artistic and because he’d wet the bed as a child.
STYLER: I never said that. I was never going to say that.
FARQUHAR: Then what were you going to say?
FARQUHAR picks up the scalpel and approaches STYLER who shies away.
You know, usually it’s the biographer who ties down and then dissects his subject, but this time it could be the other way round.
STYLER: Don’t…
FARQUHAR: But I’m giving you an opportunity to save yourself, Mr Styler. Tell me the truth, what you believe, not what you think I want to hear. Give me your eyes…
The scalpel is close to STYLER’s eyes. He moans. Then FARQUHAR whisks it away.
I want to know about you.
STYLER: What? What do you want to know?
FARQUHAR: Well, you could tell me what brought you here. Why this interest in psychopaths?
STYLER: I told you…
FARQUHAR: You told me nothing. Oh, you gave me some bullshit about the human condition but that’s a bit like a crack-head saying he takes cocaine because he’s interested in the social history of Peru.
STYLER: If I tell you what you want to know, you’ll let me leave?
FARQUHAR: If you tell me the truth, I might.
STYLER: I don’t know. I don’t know where to start.
FARQUHAR: How about with your mother?
STYLER: No.
FARQUHAR: Victoria Barlow. That was her name, wasn’t it. Now there’s an interesting thought for you. You said you moved to London. Victoria Station. From one Victoria to another.
STYLER: I lived in Vauxhall. It was close to Victoria.
FARQUHAR: Were you close? You and your mum?
STYLER: You’re not interested.
FARQUHAR: If I wasn’t interested, I wouldn’t ask.
STYLER: Yes! We were close…
FARQUHAR: Victoria Barlow. I seem to remember her. Quite a large woman. Large teeth.
STYLER: Yes.
FARQUHAR: She lived at number twenty-nine. Twenty-nine, Sunflower Court. She was my neighbour. And according to what you were telling me earlier, before you left her for the other Victoria, you lived with her.
STYLER: (Uneasy.) I was there some of the time.
FARQUHAR: Well, we must have run into each other. There was you living with your mother at number twenty-nine. There was me living with mine next door. You must have seen me.
STYLER: I wasn’t there much of the time. I was at boarding-school. And then at university.
FARQUHAR: York University?
STYLER: No.
FARQUHAR: No?
STYLER: No.
FARQUHAR: Why not?
STYLER: I didn’t get in.
FARQUHAR: That must have been a disappointment.
STYLER: No. Not really.
FARQUHAR: So where did you go?
FARQUHAR: There’s a university in Torquay?
STYLER: It wasn’t exactly a university. It was more of a college.
FARQUHAR: What was your subject?
STYLER: Catering.
FARQUHAR: Catering.
STYLER: Yes.
FARQUHAR: It was a catering college.
STYLER: Yes.
FARQUHAR: You wanted to cook?
STYLER: No. But it was something to fall back on. A day-job…
FARQUHAR: While you were waiting to become a writer?
STYLER: Yes.
FARQUHAR: So you were away from home a lot?
STYLER: Most of the time.
FARQUHAR: But not all of it?
STYLER: No.
FARQUHAR: You must have come home to visit your mum?
STYLER: I did.
FARQUHAR: And you never saw me? On the other side of the garden wall?
STYLER: It was a fence. There was a wooden fence, covered in wisteria.
FARQUHAR: Yes. I remember it. (Realising.) My Mother’s Garden. Did you write about the wisteria?
STYLER: Yes.
FARQUHAR: It was in your book. The wisteria between your garden and mine.
STYLER: I mentioned it.
FARQUHAR: Did your mother have any tips about the wisteria. I mean, it must have been growing pretty well anyway, considering all the nutrients I was putting into the soil.
STYLER: I can’t remember.
FARQUHAR: There must have been something.
STYLER: (Remembering.) Chinese wisteria grows anti-clockwise.
FARQUHAR: I’m sorry?
STYLER: My mother said that’s how you tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese wisteria. The stems twine in different directions.
FARQUHAR: Is that it?
STYLER: That’s all I can remember.
FARQUHAR: Well, I suppose in its own way that’s quite remarkable.
STYLER: Yes.
FARQUHAR: She must have been a remarkable woman.
STYLER: She was.
FARQUHAR: And yet you never mentioned her, not after I told you who I was. And here you are, face-to-face with the man who killed her, but I don’t sense any hatred. Maybe you’ve forgiven me. You said you were going to forgive me. Have you forgiven me?
A pause. STYLER says nothing.
Let’s talk about this. This is intriguing. You and your mum. Why didn’t you mention her earlier? In fact, now I come to think of it, why did you never say that all those years… you and I actually lived next door?
STYLER: (Faltering.) Didn’t I?
FARQUHAR: You didn’t even say you’d lived in York.
STYLER: I did.
FARQUHAR: You said you’d lived in the north but you were careful not to specify where.
STYLER: I didn’t think it was relevant.
FARQUHAR: Of course it’s relevant. We were neighbours.
STYLER: But I never saw you!
FARQUHAR: You’re lying.
STYLER: No.
FARQUHAR: Yes. You saw me all the time. And how do I know? How do you think? Because I saw you!
A pause.
STYLER: Can I have a cigarette?
FARQUHAR: What?
STYLER: I want a cigarette.
FARQUHAR: You want me to give you a cigarette?
STYLER: Yes.
FARQUHAR: And how do you propose to smoke it?
STYLER: You’ll hold it for me.
FARQUHAR: You want me to hold a cigarette for you?
STYLER: Yes.
FARQUHAR: You don’t think we’re getting a little pally?
STYLER: I just want a cigarette.
FARQUHAR: Alright.
FARQUHAR picks up the cigarette packet and takes one out. He examines it.
How strange.
STYLER: What now?
FARQUHAR: The packet says Embassy. But this cigarette is a Lambert and Butler.
STYLER: Does it matter?
FARQUHAR: I’m just interested. Where did you get them?
STYLER: At a garage on the way up. I don’t know.
FARQUHAR: Did you ask for Embassy or for Lambert and Butler?
STYLER: What?
FARQUHAR: I’m just trying to work out whether this is the right cigarettes in the wrong box or vice versa. Either way I’d say it’s a direct contravention of the Trade Descriptions Act.
STYLER: Can I just have the cigarette?
FARQUHAR: Certainly.
FARQUHAR puts the cigarette between STYLER’s lips. Then he gets the lighter out of the desk and stretches it on the chain. Throughout all this…
I used to see quite a lot of you. We should have recognised each other when you came in. I’m surprised we didn’t, but then it has been thirty years.
FARQUHAR lights the cigarette.
You had a dog. A golden retriever. It used to bark to be let out. Isn’t it funny how the memories come flooding back. The two of you were always arguing.
STYLER: Me and the dog?
FARQUHAR: You and your mother. I used to hear you – over the fence. (Imitating — in a York accent.) ‘Eeh-up, you’re stepping on the azaleas, Mark. Get your stupid feet off my plants.’
STYLER: I told you. I wasn’t there very much.
FARQUHAR: But when you were there, you argued.
STYLER: Sometimes. She was very fussy about her garden.
FARQUHAR: And about her kitchen?
STYLER: What?
FARQUHAR: Your mother’s kitchen.
STYLER: Yes. She was fussy about food.
FARQUHAR offers the cigarette. STYLER takes a drag. FARQUHAR removes the cigarette from his lips for him.
Thank you.
FARQUHAR: I wouldn’t do this for just anyone, you know.
STYLER: Thank you very much.
FARQUHAR: Tell me more about your mother. What else was she fussy about?
STYLER: She was a very independent person. She liked things done her way.
FARQUHAR: She sounds like a bit of a dragon.
STYLER: I wouldn’t say that.
FARQUHAR: What would you say?
STYLER: She was difficult. She was demanding…
FARQUHAR: But you said she always encouraged you.
STYLER: Yes.
FARQUHAR: Yes, it’s true?
STYLER: Yes, it’s true that’s what I said.
FARQUHAR: So she didn’t encourage you?
STYLER: She was sceptical.
FARQUHAR: She didn’t think you could write.
Another drag on the cigarette.
I’ll tell you something. While we’re in this climate of confidence.
STYLER: What?
FARQUHAR: I know where you’re coming from.
STYLER: Do you?
FARQUHAR: My mother didn’t think I could paint.
STYLER: You wanted to paint.
FARQUHAR: I did paint. Only my mother was colour-blind.
STYLER: I didn’t know that.
FARQUHAR: It was one of the reasons I decapitated her. It was meant to be symbolic but to be honest I may have got the image confused with the wrapping-paper.
STYLER: Why did you do it?
FARQUHAR: Why did I do what?
STYLER: Her head…
FARQUHAR: I wrapped it in gift-wrap.
STYLER: Why did you do that?
FARQUHAR: I had to put it in something. And now I think about it, she always used to keep gift-wrap…old gift-wrap. It was one of her habits. If you gave her a present she would unwrap it…sometimes it would take her all morning. She didn’t want the sellotape to tear the paper. And then she’d store the old paper in a kitchen drawer, to use it again when it was someone’s birthday or she was invited to a dinner. And you know, they always knew. Because no matter how careful she was, the paper was always a little crumpled. You could tell at once that it was second hand. And the funny thing was, no matter what she bought you, no matter how generous she was with the present itself, there was never any pleasure in it. There was never any pleasure in getting a present from her.
He gives STYLER another drag on the cigarette. STYLER chokes.
Shall I put this out?
STYLER nods. A pause. Then FARQUHAR suddenly grabs STYLER’s head, clamping his hand over STYLER’s mouth. He twists STYLER’s head and begins to move the glowing cigarette towards STYLER’s face.
You want me to put it out?
STYLER tries to scream, tries to beg, but the clamped hand cuts off almost all the sound. At the last minute, with the cigarette an inch away, FARQUHAR changes his mind. He drops the cigarette and grinds it out. Then lets STYLER go.
STYLER: (Gasping.) Why…? Why did you do that?
FARQUHAR: I didn’t. I changed my mind.
STYLER: But you were going to…
FARQUHAR: Yes.
STYLER: Why?
FARQUHAR: (A smile.) Because I can.
STYLER: You are mad. You’re evil.
FARQUHAR: Surely one or the other.
STYLER: What?
FARQUHAR: I can’t be both. Come on, Mark. You’re disappointing me. How could you have written a book about me with such sloppy thinking? (Pause.) I mean, think about it for a minute. If I’m mad, then according to the Mental Health Act of 1983, I have a ‘persistent disorder or disability of the mind’. In other words, I’m sick. I don’t know what I’m doing.
STYLER: You know what you’re doing.
FARQUHAR: So then I’m evil — which makes you wonder why I was considered unfit to stand trial and have spent the last thirty years in a hospital for the criminally insane. It’s a paradox, isn’t it? I wonder if it isn’t possible that I’m something else, something neither mad nor evil but… something we don’t understand.
STYLER: Why don’t you just kill me? That’s what you’re going to do anyway. Why don’t you just get it over with?
FARQUHAR: Now you’re being defeatist.
STYLER: I don’t like these games.
FARQUHAR: Games? I’m not playing games, Mark. I’m trying to orientate myself into your scheme of things and at the same time, I hope, I’m slowly easing you into mine. But if you think we’re playing around, if you think this is some kind of mind game, then let’s do it. (Pause.) I killed my mother because I woke up one morning and felt like it. What did you do to yours?
STYLER: We argued, yes. But I would never have hurt her. Never…
FARQUHAR: You never thought about killing her?
STYLER: No!
FARQUHAR: You never thought about killing?
STYLER: Well of course I thought about it.
FARQUHAR: You were obsessed by it.
STYLER: No…
FARQUHAR: Two books on mass murderers and a third in the pipeline not to mention your one work of fiction in which you managed to murder your wife.
STYLER: My book had nothing to do with my wife.
FARQUHAR: You said it was based on experience.
STYLER: Loosely.
FARQUHAR: So tell me about your wife.
STYLER: No!
FARQUHAR: Yes!
STYLER: She’s got nothing to do with this.
FARQUHAR: She was ‘your other half’ wasn’t she? How can I understand you when there’s a whole half that isn’t here?
STYLER: What do you want to know?
FARQUHAR: Everything. What was she like in bed?
STYLER: You’re disgusting.
FARQUHAR: (Threatening.) Tell me…
STYLER: There is nothing to tell you.
FARQUHAR: What?
STYLER: Alright. You want the truth? Well there were no ‘sexual relations’. That’s why we split up.
FARQUHAR: Was she ugly?
STYLER: No.
FARQUHAR: But she didn’t turn you on.
STYLER: It wasn’t my fault.
FARQUHAR: ‘Blaming Jane’ are we?
STYLER: I’m not blaming anyone.
FARQUHAR: Why didn’t you have sex?
STYLER: We did, but…
FARQUHAR: Go on.
STYLER: No.
A pause.
FARQUHAR: Are you queer?
STYLER: That’s a horrible word. Nobody uses that word any more.
FARQUHAR: Well maybe I’m thirty years out of date. (Pause.) Why does it bother you? From what I’m told, nobody cares anymore anyway so what’s the big deal? (Pause.) Gay. Is that any better? That’s what you were going to call me, Mark. That was the theory you were going to put in your book. But maybe it’s Mr Pot and Mrs Kettle. Maybe the boot’s on the other foot.
STYLER: You’re wrong…
FARQUHAR: You couldn’t get it up! That’s why your wife left you.
STYLER: No.
FARQUHAR: And you wanted to kill her because she knew you for the impotent, the impotent little mother’s boy that you were. But you didn’t dare do it in real life. You didn’t have the guts so you fantasized. You wrote a book…
STYLER: No, no, no.
FARQUHAR: Yes. I’ve read it. I’ve read Blaming Jane. Dr Farquhar had it here in his desk and I picked it up and I read it.
STYLER: You’re lying.
FARQUHAR: It’s the truth.
STYLER: Then where is it? Show it to me.
FARQUHAR: I lent it to Borson. (Pause.) He’s enjoying it too. You see, it takes one to know one and we can recognise something in it. You don’t want to admit it. Of course you don’t want to admit it. But deep down inside you, don’t you think that perhaps you’re just a tiny little bit like us?
STYLER: No!
FARQUHAR: Then maybe not a tiny bit. Maybe a lot.
STYLER: No!
FARQUHAR: And maybe you’re not alone.
A pause.
Mark… Consider your situation… Here you are, completely in the power of the most dangerous man in the country — and here I’m quoting the Sun and they should know. I told you before that I was thinking of leaving the asylum. We all are. Midnight tonight and the whole lot of us are going to disappear. We were just getting ready, making the last preparations over in B-wing, when you arrived. It’s all been a bit like the Colditz Story really, though without the bonhomie.
STYLER: When you go…what will happen to me?
FARQUHAR: Well, it seems to me that there are two possibilities. The first is that I kill you. Cut open an artery and leave you to bleed to death. But there is another possibility. And that’s that I set you free.
STYLER: Easterman, please…
FARQUHAR: (Interrupting.) But by setting you free, I don’t just mean taking off the strait-jacket. I’m talking about liberating you. This is the moment. It’s got to be now. There’ll never be another time.
STYLER: Liberate me?
FARQUHAR: Right now you can tell me anything and everything. Nobody will ever know except you and me. We have that wonderful intimacy, Mark. The intimacy of the writer and his subject, of the killer and the killed. Right now you can say things and do things that you may have dreamed of all your life but have never dared to say or do because now, here, there are only the two of us and we can’t even be sure which one of us is actually mad.
A pause.
STYLER: I have nothing to hide.
FARQUHAR: Every man has something to hide. He couldn’t be a man if he hadn’t.
FARQUHAR: I’ll help you.
FARQUHAR approaches STYLER again.
When you thought I was Dr Farquhar, you didn’t want to say that we’d been neighbours. And what was your first question? What did you want to know? What did Easterman look like? How had he changed?
STYLER: I…
FARQUHAR: Because you had seen me, hadn’t you. Over the garden fence. Over the wisteria that mattered more to your mother than you ever did. You’d seen me as a boy.
STYLER: Once…
FARQUHAR: Many times. ‘Slim. Fair hair. Blue eyes. Dressed all in white. A very beautiful boy. The face of an angel.’ You said that.
STYLER: But that was a photograph.
FARQUHAR: There was no photograph.
A pause.
STYLER: I saw you…sometimes.
FARQUHAR: You were in love with me.
STYLER: No.
FARQUHAR: You were.
STYLER: No.
FARQUHAR: You still are.
A long pause. The two of them are very close. Then FARQUHAR moves away.
I will tell you what you wanted to know about me, Mark. I will tell you everything you wanted to know, everything you wanted to write about. And then, maybe you’ll find the courage to open yourself to me. You’re the writer but I’m your book. How can we have secrets from each other?
A pause.
I only ever killed one person in this world for anything as petty as a reason and that was my father. He was a loathsome, boorish man who when I got a place at art school sneered at me and refused to pay. So when I was sixteen, on holiday at the Chateau Mavillion in France in 1966, I ran over him in the car and killed him.
FARQUHAR suddenly undoes one of the straps of the strait-jacket. STYLER reacts in surprise.
Anyway, the years passed — I went to art school. I persuaded my mother despite all her misgivings to send me there and do you know what happened? I worked. I developed my technique. I started to produce portraits, animal portraits and I thought they had a certain power, an inner strength…and I reached my final year, my exams. And I failed! They told me, you see, the art school told me that in their opinion, I wasn’t actually very good. That was what they said. It’s very difficult to describe to you now, after thirty years, quite how that felt to me. I was a young man, twenty…twenty-one and I was convinced. Convinced of my own ability. So I got second opinions. I went to other art schools. I went to galleries. And they all told me the same thing. ‘Your work is crap.’ It was as if they were seeing something completely different to me. As if I had painted a snarling wolf and they were seeing a cuddly labrador pup. It was as if I was the only sane person in an insane world. I was right and they were all wrong but it doesn’t matter because like I told you at the end of the day it’s the majority that counts and if the majority thinks ‘carpet, envelope, wallpaper, cigarette, jelly’ makes sense then I’m sorry but ‘carpet, envelope, wallpaper, cigarette, jelly’ it is.
FARQUHAR releases a second strap.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. Because, you see, with the passing of time, I was forced into the realisation that actually they were right. That even my father had been right. And that I was wrong. My painting was crap.
STYLER: It wasn’t. That’s not true. I saw your work…
FARQUHAR: And you thought it was great but I’m not sure I trust the way you see things, Mark. And anyway, it’s too late. (Pause.) Thirty years ago I came to the realisation that I was never going to be famous. I was going to spend the rest of my life in a little wine shop in a backstreet near Bootham Gate selling cheap French wine to people who’d choose it because of the picture on the label. And that should have been the end of it. I should have just disappeared. But I didn’t.
A pause.
It seems to me, Mark, that the great majority of people live between two bands. I’m talking about people who are born, who go to school, who work at a job they don’t even particularly like and who get old. Who live, simply, until they die. I’m talking about almost everyone in the world. But there are the few who manage to break through the bands. The film stars. The novelists. The football players. The prime ministers. The generals. The industrialists. Whatever. You know who I mean. The chosen few and oh what a life they lead, what company they keep in their own golden circle.
FARQUHAR gestures, indicating a narrow band above his head. Then he releases another strap.
What I realised was, that even though the upper band was excluded to me, there was still the pit, or the band that existed below. Maybe the company there might not be quite so golden — Jack the Ripper, Chikatilo — but even so, they had done it. Immortality was theirs. And do you know the strange thing? I believe that the impulse, the ambition that drives some towards the upper band and that which sends some, like me, to the lower, may not in fact be that different. Think of the architects of the pyramids who crushed and trampled on thousands of lives in creating their memorials to themselves. Think of the great leaders who inspired and master-minded the great wars. Saints or sinners? I wonder what’s the difference. Remember, when Hitler started out, all he wanted to do was paint.
FARQUHAR undoes another strap. The strait-jacket falls free.
So I became Easterman. I made a quite conscious decision and proved Socrates wrong. I tortured people and I killed them because I wanted, because I was determined…to have…the immortality I had set out for. You were talking about Jack the Ripper. Well that’s what I’ve achieved. That’s who I am.
STYLER removes the strait-jacket. A pause. Then he runs for the nearest door and tries it. But the door is locked.
Oh don’t do that. Don’t be so facile. You can’t run out on me. We’re locked in. We have only this room.
STYLER: But you said you’d let me go.
FARQUHAR: I said you’d let yourself go. That’s what I want.
STYLER: What?
FARQUHAR: Admit to me…
STYLER: That I admired you?
FARQUHAR: More. That you want to be me.
STYLER: What?
FARQUHAR: That that was why you wrote about Chikatilo and Dahmer and all the rest of them. Because part of you wanted to be them, part of you actually envied them.
STYLER: No.
FARQUHAR: Yes. The two of us are so similar, you and I. We began in the same place, in Sunflower Court. We’ve followed almost the same paths. And here we are, together in this place. So admit it…not to me but to yourself. Do it, Mark. Become me.
A pause.
And then NURSE PLIMPTON screams and lunges out from behind the screen. Coughing and racked with pain she crawls forward. She has been horribly cut by the scalpel. There’s blood everywhere. She is barely alive. STYLER can only glance in her direction in surprise, drained by what he has been through. But FARQUHAR is delighted.
Well, well, well. There’s a turn-up for the books. It seems that Dr Ennis has returned from the dead. (He goes over to her.) Can you hear me, Dr Ennis? Are you still there?
PLIMPTON: (With difficulty.) You bastard…
FARQUHAR: A disappointingly bland sort of response. Scores nought for originality. Don’t you agree, Mark?
STYLER doesn’t react. PLIMPTON gazes at him.
PLIMPTON: Help me.
FARQUHAR: (To STYLER.) I think she’s talking to you.
PLIMPTON: Please…
But STYLER doesn’t move. He doesn’t seem able to.
FARQUHAR: Do you want to help her?
STYLER: (Uncertain.) Yes…
FARQUHAR: Or do you want to have her?
A pause.
It all comes down to getting away with it. We keep on our masks, we conform, we follow the herd because we’re afraid. But you don’t have to be afraid anymore. There are no consequences now. When the police do arrive, what are they going to think? It could have been me. It could have been anyone. But it couldn’t possibly have been you.
STYLER: But…
FARQUHAR: What?
STYLER: She tried to help me.
FARQUHAR: She screwed up, frankly. Here…
PLIMPTON: No…
But FARQUHAR has scooped PLIMPTON up and dragged her over to the hard-backed chair which positions her some distance from the desk. As he holds her, he calls to STYLER…
FARQUHAR: I think you’ll find some adhesive tape in one of the drawers.
STYLER: What?
FARQUHAR: Top left. Do you think you could get it?
Almost in a trance, STYLER goes over to the desk and finds a large roll of tape, the sort used to tie up parcels.
PLIMPTON: I’m hurting…
FARQUHAR: Sssh! It’ll all be over soon. (To STYLER.) Here…
FARQUHAR takes the industrial tape and binds it round and round PLIMPTON forcing her to sit upright in the chair but keeping her legs free.
This is really just like old times. We should have met years ago, Mark. We could have been the Burke and Hare of our time.
PLIMPTON: (To STYLER.) Stop him!
FARQUHAR: (To PLIMPTON.) He’s not going to stop me. He’s the reason this is happening. There…
FARQUHAR steps back. PLIMPTON is helpless.
So.
STYLER: What?
FARQUHAR: What do you want to do?
STYLER: I…
FARQUHAR: You can do anything you want.
STYLER: I don’t know…
FARQUHAR: Come on! All those things you’ve always wanted to do to a woman, all those fantasies.
STYLER: I don’t want to touch her.
FARQUHAR: You’d prefer a boy. Well, beggars can’t be choosers. Mind you, I do see your point. She does look a bit messy. My fault, I’m afraid. What do you want to do?
STYLER: I don’t…
FARQUHAR: Do you want to kill her? Slowly? Quickly? Or do you want to play with her first?
STYLER: No!
FARQUHAR: Well in that case, let’s just get it over with.
PLIMPTON: Please… (She begins to cry.)
FARQUHAR: Come on, Mark. She’s dead anyway because if you don’t do it I will. Come on! It’s like jumping into a swimming pool. The water looks cold but once you’re in there you’ll be fine. Come on in, the slaughter’s lovely! Just take a deep breath and…
STYLER: Yes!
A pause.
FARQUHAR: Yes, what?
A pause.
STYLER: I want to.
FARQUHAR: You want to kill her!
STYLER: Yes.
FARQUHAR: How do you want to kill her?
STYLER: I don’t know.
FARQUHAR: But you do want to kill her? You have the urge?
STYLER: Yes.
FARQUHAR: Well think about how you want to do it. What would you enjoy?
STYLER is confused. He is a man who is beginning to lose his identity.
Your mother died with a knife driven into the side of her throat.
STYLER: (Still absorbing the truth.) I could do that.
FARQUHAR: You could do that. You could have done that. But you can’t do that now because we don’t have a knife.
PLIMPTON: (To STYLER.) He’s twisting you!
FARQUHAR: (To PLIMPTON.) Shut up!
PLIMPTON: (To STYLER.) Please…
FARQUHAR: We do have a scalpel…
STYLER: No.
FARQUHAR: No. You’re right. Too messy for a first time. And the blade…too small. I’d recommend a gun for a beginner. But alas, we have no gun. What does that leave us? There are various drugs but… (Pause.) Wait a minute. Wait a minute. We have fire.
PLIMPTON: Jesus, save me…
FARQUHAR: Fire. What do you say to fire? It’s easy. It’s dramatic. It’s painful. Maybe that would be the way to do it. You can always close your eyes if it’s too intense. (Pause.) Mark?
STYLER nods.
PLIMPTON: God…
FRQUHAR: Let me see.
FARQUHAR goes over to the desk and rummages in the drawers.
Here…
FARQUHAR produces a can of lighter fuel. He hands it to STYLER.
Go for it, Mark. (Pause.) Go on…
STYLER hesitates, then sprays lighter fuel all over PLIMPTON. She screams and writhes in the chair.
Listen to her. Imagine if Quentin Tarantino were here. Just imagine it. He’d love this. He wouldn’t need to option your book anymore. He could just film this, right here and now. And you know what? People would say it was a masterpiece. Just think Hannibal Lector, Mark. They’d love you.
The stream of petrol ends. PLIMPTON is moaning, writhing. FARQUHAR goes to the desk and takes out the lighter on its chain.
So now we come to the moment of truth.
STYLER takes the lighter.
You can do it. You want to do it.
PLIMPTON: No. Don’t listen to him. He’s twisting your mind. He’s the devil, Mark. He’s the devil. He’s the devil. He’s the devil. Please. I told you. I told you — he’ll break you down. He’ll destroy you. I told you…
STYLER: Shut the fuck up!
A pause.
I want to do it. (To FARQUHAR.) Because I want to be like you.
FARQUHAR: Then do it.
STYLER strikes the lighter and advances on PLIMPTON, with the chain stretching out.
PLIMPTON: Please, please. Please don’t do this. You’re not like him. You can’t do this. You can’t do this.
STYLER reaches the end of the chain. And he’s not near enough to reach PLIMPTON. He stands there, a couple of metres short, faintly ridiculous, the lighter in his hand.
FARQUHAR: Ah.
STYLER: It won’t reach.
FARQUHAR: Clumsy. Slightly ludicrous, really.
PLIMPTON sobs with a mixture of horror and relief.
STYLER: We…
FARQUHAR: What?
FARQUHAR: Lift her up?
STYLER: We can do it together.
FARQUHAR: Together. Alright. You take that side…
FARQUHAR and STYLER each take one side of the chair and lift up PLIMPTON. She screams and tries to bite STYLER.
Watch her teeth!
They put her down.
She’s like a woman possessed, damnit. Saint Joan meeting the flames. (To STYLER.) Do you want to get it over with?
Once again STYLER picks up the lighter and approaches. This time he can reach. PLIMPTON closes her eyes.
This is going to be interesting.
STYLER clicks the lighter. It doesn’t light. He clicks it again. Nothing. A pause.
(Irritated.) What is it?
STYLER: It’s out of fuel.
FARQUHAR: There’s the fuel in the can.
STYLER: I used it all.
FARQUHAR: Is it my imagination or have we just taken a downward spiral into farce?
STYLER: I’m sorry. (Pause.) I still want to do it.
FARQUHAR: I think the moment has passed, really.
STYLER: Please.
FARQUHAR: Well, we’ll have to consider another method.
STYLER: Yes.
FARQUHAR: You could strangle her.
STYLER: What?
FARQUHAR: I strangled two, maybe three of my victims. I forget the exact number.
STYLER: No.
FARQUHAR: Wait a minute…
FARQUHAR goes over to the desk and picks up the plastic Marks & Spencer bag. He takes the box of tissues out of the bag and hands the bag to STYLER.
Use this.
STYLER looks puzzled.
FARQUHAR: Use it to smother her.
STYLER: Smother her? With that?
FARQUHAR: Yes.
STYLER: It’s Marks & Spencer.
FARQUHAR: That guarantees the quality. Put it over her head. She won’t be able to breathe.
STYLER: I could do that.
FARQUHAR: Then do it.
PLIMPTON: No…
FARQUHAR gives STYLER the bag.
FARQUHAR: This is getting tedious. Just do it and then let’s go.
STYLER takes the bag and advances on PLIMPTON.
PLIMPTON: Mr Styler…you can’t do this. I’ll tell you why you can’t do this. Because whatever he says, you’re not like him. You know what you’re doing so it’s impossible for you to…
As quick as a flash, STYLER whips the bag over PLIMPTON’s head and holds it there. The bag cuts out any sound. Tied to the chair, PLIMPTON can barely struggle. But her legs kick more. Meanwhile, FARQUHAR gives advice.
FARQUHAR: That’s right. Trap the ends and keep the air out but don’t squeeze her throat. This is death by smothering, a Jacobean device frequently seen on stage. Much loved. It’s also the method, incidentally, by which Lee Marvin was killed in Stanley Donen’s 1963 classic, Charade.
Suddenly PLIMPTON slumps and her legs stop moving. Even then, STYLER doesn’t relax his grip. Not until FARQUHAR comes over to him and lays a hand on his arm. And suddenly we become aware that FARQUHAR has changed character again. He is gentler now, rational, sympathetic.
You’ve done it.
STYLER: Yes.
FARQUHAR: How did it feel?
STYLER: It felt…
FARQUHAR: Tell me!
STYLER: (Sobbing.) It felt horrible!
FARQUHAR: Do you feel remorse?
STYLER shakes his head, unable to speak.
Do you feel guilt? (Pause.) You feel disgust?
STYLER nods.
You wanted to be Easterman. (Pause.) You wanted to be Easterman.
STYLER: Yes.
FARQUHAR: And now you have become Easterman.
STYLER nods. Then realises.
STYLER: No.
FARQUHAR: Sssh…!
STYLER: I’m not Easterman.
FARQUHAR: You are Easterman. But you don’t want to be.
STYLER: No!
FARQUHAR: It’s alright now. We’ve moved back to the periphery. We’re in status nascendi. It’s alright.
STYLER: What?
FARQUHAR: You are Easterman. You were always Easterman. But what we’ve explored a little more today is why you were Easterman.
A pause.
STYLER: What are you talking about?
FARQUHAR: (Gently.) Easterman…
STYLER: I’m Styler!
FARQUHAR: You were Styler. That’s the name you chose. ( A smile.) All Styler, no substance. He’s gone now.
STYLER: I’m a writer.
FARQUHAR: We have no more time now.
STYLER: What are you doing?
FARQUHAR: That’s enough.
STYLER: This is a trick. You’re trying to trick me.
‘DR FARQUHAR’ whips the bag off ‘NURSE PLIMPTON’s’ head. She is alive. And she too has changed character. From now on she is a business-like woman, brittle and serious. Unhappy with what has taken place.
It would seem that DR FARQUHAR is actually Karel Ennis.
NURSE PLIMPTON is actually Dr Farquhar.
And STYLER is actually Easterman.
FARQUHAR: Tell him, Dr Farquhar.
PLIMPTON: Go back to your room, Easterman. That’s enough for today.
A pause.
STYLER: (To FARQUHAR.) Dr Farquhar?
FARQUHAR: (Indicating PLIMPTON.) This is Dr Farquhar.
STYLER: No.
FARQUHAR: (To PLIMPTON.) Help him.
PLIMPTON: I’m Dr Farquhar.
STYLER: (To FARQUHAR.) So who are you? Who are you telling me…? Who are you?
FARQUHAR: I’m Karel Ennis. You know that. I’m your therapist.
STYLER: (Close to tears again.) No. You’re doing this to me. You’re both doing this to me.
PLIMPTON: (To FARQUHAR.) Could you please let me out of this chair. I’d like to go and wash.
FARQUHAR: I’m sorry…
FARQUHAR picks up the scalpel and uses it to cut PLIMPTON free. STYLER can only watch as she crosses to the desk and picks up the box of tissues, using one to wipe her face. Then she crosses the room to the door and opens it. Once again it is unlocked. But this time it leads into a small bathroom with white tiles and a sink. During what follows, she washes and changes. We see her some of the time…
STYLER: What have you done to me?
FARQUHAR: You know where we’ve been travelling. You know what we talked about. The shifting anguish of responsibility.
STYLER: No. No. No. No. No. (Pressing his fingers to his head.) You’re trying to take away who I am. I am Mark Styler. I’m a writer.
FARQUHAR: You tried to kill Nurse Plimpton.
STYLER: (With difficulty.) I did it…because I was afraid of you.
FARQUHAR: You did it because you wanted to.
STYLER: No. I have written about murder. I have written…
A pause. FARQUHAR sees there is only one way forward.
FARQUHAR: It’s over. You haven’t written. There are no books.
STYLER: You had it. You lent it to Borson.
FARQUHAR: You came here in a red BMW. Where is the BMW?
STYLER: It’s outside. It’s by the main door.
FARQUHAR: Show me.
STYLER crosses to the window. The entire view has gone by now. A high brick wall surrounds the place.
STYLER: It’s gone!
FARQUHAR: No. It was never there. You never drove to Suffolk. We’re not in Suffolk. This is Vauxhall. This is the middle of London.
FARQUHAR: That’s what you like to call it. But there are no fields. You haven’t seen a field for thirty years.
STYLER: This is a trick!
FARQUHAR picks a sheet of paper off the desk. It is the ‘letter’ that STYLER showed FARQUHAR when he first arrived.
FARQUHAR: This is a copy of the letter you sent me. You showed it to me. You said it was the letter that you wrote to Dr Farquhar.
STYLER: Yes.
FARQUHAR turns it round and now we see that it’s a blank sheet of paper.
FARQUHAR: It’s a blank sheet of paper.
STYLER: But you read it!
FARQUHAR: No. How could I? You read it to me.
STYLER: No…
FARQUHAR: Your tape recorder. The tape recorder you used when you were asking me questions…
FARQUHAR turns it round to show that it is broken, hollow, with no inner workings.
It has no tape. It has no batteries. It has no components. It’s a shell. Just like Styler.
STYLER: You’re saying that I’m mad and you’re sane but that’s not true. That’s not true. It’s the other way round. You’ve taken over the asylum and you’re doing this to me, both of you. You’re doing this to me because you think you can get away with it. But I know who I am. I know what I am. I know…what I see…
STYLER sinks into a chair.
FARQUHAR: (Gently.) ‘He does not think there is anything the matter with him because one of the things that is the matter with him is that he does not think there is anything the matter with him.’
PLIMPTON walks back into the room. She has wiped off all the blood make-up and is now smartly dressed as the head of Fairfields. And by now it is her portrait that dominates the room, behind the desk.
PLIMPTON: He’s still here?
FARQUHAR: We’re having a little trouble winding down.
PLIMPTON: I’m not surprised. These sessions of yours, Karel, the psychodrama. It’s getting out of hand.
FARQUHAR: So you’ve said.
PLIMPTON: I sometimes wonder what it is exactly that you’re trying to achieve. Look at him, for heaven’s sake! Sometimes I think your patients end up sicker than they were before you started…
FARQUHAR: …which is something you know perfectly well Moreno was accused of throughout his life…
PLIMPTON: Yes!
FARQUHAR: …and which he cheerfully acknowledged! (Quoting.) ‘I give them a small dose of insanity under conditions of control…’
STYLER: You’re trying to make me mad.
FARQUHAR: ‘You cannot control your emotions until you have fully experienced them.’
PLIMPTON: Yes, yes, yes. But it’s the nature of the experience that I’m questioning. And from my own perspective, as head of this establishment and your boss – which perhaps I should remind you – I’m beginning to find these sessions…well, frankly humiliating.
FARQUHAR: (Soothing.) Alex…
PLIMPTON: No! I haven’t spent twenty-nine years in clinical psychiatry to end up being treated as a bit-part player in the theatrical equivalent of a video nasty. And I’m growing increasingly concerned about the level of the violence.
FARQUHAR: There was no real violence.
PLIMPTON: It was implicit.
STYLER is being ignored, edged out. And it’s as if he can feel himself slipping away…his sanity slipping from him.
STYLER: No, no, no, no no!
PLIMPTON: Are you going to take him back to his room?
FARQUHAR: Alex, I think we need to have this out.
PLIMPTON sighs and picks up her telephone.
PLIMPTON: (Into the phone.) Nurse Borson. Could you come up to my office please.
PLIMPTON puts down the telephone.
FARQUHAR: Of course these sessions are exhausting. But you know as well as I do that we can achieve more in two hours of psychodrama than we can in two months or even two years of conventional therapy.
STYLER: (Brightly, to PLIMPTON.) Hi. I am Mark Styler.
PLIMPTON: So it’s a question of means justifying the carpet.
FARQUHAR: I don’t deny that.
STYLER: (Looking up.) What did you say?
PLIMPTON: Come on, Karel. I’m as great an admirer of Moreno as you are, you know that. But I think you can envelope his methods to extremes.
STYLER: Carpet. Envelope.
FARQUHAR: But for ten years he said nothing. He was nothing but wallpaper. And yet in the ten months since I started with him…
STYLER: It’s a game.
PLIMPTON: Cigarette?
FARQUHAR: No, thank you.
PLIMPTON takes out a cigarette and lights it with a working lighter that is unattached to a chain.
PLIMPTON: Jelly.
FARQUHAR: I wouldn’t disagree.
PLIMPTON: With the carpet or the envelope?
FARQUHAR: Nor with the wallpaper.
STYLER: I am…!
PLIMPTON: Carpet. Envelope. And, of course, wallpaper.
FARQUHAR: Cigarette. Jelly.
PLIMPTON: Carpet. Envelope.
FARQUHAR: Wallpaper. Cigarette. Jelly.
PLIMPTON: Carpet.
STYLER has shrunk into a foetal position. He begins to rock back and forward, his hands pressed against his ears, his eyes closed, humming tunelessly to himself, trying to keep out the sight and the sound of the two people in the room.
FARQUHAR: Wallpaper. Wallpaper. Cigarette. Jelly.
PLIMPTON: Carpet. Cigarette. Cigarette. Carpet.
FARQUHAR: Jelly. Carpet. Wallpaper. Cigarette. Envelope.
The words continue, spoken as if part of a completely rational conversation. STYLER rocks back and forth.
The lights fade until he is left in a single spotlight.
Blackout.
The End.