by Alison Lyssa
AXIS: She still loves to rub her fingers in the paint.
VIOLET: One day she painted a whole story on the lounge-room wall. It’s still there, under the wallpaper. And what do you do, dear?
AXIS: I see people. In a clinic. I get fed up with it sometimes.
VIOLET: Oh, you’re a nurse, aren’t you?
AXIS: Not exactly. We have …
ARCHIBALD enters with a chair. There are now three chairs.
VIOLET: Over there, dear. We’ll need the cake tray down from the top shelf and a ribbon to tie on the knife.
She leaves.
AXIS: It’s a beautiful old jug. Is it crystal?
ARCHIBALD: Young lady. You do appreciate … You have a responsibility to consider Alabastar.
AXIS: I do.
ARCHIBALD: It is important that you tell me what you think … of our landscape. An original.
AXIS: It’s very nice.
ARCHIBALD: Ah! Do you dabble with the brush, too? Like our Theenie?
AXIS: Dabble? It’s Theenie’s work.
SOLOMON enters as KURT with a bottle of brandy.
KURT: Behold! A wise and kingly spirit.
ARCHIBALD: Son, how do you do?
KURT: How do you do, father?
ARCHIBALD: Napoleon, ah.
KURT: ‘Who is this that looks forth like the dawn,
Fair as the moon, bright as the sun …’
AXIS gives KURT a dirty look.
‘… Terrible as an army with banners?’
ARCHIBALD: Allow me to introduce a relative newcomer to the family, currently establishing her reputation as an art critic. Kurt Havistock, may I present Miss Axis … Axis mmm.
KURT: We’ve met. An art lover, eh? Did you have time to study the collection of Old Masters when you were at Central Court?
AXIS: I am outnumbered.
She leaves.
ARCHIBALD: What was she doing in court?
KURT: It would not be very loyal of me to tell you.
ARCHIBALD: Loyal?
KURT: To Theenie. She is entitled to her secrets.
ARCHIBALD: Kurt, we are a family. We have our name.
VIOLET: [off] Arch, dear, the ham. Are you ready with the carving knife?
ARCHIBALD: Now is neither the time nor the place, but this is no light matter, son.
He leaves.
MIRIAM: [off] Darling!
She enters, pregnant, bearing a pavlova pudding.
KURT: Christ!
MIRIAM: Darling, is there anything else to bring in out of the car? I do hope Sarah and Matthew behave themselves; it’s boring when they don’t.
AXIS enters with things for the table.
Hullo! Who’s this?
AXIS: Well, I’m …
KURT: Theenie’s latest.
MIRIAM: Beautiful hair. It does set off your head, short like that, but how long did you leave the henna in? [To KURT] She’s actually beautiful, darling, what a waste!
AXIS: Don’t turn away. Teach me how you wrap the sugar round the put-down.
THEENIE enters bearing a dish.
THEENIE: Oh, my God. Don’t take them on, Axis.
AXIS: I’m taking them off.
VIOLET enters.
VIOLET: Don’t upset your father, Theenie, Kurt. There’s the worry of his kidneys.
AXIS: Truce.
VIOLET: [calling] Alabastar!
She takes the dish from THEENIE.
Come on, darling, call the others. Children! Your frankfurters are ready in the rumpus room. Grandad’s waiting.
She leaves.
KURT: Give Miriam the comfortable chair.
‘The fig tree puts forth its figs,
And the vines are in blossom.’
Would you like a cushion for your back?
MIRIAM: Please. Thank you, darling. Happy mummy, happy baby.
VIOLET enters.
VIOLET: I didn’t buy enough yo-yos. Isn’t it funny how everybody wants one. Children, children. It takes two to make a quarrel.
THEENIE: Do sit down, Violet.
AXIS stands to give VIOLET her chair. VIOLET glares at Kurt who has remained seated.
VIOLET: Theenie, what have you been up to, dear?
THEENIE: I’ve started a—
ARCHIBALD: [entering from the rumpus room] Little children should be seen and not heard.
THEENIE: Actually, I’ve—
ARCHIBALD: May I help anyone to a glass of liquid refreshment? Would you do the honours, son?
KURT: I think Theenie’s about to tell us what she’s been up to, Theenie?
He offers her a drink.
[Calling] I don’t care who started it. Matthew, you hit your sister again and you can forget about football.
ARCHIBALD: I would venture to suggest without fear of contradiction that the behaviour of the children is the fault of our schools, where rampant left-wing influences exult in the subversion of discipline, diligence and decorum.
VIOLET: A growing boy needs his vitamins. I hope you’re taking them every day now, Miriam.
KURT: Yes, mother, she is. Sarah! Let your mother have her rest.
MIRIAM: There’s no need to take it out on the children. Sarah and Matthew are at very good schools. They have their altercations, naturally, but they adore one another.
She exits to the rumpus room.
VIOLET: [to ARCHIBALD] I’ll have a drop more, thank you, dear. I wouldn’t entirely blame the schools. There’s more nonsense on television …
KURT: It’s the Teachers’ Federation, mother. I’ve told you that.
MIRIAM: [re-entering with a child’s stained white dress] Sarah! Kurt, she wanted to wear her new white dress and now look! If you knew how it makes me tired.
She leaves with the dress.
KURT: [to ARCHIBALD] Don’t fill Miriam’s glass. She becomes uncontrollable. [Shouting] No more crisis–mongering in there, Sarah. I’ve told you not to cry. Don’t cry. Okay? Just don’t cry. [To VIOLET] I wouldn’t put it past her to pull his hair.
AXIS: Theenie, you’ve got to say something.
THEENIE: Where would I start?
MIRIAM: [returning] My charming Mr Havistock senior, now that the children have promised to be good, may I?
She holds up her glass.
VIOLET: Miriam, you have your baby to think of.
KURT: She’s drinking for two.
ARCHIBALD: For the blossoming Mrs Havistock junior, a pleasure.
VIOLET: Arch, dear, you haven’t answered me. You always change the subject when what I say about television is right.
KURT: Mother, television is a powerful vehicle for freedom of choice, an indispensable part of the market, and of your financial destiny as an Australian shareholder.
VIOLET: We can have a destiny and a sense of responsibility.
MIRIAM: I consider television a godsend for the mother with a commitment to her husband’s career.
VIOLET: Are the children ready for their chocolate crackles?
KURT: Just a minute, mother. No sweets for Matthew and Sarah until they’ve got every sandwich off their plate.
THEENIE: Aren’t you being a bit savage, Kurt? You’re piling so many rules in front of them they’ll never see over the top.
MIRIAM: Waste not, want not. Think of the starving millions.
KURT: You might be my sister, but you mind your own bloody business.
VIOLET: Don’t use language here, Kurt.
KURT: Yes mother, I’ll swear in my father’s house if I bloody well want to. [To THEENIE] How dare you criticise the upbringing of my children, when I suffer in silence the aberrations of you and your ill-trained offspring.
VIOLET: Theenie, a soft answer turneth away wrath.
THEENIE: It’s okay, Violet. I don’t want to quarrel.
THEENIE gives her mother a kiss.
ARCHIBALD: The disgrace is not the food, but the language. A generation is growing to adulthood with the grammar of the gutter. It comes this very afternoon from my grandson’s mo
uth. ‘I done whatcha said.’ The greatest work of genius in the history of mankind is the English language. It catches at an old man’s heart when the treasure house of centuries is ransacked.
THEENIE: No, Dad. It’s changing, growing. If we did a Rip Van Winkle backwards for a hundred years, we’d find the language very different.
ARCHIBALD: That argument does not hold. I knew a time when it was the great men of letters who moved the language forward.
AXIS: And the women.
ARCHIBALD: I’ll start again. I knew a time when it was the great men of letters—and history includes Jane Austen and George Eliot—who created our language and its beauty. Now it has become fashionable to adopt the speech and manners of the proletariat. The children of the least educated are dictating to us how we shall talk. ‘I done whatcha said.’
VIOLET: [perfectly modulated] I did what you said.
ARCHIBALD: Thank you, Violet.
MIRIAM: I did enjoy the claret cup.
THEENIE: Are you sure it’s a choice between I done and I did? I mean, once we used to say, ‘I have done’, then someone invented ‘I’ve done’, and now the adults are saying it so quickly, all the children hear is ‘I done’. We’re moving to a faster language, away from the restrictions of the apostrophe.
ARCHIBALD: My dear daughter! What we have lost in clarity and precision …
AXIS: Our Alabastar’s helping. The other day he told me, ‘I already undone them there knots meself, but’.
ARCHIBALD: Theenie, you must move.
VIOLET: Arch, dear, couldn’t we manage somehow to send Alabastar to a private school?
AXIS: I don’t think they’d like my sandshoes on parent-teacher nights.
THEENIE: Don’t tease them, Axis, I can’t bear it.
MIRIAM: Have you ever had the opportunity to have children, Axis, dear?
KURT: Are you being optimistic, or ridiculous? How can women’s libbers have a sensible conversation about motherhood? Look in the media. They tirade against it. But notice how she says, ‘Our Alabastar’. Mark my words, as soon as these women realise their control over the next generation is slipping out from under them, you’ll see an immediate revival of the maternal instinct they’ve been so busy thwarting.
AXIS: Bullshit.
ARCHIBALD: I will not have the language of the tavern in my house.
AXIS: I’m sorry. But do give me a moment to defend myself.
KURT: Moment! I have an hour. Take the chair.
MIRIAM: Kurt.
AXIS: I can choose to give birth if I want to, and right now I’ve got other things to do. How come, when you can’t have a baby yourself, you think you have a god-given right to tell me how to run my maternal instinct? You’re not going to put me down.
KURT: Nobody put you up in the first place.
THEENIE: Axis.
MIRIAM: Go on, Axis, spit at him, like you did at the policeman in court. Oh! Sorry! Is it a secret?
VIOLET: Kurt, get your father his tablets.
AXIS: This is so fucking real, I’m getting out of here.
THEENIE: Wait. Please, Axis.
AXIS: I’ve got to apologise again, have I?
THEENIE: No. No. This time he has. Listen, Kurt, you may be my brother, and I used to love playing marbles with you, but I didn’t come here for your judgement. I came because I love my warm-hearted mother and I love my dear old conservative dad, and we enjoy our odd conversations on language and the death of the King’s English. And you can’t turn Alabastar into a dog that you train how to bark, and you can’t turn me into you. I’m going out to the kitchen to stuff myself on the biggest piece of pavlova since the Sydney Opera House. [To AXIS] Are you proud of me?
AXIS: Yep. For sanity’s sake, let’s go.
THEENIE: Yes. No. Everybody’s ideology’s at stake, but I can’t leave before the birthday cake.
AXIS: I can smell the passionfruit and cream.
AXIS takes the pavlova. THEENIE and AXIS go out.
MIRIAM: I need to do my yoga breathing to plan my reduced serving of pavlova.
She leaves.
KURT: Father, why have you allowed Theenie and that woman such a disgraceful exhibition?
VIOLET: Now, Kurt, Theenie’s got an opportunity my generation didn’t have to work it out for herself.
ARCHIBALD: Work it out? You expect me to welcome the female-involvement society? The multi-cultural society? Do you know what lies behind that balderdash? Every troublesome, unqualified, ungrammatical, pill popping dishmop of a housewife to be found in this country, and every guttural, lisping tinpot god of a migrant desperate to settle here, thinks he … or she, is entitled to the freedom to dictate to everybody else. Already at Havistock Credit we do our market research in sixteen languages and three sexes. And an upstart Turk comes into the office, the sort that hangs gold rings in the nose of half a dozen wives, devoid of any understanding of democracy, and dammit, he’s an indispensable multi-national contact!
VIOLET: Arch, dear, your daughter’s just like you, she cares.
ARCHIBALD: Yes, Violet, you are right. Our daughter is only a symptom, but she has a heart. She hasn’t been left an easy life since that business of the divorce. Sylvester was a lovely boy. I’m worried about the polarisation, son. I’m worried that the decent people, the intelligent people, are going to be forced to build a high wall around their heritage, and patrol the boundaries with machine guns against the pillage of this vile generation. And that is not the freedom I have worked for in my life.
KURT: It will be Theenie’s friends we’ll have to shoot.
ARCHIBALD: That is harsh, my son.
VIOLET: It’s no wonder there are wars.
MIRIAM enters.
ARCHIBALD: My dear, sit down. Let your old father-in-law have a kind womanly smile.
MIRIAM smiles and takes ARCHIBALD’s cup of punch.
KURT: ‘You have ravished my heart
With a glance of your eyes.’
Look at her. Ready for another baby, and still Bo Derek.
MIRIAM: And look at him. My brilliant lawyer and judge-to-be. As wise as Solomon. She just dropped a willow pattern jug, your sister’s wife.
VIOLET: I don’t know why you all can’t live and let live.
MIRIAM: Kurt, they’re unnatural. Theenie kissed her. On the lips.
She puts her arms around KURT for reassurance.
KURT: Well? You could have said something.
MIRIAM: I walked out.
KURT: It’s time you learned to present an intelligent argument. [Calling] Theenie! Axis!
MIRIAM: Don’t bring them in here. I’m relaxing.
KURT: Don’t give me instructions. Stand up for what you believe in.
MIRIAM: Darling, you’re embarrassing me.
KURT: You’re letting the side down. Challenge them or they’ll have you in a factory like the women in Russia.
VIOLET: Arch, you marshal the children while we bring in the birthday surprise. Come along, Miriam, get your punch-bowl. And after that you must put your feet up.
VIOLET and MIRIAM leave.
ARCHIBALD: Now’s the time, son.
KURT: Theenie and that woman were both in court like a couple of witches. On charges of indecent language, immoral acts in public, offensive behaviour, assaulting a police officer in the execution of his duty, malicious damage to the interior of a paddy wagon, and resisting arrest.
ARCHIBALD: Don’t tell your mother.
KURT: Are you going to let her behave like that and keep custody? Do we sit by and lose a Havistock to the other side?
ARCHIBALD: Get me Sylvester’s phone number. We’ll save my grandchild if we have to take it to the highest court in the land.
ARCHIBALD leaves. VIOLET, MIRIAM, AXIS and THEENIE enter, THEENIE carrying a birthday cake made like a pinball machine with ten candles lit.
THEENIE: It’s lovely, Violet.
Lights out.
ARCHIBALD: [off] Line up behind the birthday boy. Get your guns ready. Straigh
t line. Wait for it. Quick march.
He enters with invisible children.
Left, right, left, right. Halt!
ALL: [singing] Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday, dear Alabastar
Happy birthday to you.
ARCHIBALD: Hip hip …
ALL: Hooray.
VIOLET: Make a wish, Alabastar, make a wish.
Candles are blown out. They all go out in the dark, clearing props from the party scene, while singing:
ALL: For he’s a jolly good fellow …
Etcetera.
SCENE FIVE
Plush old country hotel. Green light on the table. Imaginary billiard balls. AXIS and THEENIE enter with billiard cues. Sound of billiard balls and pinball machines.
AXIS: Lovely cut! I’ve got my eye in now.
She plays.
Blew it! Theen. Theenie!
THEENIE: What? What are you doing?
AXIS: I sunk four in a row.
She kisses THEENIE. SOLOMON enters, disguised as a hotel GUEST. With billiard cue.
AXIS: [to THEENIE] It’s your turn.
GUEST: Ladies. Excuse me.
AXIS: I’d be on the red, you’ve got a nice shot there.
GUEST: ‘Your shoots are an orchard of pomegranates
With all choicest fruits.’
When I was at school a man stood up for a lady, and women did not play billiards.
THEENIE: I can’t concentrate.
AXIS: Ignore him.
THEENIE plays.
Good shot.
THEENIE: It is lovely here. Cedar architraves, tinkling glass, moths in the velvet walls. I can’t breathe.
AXIS: Stop worrying.
THEENIE: I want to rip up everything felt.
GUEST: She will ruin the cloth.
‘You are stately as a palm tree
And your breasts are like its clusters.’
[Attempting to show THEENIE how to use the cue] Madam, this is how you hold it.
AXIS: We got here first, thank you, sir. Get out.
GUEST: ‘I say I will climb the palm tree
And lay hold of its branches.’
AXIS: Fuck off!
The GUEST leaves.
Wow! Did you see that?
THEENIE: Kiss me again. Come up to our room … Axis.
AXIS: Alabastar’s with us and it’s fine.
THEENIE: Why do they want to take him away from me?