The play was commissioned by Forest Forge Theatre Company and was first produced at The Pleasance Theatre, London, on 22nd September 2014, before touring nationally.
Characters:
Rose
Gwynne
Lewis
Graham
Set: A farmhouse, the forest surrounding it, and Rose’s imagination.
Time: now
Music: for use of the musical score specially created for this production, contact: Rebecca Applin
e: info@rebeccaapplin.co.uk www.rebeccaapplin.co.uk
Preset
The watcher of the dark.
Somewhere
in the no-time of the forest,
the place between
where there is slippage,
a no-space.
A story is told by its pauses
as much as its words,
by that hiatus between
the breaths
the blanks
the space
between
the petals.
One.
A farmhouse. Rose stands by a tin bath.
Projected text, visual language, and also possibly speech.
I fly in my dreams, over the farmyard and down towards the river. I can see the glint of a salmon leap in the moonlight. The water ruffles like a bird when it raises its feathers in fright, then lays them smooth – calmed – sleek as a peacock’s mirror. But there’s no reflection of me in this glass – nothing but a harvest moon – so low and full and yellow and I’m afraid. Afraid of the moonface and dark clouds arching above her and I see she too is on the wing and she hunts alone.
Flurried chicken sounds. Lewis enters the kitchen from the yard, shame-faced but defiant in his defeat. He looks at Rose, who exits.
The sound of chickens in fear and flight, off. They squawk. Silence.
Rose enters, carrying a dead chicken by its feet.
It’s done. (No response from him.) Wasn’t difficult. (No response.) Get it by the neck and –
– Don’t.
So it does talk.
And I know. I do know how –
Silence. She sits and plucks the chicken. He watches, then:
Must you do that here?
Where else is there? Front room? Feathers all over the carpet, three-piece suite?
No.
Or outside, with a gale blowing?
Forget I – [said anything]
– Or the hen house? Maybe stay there all night to stop the fox or stoat getting in?
Here’s fine. (Several beats. She plucks.) Doesn’t it bother you?
What?
It was running around in the yard two minutes ago.
And it’s dead in my lap now. And in thirty minutes it’ll be roasting in the oven and in two hours it’ll be in your guts.
Jesus.
Delicate, for a farm boy.
I‘m not. It’s just the
Killing?
Means of disposal.
That’s what comes of going to school.
What?
Words.
You’ve got words.
Not like yours.
You don’t need mine, you’ve got your own.
Expect me to thank you for that? Down on my knees, grateful for my own words?
No.
Have little else my own.
How many times…? You want. You tell. We get.
Some cheap old thing – too tight, or too big, the wrong colour, wrong shape, maybe used already – and then wants gratitude.
Have you ever gone without?
Never went to school.
Didn’t need to. Knew everything already, or as much as you’d need to know. Lucky. Some’d give their back teeth for that. Didn’t miss anything. Not much. Know near as much as me. Numbers, writing. Anything else, the farmer teaches.
He’s like you with words. No – better. Stories like rope: tie you up. Why d’you speak different to him than me?
Don’t.
Do. You talk longer. Bigger words.
How d’you know that?
I see.
I watch.
Less, and small. That do for me? (She plucks.)
Maybe I prefer it. (She plucks.)
‘Means of disposal …’
What’s wrong with ‘kill’? (He doesn’t engage. She plucks.) You hiding with them words? It’s how it is. Don’t know why you’re afraid of it.
I’m not.
Afraid of saying things as they are. Things live, things die, things get killed; it’s natural. It’s nature.
I know that. But don’t you feel it when you wring its neck?
You’ll not get far on a farm with that. Best not tell the farmer you’re thinking that.
I wondered if you felt sorry.
I breed them, hatch them, feed them, collect their eggs and when they’ve gone off laying, I make them into supper.
It’s like you enjoy it.
Your Uncle wanted roast chicken for dinner, so roast chicken he’ll get.
Silence. Several beats. Gwynne enters from the yard.
That sow’s out again.
The fencing’s broken. I haven’t had the chance to fix it, yet.
Then find the chance. I’ve told you: I’ll not have the pigs out loose.
Gwynne indicates for Rose to help pull off his boots. She kneels before him, but watches his face.
I thought they could eat the acorns under the trees.
So you know better than me, then? Is that it?
No.
Thinks he knows better than me. (to Lewis) Go on, then. We’re waiting to hear what the big pig man has to say.
It’s just – the black sow likes acorns and –
– you thought you’d give her a treat. Is that it?
No.
Good. Because she’s not a pet. You seen them teeth? A bite worse than a pit bull terrier. And he’s wanting to let that out, under the trees?
I don’t like to keep her tethered.
You’ll learn. Takes a lot to be a pig man. Have to know when to crack the whip, boy, and when to treat her right, a scratch behind her ear – in the right place she’ll tilt her head and sing right back at you, breath sweet as your own breakfast, which is probably what she’s had. But a pig won’t thank you for being soft. She’ll take the fingers off you then come back for the hand.
It’s pannage season. The others let their pigs out for acorns and beech mast. It cleans the forest.
Well, we’re not like the others, and we don’t want our pig stock mixing with theirs. No telling how they keep them. Next thing there’s swine disease, and infection, and you wanting to bring that here?
They seem all right at market.
Everyone seems all right at market, that’s what happens at market, all cheery smiles and how d’you do. But they’ll be playing you, boy, looking for the advantage, watching you to see where you’re weak and when they find it… What did I tell you?
Trust nobody but ourselves.
And take everything they tell you with a thick pinch of salt. They hadn’t even seen pork round here til I imported it.
‘Imported’?
Brought in from somewhere else. I brought them here, bartered, did a trade, fair and square.
Except it wasn’t.
What’s that?
Your barter. It wasn’t what it seemed.
Who told you that?
Nobody.
Where you been to be talking to others?
Nowhere. You know that.
So who’s been visiting?
No one.
Did you let someone in, girl?
And get the strap?
That’s right.
I know what’s good for me.
You don’t let what’s out there get in here.
I know.
You look at no one. You speak to no one.
When am I going to get that chance?
Even with the chance, you don’t.
I don’t.
You wouldn’t like what’s out there.
I know.
You want me to tell you what can happen?
No.
You want nightmares, trembling in your bed?
No.
So I’m telling you: You look at no one. You speak to no one.
I don’t.
She doesn’t.
Good. So then where’s these opinions about my barter coming from?
Not from me.
He’s right.
From thin air, is it?
Yes.
Be careful, now.
But it’s true. Sometimes –
Yes?
– when I’m in the back of the van … I see people. I see. And I understand.
There’s no harm in it.
You stop that reading what people say by watching their mouths.
It’s just people talking.
Saying things about me. About us. They see the van and they talk, oh yes. I know them, know the poison they speak, the slurry they spread, stinking. And then her carrying what’s outside back in here, where it’s clean and safe. I’m not having it.
I can’t help it.
Try.
I don’t mean to.
Then we keep you here when we go to market. Or paint over the window at the back of the van. If you can’t see out, you don’t get to steal peoples’ conversations.
I don’t steal. It just happens.
Nothing happens by itself. Everything happens by will. (Rose resumes plucking the chicken.) Like that sow getting out.
The black sow likes acorns. I still can’t see what harm there is in letting her out under the trees.
She’ll eat a lump out of you, and come back for more.
Sounds familiar.
You won’t get a sow do what you want by speaking kindly to her. She needs the buckle or a good sting from the cattle prod. Better still not to give her the opportunity to think. Bend her will to yours, that’s the way. And keep her penned.
Two.
Morning. Rose outside feeding the hens. She watches the wind in the trees and looks about her. Projected text, signed, perhaps partly spoken.
I see the invisible. Shaking leaf. What moves it?
Not the leaf.
And the flower head nodding – not in agreement, not to itself, but at nothing. The nothing that moves it, the unseen not-there that crosses the lake, surface shifting, like my breath on my tea in the morning. I see the unseen and understand – like the mouths that move, then words appear in my head. How’d they get there? The people aren’t talking to me; don’t know I exist, hunkered down in the back of the van. Don’t know where I live, that I’m here and breathe and eat and sleep and see the invisible, inside their heads. They move their mouths but not at me.
I’m stealing.
I’m taking sense that was not for me, sense from the air, like the wind shaking the leaf, nodding the flower, stirring the lake.
Does that make me a thief?
Am I taking what’s not mine?
Have I been taken?
Graham approaches, at first unseen. Rose stays stock still when she realises he is there. He is concentrating, looking for something on the ground and is oblivious to her presence.
She watches him acutely, trying to remain invisible as he passes her by. When he has gone, she takes in a great gasp of air, and then swiftly, hungrily, looks after him.
Three.
Evening. Rose is clearing up after supper. The radio is on. // marks overlapping dialogue, signifying when Gwynne interrupts the broadcast.
… whether there could be more transparency in procedure and wider interaction with the European community. Delegates say dialogue is on-going and these concerns will be high on the agenda when they gather at the international summit at the end of the month. Concerns are mounting following the disappearance on Saturday evening of a young British boy from a holiday resort in Spain. The eight year old, who can’t be identified for legal reasons, was last seen by his mother// when playing by the swimming pool in the holiday complex. Spanish and British police are liaising in an attempt –
//Switch that off.
I’m listening.
I said off.
Lewis switches off the radio. Rose senses a change in dynamic.
What?
Can’t hear myself think with that racket. Always bad news – some war, someone killed, unemployment gone up, house prices gone down –
Some kid gone missing …
It’s always the same. It was exactly the same at some point over the past twenty years. You don’t need journalists to write it up, just newsreaders using the old scripts, with a changed name. The news is old.
He exits.
Another?
What?
Kid gone missing? Is that what you said?
Not specifically. It’s not a specific kid gone missing. Like the farmer said, the same things are always happening.
So what made you say it? Was it on the radio?
The radio’s not on.
I know – I saw you switch it off. But it was on.
So?
So is that what made you say it?
Say what?
A kid’s gone missing.
I didn’t.
Did.
Okay, maybe I did.
What made you say a kid’s gone missing when there isn’t one?
I don’t know. I was just saying…
Yes…?
I was saying there’s always people going missing.
To where?
Don’t know. That’s why they’re missing.
You can’t just lose them. People aren’t like bus tickets, or buttons, lost –
– and since when were you dealing with bus tickets?
People are people. They can’t just vanish into the air.
Can.
Can they?
There was a woman on the radio. She said her husband went out for a bottle of milk and didn’t come home for nine years.
What did he want milk for?
His tea, probably.
And he waited all that long? It’d be cold after nine years.
Well, he wouldn’t have wanted the tea really, would he? Just like he never really wanted the milk. It was just an excuse to get him out of the house and once he was out, he kept walking.
I think about that sometimes.
What?
Going outside and just keeping walking.
Do you?
Putting on my jacket and heading out. Lifting the latch and gone, out into the wind and never mind the sow waiting for her slops, or the eggs to be fetched. Just up and away and the wind on my face and never looking back.
Do you?
Think that? Sometimes.
And you wouldn’t tell us where you were going?
How could I with you out in the fields or forest, maybe in the van, driving around, working? Wouldn’t let me go, anyway.
Too bloody right.
Take me back; keep me here.
Lock you in, where you belong.
And that’d be that. No walking, the wind on me, looking.
At what?
Just looking. And walking. And never coming back.
And you’d do that?
Maybe.
And not tell us where you were?
Might send a card. A picture of some town I’d pass through. Just put the address, no message. But you’d know who it was from.
Yes.
You’d know it was me.
And you could do that, and not miss us?
I don’t know. Can’t remember a time when you weren’t there.
We wouldn’t manage without you.
Would.
I wouldn’t. And you wouldn’t manage without me. We’re not meant to be apart. (Beat) So what would you do without me to look after you?
Same as I always have. Cook, clean.
That wouldn’t make much money.
Wouldn’t need any.
So how would you live?
In. I’d live in, where I cook and clean. And eat there and sleep there. Same as here.
People don’t do that anymore. People don’t have housekeepers, haven’t the money or the space. They don’t need cooks.
So what about here?
Here’s different. You know that.
So what if you can’t cook? Or too busy working, get home late?
Do what everybody else does: buy readymade from the supermarket, perforate the film and two minutes in the microwave. Ping! There you are: Ready.
We don’t do that.
No.
I don’t know if I’d like that. Eating things you don’t know what’s been put in there. Could be anything. And two minutes and ping, there you are, ready. Can’t be right. Nothing cooks in two minutes. Not even eggs.
Sounds like you’re better off staying.
Or maybe I’d work in a shop. Wrapping up things.
Like what?
Things.
Like…?
Things – things. The things people have in bags coming out of shops. I don’t know what people have in their bags. I don’t know what they have in the shops, but I see them walking in the street with bags, plastic bags with things in them, sometimes one in each hand, or more sometimes, things bought in the shops. I could do that. Put things people buy inside the plastic bags in the shop.
What about taking money, giving change?
I’m best left with the bags.
They don’t employ people just to do that.
Someone else would do the money and I’d take the thing and wrap it and put it in the bag and I’d say ‘thank you very much. We appreciate your business. Have a sweet day.’
It’s ‘nice’. ‘Have a nice day.’
No it’s not.
You got that off the telly the other night, when Gwynne said you could watch it for a while.
There was a woman in a shop and she wrapped something in white paper and put it in a bag and said to the other woman with the yellow hair: ‘Thank you. We appreciate your business. Have a sweet day.’
Nice day. They say have a nice day.
Well maybe they do, but I’d say different. I’d say sweet and maybe that’s why I’d work there, because I would say things different from the others and that’s why they’d give me a job.
Really.
But perhaps I’d best stick with the bags. Just taking the thing and putting it in the bag.
Or maybe you’re best just staying here.
Maybe. We’ll see.
Several beats. They continue with their work.
There’s a saying – well, people say –
– Gwynne says.
Yeah. Gwynne says once, a long time ago, we had two heads. Two heads, four arms and four legs, but we were ripped apart, pulled asunder, and so ever since then we search for our other half, the person who makes us whole. He found you for me. Magicked. Perfect fit. (Rose looks at him. Several beats.) The door is always open.
Four.
Rose alone outdoors. She has been collecting mushrooms. Projected text. Visual and spoken language.
I don’t think I remember before.
He says I was made for him, conjured from thin air.
Crafted by a watchmaker, a herbalist,
a surgeon melding flower to form flesh,
those intricate inner coils curled
and soldered. Made.
A master joiner planing
my limbs to ivory bone.
Flowers made me.
Stem stamen sepal style
Pistil anther filament ovule.
Nothing without pollen.
Bees.
Graham is here, watching her sign ‘bees’.
They stare at each other motionless, then as he moves towards her, she takes to her heels and exits at speed. He calls after her, unheard.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean –.
I’m –.
He stands, looking after her.
Five.
Gwynne is outside looking out at the view. Rose tries to hide her previous fright and flight. Gwynne sees her, opening his arms to what is around them.
And here we are, standing on the crust of the shining world … So little changed over hundreds of years, more. Ancient woodland, wilderness, heaths. Grassland, bogs … (He looks, savours.) We own everything far as the eye can see.
Can’t see much for the forest.
And that’s how we like it. We can’t see out; they can’t see in. They won’t be bothering us.
What if someone comes here?
They won’t.
But if they did?
You seen someone?
If I did, who would it be?
Doesn’t matter. Shouldn’t be around here.
But if. What would you do?
Deal with them.
How? (Beat)
Anyone out here knows it’s our land; it’s private. They trespass – they take the consequences. So you say if you see anyone.
But what would they be here for?
Sniffing around, thieving. Up to no good, simple as that.
They can’t all be bad.
That’s lack of experience talking. That’s words from a good, innocent heart that hasn’t been crushed or swindled and taught to fear or distrust. A dog turns wicked when mistreated. I don’t want to teach you the evils out there. Don’t want you to even know.
But you go to market, you trade. You have the vet come.
How d’you know that, girl?
I’ve seen his van in the yard.
You keep away from the windows when we send you upstairs. We send you for a reason.
But –
– It’s for your own protection.
It’s the vet.
Doesn’t matter.
But –
– There are those who would use you up then open the car door and tip you out like rubbish, like emptying an ashtray at the side of the road, the car not even slowing as they roll you out dead, or worse. So you heed what we say. The world... (He shakes his head.) Safe here.
He starts back towards the farmhouse.
Maybe I don’t want to be safe.
Did you just do that thing with your hands?
No.
Good. It isn’t allowed.
I know.
Slowly she follows him in.
Six.
Later, the kitchen. Lewis and Rose busy with chores: he polishing up the shine on boots with newspaper, Rose preparing vegetables for dinner. She pauses and stares ahead, deep in thought.
Lewis notices and playfully throws some scrunched up newspaper at her. At first he throws wide and misses her, then catches her, making her startle. They laugh.
Miles away.
What is?
You.
No crime in that.
Maybe I like you close.
They both go back to their chores. After some time Rose is again distracted and pauses in her chopping, making Lewis look up. He again throws some screwed up paper at her. She is startled, but there is no laughter this time.
At least you saved your fingers and stopped chopping. That knife’s sharp.
No good if it’s blunt. More dangerous when the blade’s dull.
She continues chopping, but carefully and in a position where she can see Lewis’s face. He takes up the next boot to polish.
Lewis?
Mmmm.
Hens lay eggs. They sit and hatch if we let them, have chicks, little hens. And the sow. The boar comes and covers her and time later she has a litter.
Can’t disturb her then, or she’ll eat them all.
Don’t touch, I know. But I see. Maybe ten, twelve, all lying at her teats, sucking. Babies. Same for farm cats.
There to keep the mice and rats out of the barn.
They have kittens, born blind, eyes tight in the straw, nested.
And drowned if we find them. Can’t be overrun with cats yeowling and fighting all the time. They’re like us. Don’t like any company except their own.
Kitten has mother cat, piglet has sow, chuck has hen. So how did I get here?
I don’t know why you’re asking how it works when you know how it works. Good at it, too.
Piglet sucks the sow, the chick has the hen. The pup cries when taken from its mother. How come I can’t remember?
Remembering is for them with time on their hands. The idle. We don’t have time on our hands. Too busy being busy working, the hands full with things to do, mind on work, not trying to remember.
But how come I – ?
– It’s not good you thinking. You know we don’t like you thinking. You weren’t built to be thinking.
Am I built to have little ones?
With luck, in time.
But if I do, how’m I to look after it when I don’t know?
You look after us fine.
Different for little ones. Like the kitten, born blind, How’m I meant to know what to do when I can’t remember?
It comes natural.
Collie pup learns from mother bitch. She growls, nips, she teaches. Same with the cat. She teaches how to hunt, how to survive.
You’re managing to survive all right here. We look after you, you look after us, that’s how it works.
But a little one. How am I meant to teach when I was never taught?
It’s instinct, just like for the cat, the sow.
Some things you don’t need lessons for.
But how come I don’t remember being mothered?
Because you’re the same as me. Reared without. And it didn’t do me any harm. Better, in fact. Gwynne says some mothers are more careless than a sow with her young.
But you had him rear you. He was mother and father all. There was no one to rear me. None. That I remember.
What happened for you to be asking these questions?
Just thinking.
I asked you not to, because we know what it does. Just brings unhappiness. You content now?
Never thought of it.
See? You think, you question, you doubt, you’re unhappy. You’re fine now. You think and you’re not fine. No good comes from you thinking this way, or any other. You want to be happy, content? (She shrugs) So stop using this.
He taps her head, then tries to be tender. She is brusque, brushing him off.
Why can’t you be soft like some of them girls in town?
Never been to town, least, never let out the back of the van.
I buy you stuff from the chemist don’t I? The lipstick and stuff. To put on your face and make yourself up.
That’s just what you like. It isn’t for me.
I thought all girls liked that.
Never been shown how.
You see it in the magazines. The pictures I give you. TV, when it’s allowed. You seen it then.
But I don’t know how… And I’m better, without.
That’s because you’re not like other girls.
He begins to nuzzle her.
I’ve got to get on.
But what about your Lewis?
What about him?
He’s lonely. Look: his arms are empty ...
She puts the fencing stakes into his outstretched arms.
Fence needs fixing.
Later.
Now.
I want my comforts.
You’ll get them after supper.
I want them now.
I want never gets.
Is that so?
He catches her up in his arms.
Don’t.
Don’t tell me to don’t. Come on, Rose. Sweet Rose.
I’m not sweet.
Kiss me. Just a little one.
I’ve my chores and dinner to cook … And you’re to fetch up all the newspaper you’ve thrown.
Leave it.
Farmer’ll be in and there’s mess –
– Just a taste, just a...
– you know newspapers aren’t allowed.
Rose …
It’s my job to keep the place clean and –
– Your first duty is to me.
Resigned, Rose turns to him and embraces him with a short kiss.
Is that all I get?
Your Uncle’ll complain if I don’t –
Kiss me. (She does, perfunctory) Come on, put a bit more effort into it ... Come on, do it how your Lewis taught you, how he likes it best.
Without letting him see, she hides some of the scrunched-up newspaper in her pocket before he leads her out.
Seven.
Graham is outside. He uses a Swiss army knife to dissect an owl pellet. He dictates a note of what he sees into a voice recorder.
Teeth, a few claws. What appears to be insect head parts and wing cases, enclosed by fur – from the rodent prey, perhaps. Some kind of vegetable fibre.
He abandons the pellet, moves on. He hears an owl call. He listens, thinks, dictates.
Athene notua. Not native. Introduced to Britain in the –1840’s? Check date. A sedentary species often found in open country and mixed farmland. In mythology, the familiar to Athene Pronoia, goddess of wisdom and darkness. In ancient times they inhabited the Acropolis in great numbers. It was their inner light, the Athenians believed, which gave them their night vision. As Athena’s symbol, the small owl was a protector, carried into battle by Greek armies on amulets and coins. Protector and harbinger of death. Watcher of the dark flying past on soundless wings.
He realises Rose has been watching him, lip-reading. Motionless, they look at each other for some time. He begins to move but she indicates she will take flight if he comes closer.
He stops. They look at each other. He tries to reassure her, engage her, keep her there. She looks at the wind through the trees in the forest.
Trees. (She looks to him.) Trees grow from a tiny seed into one of the biggest and longest living organisms on this planet. Using sunlight, trees build themselves from the nutrients and minerals found in water, and gases in the air. It’s miraculous.
He moves, but she indicates he should be still, or she will go. He is still.
They give shade, provide food, and building materials. Trees can heal. Aspirin was developed from the bark of the willow tree, the cancer drug taxol is from the yew, and pine tree bark yields pycnogenol, which helps prevent DVT … Deep Vein Thrombosis – during long distance flights…? But it’s not just the pharmaceuticals. It’s the energy from them – these massive plants – so permanent, and yet –
Did you know that in one year a single tree can absorb as much carbon as a car produces when driving 26 thousand miles? And a hectare of trees makes enough oxygen to keep 44 people alive for 12 months. You must be drunk on all the oxygen here.
Why trees?
I like them. I study them – and who they give shelter to. Walking through just now – this canopy – a cathedral of trees, breathing out, absorbing in… It’s alive. If you listen with your blood, you can feel the pulse of its great heart.
You don’t talk like others.
You’re not the first to tell me that.
I’m told I’m made from flowers of the oak.
I could almost believe that.
Eight.
The kitchen. Rose has ironed flat the scrap of newspaper with her hands and is carefully but slowly reading the words, keeping alert for anyone coming in. She puts it away when Lewis enters with tools and clumsily tries to fix the window. Rose watches.
You’re not very good at this.
Wouldn’t have been my first choice for things to do after a day out working.
Do we get to choose?
I reckon not. Beggars can’t be choosers. You heard that before?
What?
Beggars can’t be choosers.
I’m not a beggar.
I didn’t mean it – literally.
– I work hard for what I get. I’m not given. I earn.
Okay.
You don’t give me charity.
I never said that, did I?
And I’m good at what I do. What are you good at, Lewis? Isn’t stories, like the farmer.
No.
And it isn’t wringing chickens’ necks. So what is it you’re good at, boy? You good at anything?
What has you like a nettle today?
He goes back to trying to fix the window. Some silence.
They found him.
Who?
Little boy went missing.
What are you on about now?
Little boy, missing in Spain.
How d’you (know about that)?
Rose takes out part of the newspaper scrap. Lewis immediately takes it from her.
Careless, that, you leaving it around.
Farmer doesn’t like me seeing news.
Doesn’t want you worrying.
Trembling in my bed?
There’s things out there ...
Like what, Lewis? (Long beat) You said right. People go missing all the time. Many, paper said. Gave a list of children disappeared over the last twenty years.
Runaways to London, mainly. City lights. Or first love. They’ll learn. Leave home, and that’s it.
Maybe some get lost in the forest?
And accidents. Falling down mineshafts. Old quarries. Lakes. And people. People are the worst. But maybe some come good. Maybe some change their name and start all over again. Be who they want.
Are you who you want, Lewis?
Lewis turns his back on her, appearing to be engrossed in his handy work. Rose watches him.
He was eight – the little boy. He didn’t go missing. He was taken. (Beat) Lewis?
Mmmmm.
What happened?
When?
Before.
Before what?
I was here.
She tries to help, so she can see his face.
Don’t.
Don’t what?
You know what.
I’m not. I’m –
He gets irritated apparently by the way she is assisting him.
Not like that! You’d think nobody’d shown you.
Nobody did.
You made a right cack-handed –
– If there’s any complaints, it’s just yourself you have to blame. You taught me, it’s your fault.
Gwynne enters, aware of the growing argument between them.
Don’t get funny with me, up on your high horse …
Well, don’t expect me to be better than I can be. I don’t know how to do this, was never shown, never taught, just kept apart, and some things don’t come natural, no matter how much you say it does.
Now – now children. Lewis, say sorry to Rose. Ask for her forgiveness.
For what?
Ingratitude.
I’m sorry.
It’s all right.
No, it’s not.
It is. It’s fine.
Sometimes you need to count your blessings and we’re blessed, as we have you to look after us.
Doesn’t matter, it’s –
– Greatest day of our lives when you came to live with us. A gift. I only wish we could give you more.
Don’t need it.
It’s what you deserve.
It’s fine.
But when I think about where you could be, what you might –
– I wouldn’t want anything else. Here’ll do.
Good. (In an instance, almost magically, he fixes what they have been trying to mend.) The girl speaks right. (To Rose) And shall I tell you why that’s right? Because you’re nothing. Unimportant. Nobody knows you’re here. Nobody cares. They’d step over you if you fell down in the street. Got their own troubles to think about, their own to look after, their own little lives to lead. Selfishness, the world … This here is all we have; this is all there is. We’re fortunate to have one another. Be grateful.
I am.
A perfect, beautiful fit. (to Lewis) Check everything’s in and safe for the night.
Lewis leaves. Rose starts preparations for supper.
It does something to you, not being wanted by your mother. Rejected from the start – he was thrown away, abandoned, denied a name, denied protection, denied comfort. So what are you going to do? Deny him also?
I didn’t, I –
– I took him to rear as my own. Is my own. Good as.
I didn’t deny him, I –
– It does something to you when you know your own mother didn’t want you. Something gets broken inside, bruised. Well if your own mother couldn’t love you, why should anyone else? And you become shy and awkward and incapable with others. You doubt your worth, your right to be on the earth. And so you need help. And with that help, you find your way, you make your life, you have your family, your home – the door to close and keep everything in and that cold, hurting world out.
Did my mother reject me, too?
He’s all the family you need.
But mother –
– You both did without.
But –
– I told you. You’re not like others. You were made to be his perfect fit. Out in the fields, working side by side.
You never take me to the fields. We never work like that.
Sun beating down on strong, firm arms. Strong limbs, slow to tire.
Just stories. In your head.
I saw my boy lonesome. He was pining for company, eyes straying to the town. Can’t have that. So I brought you home for him.
He says I was magicked.
And so you were.
Must’ve come from somewhere.
Out of flowers and thin air.
Something can’t come from nothing.
You can’t doubt the power of the forest. Things happen there.
Piglet comes from sow, pup comes –
– You came from the forest, girl, I told you. I found you in the forest.
Found?
Found, made, magicked. It’s the same.
It’s not.
They’re just words.
You’re good at that. Confusing me with words, with your stories.
What are we but stories? This doesn’t last – this body, flesh. It perishes and falls to nothing; burns to ash, is taken by the wind and scattered. But a story. A story lives, passed on from one mind to another, jumping host, going down the line from father to son, generation to generation. That’s what’s real. Not this. We’re like the shadow on the wall, a trick of the light, then gone. Stories can’t die; they can’t be killed. They may be lain down for a while, but they’ll be taken up again, leaping like a spark from one stack of kindling to the next, one head to another, where a story will sit glowing until it takes and burns. You’re unimportant. But a story ... A story of a girl from the forest The story of a woman made from the flowers of the oak? That story goes round and it’ll go round forever, so long as there’s a forest, or even just the myth of one, for the forest is shrinking. It’s the forest that’s endangered now. And when the last tree being felled is not a living memory but rumoured by the descendant of the one who saw it done, when no one can believe there was once a wild place where things grew as they chose and not for convenience in easily harvested lines… Then, when the tale of that last tree in what had once been a forest is told, then the story of the girl who came from it will also be said aloud, and live again in the imaginations, in the dreams, springing into life as the shadows spring against the wall with the leap of the flame. Some things are eternal. That is my gift to you.
I don’t want it.
Be careful.
Me? No. You be careful.
Lewis enters and pauses when removing his coat, feeling the change in dynamic. He looks to Gwynne and Rose, but they continue as usual, as though nothing has happened.
Nine.
Graham and Rose together outside. When not directly speaking with Rose, he is engaged in his field study, observing activity and making notes of bird calls.
Ko’ko.
Ko’ko.
It means ‘Watcher of the dark.’
Watcher –
– of the dark. For the Hopis, the Burrowing Owl – Ko’ko – is the god of the dead and the guardian of fires. It also tends and nurtures all things underground, including the germination of seeds. So it’s just a sleep, death, like the seed sleeps until called to grow another life.
I think I had another life.
You believe in reincarnation? A previous existence?
No, in this one. Before the forest.
When I think about myself when I was younger – it’s a different life, a completely different person.
I don’t remember.
I try not to think about it, either. I was a disaster. Not very good at being young. So serious. Head in a book, or down a rabbit hole. I sometimes want to tell that younger self ‘hang on in there; it’ll be okay. You’ll be doing a PhD on this stuff in years to come, nature diary for a magazine.’ It was all about city living and being urban and edgy when I was younger. The natural world was so uncool, never mind being into night birds.
She moves his hand from covering his mouth.
I want to see your mouth. More.
The Kwagiulth nation believe owls represent both a dead person and their soul on its journey to the afterlife. It’s the silent flight, I think, that creates these links to death. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen an owl flying, but it’s astonishing – moving at speed through space with no sound – this noiseless predator, a silent killing machine… Though not all of the stories are quite so gloomy. The Inuit and ancient Welsh believe the owl was once a beautiful girl transformed into the night bird as punishment for her crimes.
What did she do?
She fell in love with the wrong person.
That’s a crime?
She tried to kill her husband – I sense a theme developing here – so she could be with her lover, and so she was turned into an owl. Spectral figure; winged denizen of the dark … (Several beats.) When did you lose your hearing?
I didn’t. I’ve always been like this.
But you have spoken language, so it must’ve been after you were seven?
I don’t think I was ever a child.
An old soul – solemn and wise.
He hears something, a birdcall. He immediately makes a note and listens intently, trying to locate the call. Rose watches him listening, moving softly on.
She speaks aloud, knowing he won’t hear her.
I’m like this because flowers don’t have ears.
He is oblivious to her, having moved away.
Meadowsweet, oak blossom, chestnut, primrose, broom. Hawthorn, nettle. The flowers in the forest. (A change in dynamic, more internal, in Rose’s imagination.) He said I was made for him. That first time. I remember. He put his hands on my waist. We were outside. It had been snowing. His fingers were cold. I felt them where my shirt had come out of my jeans. Undone. He said then I was his. I’d been made for him. Can’t remember anything before. Just more of the same. Like always. Get up when it’s still dark, ghost of breath on the air. Ice on the inside window, like lace. The pigs in the morning, giving them their gruel. And cold. So cold my fingers are burning. And the ache. So tired, but must keep awake. Scrub. Clean. Feed. Wash. Comfort. But what about me? Where’s my comfort?
Lewis and Gwynne appear in dim light.
You don’t need any as you’re mine.
Stupid girl with no mam, no dad, no family, no prospects. So where else would I go?
You’re better off here – clean bed, giving comforts. I’ll look after you.
You can bolt that door at night and the world can’t get in.
You don’t want the world let in with its nastiness and corruption.
Better here on the farm, where you’ve always been, where you belong. What else would you do?
Go to the city and walk the streets
sleep in a doorway,
prey to anyone passing by, no protection, no one to run to.
Would you want that?
And nothing before, no memory, just his fingers on my waist. Under my coat. On my skin. Claiming me.
I’ve made it nice for you here.
I’ve made you a good farmer’s wife, for the boy.
They go.
The dynamic shifts again to the forest, to Rose and Graham, who has returned.
She looks at him.
Touch me. I want you to. I’ve never wanted anything before.
A duet – music, sign performance and movement.
I fly in my dreams. Over the farmhouse and down towards the river. My love is there, standing by the stone. He touches me and flowers bloom against my skin. Meadowsweet, broom, the flowers of the oak. All the petals, stamens, the cells, feathers, the claw and hollow bone, all the ticking in a clock, the pulse of life beating, beating, beating of wings, of time passing, of life, all this is him.
Ten
As opening. Rose stands beside a tin bath.
Lewis tries to embrace Rose.
Not now.
Rose...
I said not now. (Beat)
I don’t remember before. Maybe I don’t want to, maybe farmer told me to wipe it from my mind so I did and it was wiped. He says the mind is everything – you can control and make things turn out as you want just through words. You call something into being – you say it is, and it is. It isn’t magic. It’s how things work. Power of the word. Mind control. (Beat) We don’t take any shit. Not from anyone. We need to pull up the drawbridge, make our own little camp. It’s cold and dark and getting darker. The world ... They only want to screw you over, take what they can and just ... Safe here. We’ll be alright. You’ll see.
He tries again to embrace her. She flicks him off as she would a fly.
I’ve got to get on; I’ve the pigs to settle. The black sow’s spooked, playing up and –
– Be nice to me.
I said not now. I’m away to the sow before she eats her young.
I want my comforts.
Matter of fact, she turns to him and allows him to kiss her, passively. He pulls away.
So I’m just another chore to you?
Lewis, I –
– There’s no warmth in you. No spark.
She embraces him with more enthusiasm.
Ow! (He pulls away) That hurt!
You wanted passion.
Not like that.
I can’t win with you, can I? I try and then you complain ...
I want you to respond, not claw me to death.
So I’ll cut my fingernails in future. Will that satisfy you?
Don’t get in a huff ... I just wanted to –
– Have your way.
Don’t see it like that
How else do you expect me to?
Come on, Rose, sweet Rose ...
I’m not sweet.
Come give me my comforts, be kind ...
It’s not in my nature.
Don’t be so prickly.
I can’t help it.
Kiss me.
He roughly grabs her and kisses her. She bites. He raises his hand to her. She stares him out.
You stink of pigs.
So I’ll have a bath.
He steps into the tub, fully dressed and sits down. Silence. Angry, she turns away from him. Graham is there. Rose sees him. They stare at each other. Suddenly she turns and pushes Lewis under the water. He struggles. She holds him down with difficulty, his feet out of the bath. He struggles, then he lies still.
She steps back. A beat. The sow starts squealing, as if at slaughter. Graham stands frozen as Rose becomes full of action. She puts Lewis’s legs into the bath, and tries to cover the tub. She starts pushing Graham out.
You have to go. If Gwynne sees you here … I’ll deal with it. I’ll find you. Go.
Graham finally moves. He tries to catch her face in his hands, but she pushes him away.
Don’t look at me. Don’t. You mustn’t see my face.
Graham goes.
The fluttering of bird wings, shadows across her face. In a mix of spoken and visual language:
Feather. Claw. Eddying swirl and buffet. Air. Held aloft, braced against the current. Dip and soar. Wind combs through feather, eye sharp and bleak against the glare of moonlight on the lake, viewed from above, through claws. Flying. I’m flying. The shadow a crucifix below me. I’m a bird.
The shadows of birds against the walls, across her face, growing more sinister, threatening.
She startles as though from a bad dream. Gwynne is making shadows of birds with his hands. She is in the kitchen.
So you don’t accept my story? The woman of flowers magicked from the forest. You want something else. I can give you something else. What of the bird, so hated by its own kind, it has to hide by day, only daring to show its face by night?
Lewis enters through the door. He is wet. He sits blankly beside Gwynne. Rose is confused, she looks over at the tin bath.
Thought you could lie and hide from me, girl? Thought you could break the rules, have your way and not be found out or punished? I dealt with the intruder. Your owlman’s with his like in the dark, deep in the forest. He won’t be bothering us again.
I don’t believe you.
It doesn’t matter. He’s gone, and you’re here.
I will find him.
He’s disappeared. In fact, he never was.
I’ve had enough of your stories.
There’s plenty more. How about the little runaway, shop-soiled, damaged goods, the beaten child that turned up here and out of the goodness of our hearts, we took you in…
I don’t –
– Or maybe we saved you from a terrible accident, found you knocked out and bleeding in the forest with no memory, dumped, no details, no bag, no nothing. Authorities not interested.
Didn’t even turn up to look.
So we took you home and nursed you, gave you food, warmth, family.
No one else wanted you,
Not even the police. Not the slightest bit interested. Human trash.
Not worth the paperwork.
Just another accident, another near-murder, another domestic, yet another runaway. Should’ve just left you there.
Less bother.
Such ingratitude. Or another story – the human pin-cushion, tramlines up her arms, collapsed veins, sunken eyes, the broken doll selling herself for the cost of a fix, all dignity gone, and with it all trace of humanity …
I –
– You don’t exist. No papers, no identity, no passport, no national insurance number. You only exist as a story. Trafficked, sold, found at the side of the road – which version would you prefer?
How about the girl taken from the front garden of her mother’s house where she was playing? How about a girl kept ignorant and away from the world, fed on stories and kept in fear of the magic in the forest?
Be careful.
You thought you made me, shaped me as you wanted, what was good for you, easy for you. Wash my clothes, where’s my dinner, come to bed. You thought you could control me – own me – but I am myself, I own my self. The flower face grew thorns. Why do you never go into the forest at night? For the same reason, you should be afraid of me.
I will have my revenge.
You’ll have to find me first.
The shame you bring upon my honour, this house.
Rose signs and then speaks:
I am not of this house. Not of your laws, or your rules, or your punishments. The way is open. And I’m walking out.
A way through appears. She moves out.
Eleven
Rose in the forest. Owl calls. She signs.
Days pass.
Sun revolves around.
A tiny pure light is lit
deep in my belly.
It frightens me at first,
What is it?
The flicker of flame.
The leap of the tongue.
What is it?
And then I realise:
It’s joy.
She walks on.
The End.
With thanks to:
Kirstie Davis for her innovation and spirit of adventure, and to Sophie Stone and Jean St Clair for our hours turning printed words to poetry sculpted in air. Thanks to Phillip Zarrili for his patient dramaturgical eye and to Conrad Williams, and Isobel Dixon, agents extraordinaire. Final thanks to the unknown ancient storytellers who first spoke of the woman of flowers, and the anonymous Welsh hands who with such skill wrote those stories down.
Praise for Kaite O’Reilly:
peeling:
“… Kaite O’Reilly’s dense, dangerous play … has all the deceptive simplicity and hopeful despair of a Samuel Beckett play. As in Beckett, the characters are tragic and comic, heartbreaking and ridiculous. As in Beckett the joke is ultimately on us. This is a major piece of theatre…”
Lyn Gardner, The Guardian
“… a powerful and important piece of work … A minor feminist masterpiece … Quietly groundbreaking…”
Joyce McMillian, The Scotsman
“… humorous, sardonic, disbelieving, outraged, foul-mouthed, quarrelsome, defiant … O’Reilly’s dialogue has the punch and spareseness of the late Sarah Kane’s suicide play, 4.48 Psychosis…”
Benedict Nightingale, The Times
“… The spirits of Bertold Brecht and Samuel Beckett hover over Kaite O’Reilly’s peeling … and it’s a teasing, provocative combination, this marriage of Brecht’s alienation-effect sloganising with Beckett’s sumptuous inertia … a droll, self-deconstructing piece of theatre that is far too clever to be pigeonholed.”
Dominic Cavendish, The Daily Telegraph
“… strong, eloquent and funny, the piece has a cumulative power … had me, for one, close to tears…”
Sarah Hemming, Financial Times
“… dry and pungent with a bitter twist … This intriguing reflection on disability and performance [and] the ethics and aesthetics of appearance … an absorbing theatrical form … What’s most fascinating … is the use of the linguistic diversity that people with disabilities often have to master … The fecundity and inventiveness of its many languages counterbalance the stark, sometimes horrific imagery, giving us a depiction of death and sterility that is vivid and abundant…”
Fintan O’Toole, Irish Times
“… a show of great power and ingenuity … ground-breaking and boldly new…”
Birmingham Post
Yard:
“… A scathing eloquence…”
The Independent
“… The talent that Kaite O’Reilly shows … is unusual: bloody, poetic, rhetorical, full of violent emotion, but civilised and savage. It is very much like Jacobean drama – but modern and in microcosm.’
The Financial Times
“… astonishing … Irish lyricism and imaginative writing … strong theatrical meat…”
Daily Mail
“O’Reilly … has an ear for lyrical dialogue, a strong sense of setting and vital humour…”
Daily Telegraph
Persians
‘… chilling, terrifying and a timelessly resonant evocation of the rending grief, fury, and devastation of war … O’Reilly’s [Persians] is drenched in bloody poetry…’
The Times
In Water I’m Weightless
‘… sardonically funny … thrillingly vitriolic…’
Alfred Hickling, The Guardian
Kaite O’Reilly’s play Peeling is also published by Aurora Metro Books in the collection titled Graeae Plays 1: new plays redefining disability selected by Jenny Sealey £12.99
ISBN 978-0-953675-76-0
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