Plays 5

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by Caryl Churchill


  but we know people do just that sort of thing quite a lot so maybe there is a hell of arms chopped off and piles of bodies with bags on their heads and hanging upside down ah why shouldn’t I be one of the people who deserve that

  if deserving comes into it it might be random

  because I’m the rich camel who can’t get through compared to oh I know there’s mega how reassuring yachts but no I was comfortable comfortable in my life chicken and a warm bed

  and how much good did I very little because I was always loving someone or organising something or looking at trees or having a quiet sit-down with the paper and I’m sorry I’m sorry

  or is it purgatory do they have that still where it’s burned out of you not for ever yes I can feel it getting hotter the blast of it on my

  ridiculous I don’t believe it of course never did that’s not happening there’s plenty of other something completely

  yes here comes aah his head’s what a wild dog fox jackal that’s it not a mask he’s

  and that one’s a bird ibis long curved sharp I’m sorry I’m sorry

  and here are the scales there’s a feather in one pan so I take out my heart and put it in the other and surely it can’t be light as a feather and if it weighs the pan down I get thrown to that lion hippo crocodile and will I pass out as I feel its hot breath sometimes people go into a swoon of shock when an animal has them in its mouth National Geographic probably and then I would really be dead and gone I suppose

  which ancient religion is this anyway Egypt

  surely I must be in for something more Nordic

  Thor with a thunderbolt

  valhalla or is that just for war heroes yes there they are sitting round the table drunk and roaring not my idea of fun

  and for illness or old age here’s a blue black giantess come to take me somewhere bleaker maybe a cold beach with a wind I once went swimming I’d rather a warm Greek white stones can I have that and is that Charon in the boat I can get in wobble sit down and over the dark river we go

  I’ve always been scared of guard dogs so I hope Cerberus

  and do I have to gibber with those bloodless dead did Odysseus go to see them yes I can see him coming now and here we are all stretching out our hands to him

  but he won’t do anything for me living so long after his time and surely he’s fictional anyway so how can he help me get out of this hanging about and hanging about for ever when I could be doing something like going back and

  walk haunt turn the room cold hear them talking and long for someone to see me here I’m here my love can’t you see me hundreds of years still floating through walls I’m here I’m here no I’m not a ghost story

  going back and having another life my own life over again like that movie and do it better of course because most of the time I hardly noticed it going by and I used to look back and think how careless I was when I was young I never noticed and by then I was middle-aged and later I’d look back and think then I never noticed

  and another go would be welcome

  but nobody suggests they do that in real life real death not another go as yourself another go as somebody else or of course something else

  and have I lived the sort of life that would get me one step up to be a happier better person one true love maybe I deserve to paint or

  no not be in power hate to be a president king general imagine how terrible that might be a punishment of course a step down

  or I might have to sleep in the street yes I’m walking miles with a heavy sick child I’m so depressed I can’t put on my socks

  but I might not be human a bird a bird everyone wants to fly oh a kestrel can I be a kestrel yes I can see every blade of grass and a mouse drop on the mouse but I might be the mouse

  I might be a rabid street dog foaming a cow up the ramp to the slaughter

  I’d rather be an endangered species some beautiful far far anywhere oh

  I might be an insect one of billions I am already one of billions but trillions

  a locust eating and eating do they feel joy do they just eat or maybe a flea blood and the amazing jump

  oh I don’t want to be the caterpillar the wasp lays an egg in and it hatches and consumes from inside

  but surely that’s not a belief I’ve ever I’ve never

  and I wouldn’t be me this one I’ve been doesn’t remember others it’s extinction of me even if I’m part of some cosmic whatsit drop gone back to the ocean no

  and of course all the bits of my body are on their way now breaking down into smaller and smaller rather disgusting at first but into the daisies

  or did they have me cremated how odd I don’t know in which case it’s all gone up in smoke leaving just those gritty ashes that might be partly someone else’s I’m not sure how particular they are at the crem when they sweep it out

  but anyway all the chemicals atoms neutrons from stars on their way because the energy’s still all there

  but not my energy like ‘oh I’m so tired today I’ve got no energy’ now I’ve really got no energy it’s somewhere else like before I was born

  all those atoms are somewhere else

  and you’re just a thing that happens like an elephant or a daffodil

  and there you all are for a short time

  that’s how it’s put together for a short time

  and oddly you are actually are one of those

  and it goes on and on and you’re used to it and then suddenly

  3. GETTING THERE

  A very old or ill person and a carer.

  The old/ill person is in nightclothes and is helped by the carer to get dressed, slowly and with difficulty because of pain and restricted movement.

  Then to get undressed and back into nightclothes.

  Then to get dressed.

  Then to get undressed and back into nightclothes.

  Then to get dressed…

  for as long as the scene lasts.

  End.

  ESCAPED ALONE

  Escaped Alone was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre Downstairs, London, on 21 January 2016. The cast was as follows:

  MRS JARRETT

  Linda Bassett

  SALLY

  Deborah Findlay

  LENA

  Kika Markham

  VI

  June Watson

  Director

  James Macdonald

  Designer

  Miriam Buether

  Lighting Designer

  Peter Mumford

  Sound Designer Christopher Shutt

  ‘I only am escaped alone to tell thee.’

  Book of Job. Moby Dick.

  Characters

  SALLY

  VI

  LENA

  MRS JARRETT

  They are all at least seventy.

  Place

  Sally’s backyard.

  Several unmatching chairs. Maybe one’s a kitchen chair.

  Time

  Summer afternoon.

  A number of afternoons but the action is continuous.

  1.

  MRS J

  I’m walking down the street and there’s a door in the fence open and inside are three women I’ve seen before.

  VI

  Don’t look now but there’s someone watching us.

  LENA

  Is it that woman?

  SALLY

  Is that you, Mrs Jarrett?

  MRS J

  So I go in.

  SALLY

  Rosie locked out in the rain

  VI

  forgot her key

  SALLY

  climbed over

  LENA

  lucky to have neighbours who

  SALLY

  such a high wall

  VI

  this is Rosie her granddaughter

  MRS J

  I’ve a son, Frank

  VI

  I’ve a son

  MRS J

  suffers from insomnia

  VI


  doesn’t come very often. But Thomas

  LENA

  that’s her nephew

  SALLY

  he’d knock up the shelves in no time

  VI

  a big table

  SALLY

  grain of the wood

  VI

  a table like that would last a lifetime

  SALLY

  an heirloom

  LENA

  except we all eat off our laps

  MRS J

  nothing like a table

  LENA

  I like a table

  VI

  all have each other’s keys because there’s no way round and anyway I couldn’t climb

  MRS J

  unless you lose them

  VI

  no I hang them all on a nail

  SALLY

  in a teapot

  VI

  teapot?

  SALLY

  Elsie puts them in and takes them out

  LENA

  down the floorboards

  VI

  only use bags in mugs

  SALLY

  holds your finger and then takes one step and down she goes.

  LENA

  Barney never out of his phone

  VI

  I’d have been the same

  LENA

  looking pale

  VI

  whole worlds in your pocket

  LENA

  little bit worried about Kevin and Mary, never hear an endearment

  SALLY

  but nobody ever knows

  MRS J

  you’d be surprised what goes on

  LENA

  twenty years in June

  VI

  we had to wear hats

  SALLY

  a pink one and I didn’t

  VI

  so you gave it to Angela

  SALLY

  I’d forgotten Angela

  LENA

  shadows under her eyes

  VI

  ended up with a green one and it didn’t suit you

  LENA

  I could never say a word of course.

  VI

  And Maisie, never so happy

  LENA

  that’s her niece

  SALLY

  quantum

  VI

  I can’t really follow

  SALLY

  I can’t even add up

  LENA

  they don’t add up any more

  VI

  particles and waves I can manage but after that

  SALLY

  always good at sums as a child, she’d say two big numbers

  VI

  and while we were carrying things in our head

  LENA

  I needed a pencil

  SALLY

  she’d say the answer and it was always right

  MRS J

  I could always make change quick with the shillings and pence

  VI

  we’d be the ones got it wrong

  LENA

  easier now it’s decimal

  SALLY

  always right.

  LENA

  And Vera

  MRS J Four hundred thousand tons of rock paid for by senior executives split off the hillside to smash through the roofs, each fragment onto the designated child’s head. Villages were buried and new communities of survivors underground developed skills of feeding off the dead where possible and communicating with taps and groans. Instant celebrities rose on ropes to the light of flashes. Time passed. Rats were eaten by those who still had digestive systems, and mushrooms were traded for urine. Babies were born and quickly became blind. Some groups lost their sexuality while others developed a new morality of constant fucking with any proximate body. A young woman crawling from one society to the other became wedged, only her head reaching her new companions. Stories of those above ground were told and retold till there were myths of the husband who cooked feasts, the wife who swam the ocean, the gay lover who could fly, the child who read minds, the talking dog. Prayers were said to them and various sects developed with tolerance and bitter hatred. Songs were sung until dry throats caused the end of speech. Torrential rain leaked through cracks and flooded the tunnels enabling screams at last before drownings. Survivors were now solitary and went insane at different rates.

  2.

  SALLY

  corner shop

  LENA

  don’t like the

  VI

  mini Tesco

  LENA

  bit far

  MRS J

  used to be the fish and chip shop

  VI

  that other one’s gone

  SALLY

  the old grocer

  VI

  I’d do a shop for seventeen shillings

  LENA

  so what’s that in

  MRS J

  fifteen’s seventyfive p

  VI

  but we earned nothing too

  SALLY

  so who does the shopping if you can’t go out?

  LENA

  I do go

  VI

  is Kevin a help?

  SALLY

  I could always

  VI

  but it’s good for you to go yourself

  SALLY

  good to get out

  LENA

  I do get out

  SALLY

  you’re here

  LENA

  it’s not easy

  SALLY

  antique shop now but in between it was that café

  VI

  it was never a café

  SALLY

  the Blue something, an animal

  MRS J

  I been there

  SALLY

  Hedgehog, something unlikely

  VI

  I don’t think so

  SALLY

  maybe it was when

  LENA

  oh

  SALLY

  that would be it of course

  VI

  I did miss a few things when I was away

  MRS J

  away was you?

  LENA

  just a little while

  VI

  six years

  SALLY

  that’s what it was then, Blue Antelope

  VI

  antique shops now but down the other end

  SALLY

  yes three shops boarded up

  VI

  that’s the nail parlour and the old dentist

  SALLY

  did you ever go?

  VI

  he was terrible

  SALLY

  he was such a bad

  VI

  ‘this might just trouble you a little’

  SALLY

  oh my god

  VI

  half an hour to get there but so much better

  LENA

  I should go to the dentist

  SALLY

  a checkup

  LENA

  it must be five years

  MRS J

  you don’t want toothache

  LENA

  it’s just one more thing you have to do, one thing after another, I can’t seem to

  SALLY

  I could always go with you

  LENA

  if I go

  SALLY

  or do some shopping

  VI

  it’s good she gets out herself

  LENA

  I do get out

  SALLY

  and the chicken nuggets closed down

  VI

  that was the ironmongers

  SALLY

  no in between it was the health shop

  LENA

  a hammer and a spade

  VI

  there must be quite a few things I missed

  SALLY

  not really, it all goes by, I can’t remember those years specially

  VI
>
  remember what was happening where I was of course

  SALLY

  yes of course

  VI

  though it gets to be a blur because it’s all a bit the same

  SALLY

  it must have been

  VI

  unless there was an excitement like a fight

  MRS J

  fights was there?

  VI

  or love affairs

  LENA

  I do get out it’s just difficult

  MRS J

  First the baths overflowed as water was deliberately wasted in a campaign to punish the thirsty. Swimming pools engulfed the leisure centres and coffee ran down the table legs. Rivers flowed back towards their tributaries and up the streams to what had been trickles in moss. Ponies climbed to high ground and huddled with the tourists. Yawls, ketches, kayaks, canoes, schooners, planks, dinghies, lifebelts and upturned umbrellas, swimming instructors and lilos, rubber ducks and pumice stone floated on the stock market. Waves engulfed ferris wheels and drowned bodies were piled up to block doors. Then the walls of water came from the sea. Villages vanished and cities relocated to their rooftops. Sometimes children fell down the sewage chutes but others caught seagulls with kites. Some died of thirst, some of drinking the water. When the flood receded thousands stayed on the roofs fed by helicopter while heroes and bonded workers shovelled the muck into buckets that were stored in the flood museums.

 

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