If that’s how you feel, Leon,
Why not!
Leon
So I’ve sewn him back together.
He’s got a belt on this time.
Scene Nine
Back at Jimmy and Petra’s. They have just seen the picture.
Petra
(explosive)
Well bollocks to that!
I mean,
What he’s done;
What he’s done to us:
Jimmy
So he draws cars, does he?
Petra
It doesn’t go away, you know,
It doesn’t diminish.
Jimmy
Art therapy?
Now that’s one we haven’t tried.
Petra
He can draw cars all he likes.
Jimmy
Petra, the gentleman’s only here to help.
He’s trying to give us a sense of the lad.
Petra
When I got the message:
I want you to imagine this.
No, I want you to see this:
Jimmy
Love,
No one’s forcing us to do this.
Petra
When the police come round with the news,
I’ve been sat here for over an hour and a half,
Mr Casey.
Jimmy
(to Casey)
Look, mate,
I’m sorry.
Petra
Sorry?
Sorry?
Jimmy
OK, Petra,
Calm down, will you!
Petra
So he draws cars instead of crashing them?
Well that’s nice.
(To Casey.)
But, with the greatest respect,
It was Jimmy who invited you here.
Not me!
Jimmy
So she gets up,
And we all know what’s going on now:
She’s trying to make a pig of herself,
She wants to wallow!
She wants to roll around in it! Φ
Petra
I go to the kitchen,
While Jimmy and the man Casey
Sit there./
Jimmy
So I say to the bloke:/
Petra
I’m shaking with it
The rage,
The bitterness of it,
The bloody unfairness./
Jimmy
‘Now perhaps you can see –
And it’s probably just as well –
The reason I invited you here
To talk to you about the lad.
It’s not that we forgive him,
Because we can’t,
We can’t do that.
But I’m fed up with him
Having this power,
This power over us.’
Petra
And I know it’s Easter,
It is that time of year.
But fuck it.
Put me in a room with him,
Put me in a room with that bastard and a set of nails
And I’d show him what it’s like to be hung out to dry.
I’d pick up my hammer and nails,
Two large ones for his hands
And a stake for his feet
And Bang!
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
I’d nail him to his fucking easel!
Jimmy
So I have to hand it to him.
That Casey.
Cos when Petra goes into the kitchen
And I start apologising
He doesn’t bat an eye.
He just gets up
And walks towards the kitchen.
‘Can you make that two?’
He says.
‘Do you mind if I join you in a glass?’
So I say
‘Mine’s a lemonade, mate,
Cos I don’t drink.
But make that three glasses
And we’ll all have something to hold in our hands.’
(Beat.)
And then,
Maybe I’m mistaken,
But I feel something changing
In the air.
You know;
Something like spring,
Like:
Electricity discharging,
Like:
The first thunder’s
Broken out of the sky.
Petra
(now suddenly becalmed)
There.
There!
Calm again.
Anger over.
Jimmy
So I get out the biscuits
And blow me down
If Petra doesn’t comes back in with the bottle,
And three glasses!
Petra
(calmer now, but not without irony)
Anger over!
(Beat.)
I’m sorry.
Forgetting my manners.
What can I say?
(Beat.)
But you see, Mr Casey,
Ever since:
Ever since it happened,
I’ve had this –
Anger.
This –
Monstrous anger.
I don’t know how else to put it.
Jimmy
Let me try,
Let me try and explain.
(Beat.)
It’s been four years
And you might think,
Well –
Four years;
That’s a certain amount of water under the bridge.
But when something like this happens
Time –
(Pause. He is on the very edge of control.)
Well,
Time stands still.
Cos there’s absolutely nothing –
Nothing
Prepares you for it.
It blows you away.
You’re nothing,
Zero,
Nada.
And you can multiply anything by zero,
Do you get me?
Anything you like:
Four,
Eight years,
A lifetime.
At the end of it,
What are you left with?
I mean:
What are you left with?
Scene Ten
Leon in jail, about a year into his term.
Leon
So one day
My mum comes to visit:
‘Freddie’s brothers are after you,’
She says.
‘They’re putting shit into our letter-box.’
(Beat.)
‘Tight bastards,’
I say.
‘Couldn’t they afford a stamp?’
(Beat.)
‘How can you make a joke out of that?’
She says.
‘Out of what?’ I say.
‘Out of what you’ve done.’
(Beat.)
‘It’s all right, Mum,
I won’t come knocking on your door.’
‘Bloody right.
Cos you’ve already pissed all over it.’
(Beat.)
And then she starts screaming.
Mum
(ferocious)
And you know what they’re calling you?
You know what they’re bloody calling you?
Leon
(embarrassed, looking around him)
All right, Mum.
Stop shouting, will ya?
Everybody’s looking!
Mum
Let them look.
Let them fucking look,
I’ll tell them and all.
Leon
Go on then!
Go on!
Mum
They’re calling you a child-killer.
They’re calling you a paedo.
Leon
(ballistic now)
You bitch! You fucking bitch.
That�
�s bollocks./
Mum
Is it?
Is it? /
Leon
That’s bollocks
And you know that!
You fucking know it!
Mum
Do I?
Do I?
(Beat.)
Well maybe you’re right.
Cos what you are is rubbish.
Just rubbish, you.
So don’t expect to come home.
Don’t expect to come home to me!
Scene Eleven
Leon in his art class.
Mr E
So draw rubbish, Leon.
Draw rubbish!
Leon
Like how am I supposed to do that?
Mr E
Anyone can draw rubbish.
Leon
Not me.
I can’t.
I can’t do bollocks.
Mr E
Who said anything about bollocks?
I’m just asking for rubbish.
Leon
Go away!
Just go away.
Mr E
You got anything better to do?
(Beat.)
Do what you like.
Leon
What I like?
Do what I like?
I’ll tell you what I like:
I’d like to push this pencil right into my fucking ear hole.
Mr E
Now why do you want to do that?
Leon
Cos it’s doing what I like!
Mr E
I can think of better uses for it, Leon.
Leon
Well, maybe that’s cos
You’re you,
And I’m me.
But if you know it all,
Why don’t you tell me?
Do you have to be unlucky to be me?
Or do you just have to be rubbish?
(He puts the pencil into his ear.)
Unlucky or rubbish?
Mr E
Don’t be daft, Leon./
Leon
Pencil’s hurting, Mr E./
Mr E
Don’t be so stupid!
Leon
Unlucky or rubbish?
Mr E
Are you going to stop this now, Leon?
Or am I going to have to have to press that alarm button?
(Beat.)
Leon!
Leon takes it out.
Mr E
Don’t you ever do that to me again,
You hear?
Leon
(beat. Subdued now)
Robbing cars.
That’s all I was doing.
That doesn’t make me a nonce, does it?
Doesn’t make me a kiddy fiddler,
Or a child killer,
Well does it?
Well, fucking does it?
(Beat.)
So why me?
Why me!
Mr E
Why not you?
What’s all this ‘me’?
Leon
What are you talking about?
Mr E
Who’s ‘me’, Leon?
Draw ‘me’!
Leon
You should fucking listen to yourself!
Mr E
(beat; lighter now)
All right:
You ask,
‘Why me?’
But I say,
Why not you?
Why not you, Leon?
I mean,
Welcome to the human bloody race!
(Beat.)
Or are you telling me,
You’ve never stepped in a steaming pile of dog crap
And asked exactly the same question?
Scene Twelve
Jimmy and Petra‘s living room.
Petra
(softly now, with great weariness)
When the police bring me the news,
I’m here.
This place.
I’ve been working late that evening
At the newspaper,
My job.
So when I return home
About nine, Mr Casey,
I’m expecting Jimmy to be here,
Expecting our baby./
Jimmy
She wasn’t a baby – /
Petra
To be in bed.
Because since Jimmy and I last spoke – /
Jimmy
(to Casey)
She was six
Going on thirteen.
Petra
No one has rung me –
No one has rung me to say
What’s going on.
Jimmy
You see,
Personally,
During this time,
The hours immediately afterwards,
After the accident:
I wasn’t really aware.
I had no real awareness.
Petra
So I did what I always do when I come home late,
At the end of a long week:
(Begins to enact the homecoming.)
‘Jimmy?’
‘Charley?’
Jimmy
For Petra too,
I think this is a time when we only partly exist.
Petra
And when no one answers,
I think:
Well that’s strange.
Jimmy
Cos when we want to go back to it,
When we try to go back,
It moves away from us.
Petra
So I check my mobile for messages:
Jimmy
And all I can come up with – /
Petra
Nothing!
Not a dicky bird!
Jimmy
Is the time before the time.
Like the time itself,
The moment itself
Is just a pair of her empty shoes.
And I know that she was walking around in them,
Hours before,
But I can’t see her feet.
So I’m asking,
‘Where are her feet in those shoes?’
Petra
Must have stopped at Laetitia’s, then!
Mind you:
Jimmy
And all I’m left with
Are some last words:
Petra
I can see Charley digging her little heels in.
Doing her party trick.
Jimmy
Some stupid last words
Before we left the party.
(In recall.)
‘We’re off now, Charley.’/
Petra
In the evenings she got so easily overwrought.
The slightest thing could upset her.
Jimmy
‘No.
Don’t be like that, Charley!’
Petra
And it was no good talking to her
If she just needed to get home!
Jimmy
If you don’t come home
Daddy’s going to be cross.
(Beat; amused despite himself.)
What was that you said?
Petra
Even at that age,
She had a gob on her.
Jimmy
What did you say?
If I had a bar of soap!
Petra
And child-minders were bloody useless.
Jimmy
Who taught you to speak like that like?
Petra
So there was no continuity.
The moment we found one that was any good,
They’d either go away or get ill.
Jimmy
Five more minutes, babe:
And then we’re off.
We are
One hundred per cent going.
(He freezes, caught in the recollection.)
Petra
So instead of checking up,
Mr Casey,
Instead o
f ringing around
Like I should, I decide,
Sod it!
I’ll let Jimmy deal.
I’ll let Jimmy cope with this.
Jimmy,
(emphatically not coping)
‘No, you’re not sitting in the front seat,
No way!
This is your seat, here, Charley.
In here, I said.
No, you can’t sit next to Daddy,
Cos Daddy’s not allowed.
Back here’s where you sit,
In your special seat!
In Charley’s magic seat
With Charley’s magic belt:
The belt with the magical powers!’
Petra
(recitative almost, recalling Charley)
‘But I’m not going home,
I’m not going home,
I’m not going home
Without Horsey!’
Jimmy
‘What do you mean,
“You’re not going home”?’
Petra
I know it’s ridiculous,
Mr Casey.
Jimmy
‘You bloody are going home:’
Petra
But Horsey had become the front seat.
Jimmy
‘You’re going home with me!’
Petra
So when she wanted to assert herself,
She wanted to be riding Horsey.
(Small pause.)
Well, the next thing I know,
It’s half past nine, Mr Casey,
And the doorbell’s ringing.
I must have dozed off:
I’m still feeling dizzy,
So I let it ring.
It must be Charley,
Playing games,
Or Jimmy being a lazy beggar,
Cos I know he’s got the house keys.
But it’s not.
Jimmy
‘Look,
I only promised you five minutes, babe.’
Petra
Oh, Christ, it’s not.
Jimmy
‘Then get in that front seat.
Get in that front seat.
And make sure you put your belt on.’
Petra
There are these two police officers
Standing outside our front door
Like ghosts.
Jimmy
(to Petra now, feeling her blame)
Well what else did you expect me to do?
Friday night:
What else did you expect?
Small pause.
Petra
I’m completely numb.
I can hear,
But I can’t take it in.
There’s this person –
This young WPC –
Telling me.
Telling me.
Scene Thirteen
Leon in jail. Recent time before the conference.
After the Accident Page 3