This time last summer, Dad sent me to the South of France. The day I left, he stood on the front step and saluted my departure, like some bloody sergeant-major, pair of baggy corduroys, copy of the Guardian wedged under his arm.Ella Hickson
WHO Jude, eighteen, from an affluent middle-class background.
TO WHOM The audience (see note on ‘Direct audience address’ in the introduction).
WHERE ‘A large black block, centre-stage, acts as a bed and a dinner table’ – South of France.
WHEN Present day, recounting the events of a year ago.
WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED This is the start of a longer monologue in which Jude recounts his trip to France and the liaison he has there with an older woman.
WHAT TO CONSIDER
• | This is one of eight monologues that together form a fulllength play. |
• | As with the other characters in the series, Jude has grown up in a culture that is primarily materialistic. As Ella Hickson writes in her introduction to the play, ‘a world in which the central value system is based on an ethic of commercial, aesthetic and sexual excess.’ |
• | Decide to what extent this key experience at seventeen has shaped him. |
• | Jude’s use of language. The speech is highly descriptive, florid even. To what extent is Jude consciously trying to emulate Fitzgerald and Hemingway as he recounts his experience? |
WHAT HE WANTS
• | To distance himself from his father. |
• | To gain some independence. |
• | To prove his manhood. |
KEYWORDS smacked burned strained squeaked cracking reckless abandon crazy crooked scowling slammed crusty creaked bikinis sharp fluent looove/lovin
NB This play offers a number of other speeches from which to choose.
Jude
This time last summer, Dad sent me to the South of France. The day I left, he stood on the front step and saluted my departure, like some bloody sergeant-major, pair of baggy corduroys, copy of the Guardian wedged under his arm.
‘Off you go, my son,’ he yelled. ‘You will walk away a boy and return a man!’
Except I could barely hear him cos he had Haydn’s ‘Farewell’ Symphony booming out of every window. […] When I stepped off the plane, the first thing I felt was the heat – it smacked me in the face, the stairs burned my feet through my shoes; I strained to see the city in the distance, but I couldn’t see a thing, I was shitting myself.
Taxi dropped me off at Boulevard Victor Hugo. Now, my dad would have been in his element. I could hear his voice in my head: ‘Did you know, Jude, that without Victor Hugo, I strongly doubt we would’ve ever had Dickens.’ Really, Dad, that’s fascinating. I felt for the sandwiches he’d put in the bottom of my bag, but I’d eaten them on the plane. […]
Twenty-three, twenty-four – fuck a duck… It was huge. Wrought-iron gates squeaked open, I carried my suitcase up to this big green door; the paint was all cracking off it in the heat. There were old-fashioned shutters and yellow walls. It looked like all the Riviera photos that Dad had showed me before I left, all those stories about – (Sits, imitates Dad, talking down to imaginary Jude.) ‘Fitzgerald, Picasso and Hemingway, when genius was valued, Jude, and the women, oh, the women, beautiful muses with wild eyes and…’ Oh, what did he say?… Oh yeah, ‘reckless abandon’, as if he was a hundred years old and he had been there himself – sad act.
I breathed in. I knocked. I was shown to my room by a crazy and crooked-looking woman with fag breath who kept scowling as my bag slammed against the stairs; ‘Pardon,’ I whispered weakly, with this pathetic smile like I’d just peed myself. (Smiles.) She growled – (In a growly French accent.) ‘Madame Clara will return later, little boy, for the dinner,’ alright. […] As much as I wanted to be back in Poynton, my French room was… pretty fucking cool. The walls were covered in black-and-white photos that looked like scenes from old movies and that. There was a hat stand, here, in the corner – (Imitates popping his hat up onto it.) next to the bookshelf… busting with crusty old novels, all in French, then my window… floor to ceiling, old shutters that proper creaked and a balcony, little radio, huge old mirror – it was brilliant. […]
Three months here might not be so bad, there was sun and sea and there were bound to be women – (He thinks.) in bikinis. I was an independent man, my own room – I could be a Riviera gent; look sharp, become fluent… in the language of looove… eat well, get to know the place, maybe make friends with a… baker. […]
‘Bonjour, Jude!’
‘Bonjour, Pierre!’
‘Say, Jude, where is that young lady I saw you with, eeh, she is very good-looking, no?
‘Eh, Pierre, she some needs some rest… from all the lovin’.’ 