AUGUSTA: ‘Your Excellency’.
JEFF: Ma’am.
AUGUSTA: Then you can stand outside until it rains. Visi! Where is she?
BASRA: She spends all her time in your bunker. On the computer.
AUGUSTA: Plotting.
BASRA: Bored. Trapped. Like the rest of us.
AUGUSTA: Speak for yourself. Visi!
VISI enters.
Ah, here she is. Visi, it’s been lovely, dear, but we won’t be requiring your services any longer. Housing the relative of a terrorist who attempted to blow me to smithereens makes absolutely no sense. I’ll contact security and let them know you’re here.
BASRA: Excuse me?
AUGUSTA: [to VISI] I’ll have Gregor drive you to the nearest police station once he’s dropped me off at the airport. It would be better if you turned yourself in. Kept us out of things.
BASRA: No!
VISI: I told you.
BASRA: That isn’t fair!
AUGUSTA: It’s not just fair, it’s legally correct, Basra. Stop wailing like a Mediterranean and face up to your responsibilities.
JEFF: This is all cockeyed logic.
AUGUSTA: Why are you still here?
JEFF: Well now. I thought we’d developed a friendship. A spiritual connection forged over humidispheres and luxury suites.
AUGUSTA: You developed a bond with an air bubble, Mr Cleveland. Not with me.
JEFF: That disappoints me to hear you say it. You told me about your memories of a legacy that were coming back to you. Norfolk pine trees … Arriving ashore in a boat …
AUGUSTA: Those were hallucinations.
JEFF: … on a beach with a name that was spelt the same forwards and backwards. A free state without the taint of convict history …
AUGUSTA: I really don’t …
BASRA: You spoke German.
AUGUSTA: I told you that was the air bubble.
OLYMPIA: We’ve never learned German.
AUGUSTA: Everyone picks up a few words here and there.
JEFF: Common, found phrases …
AUGUSTA: Yes.
JEFF: Like ‘The soil is made of limestone’.
AUGUSTA: Well—
OLYMPIA: That was clever.
JEFF: And ‘The seasons are upside down’.
OLYMPIA: I wonder how she did it.
AUGUSTA: [becoming agitated] I told you, that was the drugs they had me on. The treatment.
JEFF: Drugs don’t teach you languages you’ve never spoken.
AUGUSTA: The—the organs then.
JEFF: Language recollection is stored in the liver and pancreas?
AUGUSTA: Maybe.
JEFF: In the heart.
BASRA: Not the brain?
AUGUSTA: Well, it sounds preposterous when you put it like that.
OLYMPIA: I blame the doctors. In cahoots with the terrorists!
AUGUSTA: No, no. There was no German. No seasons. No elephants. No—
Silence.
A turquoise elephant enters the room—faintly, quietly—and stares at AUGUSTA. She and OLYMPIA are the only ones who see it.
You.
OLYMPIA: There!
JEFF: Mrs Macquarie?
OLYMPIA: It’s here!
AUGUSTA: No! I won’t have it.
BASRA: Grandma?
OLYMPIA: I need to censor it!
AUGUSTA: I won’t see it.
OLYMPIA: Turn it off!
AUGUSTA: I refuse!
OLYMPIA: Turn it off!
AUGUSTA: Refuse, do you hear me? I deny you!
OLYMPIA: Shoo! Shoo!
AUGUSTA: I deny you!
She has seen the elephant off.
There!
JEFF: Why don’t you go lie down awhile?
AUGUSTA: That’s the way to deal with that!
OLYMPIA: Didn’t anyone else see it?
JEFF: Visi here can show you to your room.
AUGUSTA: Visi’s going to prison. And you’re leaving too, you grotty little man. And by the way, I have revoked your purchase of the Crown land you wanted in Central Australia. Remember those documents you got me to sign when I was medically and mentally unfit? I told the minister I signed under duress. He’s torn up your contract. Null. And. Void. So that puts an end to that fantasy.
JEFF: You can’t. I’ve bought it. I own it.
AUGUSTA: You own what your fellow countrymen like to refer to as ‘jack shit’, Mr Cleveland. Oh—and you’re about to be served a summons for outstaying your visa. You’re an illegal immigrant. Get out while you can. Now! I’m returning to the capital and watching the vote from the gallery.
BASRA: You’re still hallucinating. You need rest.
AUGUSTA: Nonsense. Rest is for the decrepit and the unemployed. That’s all I came here to say. I’ve got a flight to Canberra that leaves in an hour. [To VISI] Deal with this mess while I’m gone, will you?
AUGUSTA is almost at the door.
BASRA: You know you’re lying. You and all your coal industry execs and CEOs. You all know deep in your hearts that the science is true.
AUGUSTA: Do we, Basra?
BASRA: Yes. I’d actually have more respect for you if you just came clean and admitted that your investment in all this is purely financial. If you just admitted that we’re the ones who caused all this. But that you just don’t give a shit.
AUGUSTA: Would that really make you happy, Basra?
BASRA: Yes.
AUGUSTA: Really?
BASRA: Yes.
Beat.
AUGUSTA: Okay.
We did this.
We did it, Basra.
And I just don’t give a shit.
They look each other in the eye. AUGUSTA sweeps from the house.
JEFF: The bitch shafted me!
VISI: You’re a creep, Jeff. A creep with a Messiah complex and a jeep.
BASRA: So fuck off and never come back.
JEFF: Miss Olympia—
OLYMPIA: Oh, don’t look at me, dear. I can’t hear a word you’re saying. Had my cochlear edit you out twenty minutes ago. You’re just an empty mouth flapping on a stick.
JEFF: I see.
OLYMPIA: Flap flap.
JEFF: Well now …
I see.
Enjoy the view from the Titanic, ladies.
You’re all going down.
VISI: Yeah—but not on you.
JEFF leaves.
BASRA: Why didn’t you leave with him?
That was your ‘get out of jail free’ card.
VISI shrugs.
VISI: It’s better like this.
BASRA: Why?
VISI: It’s truthful.
OLYMPIA’s buzzer goes off.
OLYMPIA: Oh! Where to next?
BASRA: I don’t know how to help you now. Not now that my grandmother’s—herself again.
VISI: I knew she’d change back.
OLYMPIA: What? No, that can’t be right.
VISI: You didn’t buy it, did you? The mad hatter’s fucking tea party. The family trip to Eden.
BASRA: I guess I hoped that—
VISI: What?
OLYMPIA: Sydney, Australia!
BASRA: There’d be a middle path. A sensible—
VISI: There hasn’t been a middle path for decades.
OLYMPIA: It says that everyone’s coming here.
Sound of an angry mob picks up from the streets again.
VISI: They’re back.
The people.
OLYMPIA: Oh, goody goody goody!
VISI: They’re angry again.
OLYMPIA: Now this is going to be something.
VISI: Blocking that treaty was their last hope.
OLYMPIA: A superstorm! Thirteen-metre swells. Right here in the harbour!
VISI: They see your house, your glass palace, looking down over the harbour, and they want to smash bricks through it.
OLYMPIA: I’m going to have the best seat in the house.
OLYMPIA exits.
VISI: They know who y
ou are.
You’re still the enemy.
The mob get wilder. A brick hits the triple glazing.
What are you going to do?
With your millions and billions.
BASRA: I’ll buy land. Buy forests. Preserve everything.
VISI: A week. A fortnight ago I would have believed you. But it’s all changed. There’s nothing left to spend it on. Nothing it can save. Not now.
BASRA: Well, not if it’s as bad as you all say it is.
VISI: You don’t even know, do you?
What it’s like out there?
When was the last time you left this house?
Beat.
Oh, my God. You haven’t—
It’s been months, hasn’t it?
Years?
BASRA: —
VISI: That’s just fucking weird, Basra.
It’s sick.
Another brick against the glass.
This is the last time I’ll see you.
BASRA: You can keep coming.
VISI: We both know that’s not true.
I knew.
That this was the last time.
I got the driver—Gregor.
He’s been helping me.
BASRA: What do you mean?
VISI: He’s on our side.
He’s joined us.
BASRA: Who’s ‘us’?
VISI: Who do you think?
BASRA: Oh, my God. Grandma—
Beat.
VISI: I’m sorry.
She opens her jacket. It is lined with explosives. She approaches BASRA. BASRA is rooted to the spot.
Every member of The Front is doing this.
At power stations. Transmitters. Banks. Big businesses. Everything that pollutes and corrupts us.
Tonight.
Right around the country.
We think she is about to detonate the explosives. Instead she takes the jacket off and hands it over to BASRA.
This one’s for you.
You said you were an activist.
Goodbye, Basra.
She exits silently.
She leaves the door open.
The turquoise elephant appears. BASRA finally sees it.
OLYMPIA enters with a chair and lorgnette and fan. She pops herself by the window, fans herself and looks at the harbour through her lorgnette.
OLYMPIA: The Opera House is going under.
Disappearing forever.
During the storm.
Isn’t that exciting?
Will you sit here with me and watch it, Basra dear?
BASRA: I’m don’t know.
OLYMPIA: You’re not going out?
Oh, silly me. You never go out, do you?
Not for years.
Not since you were a little girl.
You’re a watcher.
Like me.
We’re watchers, you and I.
Oh! There! Look! You can see it coming up now!
The water.
It’s on the concourse.
Where’s the Harbour Bridge gone?
Are you going out, dear, or staying in?
BASRA: I—
BASRA stares from the elephant to the door—torn between the two.
OLYMPIA: Get a chair and sit next to me.
This is going to be the best one yet!
Better than Melbourne.
Better than Kilimanjaro.
This will even be better than the Sphinx.
As OLYMPIA peers at the carnage through her lorgnette, the elephant sheds a tear and its image fills the room.
Lights fade on BASRA staring at the door.
THE END
2016 GRIFFIN PLAYS
PUBLISHED BY CURRENCY PRESS
AVAILABLE IN BOOKSHOPS AND ONLINE
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COPYRIGHT DETAILS
First published in 2016
by Currency Press Pty Ltd,
PO Box 2287, Strawberry Hills, NSW, 2012, Australia
[email protected]
www.currency.com.au
in association with Griffin Theatre Company
Copyright: The Turquoise Elephant © Stephen Carleton, 2016.
COPYING FOR EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES
The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be copied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that that educational institution (or the body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
For details of the CAL licence for educational institutions contact CAL, 11/66 Goulburn Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000; tel: within Australia 1800 066 844 toll free; outside Australia 61 2 9394 7600; fax: 61 2 9394 7601; email: [email protected]
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PERFORMANCE RIGHTS
Any performance or public reading of The Turquoise Elephant is forbidden unless a licence has been received from the author or the author’s agent. The purchase of this book in no way gives the purchaser the right to perform the play in public, whether by means of a staged production or a reading. All applications for public performance should be addressed to the author c/- Currency Press.
ePub ISBN: 978-1-76062-005-9
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Front cover shows Catherine Davies.
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