Pieces

Hywel John

WHO    Jack, a pre-adolescent child.

TO WHOM    Sophie, his godmother.

WHERE    The sitting room of a large family house on the edge of a forest.

WHEN    Present day.

WHAT HAS JUST HAPPENED    Jack and his twin sister Bea have lost their parents in a car accident. The only person who is able to look after them is Sophie, their godmother. Sophie has not seen them in years, and Jack cannot remember her. The play starts straight after the funeral. Sophie, now their guardian, has come to stay in their large house on the edge of the forest. The three of them are in shock and are struggling to come to terms with what has just happened. On their second day together, Sophie is horrified to see the twins kissing. She is angry and tells them off. Upset, they disappear into the woods where they are gone for two hours. Sophie is distraught and telephones the police. While she is still on the phone, the twins return home. Bea has gone upstairs, and Jack tells Sophie about the woods.

WHAT TO CONSIDER

•	Jack is grieving the sudden loss of his parents.
•	He is one of a twin.
•	His relationship with his sister is strange and intense.
•	Although they are children, both Jack and Bea are highly articulate and very direct. They like to dress as adults and mimic their parents’ behaviour.
•	Like many twins, there is something self-sufficient about Jack and Bea that others find unnerving. Decide to what extent growing up in such a remote place has compounded this.
•	The constant power struggle between Sophie and the twins.
•	Read the play to find out why Sophie has been absent from the family for so long and to discover what happens when the twins prepare a ‘surprise’ birthday party for themselves.

WHAT HE WANTS

•	To imagine his parents are still alive. Note the use of the present tense even though he is describing past events.
•	To assert himself. In the previous scene, Sophie was telling him off. Decide to what extent Jack actively seeks to unsettle Sophie.
•	To please Bea. She has asked Jack to explain to Sophie why they were kissing and what they were doing in the woods.

KEYWORDS  fire  burst  surprise  kiss

Jack

If Mum and Dad go for one of their long walks in the woods I get worried, even though they tell us where they’ve gone. I get a panic in my belly that builds up until it’s like a fire and I almost can’t bear it any longer. Didn’t you feel that? […] Sometimes we run and find them if they’ve been gone too long. Didn’t you want to run and find us? […] Are you scared? […] Of going in the woods. Don’t you play in the woods? […] Didn’t you ever walk in them with Mum and Dad? […] I know them really well. Mum, Bea and me build things in them, like traps and hiding places and stuff. […] When we run in to find them, when they’ve been gone a really long time, sometimes we find them just walking together and talking together and we find them because we can hear their voices through the trees. We sneak up on them and surprise them. Even though I have that panicky fire in my belly, I never call out their names to them. That’s funny isn’t it? I don’t know why I don’t call out their names, because in my belly I think maybe they’ve gone away for ever. I think it’s because I know they’re in those woods somewhere. We always find them somehow. […] One time we went running to find them and we couldn’t hear them talking at all and it felt like the fire was going to burst out of my mouth or something. And the moment that I was going to shout out ‘Dad and Mum!’ I thought I heard Mum singing. Or I thought it was singing. But then it stopped really quickly. It was confusing. Then I heard it again – […]

Like this:

(Softly.) ‘Aaaaaahh.’

‘Aaaaaahh.’

And we stopped dead still, because I knew it was Mum. For sure. And then she did it another time, but the note was a bit higher and by then I knew exactly where it was coming from. Then I think I heard Dad say Mum’s name quite loudly. Then it was all quiet. And then Bea did the funniest thing: she sang it too.

‘Aaaaaahh.’

I told her to shush, but Dad must have heard her because he shouted out our names and I was really annoyed for a moment, because I wanted to surprise them, and now we couldn’t.

So we ran to where the singing came from, and we found them lying on the grass together beneath a big tree that Dad, Bea and me climb up sometimes. They were just lying on the grass, looking like they’d been running up a hill or something, all red-faced and smiling. I asked them that: ‘Have you been running up a hill or something?’ But Dad just laughed, and I don’t know why, but he just laughed. Not at me, just like it was really funny that I asked it. Oh, it’s because obviously there aren’t any hills close by. I admit it: it was a stupid thing to say. Mum got up and gave us both a kiss and we walked home for tea.

And that’s what Bea and me were doing in the woods.