MOLLY: Jesus, Mary and Joseph, Mister Synge doesn’t want to know about that!
[Mother is duly admonished. Things settle painfully. We’re all in our Sunday best.]
MOTHER: Kingstown is lovely.
SYNGE: Indeed. So it is.
MOTHER: Yes, Kingstown is only lovely. Daddy and myself had our honeymoon out beyond at Kingstown.
SYNGE: I see.
MOTHER: That was neither today not yesterday, the dear knows. Lord, I haven’t set eyes on Kingstown this donkey’s years now. Not since Adam was a boy. God be with the days. Of course it’s healthful to have the sea. I always think that. Even and it raining, what matter?
SYNGE: Quite.
MOTHER: Yes, even and it raining … what matter?
SYNGE: Indeed.
[Silence settles like a dust. The fire crackles quietly. From offstage, the muffled ruction of a couple having an argument in a neighbouring flat.]
MOTHER [to mask the din]: I say ‘Kingstown’ but really I mean Glasthule. At Muggivan’s Boarding House. Do you mind where I mean, Misther Synge? On the sea-front near the bandstand, oh a beautiful place now. Two shillings, it was, and the breakfast a farthing. And you’d want to see the breakfast; you wouldn’t eat for a fortnight again you’d be finished. We were there three days. It was a good clean place. Mrs Muggivan and her husband was Protestants from Moate.
SYNGE: From?
MOTHER: Moate. The town. In the County Westmeath?
SYNGE [is this leading somewhere?]: Ah.
MOTHER: She’d a son in America, I mind her saying now. In Red Hook, Brooklyn. And he married with a German. What’s this was his name?
SYNGE: … I … ?
MOTHER: Bartley, I think. And he married with a German. Imagine being married with a German. And yourself from Glasthule. Did you ever hear of anything queerer in your natural life, Misther Synge? You’d wonder how they knock it out at all.
MOLLY [interrupting forcefully]: Where is Sally after going, Mother, and the supper nearly cold?
MOTHER: I told her seven, child of God, but your sister won’t be said. You know my Sally, Misther Synge. She speaks terrible highly of you so she does.
SYNGE: I saw her this morning at the theatre. She will join us later, perhaps?
GEORGIE: She’s away to the bazaar at Beggars Bush with some fellow.
MOTHER: You’d want to be up early in the morning for the same girl, Misther Synge. God be with the youth of us but she’d have you near demented so she would, and she courting half the town. Isn’t it desperate?
MOLLY: Well we can’t be twiddling thumbs on Her Royal Majesty all night. Is Grannie above in the bed or where?
[As though on cue, the rags on the day-bed suddenly disturb themselves. An astonishingly elderly woman awakens beneath them. We watch as she rises and expectorates copiously in a spittoon; shuffles painfully towards the table, takes a generous snort of snuff.]
MOTHER: Mammy … Er, Mammy … This now is Molly’s … Misther Synge.
GRANNIE [dismissive]: Delirious, I’m sure. Is there e’er a bite to be had in a Christian house? I’d ate the leg o’ the Lamb of God.
MOTHER: I suppose we might do worse than sit in. Don’t be standing on ceremony there, Misther Synge. [They promptly do as ordered. A pig’s head and trimmings are unlidded.] God above, where is that Sally? Who will say grace?
MOLLY: Mother … Mister Synge is of the other persuasion.
GRANNIE [sternly]: There’ll be the grace of the Catholic Church said in this house every night I’m alive, no matter there’s a black Jewman in it.
[Georgie leads the prayer in a quiet, strained voice, the old hatchet enunciating every word with grim intentness, her face like a plateful of mortal sins.]
MOTHER: Grannie, do you mind where’s the corkscrew? Misther Synge is after bringin’ us a bottle of cherry wine.
GRANNIE: It isn’t wanted here. Far from wine you were rared.
MOTHER: But the visitor, surely – so as not to show coolness …
GRANNIE: Be damn but I’ll be taken as I’m found in my own nest, Miss!
[We begin to eat. The silence is unbearable. A few beats, and the intruder makes an effort.]
SYNGE: May I ask what do you think of the political situation at present, Mrs Harold?
GRANNIE [bleakly]: I don’t.
SYNGE: Yes. Well, indeed. Well, that is quite understandable. What with the numerous crises besetting us at present. One can only wonder as to the future. So much emigration and so on. I myself attend meetings of a society that has an outlook of socialism –
GEORGIE: What’s this is that now again? I do hear the boys talk of it.
SYNGE: There are … various interpretations, Georgie. It is a sort of nexus of beliefs, but the crux rei of the matter is simple enough. It is –
GRANNIE [interrupting]: Speak plain for the love of God or don’t be speakin’ at all. A shut mouth catches no flies.
MOLLY: It means he’s up for the working man, Georgie.
GRANNIE: Hup hurrah. Pass us a sup of that tripe. I’d ate a scabby child.
MOTHER: I was only after sayin’ to Misther Synge, Mammy, that Daddy and I had our honeymoon beyond at Kingstown. Thirty good years ago if it was a day, Misther Synge. But he was taken and we only married ten.
GRANNIE: And a merciful release. Youd’a served less for murder.
[Georgie chuckles into his dinner. A tennis game of glances ensues around the table.]
MOTHER: And Molly is after tellin’ us a griddle about you, Misther Synge. Molly and Sally, the both.
SYNGE: … A griddle?
MOLLY: It means ‘a great deal’, John. It’s a Dublin way of talking.
SYNGE: But how quaint. Do you mind if I make a note of it, Mrs Allgood?
GEORGIE [laughing]: You’ll be put in a play, Muddy. You’ll be famous entirely.
GRANNIE [coolly]: And these plays of yours, Gentleman. What do they be about?
SYNGE: Oh, I … It is hard to explain, Mrs Harold. Scenes from life, I expect.
GRANNIE: Who in the name of the Immaculate Jesus would want to see that in a playhouse?
SYNGE: … ?
GRANNIE: In a playhouse who would want to see life? Don’t we not get enough of it? Bad enough havin’ to endure it without payin’ for to see it.
GEORGIE: Would there be a laugh in them, Misther Synge? I do like a laugh in a play.
SYNGE: One hopes so, yes, Georgie. It rather depends on one’s audience. It is often a somewhat underestimated factor: the power of the audience, I mean. They can decide, in a way, if the drama is amusing.
GEORGIE: Is it yourself does be getting the money from the tickets and that?
SYNGE [attempting levity]: Not quite enough of it, I am sorry to say. But one is motivated by other, as it were, considerations.
GEORGIE [genuinely curious]: Like what?
SYNGE: I suppose the love of beauty. Beauty for its own sake. And then some of us are of the view that beauty can be a servant. To the Irish people, I mean. Their conception of themselves. One feels they need a higher vision in these difficult times.
GRANNIE: Do you know what it is they need? The fine Irish people. A good kick in a place wouldn’t blind them.
MOLLY: Grannie, for the love of Jesus …
GRANNIE: A root up their holes for them and God send they get another. Ah me dear dark Erin and the bould Fenian men. I’d rain bombs on every cur and bitch of them for a pack of huer’s melts. Prognosticatin’, craw-thumpin’ scruff-hounds.
GEORGIE [laughing]: Me soul on you, Grannie, but you never lost it so you didn’t.
GRANNIE [coldly]: And you never had it to lose, you idle halfthick. It’s a civil wonder to Christ you’re able to find your own arse.
[Strained silence as the meal is continued. Now Mother tries again.]
MOTHER: And our Molly’s a holy terror for the books, Misther Synge. She’s that many o’ them read, I don’t know where to look. If she isn’t a scholar, she met them on the road. Is
n’t that the way, alannah? A quare one for the books.
SYNGE: One can always tell when a young person has known a home in which reading has been encouraged. It is an activity greatly valued by our people, of course.
GRANNIE: An’ who would those be, now? According to Trinity College.
[He looks at her.]
GRANNIE: ‘Our’ people. Who is that? In your own considering. The quality out in Kingstown, is it?
SYNGE: Well, the people of this country. We are all of us inheritors of a beautiful place … are we not? With its heartaches, yes, and its terrible injustices – but our hopes for greater brotherhood and forgiveness –
MOLLY [interrupting]: Could we not be talking of such serious subjects at supper, John, please.
GRANNIE: It’s well for them has a ‘country’ when the rest of us has debts. Faith now, I’ll say it to the landlord and he knockin’ for the rent. ‘Hold your hour my little maneen and forgive us the arrears for I’m a citizen, not a tenant, Mary bless yeh.’
MOTHER: In the name of Holy God, must we have politics at the table? There’ll not be a minute’s luck in such a house.
SYNGE [sincerely]: … Please forgive me, Mrs Allgood … The fault in introducing the topic was entirely mine, not Mrs Harold’s. I was forgetting my manners … I … intended no offence … I’m afraid I sometimes overlook the wisdom contained in the ancient proverb: Ná glac pioc comhairle gan comhairle ban.
[The family look at him. What is he talking about?]
SYNGE: The well-known Gaelic saying? ‘Never take advice without a woman’s guidance.’
MOLLY [quietly]: They don’t have Irish, John. I’m after telling you before.
SYNGE: Oh yes … I am sorry … Please excuse me … Wasn’t thinking.
[A coughing fit besets him, becoming increasingly more violent. No one else moves. Fade to blackout.]
10
APPROACHING BLOOMSBURY
3.07 p.m.
Lads in Edwardian drapes and peacock-feather waistcoats and they eying me, a relic of the past. ‘Cosh-boys’, they call themselves. Look at that fellow there. Grease in his barnet and the aviator spectacles all black as a Sunday in Lent. But the street is crowded, Molly, there is nothing he could do. And don’t be meeting his gaze for that’s only seeking troubles, and if you seek them, you will always find them.
My son. In an aeroplane. Over northern Germany. Those who I fight I do not hate. Those I defend I do not love. Somewhere in the room all his copybooks from school. But we must not give in to weakness. The world is full of blessings. To be alive at this time, when the cruel war is over and nobody’s son is being ordered to die, and if the manners are queer and the slangs are gone strange and the fashions eccentric and the music discordant, what matter, after all? It was surely always thus. The young must be permitted to come into their force. They do not mean to look at one so harshly, should not be misinterpreted. And if the rouge on the girls seems a little too flagrant and the sullenness of the boys unremittingly brutal, it must always be remembered by those who are getting on that they themselves once resisted their inheritance. It is how progress happens, Molly, through scepticism, impatience. And if the hems are growing shorter with every passing season – woe betide us with Muddy if we came home in that – and if they like their blouses lower-cut than used to be permissible, sure where is the harm, when you think? The beauty of their bodies is not something to be ashamed of. Aren’t they better off that way? So much fuss, so much fear. Let them show what they have. God love them. More luck. They think it will save them, the poor lost lambs. And they think there is time to rehearse.
But the boys, all the same. You’d wonder about them sometimes. That rolling-shouldered swagger they affect in the street; their sneering at the police and the old. And they fighting the Jamaicans on Chepstow Road, not only with fists, but with bicycle chains, brick-ends, and then bragging in the doorways as you hurry past to Mass of the black man they beat last night. From where, these boasted hatreds? What is the victory? She enters Shaftesbury Avenue. Stops.
A constellation of scarlet light-bulbs across the frontage of a theatre.
THE ABBEY THEATRE OF DUBLIN PRODUCTION
DEIRDRE OF THE SORROWS
BY J. M. SYNGE
SEVEN PERFORMANCES ONLY
A shock. Yes. Didn’t know it was on. Could someone not have written? Don’t they know? A telegram, even? But they must have written, surely? Have they lost the address? Don’t they know that I used to … ? But they can’t have forgotten? No right to be jealous. No right to be hurt. Offence unintended. It is only a play. Doesn’t belong to you, Molly. Property of the world. A shock, that’s all. Probably lost in the post. For heaven’s sake, idiot, they don’t need your permission. Gather. Collect.
I am outside my mother’s junkshop on a sunny day in Dublin, a parade of soldiers passing, their coats as red as month’s-blood, a sentry line of breakfronts and battered old sideboards observing their progress down the quays. I am opening old compartments, searching for something – a lost letter? The black wood of the furniture is greening with age, the hasps and catches rusting, the thinning linings sundered. Coming on for dawn. I am in the bed beside Sara. Below in the street, a dog barks.
Do they think I am dead? Surely, someone in Dublin … But they can’t have forgotten me. An invitation, a pass? She is Maire O’Neill, she was once his fiancée, we must find her address in London, we must honour old soldiers. Perhaps the first-night reception? Little speech of our gratitude. Presentation or token. Piece of Waterford Glass. Not even that one would necessarily like to attend, for an opening night performance can be overexcited, too keyed up, with the reporters and the critics and the ambassador and his wife, and an artist doesn’t need to take a bow from her box, the whole house on its feet raising cheers to her past, and the gallery calling her name as the heroine directs the spotlight, and bouquets at the fall of the curtain. Who would crave that? Only a pathetic old failure. A swirl of damp wind strikes your face.
His photograph. There. In the glass case by the booth. And a poster of the leading lady. Don’t know her. So young. And a notice announcing ‘to interested patrons’ that the eminent Professor Somebody of Something College Somewhere will give a commemorative lecture at the Authors’ Club, Whitehall Court, on ‘John Synge, his life and legacy’. The director and some of the cast will attend. There will be an opportunity to ask questions following.
But why would they do that? What is to be asked? He was a man who could see into things – very ordinary things. A hat left on the floor of a café in Kingstown, a proverb overheard, an old fisherman mending a net: these, for him, were a kind of incitement. There are no answers other than that. He was not like the rest of us. Nor even like himself. His imagination, or soul, or whatever province of his mind was hungry for the sustaining rain of the world, would soak in the storms of his own haunted strangeness, and the berries would bloom, and they were what they were, and if the tendrils were peculiar, and some of them wild, the fruits were so shockingly luscious and potent that the thirsty were willing to savour the bitter for the sake of the concomitant sweet. He needed the very ordinary. He was a beautiful man. What more than this need be said?
The sort of man who makes you think the movement of foliage might be causing the breeze. Nothing was clear and everything was clear. Impossible, particularly, to know what he wanted from you. Perhaps he himself did not know. Looks that lingered too long, abashed glancings-away, and sentences that seemed in retrospect to have been calculated for ambiguity but at the time of their delivery sounded daringly direct. You would get queer intimations sometimes; maybe you imagined them: that the pain of wanting you and being denied had become an addiction, better than the pain of having you and becoming disillusioned, or better than the pain of having you at all. How could such a character be met halfway? Only by loving him. How else would you survive? His unpardonable faults, his crippling fear of happiness; you would never call him normal, he must be forgiven or left. What he
wanted was a degree of powerlessness in you that was too much to ask, a surrendering without terms, then a withdrawal from the field, and the fact that he posed as someone immobilised by the blaze of your charms was merely a subtler mode of domination.
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