by Liz Lochhead
ELISE, the maid, enters from the terrace, exactly from where she’ll have had a good view of the naked SHELLEY. He is laughing and unabashed, she professionally deadpan. MARY is not amused.
ELISE. Madame? Shall I clear the tea things?
MARY. Yes, yes, you may, Elise, of course.
SHELLEY is still trailing the tablecloth.
SHELLEY. Yes, and bring in the brandy, Elise.
MARY. Oh no, dearest!
ELISE. Yes, sir.
She takes the tea tray and exits again to where she’s come from.
MARY. We do not take alcohol, you say yourself –!
SHELLEY. No, we have no need of intoxicants. A failure of the imagination I call it, but when we have guests –
MARY. No, Shelley, no brandy, not tonight, I don’t want him to come!
SHELLEY grabs her, spins round and hugs her in a mad dance, wrapping her up in the tablecloth too.
SHELLEY. Do we care anything for prudish old hypocrites?
MARY. No!
SHELLEY. Prime ministers and poltickers?
MARY. No!
SHELLEY. Papas who go back on every principle they have ever published and are suddenly scandalised by love freed from the shackles of marriage? What do we care for them?
MARY. Nothing!
SHELLEY. Less than nothing. Let love know no limits!
They twirl and kiss, euphoric.
MARY. Now, go and change!
SHELLEY. Come with me, Mary.
MARY. Change!
SHELLEY. C’mon, Mary…
MARY. I have to feed William!
SHELLEY. Kiss me.
They kiss.
MARY. Your lips are cold! Oh, Shelley, you made me shiver.
They kiss again, longer. An intrusion of movement in the shadows.
Who’s there?
Stillness. Silence.
SHELLEY. Nobody. It’s nothing. What’s the matter? Kiss me.
He kisses her again. She responds passionately. ELISE enters with brandy on a tray, and coughs.
ELISE. Madame…
MARY (embarrassed). Yes, Elise?
ELISE. Milord Byron’s man, madame, he says he has come to fetch you both.
MARY (to SHELLEY). You go!
SHELLEY. Mary! He’ll be offended…
MARY. You go with him.
SHELLEY. Mary –
MARY. I have to feed Willmouse.
SHELLEY. I’ll stay with you.
MARY. Go and sail with Byron on the lake. You know you want to.
SHELLEY. Tonight I promise you I’ll make you shiver, Mary.
Exit SHELLEY. From far away, calling:
CLAIRE. Elise! Elise!
ELISE begins to go. MARY stops her.
MARY. Oh, Elise!
ELISE. Yes, madame.
MARY. You must have thought Mr Shelley’s behaviour somewhat strange?
ELISE. No, madame.
MARY. Tell me, are you at home here, Elise?
ELISE shrugs.
ELISE. S’pose so, madame. I am at home. I was born here in Switzerland.
MARY. No, Elise, I meant… (In a blurt.) you must not be surprised at anything Mr Shelley does, he is… I think you know we are not, he is not bound by normal conventions, he cares nothing for them, neither of us do! But he is a good, good man, he is against all viciousness and cruelty and tyranny and ownership. What is nakedness compared to…
ELISE withholds her reassurance. Eventually:
ELISE (shrugging). It’s only nature, madame.
MARY. Thank you, Elise.
ELISE. May I go, ma’am?
ELISE begins to go again.
MARY. Oh, Elise! Elise, in the packing today, that arrived from England, there is such a pretty shawl… and a bonnet that – yes, I’m sure – would look very fetching on you!
ELISE. Thank you, madame.
CLAIRE (a voice still far away). Elise! Elise, where are you, you tiresome creature? Come and help me make myself pretty!
ELISE. Can I go, madame? Mam’zelle Claire, she –
MARY. Of course you may. And do take away the brandy, please, we’ll have no need of it this evening.
ELISE. Yes, ma’am.
MARY goes to the terrace and out. ELISE takes up the tray with the decanter again, murmurs under her breath, but quite audibly:
Yes, madame, no, madame, take it, leave it. A bonnet! A bonnet! Very fetching, I’m sure…
Exit ELISE.
Transition: lights change back to that opening scene, present time, again. Widow MARY, shawled, dressing-gowned, at her desk. There’s movement in the shadows again.
MARY. We were so happy then, always, Shelley and I, even with Claire, our ever-constant companion.
CREATURE’S VOICE. You should love this. The creator should not shun his creature.
MARY. Oh, Claire Clairmont, you were always so jealous of me. Everything I had, you had to have it too. Everything…
CREATURE’S VOICE. Why? Why?
MARY. Perhaps I am unjust to her? My millstone and my sister. Since I was three years old. My papa married her mama.
‘You are to be sisters now. Share your doll.’ It’s my doll. It’s my book. I’m clever!
‘You may be cleverer but I’m prettier, my mama says so. Your mama is dead.’
Mama. My dead mama. All the time of my growing up the legend of my dead mama. And she died giving birth to me.
Rivers of blood. I heard the cook tell the parlourmaid when she thought I wasn’t listening. Puppies at her breasts so they’d suck until the afterbirth came away. No use. She died.
CREATURE’S VOICE. Who made me? Who made This…? Frankenstein.
MARY. Oh, but Claire or no Claire, we were so happy then, always, that summer, Shelley and I, before he came!
She actually means BYRON, but then –
CREATURE’S VOICE. Frankenstein, why did you make me, why did you make me not beautiful?
Echo and fade. Lights change.
Back in sunlit Switzerland. CLAIRE, in petticoats, is having her lacing done up by ELISE, in obedient ladies-maid mode. ELISE has brought CLAIRE’s dress.
CLAIRE is young, radiant, overexcited.
CLAIRE. Tight! Tighter! Lace me nice and small, Elise! Make me beautiful.
MARY comes in from the terrace in her white muslin frock, eating an apple.
MARY. – And breathless!
CLAIRE. Not me! Now my hair. One hundred strokes so it’ll shine! Ow! Elise, you’re tugging. Give it to me. Clumsy! Mary, do you not think we are somewhat alike? Oui? Yes, we do resemble each other after all.
MARY. How could we, we are not sisters.
CLAIRE. Not in blood, no. But we are closer perhaps than sisters, oui? Haven’t we always shared everything?
MARY (murmurs). Since we were three years old…
CLAIRE. You love to write! And I love to write! You found a passionate poet to be your lover. And I –
MARY. Came with us!
CLAIRE. Mary! Tu n’est pas gentile! What else could I do? (Pause.) You are such a scarlet lady, Mary. And now I am scarlet too! We are two very scarlet ladies. Tongs, Elise!
MARY. I’m not!
ELISE. Madame. (Passes the tongs.)
CLAIRE. Oh yes, you are! In the world’s eyes. Not hot enough, silly girl, here! (Pause.) Mary found herself a young and beautiful and a passionate poet to be her heart’s companion. And Claire found herself a… not quite so young but quite as beautiful and quite as passionate a poet to be hers!
MARY. Oh, Claire, be careful!
Elise, do go fetch me that ribbon from next door, please.
ELISE goes, then – at CLAIRE, urgently:
Why, this morning at dawn I saw you running through the gap in the hedges back through the garden to the kitchen quarters, all disordered with your hair loose, losing your shoe like Cinderella –
Re-enter ELISE unseen by MARY. Stands. Listens.
And that maid presented it back to you with such an ironical little bob of a
curtsey and the most insolent smirk on her face.
CLAIRE. So the servants see we too have a little blood in our veins…
ELISE. Ribbon, madame!
CLAIRE. Probably jealous, aren’t you, Elise! All England would be jealous of me if they knew. All the ladies in England, at least!
MARY. Jealous! To see you make a fool of yourself, throwing yourself at a man just because he’s a scandal – oh, and a famous poet!
CLAIRE. I love him. And I know he loves me. Such a scandal, though! Imagine! Peacocks, packing cases all over the quayside, monkeys escaping from their cages, a piano dangling in mid-air. And the ladies! All the ladies weeping oceans into their cambric handkerchiefs, pressing billets-doux on him, sending little black pageboys to shower him with locks of their hair. Do you know, Mary, some ladies even cut off –
MARY. There can be only one outcome of all this, Claire! He is married already!
CLAIRE (laughing). And you are an ’ippocreet!
ELISE. Careful, Madame Claire, these tongs are very hot!
CLAIRE. Byron loathes and detests Annabel with all his heart. Byron has far less truck with Annabel after only a month or two’s parting than Shelley has with his Harriet after nearly three years!
MARY. Harriet is the mother of his children. He cannot leave her destitute, his children bereft – I would not for a moment wish him to. Harriet is…
CLAIRE. His wife, n’est ce pas?
MARY (gentler). Claire, don’t let’s quarrel. I… I cannot bear it when we do.
CLAIRE. No. Don’t let’s quarrel, Mary. You are so good, of course you are not jealous. I was silly! Of course Shelley must care for Harriet. Oh, Mary! (Kisses her.) I want to love you, and Shelley and little William, and… oh, Mary, I feel as though my heart could burst. The moment I met my Albé, that very first instant –
MARY (bursts). Would you mother a fatherless child?
CLAIRE wavers, won’t answer for a beat, then:
CLAIRE. Mary, you do not know how cruel my life was, vraiment! You had Shelley to be your protector, I had no one… I told Byron, I wrote to him… once or twice, and told him what his poetry meant to me, how reading it had transformed my whole drab existence and that made him responsible for me – for the Creator should not shun his creature – and I… (Brazenly.) I – yes I did! – I arranged that we would go away together and be free and unknown and we could return the following morning!
Well, did not your mama defy convention so?
I am sure she thought it shameful that women must simper and sit in the chimney corner and make mimsy mouths and wait for men to decide to kiss them. I am sure she looked forward to a time when woman as well as man may freely state her desire.
MARY. Of course! But –
CLAIRE. But what? Everything your mother ever thought, everything she wrote – Your mama wanted that women should be free.
MARY. Do you want to be a mother? Because –
CLAIRE. There is no stronger bond between a man and a woman than the making of a child. It is only nature, Mary. (Pause.) I think… perhaps… it may have happened already. Oh – I’m sure not – don’t let’s quarrel! You said so yourself. We mustn’t quarrel. We must be happy here – the lake, the high Alps – we are a million miles away from tight little Angleterre! Hasn’t all our luggage been unpacked yet? Elise, hasn’t –
ELISE. Madame?
CLAIRE. Our baggages! Lord, I’m sure it seems such ages ago we packed it, and I was in such a lather of excitement – I cannot think what we’ll find when we open it! Isn’t it exciting?
MARY. You know I do not interest myself much in frippery!
CLAIRE. Did you pack the blue, ma favourite?
MARY. I can’t remember…
CLAIRE. I was always jealous of that dress. Quite green over the blue! A happy dress – you wore it always that summer when we were sixteen and I was the little bird that carried messages between you and Shelley and you walked together in the graveyard.
SHELLEY enters, for first beat of his presence a strange and frightening shape, then graceful light-footed SHELLEY, finger to his lips, holding a blindfold.
CLAIRE sees him, smiles, distracts MARY by tying, choker-fashion, a thin red-velvet ribbon round her throat.
Look at me, Mary. Look! Do you not think this is fetching? It is my latest fashion… oh, rather an antique one to be sure, but then something genuinely flattering is surely à la mode for all time… The brave beldams of the French revolution affected it. The thinnest simple crimson-velvet ribbon at the throat… ‘À la victime’! (Laughs.) – Don’t you love that?
So witty! Such a piquant bit of stylishness. Oh, only a fashion, Mary, but I’m sure the gentlemen will love it!
SHELLEY, giggling his high-pitched laugh, grabs MARY and ties the blindfold over her eyes. She gets a fright but SHELLEY and CLAIRE begin an at first sweet, childish and innocent ‘Blind Man’s Buff’, calling MARY in different voices and dodging under her arms and giggling. MARY tries to join in as if it’s fun. But soon she’s spinning round, grasping, stumbles towards, stops at ELISE, who has been standing silent at the edge of the game, an onlooker.
MARY feels all down ELISE’s face and shoulders and breasts.
MARY. Claire?
CLAIRE. Not I!
Then she feels who it is and screams slightly.
CLAIRE and SHELLEY are laughing aloud.
(From elsewhere.) You’re getting colder!
MARY (spinning around). Shelley!
CLAIRE. Getting cold-er! That was only the maid, Mary, and she’s not in our game!
MARY (grasping, desperate). Shelley!
Giggling, SHELLEY and CLAIRE dodge her, pull ELISE out from her grasp too.
BYRON limps in silently. MARY bumps into him, touching, and then she grasps him, hugging. Holds on.
Shelley! Oh, darling, free me –
BYRON kisses her lightly on the cheek and unties her blindfold.
BYRON. Easily… but it’s only me, Mary.
MARY looks confused, turns away.
ELISE helps a suddenly imperious CLAIRE into her dress.
CLAIRE. Byron! Where have you been? I was waiting! When my Albé says he will come over with the poem he wishes me to transpose then I do expect him to come.
BYRON. But I didn’t.
Ah! Such a fine sail we had, eh, Shelley? We’ll get you your sea legs yet, Shiloh! I was as good as born with them. (Limps arrogantly across the room.) It’s dry land I find difficult, except when I have strong drink taken and am half-seas-over. Well, ladies, how have you been wiling away the idle hours? Apart from rouging, titivating and bathing in asses’ milk and waiting for your sailor boys to return?
CLAIRE twirls around before him.
CLAIRE. And don’t we look pretty? Albé, don’t you admire my necklace?
BYRON. Very diverting, yes. Not so bonny as that gewgaw you wear at your throat, though, Mary. And who is that?
CLAIRE. That’s Mary’s famous mama!
BYRON looks at it, holding MARY by it close to him.
BYRON. The writer, eh? She was bonny, but not so bonny as you.
MARY. I do not resemble her.
BYRON. No, she was all russet – fire and earth. You’re more… water and air.
MARY pulls away.
MARY. And where’s Polidori? He doesn’t join us this evening?
SHELLEY. Pollydolly says he won’t come. I think he’s jealous.
BYRON (laughing at the idea of it). He says he’s busy writing…
MARY. He has never refused to join us before…
SHELLEY. The wild eye, the pale brow, the fevered scratchings and scribblings! (Laughs.) A harsh mistress he’s taken up with, the Muse, she’ll lead him a merry dance, if she don’t desert him like she has me these days and nights…
CLAIRE. Shall I go, Albé? I’ll charm him into joining us. I’ll tell him it won’t be the same without him.
BYRON. Without his French volume of ghost stories more likely! Lord, but there are s
ome stirring tales in that book of his – oh, after what you read aloud to us last night, Mary Godwin, all the long night through I slept scarce a wink. Yes, after our… little soirée, our cosy little conversazione of the supernatural…
SHELLEY (playful, in a mock-sepulchral voice). Once upon a time, there was Byron and Mary, and Claire and Shelley. It was a dark and a moonless night –
BYRON. – and all night long I was quite unmanned and unnerved by thoughts of a light pale little girl with silken hair and the strangest stories to tell. All I could see was Mary, Mary…
SHELLEY is laughing.
MARY is held in thrall, but horrified.
CLAIRE is jealous, but when, pouting, she goes to try and hang around BYRON’s neck, she is shrugged off.
BYRON never flinches from his blatant attention to MARY.
SHELLEY. See, Mary, you are a witch, cast quite a spell on poor old Byron here!
BYRON. Ask poor Pollydolly! I had to summon him in the middle of the night and he had to administer me the strongest draught to make me… lie down and get me to sleep.
Well, dear friends, and shall we eat dinner soon, I’m ravenous. Where’s the maid? She’s always forgetting to bring the bloody decanter! Elise! Elise! Lord, I am so hungry I could eat a Scotch reviewer. Roasted. Couldn’t you? Oh, I forgot, the Shelleys are Utopian vegetarians who won’t gorge themselves on anything bloodier than an orange, eh?
ELISE enters.
Bring us brandy, my dear, did not you know I was arrived?
ELISE. Yes, sir.
BYRON. Well, surely by now you know how to fulfil my every desire and pleasure?
ELISE. Yes, sir. (Confused.) No, sir…
BYRON. Well, just bring the bloody brandy on the double. ’Twould be a start…
ELISE. Yes, sir…
ELISE exits.
MARY. Lord Byron! Please don’t –
SHELLEY sees that MARY’s really angry, is outraged at BYRON’s proprietorial attitude to her servant, and he interrupts, tries to change the subject.
SHELLEY. Ah, Mary, I wish you had come with us… Today we were right inside that storm, I was part of it.
MARY. I am afraid to sail.
SHELLEY. Nonsense, Mary, you want to. I know you do! Remember back there in St Pancras Graveyard we used to blow bubbles and sail paper boats, and plan how we would sail away for ever.
BYRON. Graveyard? That does not sound the most romantic sport for courtship, still –