A part of Passchendaele in 1920. Looking over a scene of desolation, the PRINCE OF WALES. He wears a bowler hat and clasps a pair of gloves behind his back. Pause.
PRINCE: Feel sick. (Pause.) Somebody. (Pause.) FEEL SICK!
(A GENTLEMAN OF THE HOUSEHOLD hurries in and assists the PRINCE into a stooping posture. Pause. The PRINCE straightens.)
Want to say something. Want to be apt and truthful. Do you understand? Feel the need for it.
GENTLEMAN: Sir.
PRINCE: For lovely words.
GENTLEMAN: Sir.
PRINCE: Can make it better, if you find the proper words.
(Pause.) Sorry, for example.
GENTLEMAN: Sorry?
PRINCE: Yes. Good word. Cheapened by over-use, that’s all. But in this context, perfect. In this context, pure poetry. (He points to the horizon.) Get it up there, d’ye see? In hundred-foot-high letters. Spanning Flanders. SORRY. Coloured lights on it at night!
GENTLEMAN: Yes. (Pause.)
PRINCE: Wish I spoke better. Wish I had an education. Didn’t like Sandhurst at all. There is a man down there. Digging.
GENTLEMAN: Oh, yes. So there is.
PRINCE: Fetch him, will you?
GENTLEMAN: Fetch him?
PRINCE: Up here, please.
(Reluctantly, the GENTLEMAN beckons.)
GENTLEMAN: Can’t see me.
PRINCE: Shout, then. Please.
(Pause while the GENTLEMAN clears his throat.)
GENTLEMAN: Hey.
PRINCE: No. Shout.
(GENTLEMAN looks at him.)
You know. Shout.
GENTLEMAN: HEY!
PRINCE: Seen us.
(GENTLEMAN beckons wildly.)
I shall be King of England soon. When Daddy’s cancer gets the better of him.
GENTLEMAN: Yes, indeed.
PRINCE: Very funny thing to be.
GENTLEMAN: I don’t see why.
PRINCE: Unusual.
GENTLEMAN: Possibly.
PRINCE: Like to be good at it. Like to make a decent go of it.
Win the people’s hearts and so on.
GENTLEMAN: You already have.
PRINCE: And do things, too. (Pause.)
GENTLEMAN: What things?
PRINCE: They do have such a lot of power, don’t they? Kings?
Daddy chose the generals.
GENTLEMAN: Yes.
PRINCE: Rather badly, I believe...
(A MAN in a leather garment enters, holding a spade.)
FLOWERS: Guv?
(Pause. They examine him.)
PRINCE: T-t-tell me, w-w-were you a soldier of the war?
FLOWERS: I was.
PRINCE: Please may I k-k-kiss your hand?
GENTLEMAN: KISS HIS HAND?
PRINCE: Please?
(FLOWERS extends a muddy hand. The PRINCE kneels and takes his hand to his lips.)
GENTLEMAN: HE IS A COMMONER!
PRINCE: Do you know who I am?
FLOWERS: I ’ave a rough idea, guv.
PRINCE: I am Edward, Prince of Wales.
FLOWERS: Tha’s what I reckoned. (Pause.)
PRINCE: I wish you to know that I am sorry.
FLOWERS: What for?
GENTLEMAN: You see, there isn’t really any point in this.
PRINCE: Now ask me to rise, will you?
GENTLEMAN: Ask you to WHAT!
PRINCE: Will you, please? The ground is rather wet.
FLOWERS: Rise, please.
(The PRINCE gets up, brushes his coat.)
PRINCE: Stained the new coat Mummy gave me.
GENTLEMAN: Dear, oh, dear! Look at it! (He begins rubbing it with a handkerchief.)
PRINCE: She can always get another one.
GENTLEMAN: That’s all very well, but coats cost money!
PRINCE: His hand had mud on it...
GENTLEMAN: Better let it dry, I think.
PRINCE: Did it get onto my lips?
GENTLEMAN: (Stands up, looks at the PRINCE’s mouth.) No.
PRINCE: The ground here is alive with tetanus. Suppose I had a small cut on my lip?
GENTLEMAN: (Looking closely.) Can’t see one...
PRINCE: I might have died from it...
(He muses on the idea. FLOWERS goes out unobserved.)
This will get around, won’t it? That I knelt to a common soldier?
GENTLEMAN: Their Majesties will splutter. I shall feel the royal saliva.
PRINCE: It will get in the papers, though?
GENTLEMAN: I imagine he is heading for the nearest journalist.
PRINCE: What was he doing here? All the troops went home, surely?
GENTLEMAN: Some were kept back. To re-inter the corpses. Shall we go?
(He starts to move off. The PRINCE is frozen. Pause.)
PRINCE: Feel sick. (Pause.) Somebody! (Pause.) FEEL SICK!
THREE MEN, dressed in Wellington boots and heavy coats, come in, carrying dividers, plans, maps, etc.
HACKER: I took on more labour. I don’t like taking labour but there was this contract going begging and I would ’ave been an idiot to pass it up. Silly, I know, but I am timid about labour. I would say there is a ratio between workers and bother. The more workers the more bother. I tried to take the sons of my existing masons but most of ’em were dead, so I ’ave been obliged to take on strangers. I expect wage demands. I expect all kinds of nonsense, but I will deliver. No question of that. Won’t I, Clout? I will deliver.
CLOUT: Your strong point, Mr ’acker, is delivery.
HACKER: Loyal, ain’t he? Fuckin’ parrot. Always says the right thing. No, I love him, I do. Now, what’s the situation?
BRIDE: Before I go into that, I wonder if I might ask you something?
HACKER: Fire away.
BRIDE: That you are careful not to swear. (Pause.)
HACKER: Swear? Did I swear?
BRIDE: Yes.
HACKER: Oh. Beg pardon.
BRIDE: I wasn’t thinking of myself. I was referring to our situation. You see, I don’t expect you swear in church. (Pause.)
HACKER: Not often.
BRIDE: And this is a church. I think we have to regard this whole enterprise as the building of a church.
HACKER: A church.
BRIDE: Yes.
HACKER: Right. (Pause.) That cuts out the swearing, then.
BRIDE: There are a million dead men here.
HACKER: Yup.
BRIDE: A million Englishmen.
HACKER: And as many monuments, of which five thousand will be mine, ’and chiselled in my Peckham factory. It will be time and ’alf on Sundays for a year, but they will be a credit to the Empire, Mr Bride, I promise yer.
BRIDE: This is not so much a contract with the government. It is a contract with our dead people.
HACKER: Mr Bride, I am a rough character, perhaps, but if you scratch me I do bleed. Clout ’ere will tell you I am not impervious to grief. I am ’ere to make money, I make no bones about it. I am in business. But I ’ave a soul. The idea got around during the war that businessmen do not ’ave souls. But did we not lose our boys as well? Not me personally, but the business people did. Money was made on the one ’and, but sons were slain on the other. Now either we are animals or the system’s buggered. Take yer pick, I ’ave no answers, do I, Clout? I am not a provider of answers any more than you.
CLOUT: What’s the stake-out, Mr Bride?
BRIDE: This ridge we are standing on is about a thousand yards in length. It changed hands many times during the war. They do not know how often, but it got very bloody, being so exposed, you see. And as a consequence, it is very deep in bodies. I do not want to dramatise, but where we are standing is not ground so much as flesh.
(Pause. HACKER clears his throat.)
HACKER: Nasty business.
CLOUT: When we got out the taxi, I said to Mr Hacker, isn’t there a smell?
HACKER: All right, Clout.
CLOUT: I know we’re in a church, but definitely there is a smell.
HACKER: ALL RIGHT.
BRIDE: This ridge is designated Number 14 Cemetery. It will be according to the Commission’s specifications. At least there is no drainage problem here. If you want me, I shall be here. I am recording everything.
HACKER: A lifetime’s work, Mr Bride.
BRIDE: It must be written and recorded. Every death and every maiming. There is no truth in war except this truth.
HACKER: I wonder if it isn’t best forgotten? All that. A decent veil drawn over it.
BRIDE: I am presenting the bill, Mr Hacker. It is my mission. Ignore the dead and you will cheat the living.
HACKER: Cheat, Mr Bride?
BRIDE: This place has been the scene of awful lies. Such lies as nearly swamped humanity. We must not cheat the people of their consciences. We must name names. All million of them! Till we are dizzy with the lists!
HACKER: Yes. Right.
BRIDE: Dazzle them with suffering!
HACKER: Right.
BRIDE: Christ, man, would you draw a veil across all this?
HACKER: No. (Pause.) No, of course, I wouldn’t. Just a suggestion. A silly one, I see that now.
BRIDE: I am against all veils. Give the dead their voice!
HACKER: Absolutely.
BRIDE: Which is your task, Hacker. You will orchestrate their suffering. (He looks into HACKER’s eyes.)
HACKER: Yup.
(Pause, then BRIDE turns and goes out. They watch him disappear.)
Bananas. Fuckin’ bananas.
CLOUT: Swearing.
HACKER: Fuck swearing!
CLOUT: (Shrugs.) All right.
HACKER: I don’t want lecturing. I didn’t come to Belgium for a lecturing. I ’ave respect. My own respect. Let me do it my way. Not bananas fashion, thank you very much.
CLOUT: Funny. Funny though.
HACKER: What?
CLOUT: Standing on – a million dead Englishmen – did he say?
HACKER: Something like that.
CLOUT: Not so much ground, he said, more ’uman flesh...
HACKER: Give over, Clout.
CLOUT: Creepy, Mr ’acker.
HACKER: Yeah, well, it will be if you give into it.
CLOUT: It’s getting dark, Mr ’acker. Shall we get back to the lodging ’ouse?
HACKER: Yeah, why not? Fleas are getting ’ungry, I expect.
(They go a few yards. HACKER stops.)
Yer know, Clout, this is easy money. Let’s be honest for a minute, this is cream and fucking jam. I can’t see myself going back to ordinary funerals after this. All the whispering and decorum. Stuff it. It’s wars for me in future. Someone’s got to benefit.
CLOUT: Mr ’acker, I’m sorry, I’m getting the creeps.
HACKER: Got to get used to it, ol’ son. Going to be ’ere bloody months.
CLOUT: I know, Mr ’acker, but – WHASS THAT!
(He grabs HACKER’s arm impulsively.)
HACKER: SHUDDUP!
(Pause. They are holding each other’s arms.)
Git. Look at me. Made me jump, yer git.
(He shakes off CLOUT’s hand, prepares to move on.)
CLOUT: THERE IT IS! (He grabs HACKER again.)
HACKER: What! Fuck it! What?
CLOUT: ’eard it.
HACKER: ’eard what?
(There is a faint sound of singing.)
Oh, bloody ’ell, what do they have to fight wars ’ere for? In the middle of a bleedin’ swamp...?
CLOUT: (Pointing.) IT’S DEAD MEN!
HACKER: Clout. Come ’ere, will yer?
CLOUT: (Starting to run.) Sorry, Mr ’acker, I can’t –
HACKER: CLOUT!
(CLOUT disappears. HACKER hesitates. The singing gets louder.)
It’s only – CLOUT!
(He tears after him in a panic. The singing grows louder. FOUR MEN enter, dressed in leather garments which virtually conceal soiled army uniforms beneath. They carry shovels and each holds the corner of a large canvas bag. They sing to the tune of ‘She Was Only a Bird in a Gilded Cage’.)
FLOWERS / BASS / TROD:
It was only a corpse in a canvas bag,
A wonderful sight to see,
With no bollocks or legs,
With no arse and no ’ead,
Why is it so fucking ’eavy?
(They dump the bag unceremoniously.)
FLOWERS: Our picturesque language. Our funny songs that kept us faithful in the midst of death. Us cockney sparrers. Us criminals and layabouts made decent for a royal kiss. (He rolls a cigarette.)
BASS: Still in Flanders. Two years after the armistice. While Vickers, Krupp and Schneider get their scrap metal back, slightly imperfect owing to its passage through the human body, and Belgian whores we fucked in cellars buy up the farms as soon as we have cleared the corpses of their clients out of it.
FLOWERS: If someone ’as to do this job, why not the chinks and wogs? What is the Empire for if this degrading labour ain’t given over to the chinks and wogs? (He lights his cigarette.)
RIDDLE: Are we ready? I would like to be pissed in time for bed, and twilight’s dirty fingers are creeping into our moist crevices.
FLOWERS: Mr Riddle has spoken. We may shove on.
BASS: Before the war I never met a type like Riddle. Then suddenly, there were hundreds of ’em. It opens whole perspectives up, a war. The longer they go on, the more you see. A couple more years and England’s innards would have been hanging out, all red and twitching. It would have been a bloody great dissecting room.
FLOWERS: Compared with clearing battlefields, fighting was ’ealthy. It is clearing battlefields that’s made young lads like Trod ’ere go mysterious. That is why I urged the use of chinks and wogs. I wrote this to The Times, and Riddle ’ere, with ’is command of English, phrased it for me. But widows and vicars were outraged. It made ex-majors’ noses bleed. The general opinion was the English soldiers’ flesh would shrink from the touch of blacks. I said we could ’ave issued ’em with gloves. In any case, whoever ’eard a corpse protest?
TROD: You have no ears to hear them. I hear them.
FLOWERS: You see what I say about Trod?
TROD: You are frightened of death. Because I understand death you mock me.
FLOWERS: I don’t mock you, son, I pity you.
RIDDLE: It is rather damp here and I am thin. I have reason to believe I have rudimentary TB. Shall we push on?
BASS: Silly to die at this stage, Riddle. After what you’ve been through. You would look a silly bugger to your friends.
RIDDLE: I have no friends.
FLOWERS: Did you not ’ave a mate killed, Mr Riddle? A painter or a poet or something?
RIDDLE: They talk about the friendships of the war, but they were not friendships. They were the whimperings of shared discomforts. None has survived the peace. The mania for bonhomie is the most disgusting fetishism of war. I could fight for twenty years if it were not for the singing.
TROD: I had a friend –
FLOWERS: So you did, son, but we don’t wanna go into that now, do we?
BASS: We don’t. Shove on.
(They bend to the canvas bag, each taking a corner.)
FLOWERS / BASS / TROD:
It looked like a body, but it was all shit,
It was no grave that was marked with a cross,
We shovelled away,
At this fucking French clay,
While the turds giggled in piss, blood and toss!
Morning. Two English women are staring over the battlefield. Pause.
MRS TOYNBEE: Do you feel anything yet?
LALAGE: No.
MRS TOYNBEE: I do.
LALAGE: I expected you to.
MRS TOYNBEE: In my womb.
LALAGE: But of course.
MRS TOYNBEE: It goes hot. (Pause.) Yes! There! (She takes LALAGE’s hand.) Feel it! (She places LALAGE’s hand on her belly.) Convulses!
LALAGE: Can’t find it...
MRS TOYNBEE: Yes, there! Oh!
LALAGE: (Turning away, walking from her.) I suppose this is Hill 60? We have got it right? (She looks at a map.) Not that there are many hills. If you can so dignify these miserable humps. (She turns back.) Have you finished, Mother, please? (Pause. MRS TOYNBEE opens her eyes.)
MRS TOYNBEE: I have never known that before. I will put it in my diary.
LALAGE: What about Mahler’s Fifth?
MRS TOYNBEE: What about it?
LALAGE: Look in your diary. It got to your womb.
MRS TOYNBEE:: Don’t remember.
LALAGE: Everything seems to get to your womb. I suppose you are that kind of woman.
MRS TOYNBEE: Well, I am a woman, most certainly.
LALAGE: Me too.
MRS TOYNBEE: I’m glad. I’m glad we are women. Bereaved men are a pitiful sight.
LALAGE: Can’t cope, you mean? Poor, silly dears?
MRS TOYNBEE: Compared to us, yes. They are poor, silly dears.
LALAGE: I don’t have that view of men. Not at all.
MRS TOYNBEE: You don’t know them.
LALAGE: Well, of course not. Not like you.
MRS TOYNBEE: They are not used to expressing real feelings.
LALAGE: They have no wombs.
MRS TOYNBEE: (Patiently.) It is not sex that draws them towards us. It is the sheer luxury of being sincere.
LALAGE: Well, you seem to know all about them.
MRS TOYNBEE: I’ve had the opportunity to form an opinion. You have not.
LALAGE: No. And I don’t want to. I hate the idea there are things called men. Things which experience will teach you to handle. Like ponies or dogs.
MRS TOYNBEE: We are standing among them. They are lying under our feet. They are lying as far as the eye can see. Ranks deep... (Pause.) No two women have ever been surrounded by so much male flesh... When they find Billy they want to put him in the official, standard grave. There is even a uniform headstone. I am not having that for him.
LALAGE: They may not find him.
MRS TOYNBEE: Oh yes, he will come back. And when he does, I am claiming him.
LALAGE: They won’t like that.
MRS TOYNBEE: Of course not. But two women can do a great deal. We will take him back to England and bury him under the tree.
LALAGE: Is that what he wanted? I never knew.
MRS TOYNBEE: He worshipped the tree.
LALAGE: He was fond of it, I know.
MRS TOYNBEE: Hills and trees. You knew Billy. Look at his poems. All hills and trees.
LALAGE: Yes, but did he actually say –
MRS TOYNBEE: Lalage, I am bringing my son home! (Pause.)
LALAGE: A million corpses coming home. That would be grotesque...
MRS TOYNBEE: I am not bringing a million. Everything is repulsive that everybody does. Every moving gesture, every beautiful thought, is hideous in proportion to its popularity. This is between Billy and us.
(BRIDE comes in, accompanied by FLOWERS and TROD, carrying plans and ledger.)
BRIDE: Are you ladies off the Cook’s Battlefields tour?
MRS TOYNBEE: Certainly not.
BRIDE: There are unexploded things round here.
MRS TOYNBEE: We aren’t afraid.
BRIDE: We have quite enough dead.
MRS TOYNBEE: My son among them.
(BRIDE stops.)
BRIDE: Hill 60?
MRS TOYNBEE: Toynbee. Second Lieutenant.
BRIDE: (Aroused.) P Toynbee? Scots Guards?
MRS TOYNBEE: No. W Hussars.
(BRIDE cogitates.)
FLOWERS: ’e ’as a million names jammed in ’is ’ead. Ask ’im who’s prime minister, who won the Derby, when ’e last ’ad a piss, ’e couldn’t tell yer, but who died by bayonet and who by bomb –
BRIDE: August the eighth.
MRS TOYNBEE: Correct.
BRIDE: Missing, presumed dead. Aged twenty-eight.
MRS TOYNBEE: Twenty.
BRIDE: (Shocked.) Twenty? Are you sure?
MRS TOYNBEE: Of course I’m sure.
(BRIDE concentrates his memory, starts to go out.)
Where do we look?
BRIDE: (Stops.) Look? He is missing, isn’t he? There is everywhere to look. Or nowhere. (He goes out.)
MRS TOYNBEE: (To FLOWERS.) But he will show up? His body must eventually show up?
FLOWERS: They don’t just kill yer. They destroy yer. Where a geezer might have been standing, there is just a black hole in the mud, and a trickling as the water drains back into it. You could argue that somewhere ’e still exists. Matter, I ’ave ’eard, is indestructible. But not impossible to separate, alas.
(He follows BRIDE out. TROD hangs back. Pause.)
TROD: The dead do not die.
(Pause. The WOMEN look at him.)
LALAGE: What do they do, then?
TROD: Transhabilitate.
(They look at him.)
LALAGE: And what is that?
(Pause. TROD looks to see that FLOWERS is out of sight and sound.)
TROD: I had a friend. Have you got time?
MRS TOYNBEE: All the time in the world.
TROD: He was beautiful. He was holy. I never looked at him without thinking I stood in a fountain of pure light. He had been a shepherd and it had brought him near to God. Not God. Not the God. But another God. Also called God.
MRS TOYNBEE: Yes...
TROD: (Looking over his shoulder for FLOWERS.) During his shepherding, the secret of Transhabilitation had been revealed to him by a saintly sheep. The sheep was known as Trotters. Have you got time?
MRS TOYNBEE: (Cooling.) I think we have, yes...
TROD: During a trance this holy ewe revealed that England was a segment of the moon, broken off and crashed near Europe aeons ago. The inhabitants of the moon had been herbivorous quadrupeds.
FLOWERS: (Appearing left.) Come on, Trod!
TROD: Damn. Bloody damn.
MRS TOYNBEE: They seem to want you.
TROD: To keep it brief, the lunar quadrupeds, breathing the terrestrial ether –
FLOWERS: FUCK IT! COME ON!
LALAGE: Perhaps we could hear a bit more later.
TROD: He meant there is no death, only reordering of spirit –
FLOWERS: TROD.
(TROD turns to go, then stops, looks at MRS TOYNBEE.)
TROD: You are very beautiful. I don’t know what you looked like before, but it has touched you with beauty. (He hurries away. Pause.)
MRS TOYNBEE: Has it?
LALAGE: Billy’s death?
MRS TOYNBEE: Put a little shadow in my face?
LALAGE: Max Factor’s Stricken Mum...
(MRS TOYNBEE turns on her, just as CLOUT appears carrying a wooden peg and a mallet. He hammers the peg into the ground, and begins measuring from it with a linen tape. At the requisite distance, he hammers in a second peg. HACKER comes in, reading from the official plan.)
HACKER: (Quoting.) Footpaths will traverse the cemetery at angles corresponding to the pattern of the Union Jack... fuck...did we bring a Union Jack? I think we can assume we didn’t. (He reads on.) With the cross of sacrifice placed at the confluence...the confluence... THE CONFLUENCE? Bugger this. (He reads on.) Each section thus delineated will contain sufficient area for one hundred graves, the surface of each grave to be eight foot by four. Got that, Clout?
CLOUT: Eight foot by four.
HACKER: Correct. And not an inch more, ’ave ’em spilling over, otherwise. Did yer bring the flask with yer?
CLOUT: (Measuring.) In the bag, Mr ’acker.
HACKER: Got to keep the sodding damp out, ’aven’t we? (He sees the women.) Morning, ladies. Cheerful business, ain’t it? (He removes the flask from CLOUT’s bag.) Note the Frogs ’ave scarcely bothered. Just chuck the spare bits in a bonery. Mind you, it’s their crops stand to benefit. Fertilising on this scale ’as no precedent, ’ave you an interest in this?
MRS TOYNBEE: A dead boy.
HACKER: Well, no doubt you are thoroughly nauseated with official sympathy, so we won’t add our little voices to the chorus, will we, Clout?
CLOUT: Sir.
HACKER: There is so much ’ypocrisy about yer could launch a ship on it. (He indicates the string line.) This ’ere will be the central road of the cemetery, north-south.
CLOUT: West-east, Mr ’acker.
HACKER: West-east, is it? Got ears all over ’im. Good job I wasn’t making an improper suggestion to the lady, Clout would ’ave been a party to it. No, ’e’s a good lad. I love ’im, don’t I, Clout? (Silence.) Now pretends ’e can’t ’ear. Bloody ’ell, this coffee’s disgusting, Clout. It is the drippings of the stable gutters, son. (He casts it away, screws the lid on the flask.)
LALAGE: Shall we move on?
MRS TOYNBEE: (To HACKER.) Are you –
HACKER: ’acker.
MRS TOYNBEE: Hacker. And you are – burying the dead?
HACKER: Building a Garden of the Fallen, actually.
MRS TOYNBEE: I see.
HACKER: I am the contractor for No 81. I put in my estimate and got it. Rock bottom, practically a loss, but a beginning. A man with a government contract shall not starve. I ’ave also tendered for Gallipoli. They say the sunsets over Lesbos are remarkable.
MRS TOYNBEE: All the dead, then, come to you?
HACKER: Funny way of putting it. Sounds like the Day of Judgement.
MRS TOYNBEE: All right. Pass through your hands?
HACKER: I suppose so, yeah. (He looks at her, closely.)
MRS TOYNBEE: I see. Mr Hacker.
(Pause. He cannot take his eyes away.)
HACKER: Ronald, if you like.
MRS TOYNBEE: We are staying in the village.
HACKER: So are we. Getting fed on Christ knows what at Monte Carlo prices. Bitten by the Belgian flea.
MRS TOYNBEE: I expect we’ll see a lot of one another.
HACKER: Every morning, should you wish. Squelching about. Though the Passchendaele mud doesn’t seem to stick to you. You are very neat and spotless. (Pause.)
MRS TOYNBEE: Well, good morning.
HACKER: Good morning, Madam.
(The WOMEN start to go. MRS TOYNBEE turns.)
MRS TOYNBEE: I am Sylvia Toynbee.
(HACKER nods, smiles, the WOMEN go out. He watches them disappear.)
HACKER: Oh, God our ’elp in ages past... (Pause.) I could use ’er shit as toothpaste... (Pause.) I could crawl across three fields of broken glass just for a piss in ’er bathwater...
CLOUT: Got the plan, please, Mr ’acker?
HACKER: Ronald, you are buggered for concentration now...
CLOUT: Plan, Mr ’acker?
HACKER: Fuck it, Clout! The plan, the plan! Did you see that?
CLOUT: Sir.
HACKER: Well, what does that do to yer measurements?
CLOUT: Very pleasant lady, sir.
HACKER: (Looking down at CLOUT.) Oh, the little urges of the little man. Never mind, Clout, ’ere’s yer plan. (He drops the plan on the ground.) Out of all this – filth and squalor – comes forth sweetness. I shall never feel disgusted by a corpse again.
The same place, late at night. Someone is smoking a cigarette. Pause.
LALAGE: (Coming in.) Is that you? (The cigarette does not reply.) Is it? (Pause.) PLEASE, IS THAT YOU?
RIDDLE: Yes.
LALAGE: Why don’t you answer?
RIDDLE: I like the shake in your voice.
LALAGE: I’ve cut myself. My leg is bleeding.
RIDDLE: There is a lot of old iron up here.
LALAGE: Will you take my hand please? I’ve come such a long way. My knees are shaking. Take my hand, PLEASE.
(He stands, gives her his hand. They sit. Pause.)
Did you fight here?
RIDDLE: No.
LALAGE: Did you shoot anyone?
RIDDLE: I don’t talk about the war.
LALAGE: What do you talk about?
RIDDLE: You want to talk, not me.
LALAGE: Yes, I do. I have to talk. I’m nervous and I have to talk. I haven’t been with many men. (Brief pause.) What do you think will happen to England now?
RIDDLE: I don’t care.
LALAGE: It’s bound to change, isn’t it, though? There are women doing men’s jobs, for example. And more questions being asked. I think it’s very good that people ask more questions now. You may kiss me if you want. (Pause.) My mother organises seances. She invites other mothers to our house. They try to reach their sons. They cry and have hysterics. I don’t think we should give in to it, do you? The war was superstition, we should –
RIDDLE: Place my hand there. (Pause.)
LALAGE: Where?
RIDDLE: You place it there. (Pause.)
LALAGE: Do you not really care about England? When you have given such –
RIDDLE: Shh.
LALAGE: I must talk, really I have to –
RIDDLE: SHH. (Pause.) There’s someone here.
(BRIDE is standing looking over the battlefield. He has no trousers on.)
BRIDE: Abbey. Abbey. Abbott. Abbott. Abbott. Abel.
Abercrombie. Abernathy. Abraham. Abraham. Ackerley. Ackerley. Ackerley. Ackerley. Ackock. Ackroyd. Ackroyd. Ackroyd. Ackroyd. Ackroyd. Ackroyd. Ackroyd. Acland. Acland. Acton. Acton. Adcock. Adcock. Adcock. Addison. Addison. Adey. Adkin.
(RIDDLE stands up as BRIDE, gathering momentum, removes a revolver from his jacket pocket and puts the barrel to his head.)
RIDDLE: Put it down, Bride. (Silence, for some seconds.)
BRIDE: Fuck. (Pause.) Oh, fuck.
RIDDLE: They go off, you know. When you don’t mean them to.
BRIDE: (His back still towards him.) Who is it?
RIDDLE: Riddle.
BRIDE: I thought I knew the voice.
RIDDLE: Please put it away, old boy.
(The revolver is lowered.)
BRIDE: Resent this. Interference. Very much. (He turns on him.)
I have a rank! My acting rank! (Pause.) God... I forgot to put my trousers on...
RIDDLE: Never mind.
BRIDE: Oh, Christ...
RIDDLE: Nothing really matters. Ranks or trousers. Go home, now.
(BRIDE starts to go out, stops.)
BRIDE: It was you last time, wasn’t it?
RIDDLE: Yes, I spend a lot of time up here.
(BRIDE goes out. Pause.)
There are no bullets in his gun. But it’s best to humour him. Everyone to his own agony. (He looks at her.)
LALAGE: What do you mean by saying nothing matters?
RIDDLE: Bride thinks the dead matter. I don’t. But I don’t think the living matter, either. England is having her recurring nightmare, isn’t she? Crackerjacks and bangers. Mounted policemen in Trafalgar Square. A lot of angry soldiers asking what happened to their acre and their cow, clinging to some punctured lie. No one will lie to me. Rot England. I will make love to as many women as will have me. That way there is no lie. Will you have me? I have talked too much. (Pause.)
LALAGE: You have not said a loving word to me. Or even called me by my name.
RIDDLE: No.
LALAGE: I don’t know you.
RIDDLE: No. (Pause.)
LALAGE: Good.
Early next morning. LALAGE is straightening her clothes after a night in the open. MRS TOYNBEE appears, looks at her.
MRS TOYNBEE: You haven’t slept in your bed.
LALAGE: No.
MRS TOYNBEE: You weren’t at breakfast.
LALAGE: No. (Pause.)
MRS TOYNBEE: Well, you must please yourself. What’s the matter with your leg?
LALAGE: Barbed wire.
MRS TOYNBEE: You know there is tetanus round here?
(HACKER and CLOUT come in, followed by FLOWERS, TROD and BASS.)
FLOWERS: We’re one short this morning. Mr Riddle is in bed with a cold, or ’is TB is nagging ’im, or ’is ulcers, or ’is varicose veins.
HACKER: Good morning, Mrs Sylvia Toynbee.
MRS TOYNBEE: Good morning, Mr Hacker.
HACKER: A nice one. A nice pink tinge in the sky. Do you like skies, Mrs Sylvia? I do. I have a set of lantern slides on skies. My favourite is ‘Stratocumulus over the Pentland Firth’. (He gazes up.) I don’t think there is a great deal to be said about these Belgian skies. When you think of Belgium you don’t think of skies.
LALAGE: What do you think of?
HACKER: Getting skinned by the inhabitants, Miss.
FLOWERS: Poppies.
(They turn to him.)
Supposed to say poppies, aren’t yer? Springing out of dead men’s eyes? (He turns to his men.) Shall we move along, gents?
HACKER: (As they pass.) I ’ope you won’t be getting under my feet, Flowers.
FLOWERS: We’re raising bodies, guv’nor. The longer you leave it, the ’arder it gets.
HACKER: That may well be.
FLOWERS: Earth to earth is a very true saying.
HACKER: Is it? Go on.
FLOWERS: The human substance ’as a tendency to imitate the soil in which it’s placed. In Palestine, our dead blokes are made of sand, while ’ere, unluckily, they absorb their weight in water and turn into mud. (Categorically.) We are moving west to east. You’ll ’ave to lump it.
HACKER: Discuss it with Bride. Bride is Graves Commissioner.
BASS: (Stopping.) Mr ’acker. Bride will bend down for a finger. He would put an eyeball in ’is ’andkerchief.
(MRS TOYNBEE lets out a pathetic sob. HACKER turns in alarm.)
HACKER: Clumsy idiot! (He hurries to her side.) Sylvia, love, I – (He see the SOLDIERS watching.) Don’t bloody gawp! Christ, everything is witnessed! (He shakes out a handkerchief.) ’ere, use this. (He looks at LALAGE.) Is she gonna faint?
MRS TOYNBEE: I may just... (Pause.) No, I shan’t faint.
(The SOLDIERS drift away.)
HACKER: She isn’t.
MRS TOYNBEE: I’m all right...
HACKER: She’s all right.
LALAGE: When my mother was a girl to faint was sexual provocation. Now it’s taken as a sign of malnutrition, but the habit’s very difficult to break.
MRS TOYNBEE: (In full possession of herself again.) It gave men the opportunity to fulfil a need. A need to be powerful. Isn’t that right, Mr Hacker?
(He clears his throat nervously.)
It was when I fainted that my husband fell in love with me. He wasn’t a strong man, but I made him feel it. Naturally he was full of gratitude. When you look at me, Mr Hacker, don’t you feel strong?
(He shifts uncomfortably.)
HACKER: Clout, do you need to work under my feet?
CLOUT: Mr ’acker?
HACKER: (Waving him away.) More that way, eh?
(CLOUT removes himself. HACKER turns back to MRS TOYNBEE.)
Where were we?
MRS TOYNBEE: I said when you look at me, don’t you feel strong?
HACKER: Yes – I – I suppose I – (Then, desperately.) What happened to your ’usband, Mrs Toynbee?
(Pause. She turns away a little.)
MRS TOYNBEE: When the Eastern Front collapsed he switched all our money into Russian tea. Buying in depressed markets was his speciality. We acquired the entire crop until 1960. Then, six months later, while we were at breakfast, I heard this funny little thud from behind the newspaper. It was his forehead on the tablecloth. The Bolsheviks had seized our tea. Coming on top of Billy’s death, he became possessed by the idea we were a cursed family. He died insane, two days before the Armistice. I have tried to reach him through mediums, but they say he is trapped in the ether...somewhere above Siberia.
HACKER: What a tragedy...
MRS TOYNBEE: Ronald, I want my Billy’s body. I want to take him home.
(Pause. HACKER is confused.)
HACKER: Your boy Billy – you want –
MRS TOYNBEE: Help me.
HACKER: Well, I –
MRS TOYNBEE: Look into my eyes. (He looks. Pause.) Will you?
HACKER: Er...
MRS TOYNBEE: Answer my eyes.
HACKER: Er...
MRS TOYNBEE: Say yes. Say yes to my eyes.
HACKER: Sylvia...
MRS TOYNBEE: Say yes, I beg you.
HACKER: Yes. (Pause.)
MRS TOYNBEE: Thank you.
HACKER: Yes what? What have I said yes to?
MRS TOYNBEE: Me.
(Pause. CLOUT is tapping in a peg.)
HACKER: I think it’s illegal, in fact, I know it is.
(She looks at him, he shrugs.)
So what? It’s illegal.
MRS TOYNBEE: Will you take my hand?
HACKER: If it’s all right with you.
(She extends a hand, he takes it, is about to kiss it, when she withdraws it. She gives him a slip of paper.)
MRS TOYNBEE: This is his name and number.
HACKER: (Deeply aroused.) Christ, Sylvia, you do – (There is a sudden shout of despair from CLOUT.)
CLOUT: OH, GOD ’ELP US! (He flings down his shovel and runs to HACKER.)
HACKER: Control yerself, Clout!
CLOUT: I can’t do this! I can’t do this!
HACKER: Can’t do what?
CLOUT: Dig ’ere! I can’t dig ’ere, I won’t!
HACKER: If yer want payin’, yer will.
CLOUT: JUST PUT ME SPADE THROUGH SOMEONE’S ’EAD! (Pause.)
HACKER: Clout. That is the sort of language that makes a lady faint.
MRS TOYNBEE: I am perfectly all right.
HACKER: You’re in luck. She is perfectly all right. Now go and fetch Mr Bride and tell ’im you ’ave uncovered somebody, ’e’ll know who it is, I expect. (Pause.) Get along, son! (CLOUT goes out.)
MRS TOYNBEE: It could be Billy.
HACKER: Oh, I don’t think so.
MRS TOYNBEE: Why ever not? He must be here somewhere, mustn’t he?
HACKER: If you say so.
MRS TOYNBEE: I don’t say so. It is the War Office who says so.
LALAGE: (Who has wandered to the place.) It’s a German.
MRS TOYNBEE: (Turning.) Darling, do you have to look?
(LALAGE shrugs, walks back.)
HACKER: Fine people, the Germans. In many ways. Got to admire ’em, ’aven’t you?
MRS TOYNBEE: No, actually you haven’t.
(Pause. He shrugs.)
HACKER: Maybe not.
LALAGE: What do you mean, ‘maybe not’?
HACKER: I’ve forgotten where I was now.
LALAGE: Why not admire them if you want?
(He shrugs.)
I admire them. As much as I admire anyone.
MRS TOYNBEE: They are not like other people.
LALAGE: It was only his uniform that marked him out.
MRS TOYNBEE: That is shallow. It is so easy to say everyone is just the same as everybody else. It is all the craze now. But because it is easy it does not make it true.
HACKER: Hear, hear.
MRS TOYNBEE: I hate the Germans because they don’t know when to stop.
(CLOUT comes in, with BRIDE. CLOUT points at the place, BRIDE looks. Pause.)
BRIDE: Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to compile a comprehensive German list. They have a different attitude to us. Mass graves and tiny granite tablets. As if there was something to be ashamed of in being dead... (He comes to the others.) Of course, they haven’t been allowed to raise great monuments.
LALAGE: They can’t afford it, can they? They’ve gone bust.
BRIDE: Is that so? I rarely see a newspaper.
LALAGE: I wonder if we wouldn’t have done better by sending them something to eat. Instead of all these endless English cemeteries.
MRS TOYNBEE: No. Let’s have the cemeteries.
LALAGE: The dead before the living?
BRIDE: Yes, oh, yes. (Pause. He is about to go, stops.) The most repulsive aspect of humanity is the ease with which it reproduces. If conception were more difficult, we would be less contemptuous of our lives. Were we pandas, should we have fought the Battle of the Somme? (He looks at HACKER.) Mr Hacker’s stones will tell no lies. Count them. Each one had lips to kiss. I loathe oblivion. I loathe the word forget.
LALAGE: They will forget. They will eat sandwiches here, and bring their dogs to shit.
(FLOWERS, BASS and TROD come in, carrying a canvas shelter.)
BRIDE: It’s a German. I will tell their people.
(He goes out, as the SOLDIERS erect the shelter round the place. CLOUT is just watching.)
HACKER: Perhaps you could start that end, Clout? Rather than ’ang about?
CLOUT: Sorry, Mr ’acker. It was a shock.
HACKER: The first one always is, isn’t that right, lads? Your first corpse shakes yer, then it’s like ’aving a fag?
(RIDDLE arrives for work. He joins the soldiers.)
BASS: ’ello, look who’s ’ere.
RIDDLE: I overslept.
FLOWERS: ’ave to report it, Riddle.
RIDDLE: War’s over two years, Mr Flowers. Report what you like.
(MRS TOYNBEE and LALAGE start to go out. LALAGE hangs back, speaks boldly to RIDDLE.)
LALAGE: It was a beautiful night.
(They stop working, all look at her, pause.)
RIDDLE: Was it?
(She goes out, behind her mother. TROD watches them.)
TROD: I could not desire a woman who had not known death.
HACKER: (Seeing to whom he refers.) Desire? What’s desire got to do with you?
BASS: Trod ain’t in a fit condition to desire anyone.
FLOWERS: Six months in the ’ighlands ’s what ’e wants. It’s shell shock with you, ain’t it, Trod?
TROD: (Still looking after the women.) A woman like that moves you, turns your bowels...
FLOWERS: (Looking at BASS.) Want to see the MO. Get some medicine for that.
HACKER: They are arresting blokes in London for that sort of trench filth, Trod.
BASS: They would not arrest me, the bastards.
HACKER: No, well, you don’t talk filth, do you?
BASS: They will not arrest me, I say.
HACKER: In fact, you ’ardly talk at all.
FLOWERS: (As he digs.) Is that the daughter? The trembling one?
HACKER: It is Miss Toynbee, yes.
FLOWERS: She’s over-ripe. Someone should pluck ’er or she’s gonna drip.
HACKER: YOU CAN’T TALK ABOUT PEOPLE THE WAY YOU DO!
BASS: (Having thrust his spade.) Gone through the leg.
FLOWERS: Fuck the leg.
BASS: No. Get it up. Don’t leave the leg.
FLOWERS: ’s a German.
BASS: Do it proper.
FLOWERS: Please yerself. (He leans on his spade while BASS digs.) So what about the daughter? On the subject of legs?
HACKER: ’er bum crack you couldn’t slip a five pound note in.
FLOWERS: While the mother ’as an arse to swallow a donkey’s cock.
HACKER: (Seething.) Stick to the daughter, shall we? Stick to one.
BASS: Right. Ready. Are we ready?
(They place their spades under the remains.)
– and HUP!
(Staggering, they transport their burden to a canvas stretcher, withdraw their spades.)
FLOWERS: Mr Riddle, do your stuff.
(RIDDLE puts on a pair of rubber gloves and kneels beside the remains.)
HACKER: That’s it, then, is it?
FLOWERS: As soon as Mr Riddle’s ’ad ’is delve, ’is nimble fingers ’ave explored vast numbers of ’uman cavities. Some ’ot and female, which ’ave no doubt benefited from ’is tenderness, but more often the rigor-mortised guts of soldiers, accidentally penetrated in the search for valuables.
RIDDLE: Nothing. (He stands up.)
BASS: No disc?
FLOWERS: Fuck the disc. Let ’im join the missing.
RIDDLE: (Feeling again.) No disc.
TROD: Herr Nichtmann.
FLOWERS: (Pulling a cover over.) Mr Nobody it is, then.
HACKER: Is this delving really necessary? I can’t see it is myself.
RIDDLE: Eight wristwatches yesterday. Two in good order.
A cigarette case. A hall-marked whisky flask.
FLOWERS: In future wars all combatants will be requested to bring valuables into battle. As tips for the poor bastards who will have to dig ’em up.
RIDDLE: We aren’t getting the officers, that’s the pity.
HACKER: Must be an easier way of earning a few bob.
FLOWERS: No doubt you’ll tell us if there is. There is no work at ’ome. The factory I worked for has closed. They switched from bicycles to howitzers, but the market for howitzers has dropped off.
BASS: We will go home, and if there is no work we will demand it.
FLOWERS: Just like that.
BASS: Exactly.
FLOWERS: You will be put inside.
BASS: I will not.
FLOWERS: ’ow will you not?
BASS: I will refuse.
FLOWERS: ’e will refuse.
BASS: It is that simple, we are the soldiers.
RIDDLE: Bass, they have already got your rifle back. They have swapped your weapon for a spade.
FLOWERS: Come on, let’s move.
(They bend to the stretcher.)
HACKER: Gents, one moment, gents. Can I whisper a little something in your ears? Something related to the ladies we discussed?
(They stand upright again.)
You see, they’re looking for a body. Mrs Toynbee is looking for ’er son. (He looks over his shoulder.) This particular youth is listed missing. Round ’ere.
TROD: She is brought here by his astral body. He calls her and she has to come...
HACKER: Something like that. So if you could make a special effort I, for one, would be prepared to make my appreciation very clear.
TROD: She bears his wound in her. She weeps his blood.
FLOWERS: STUFF IT, TROD!
HACKER: Thank you. What I’m saying is, this particular corpse would earn you more than a nickel fag-case. (Pause.) To put it another way, can you get ’im this week?
RIDDLE: (Indicating two points on the horizon.) There are tens of thousands between here and there...
HACKER: I never said it was easy. (He reaches for his wallet, removes a note.) I wonder if you could find ’im in a week? (He holds the money out.)
FLOWERS: We can do it.
HACKER: William, he is, William Toynbee. That’s ’is number and ’is regiment. (He hands FLOWERS a scrap of paper, turns to go out.) Means a lot of work, of course. But there’s more money where that came from. I’m not made of money but I admit I’m bloody keen.
FLOWERS: To knob the lady, would ’e mean?
HACKER: (Stopping.) I heard that, Flowers. Vile insinuation, vile. Four years of squalor ’as made you cynical, I suppose. (He walks away, past CLOUT, who is working.)
CLOUT is still working here next day. BRIDE comes in, with a copy of The Times. He reads it out to CLOUT.
BRIDE: Ferocious argument in the House. Copies of Hansard employed as missiles following the Government’s decision to enforce the standard model headstone for officers and all other ranks. Described as creeping socialism. As lowering downwards. An further evidence of the persistent erosion of individual choice. Desperate parents have become the body-snatchers of our time. One body only is to be returned, for interment in the place of kings. The Prince of Wales will choose the Unknown Warrior, being blindfold and using a pin. (He folds the paper and tucks it under his arm.) There is something gone in my head. If I jerk it quickly, something moves. Have you ever had that?
CLOUT: No, sir.
BRIDE: I’m not married, are you?
CLOUT: No, sir.
BRIDE: Which is difficult, because what happens if I’m ill? Someone has to wipe your bum. I should have thought of this, but I’ve been racked with work here – (He moves his head.) There it goes! WHO WILL WIPE MY SHIT AWAY!
(He goes out as LALAGE appears. CLOUT gets up, is about to go out.)
LALAGE: They don’t abuse my mother, do they? (He stops.) Please tell me she is not the subject of their filthy talk. (Pause.) I see.
(He goes out. LALAGE stares over the country. RIDDLE comes in, looks at her.)
Why didn’t you come for me? I was here all night.
RIDDLE: I didn’t want you.
LALAGE: All night here. I was so cold.
RIDDLE: What would have been the point in coming? As I didn’t want you?
LALAGE: To tell me. That would have been the reasonable thing to do.
RIDDLE: I don’t do the reasonable. That’s why you like me.
LALAGE: I thought you might be ill. I thought anything.
RIDDLE: Desperate.
LALAGE: Yes.
RIDDLE: In the freezing night. Hot and clamouring in the womb.
LALAGE: No. Sneezing and bloody uncomfortable.
RIDDLE: Quivering from knee to belly.
LALAGE: Look, we must have a talk some time. (Pause.) Mustn’t we? Get to know each other?
RIDDLE: Ah. So it begins.
LALAGE: I feel like having a conversation. I love your darkness but I am finding it too quiet.
RIDDLE: Nothing you can say will be worth saying.
LALAGE: Try it, shall we?
RIDDLE: Not with me.
LALAGE: I love you, but I cannot go on if we don’t learn to speak!
RIDDLE: Go on? GO ON?
(CLOUT appears pushing a wheelbarrow full of gravel. He takes a rake off the top.)
LALAGE: If you want to fuck me.
(CLOUT does not react.)
If you want to go on doing it.
(Pause, then she goes out. CLOUT tips out the gravel into a heap.)
RIDDLE: I know her. Through and through I know her. I read what is engraved on every vertebra along her spine. It says I am clean, and I do good.
CLOUT: (Spreading the gravel.) Someone ’as to.
RIDDLE: Her good is all to do with ventilation. Ventilated villas in suburbia. Ventilated underwear. She is throbbing with conviviality.
(HACKER comes in with a Union Jack.)
HACKER: ’ere we are, son. ’ere at last. Two years after a world war and a million rotting Englishmen, yer can’t lay yer ’ands on a Union Jack. Grateful bleeding Belgians turn ’em into shopping bags. It’s this way up, is it? (Spreading the flag on the ground.) Or is it? (He points to the pathway.) This ’ere’s the ’orizontal, am I right?
CLOUT: Er...
HACKER: (Waving his hand.) This ’ere.
CLOUT: Er...
HACKER: What you’re laying, come on, son!
CLOUT: This is the diagonal.
HACKER: What? ’ere?
CLOUT: Sir.
HACKER: Diagonals is four foot wide.
CLOUT: Er...
HACKER: Whatcha mean er? Whatcha mean, er, er? Give us the measure. (He gets up, takes CLOUT’s rule.) Bollock this up at your peril, Clout. (He tests the width of the path.) Well, so it is. Why didn’t yer say? This is the diagonal. (He gives him the rule back.) Well, I can see I am a burden on your ingenuity. (He turns to RIDDLE.) How’s things going, Riddle?
RIDDLE: We have him.
HACKER: You what?
RIDDLE: Young Toynbee.
HACKER: You ’ave ’im? You – ’ANG ON.
RIDDLE: Oddly enough.
HACKER: Oddly enough. COME ON.
RIDDLE: War is like that, Mr Hacker.
HACKER: War is like that. COME ON.
RIDDLE: Do you have to repeat everything I say? We have him. I can’t compel you to believe it, obviously.
HACKER: You can’t. You damn well can’t.
RIDDLE: Shall we bring him? Or will you collect?
HACKER: Yesterday I ask you, keep an eye open for certain remains. Today, remains arrive, on the doorstep like a loaf. Come on, it stinks.
RIDDLE: You have to give some credit to coincidence. The war has made us all so sceptical. If we were working one on you, Mr Hacker, wouldn’t we have left a few days’ grace? That would be cleverer, you must admit. Our spades upturned him within an hour of you leaving us.
(Pause, while HACKER looks at him searchingly.)
HACKER: You’re a cool one, Riddle. All right, bring him ’ere.
(RIDDLE starts to go, stops.)
RIDDLE: (Turning.) There isn’t all that much to see.
HACKER: No, of course, there wouldn’t be.
(RIDDLE goes out.)
Smart bastard. Smart bastard, don’t yer think?
(CLOUT pretends not to hear.)
Still, it has its advantages. Bona fide or non bona fide, I can’t complain. I wonder where you take a woman ’ere? Pity they ’ad to knock the coast about. Yer can’t take a lady like that to an allotment shed. (Pause.) Or maybe you can. Christ knows what the gentility conceals. Christ knows what itch...
(The SOLDIERS come in bearing a stretcher draped in tarpaulin. They dump it down, stand back.)
I would be right in thinking, wouldn’t I, there can’t be much left of ’is ’ead?
(FLOWERS shakes his head.)
Is there an ’ead?
(FLOWERS shakes his head.)
Unlucky. Nor nothing in ’is pockets neither?
(FLOWERS shakes it.)
No pocket?
(FLOWERS shakes it.)
Well, what is there, then? (Pause.) I can’t sell ’er a bag of peat!
(They just gawp. He goes over to the stretcher, lifts the tarpaulin.)
Very funny. Fifteen quid for that. I love your sense of ’umour. Come on, lads, you’re dealing with a businessman.
FLOWERS: Yer wouldn’t be accusing us of cheating?
HACKER: You said the word, not me.
BASS: British Soldiers of the Great War for Civilization?
HEROES OF ARMAGEDDON?
HACKER: Very good, Bass, but can we be serious for just a minute? (Pause.) It is not so much a matter of convincing me. I am ’appy with a pound of sausage meat. It is Mrs Toynbee, isn’t it? It’s ’er feelings I ’ave to consider.
RIDDLE: Look at his disc. Round what was once a neck there hangs a disc. Otherwise we should not have bothered you. (HACKER goes to the remains, looks at an army disc.)
HACKER: 1127161 Toynbee. Royal Hussars. (He looks up.) Well, I’ll be buggered. (Pause. He gets up.) Well, I regard that as conclusive.
RIDDLE: She will be satisfied. We have watched widows weep on horsemeat supplied by less scrupulous squads.
(HACKER gazes at the remains.)
HACKER: To think that – muck – down there came out between ’er lovely limbs...
(He bites his lip. The SOLDIERS look puzzled.)
That is the measure of war, I think... (He turns, stops.)
Christ, that shakes me... (He walks a little, staggers, stops.)
Bloody ’ell... Clout... CLOUT!
(CLOUT drops his rake, hurries over.)
Bloody ’ell, man, I’ve come over sick...
CLOUT: Bend over, Mr ’acker.
HACKER: Ridiculous... (He retches.) Cor...silly, ain’t it, but I...
(He retches again, dabs his mouth with a handkerchief.) What are they gawping at?
BASS: The money, guv.
(HACKER takes out his wallet, gives CLOUT two notes, which he hands over. The men withdraw.)
HACKER: Clout, I ’ave ’ad a vision of death. I saw beyond the grave. I saw Alpha and Omega. Are you listening?
CLOUT: Mr ’acker.
HACKER: I saw a thin ’ole to the bottom of the world...
CLOUT: Sir.
HACKER: (With sense of horror and discovery.) I SHAN’T BE ’ERE LONG! (He holds CLOUT by the shoulders.) Fuck it, I am scared of death! All these years gone and I never noticed ’em! I got to ’ave a child, Clout! Somebody must give me a kid!
CLOUT: Mrs ’acker, sir?
HACKER: Mrs Hacker? Mrs Hacker? Are you barmy? Mrs Hacker is forty-three and sterile as a collar stud. It’s been like shooting into concrete these last twenty years! What’s gonna ’appen suddenly? Use yer ’ead!
CLOUT: Sorry.
HACKER: This ’as touched me. This ’as touched me very deep. Who’s gonna remember me? What’ll ’appen when I’m gone? (He strides about in despair.) Shakespeare was a lucky sod. Day and night they’re stuffing ’im down schoolkids’ gobs. Won’t forget ’im, will they? What about me?
CLOUT: The name ’acker, Mr ’acker. Over the shop.
HACKER: Next geezer who takes over the business will ’ave my sign down in the dust.
CLOUT: It’s on all the memorials, ain’t it? Hacker fecit, it says. In little letters on the back.
HACKER: You said it. Little letters on the back. First bit of moss obliterates it. No, I shall ’ave to ’ave a kid. The common man’s immortality, such as it is. You ’ave been busy working, so you won’t ’ave noticed an interest I’ve developed in a certain lady –
CLOUT: Shit as toothpaste.
HACKER: Wha’?
CLOUT: Shit as toothpaste.
(Pause. HACKER glares at him.)
HACKER: Clout, I urge you to eradicate that particular phrase from your mind. I most earnestly encourage you to be a tabula rasa as far as Mrs Toynbee is concerned. I do urge you. (Pause.)
CLOUT: Get on with the pathway, Mr ’acker.
(He goes off, starts working, stops, looks at HACKER.)
The remains on the stretcher are mid-stage. MRS TOYNBEE and LALAGE stand together, MRS TOYNBEE in a pure white dress. Pause.
MRS TOYNBEE: I shall kiss him. Will you want to?
LALAGE: No, I shan’t.
MRS TOYNBEE: Sometimes I wonder if you loved him. (Pause.) I mean really loved him.
LALAGE: Really loved him. Loved him. What’s the point of qualifying it?
MRS TOYNBEE: Then kiss him.
LALAGE: No. I said.
MRS TOYNBEE: Why?
LALAGE: Because it won’t be him, will it?
MRS TOYNBEE: Who will it be, then?
LALAGE: It’s two years since he died. Imagine that.
MRS TOYNBEE: Love does not die at the grave. I shall kiss him. In my white dress.
LALAGE: You must do exactly what you want.
MRS TOYNBEE: You think I’m making too much of this? Making a banquet of my grief?
LALAGE: That’s about it, yes.
MRS TOYNBEE: I am. You’re right. I am drinking it to the dregs.
(She walks towards the body, stands looking down.)
LALAGE: I think you are making a fool of yourself.
MRS TOYNBEE: Or you, is it? You think I am making a fool of you? There is nothing quite so embarrassing as a parent who can’t keep her feelings checked. Especially when your own are so trapped and strangled. Isn’t that it?
LALAGE: No.
MRS TOYNBEE: You oppress your spirit too much. Everyone does. And the world is an uglier place for it. I loathe dourness and grinding teeth. So did Billy. He wrote to me that if people hadn’t been so stiff-lipped with their grief the war would have finished two years earlier.
LALAGE: I didn’t mean that. I meant –
(At this moment HACKER appears, discreet in a dark suit. He watches from a proper distance.)
I meant how do we know that is him?
(MRS TOYNBEE ignores this. She kneels beside the stretcher. At this moment, the SOLDIERS come in bearing a number of empty coffins.
HACKER, trying to preserve decorum, waves them away. They do not notice him.)
FLOWERS: These are getting lighter, or I’m getting stronger.
RIDDLE: They are using thinner wood. Out of consideration for our backs.
BASS: Or the maker’s profits, could it be?
(Seeing HACKER, they stop, look at MRS TOYNBEE, who, in an ecstasy of emotion, leans forward and places her lips on the remains.
TROD, with a groan, collapses in a faint, and the coffins clatter to the ground as the SOLDIERS struggle to hold them.)
FLOWERS: Hold it!
BASS: Jesus Christ!
FLOWERS: Hold it!
HACKER: You clumsy buggers! Oh, you clumsy sods!
BASS: Trod’s fainted!
HACKER: Sod Trod.
FLOWERS: Who are you abusing, guvnor?
HACKER: There is a woman ’ere, paying ’er respects... Christ, what is England coming to? What did we fight the war for? Women, wasn’t it? Women and their feelings?
BASS: I love the ‘we’.
HACKER: Christ, appealing to Englishmen to ’ave an ’eart.
I never thought I’d see the day.
FLOWERS: Come on. Shove off. (He leads off.)
BASS: What about Trod?
RIDDLE: He’ll recover there as well as anywhere.
(They go out, leaving TROD on the ground. After a pause MRS TOYNBEE gets up.)
MRS TOYNBEE: Oh...! There is mud on my dress...!
LALAGE: Oh, really, you are so – (She turns on her.) WHAT IS IT FOR?
HACKER: (Hurrying forward with a handkerchief.) I wonder if I might brush it off? This is a brand new handkerchief – (He kneels at her feet.)
MRS TOYNBEE: No.
HACKER: No?
MRS TOYNBEE: It is there forever.
LALAGE: (Mockingly.) Surely you realised that?
HACKER: I’m afraid I didn’t. But I understand it. I don’t think I ’ave ever been so moved. I think if someone made a painting of it, it would sell. You might call it ‘The Patriot’s Farewell’. I think it would hang in bedrooms all over England.
(LALAGE walks out smartly. Pause.)
I ’ope everything is satisfactory, then? (Pause.) Took a bit of doing, obviously. Finding one person in all this – I think you’re so beautiful – so one way and another we were lucky, I suppose they – I would give my life to kiss your arse... (Pause.) Did you ’ear me, Sylvia?
MRS TOYNBEE: (Her back still to him.) Yes.
HACKER: No doubt others ’ave said similar things.
MRS TOYNBEE: Yes.
HACKER: Naturally. Well. (Pause.) Can I? (Pause.) What more can: I say? I’m not a poet. (Pause.) Can I? (Pause. Then, nervously, he extends a hand, at last touching her, running his hand over her. Then with a groan, falling to his knees and burying his face in her clothes.) I am so ’appy! Isn’t it easy to make a man ’appy?
MRS TOYNBEE: Yes. It is. (Pause.) Now I think you should get up.
(Obediently, he rises, brushing his knees.)
HACKER: May I book a room, Sylvia? Sorry – a suite? There’s this place called Blankenberghe. I ’ave the brochure – (He goes to take it from his pocket.)
MRS TOYNBEE: Yes. Why don’t you? (Pause.)
HACKER: Why don’t I? Yes...
(He looks at her, then hurries out. MRS TOYNBEE remains motionless for some time. There is a groan behind her, then TROD sits up.)
TROD: Blood...
(She turns. He indicates her dress.)
Blood on your dress...
MRS TOYNBEE: Blood?
TROD: I am going to be killed.
MRS TOYNBEE: Oh, no. Not now the war is over, surely?
TROD: Yes. It’s the meaning of that blood.
MRS TOYNBEE: It isn’t, though. As a matter of fact. It’s mud.
TROD: I’m not afraid. You carry death in you but I’m not afraid. Bride and I, we are going to cross over soon... (Pause.)
MRS TOYNBEE: Really. It’s mud.
(She goes out. The SOLDIERS reappear.)
BASS: (To TROD.) Come on, son. Up on yer feet.
FLOWERS: Herr Nichtmann is done with, then, is ’e?
BASS: What number do we paint on this?
FLOWERS: (Looks in a book.) Missing Number 1127161. Then put it with the others in the shed.
BASS: (With a paint can.) 1127161.
TROD: We should not have done it...
FLOWERS: Done what, son, exactly?
TROD: She kissed it. With her lips...
BASS: Yeah, well, she is a performer, ain’t she?
TROD: We have mocked her pity! We have sinned against the ordinance of death!
RIDDLE: It doesn’t matter, Trod. All your conscience. All your guilt. From the right distance all the thundering of bishops is drowned by a rat’s squeak.
BASS: Only the rich come ’ere, yer notice.
RIDDLE: They are not rich. It is all appearance with them.
BASS: The poor rich, then. My mother could not come ’ere.
My missus could not.
RIDDLE: Why should they want to? As you’re not dead?
BASS: The rich can filch some bastard’s body. The poor make do with telegrams.
RIDDLE: She got nothing for her privilege. For all we know the corpse she kissed had killed her son. (He gets up.) Are we ready, then?
(They lift the remains into the coffin and start hammering down the lid.)
FLOWERS: Mr Riddle, what plans ’ave you got when it’s our turn to enjoy the peace? I can swallow ten pints at a sitting, but I ’ave a feeling no one’s employing men for that.
RIDDLE: Why don’t you emigrate? You like the Empire, don’t you?
FLOWERS: I should like it. I ’ave two brothers killed for it. One in Palestine shot by the Turks, the other lost ’is footing racing an Australian down a pyramid. The Australians lose ’alf their men through dares, did you know that? (He hammers in the final nail.) Yes, I like the Empire. Where do you suggest?
(They look up, suddenly aware of a stranger in their presence. The man wears khaki riding breeches and boots and a police jacket. He taps a small riding whip against his leg.)
HARD: Good men. (Pause. He stares at them.) Oh, good men. (He wanders around them, feasting his eyes.) Oh, very good.