by Ella Hickson
NESSA. Would you pop my coat under the stairs for me?
KATE slides her mother’s coat off for her.
IKE. You’re not staying.
KATE puts the coat away.
NESSA. It’s awful cold out there. (Pointing to ALBIN’s drink.) Couldn’t get me one of those, Al – could you?
ALBIN starts pouring her a drink.
KATE. Sit down; tell us where you’ve been.
NESSA. In the town hall – I was calling a ceilidh. Fell in with a fiddly lot.
KATE. I thought you were in Mongolia –
NESSA. Azerbaijan – a farm.
KATE. You sent me that photo of that man with no teeth.
ALBIN hands NESSA the drink.
NESSA. Aren’t you delightful?
ALBIN. Yes – um – no – am I – I mean –
NESSA beams up at him.
– um – am I?
KATE. Mum?
NESSA. Hm?
KATE. The man with no teeth – I thought you weren’t coming back until the spring.
NESSA. Ah, Karim – still no teeth, makes up for it elsewhere. What are we eating? (Smells the air.) Oh, Ike, you didn’t?
KATE. Braised red cabbage and dauphinois.
NESSA. Oh, Ikey – you bloody rascal – you’ve only gone and made my bloody favourite.
IKE. I catered for three.
KATE. We’ve enough for four – we’ll make enough. It’s family, isn’t it, Al?
ALBIN. Guess so.
IKE. I catered for three.
NESSA. Stutter, darling?
IKE. We’ve not got enough.
NESSA (putting her arm around KATE). FHB.
ALBIN. FHB?
NESSA. Family Hold Back; I’m sure there’s enough wine that we won’t even notice.
IKE. I’ll need to lay another place at the table.
NESSA. Won’t take a jiffy. Families that eat together, stay together. That’s what you used to say, Ike; wasn’t it?
IKE. Yes.
NESSA. Well, there we go then. Let’s eat!
NESSA puts her arm through ALBIN’s and leads him through to the kitchen.
Now, Albin – tell me everything about you, I want all the gory details.
NESSA and ALBIN exit.
IKE stands rooted to the spot.
KATE. Dad?
IKE. Hm.
KATE. Let’s eat.
IKE goes to walk past KATE – KATE watches him.
MEMORY
Music starts – a waltz.
IKE dances with an invisible ten-year-old KATE.
IKE laughs heartily.
IKE is forty-two.
IKE. Lady Kate, your footwork is perfection. You must have been taught by a wise man – perhaps it was your father, I hope you thanked him for his efforts! You paid him in crumpets! Crumpets? The finest of payments! And your mother? A crumpet-eater too! I don’t believe such a fine family exits! We should have your mother come and dance with us! (Calling up the stairs.) Fine woman – come and dance! Come and dance and have a crumpet! Fine woman! (Stops dancing and looks at the doorway... softer now, less hopeful.) Fine woman? Fine woman?
LONDON
KATE. Mum?
MEMORY
Pause.
NESSA does not arrive.
IKE, downcast, walks past KATE and exits the room.
LONDON
KATE watches IKE go.
KELSO
IKE exits the sitting room.
KATE stands alone.
Beat.
NESSA pops her head in.
NESSA. It’s on the table.
KATE. Coming.
Two
KELSO
The sitting room.
Late in the evening – after dinner.
An array of discarded coffee cups and wine glasses lie around.
ALBIN is up and being demonstrative – having had a few.
NESSA is actively fascinated.
ALBIN. Okay – well, we’ll do a little test.
NESSA. Oooh – yes! A test.
IKE. Do we need pen and paper?
ALBIN. No – no. It’s all verbal.
IKE. Righto.
ALBIN. Ready?
NESSA. Yes, captain!
ALBIN (to KATE). I know you’ve done this before, try not to look so bored.
KATE. I’m not looking bored, I’m looking adoring. They’re similar faces.
ALBIN. Lucky me. Right – I’m going to tell you a list of words –
NESSA. Do we write them down?
IKE. Let the man speak.
ALBIN. No. You have to try and remember them. Okay? Ready?
IKE. Just remember them, nothing more.
ALBIN. Yes – that’s it. I’ll say the whole list twice.
KATE. He is trained, Dad, just do what he says.
ALBIN. Candy, sour, sugar, bitter, taste, tooth, nice, honey, soda, chocolate –
NESSA. Yum.
ALBIN. – heart –
NESSA. Urgh.
KATE. Try not to talk, Mum.
IKE. You’ll be lucky.
ALBIN. Kate – shh. Cake, eat and pie.
KATE. Me?
IKE. It was Nessa that /
NESSA. / Telltale.
ALBIN. And again – candy, sour, sugar, bitter, taste, tooth, nice, honey, soda, chocolate, heart, cake, eat and pie.
NESSA. Got them.
IKE is working very hard to remember.
Look at the concentration on him.
ALBIN. Right – now tell me – was the word ‘point’ on the list?
IKE. No.
NESSA. No.
ALBIN. Correct.
NESSA. Even stevens, Ikey.
ALBIN. Was ‘taste’ on the list?
NESSA. Yes.
IKE (more hesitant). Yes – yes, it was.
ALBIN. Correct.
They both celebrate in their own small way.
Was ‘sweet’ on the list?
NESSA. Yes.
IKE. N – yes – yes. No – yes. Yes.
ALBIN. All bets in?
IKE. Yes.
ALBIN. Incorrect.
IKE. What?
ALBIN. Not there.
IKE. ‘Sweet’ was definitely on the list.
ALBIN. It wasn’t there, I promise.
NESSA. Hm, strange.
IKE. It was definitely on the list.
KATE. It wasn’t, Dad.
ALBIN. Your brain thinks it was because the list had so many words on it that associated with ‘sweet’.
IKE. Bullshit.
ALBIN. Um – no – the conditions of the question cause you to think. /
IKE. / I heard ‘sweet’.
ALBIN. It wasn’t there.
IKE. Are you saying I’m wrong?
NESSA. He’s not saying you’re wrong – you are wrong.
ALBIN. You imagined a memory.
IKE. I’m not sure I follow.
NESSA. Well, you’re certainly not leading, dear.
ALBIN. The environment in which you recall a memory influences the content of that memory as much as – if not more than – the actual event that you are remembering. Now is – more important than then – in terms of /
IKE. / But I remember things... clearly.
ALBIN. They may be clear but they aren’t accurate depictions of what actually happened.
IKE. I feel them /
NESSA. / I’m sure you do.
ALBIN. / But that isn’t – any more of a – it’s just a neurological process – the engram is valid, it’s just its relation to the actual event is unreliable.
IKE bows out.
NESSA. Isn’t that attractive?
IKE stands up and starts to clear the glasses.
ALBIN. Yes, it completely revolutionises the way we think about the past and the formation of the idea of self and /
NESSA. / No – you talking like that, those words – it’s very attractive, isn’t it, Kate?
KATE. Um – Dad, no – don’t do that, you di
d dinner /
IKE (snaps). Do shut up, Nessa!
Beat.
ALBIN. I’ll clear up.
IKE. It’s fine.
NESSA. Oh, look at the bloody museum-keeper having a sulk; ‘I don’t like being told I’m wrong – woof woof woof.’
IKE. I’m fine, thank you.
NESSA. You see, Albin – Ike is somewhat of an archivist, a recorder – (Pretends to play the recorder.) He finds the flimflam of subjectivity rather destabilising, would rather have a nice tidy account of things to rely on; stops him feeling queasy. Rules and regulations – right and wrong – jot it down and make it stick – that’s how you like it, isn’t it?
KATE. Mum – leave him alone.
IKE. I’m fine, thank you.
NESSA. Compulsive scribbler – never happy until he’s got it on paper, you’d be playing at something – having a laugh and then there’d be this funny little silence and a scratchy scribble – I can’t tell you how depressing the appearance of a post-coital notepad is. Can’t help but feel scrutinised. More wine, anyone?
IKE. I’ve had enough.
KATE and ALBIN signal no.
NESSA. Suit yourselves. (Pours herself another glass.) Kate, do you remember being on safari and we saw the most amazing flock of flamingos?
KATE (smiling). Yes – yes – I really do, that’s so weird, yeah – it was incredible.
NESSA. Al, we saw this incredible flock of flamingos and Ike –
IKE. A stand.
NESSA. What?
IKE. A stand of flamingos.
NESSA. But they weren’t standing, they were flying – that’s the whole point.
KATE. It’s still a stand of flamingos.
NESSA. Anyway, this bunch of flamingos flew overhead – and Ike leapt to his pen and paper, ready to scribble and by the time he looked up they’d gone. It was very funny at the time. Him looking up all – ‘bugger it’ – and seeing nothing but a jet stream of flamingo fart. But in retrospect, it’s a little sad.
IKE. That didn’t happen.
NESSA. Yes it did.
IKE. I saw them, I watched them.
NESSA. Kate – he did, didn’t he?
KATE. I just remember the flamingos.
NESSA. Scribble scribble and then they were gone.
IKE. Kate, I looked at the flamingos.
KATE. I don’t remember.
IKE. I remember I looked because I remember explaining to you that they were pink because of all the crustaceans that they eat.
KATE. I don’t remember.
IKE. Do you know that – do you know why flamingos are pink?
ALBIN. I’m not sure that that is actually scientifically the /
KATE. / Yes – but I could have learnt that anywhere.
IKE. Not from him, apparently! (At ALBIN.) It is true – bloody look it up!
KATE. Dad?
NESSA. That must have been what you wrote down; your fun fact!
IKE. I looked at the fucking flamingos! I remember it – I can see flamingos in my head – I can see the blue sky and the pink feathers and I can hear the noise of their wings flapping – I can fucking see it, Nessa, so do not tell me I was scribbling.
NESSA. Could he have invented that, Albin – scientifically? Could he have been scribbling and in fact overwritten that scribbling memory with a memory of the sky?
ALBIN. It’s possible but /
NESSA. / There we go.
IKE. But what?
ALBIN. There’s no way of knowing...
IKE. See.
ALBIN. Either way – not unless someone saw you looking, I mean – there’s no way of proving either – unless there’s a witness to /
IKE. / Kate?
KATE. I don’t remember. Okay?
IKE. Determined to make me out to be an idiot.
KATE. No – I don’t remember.
NESSA. She’s being generous, Ikey – she’s trying to protect you, give her some credit.
KATE. I don’t remember.
IKE. Stop calling me Ikey!
KATE. Who cares, it was just a flock –
NESSA. A stand.
KATE. A stand of fucking flamingos.
IKE. Language.
KATE. It was a nice thing to look at – that’s all. Now it’s not a nice thing. Okay – happy?
IKE. Flamenco.
KATE. What?
IKE. The fact I told you was that the word ‘flamingo’ comes from the Spanish ‘flamenco’, meaning fire rather than the fact about the crustaceans –
NESSA. Double bluff, very clever.
KATE. We’ve killed the fucking flamingos, okay – the flamingos are all dead! Okay?
IKE. Language.
Long pause.
ALBIN. It could feasibly be a case of emotional filtering /
KATE. / Al?
ALBIN. Just quickly – it might be the Adam and Eve syndrome – what fruit was in the Garden of Eden?
NESSA. Apple.
ALBIN. Only became important on the last day – the day they bit it – before that it was just as forgettable as all the other fruits. The notepad, present or not present, may have retrospectively taken on greater significance because it subsequently became important. For example, the first day I met Kate, it wasn’t significant at the time, I just met a girl – she could have become any other girl I wasn’t going to get to know, I could have walked away and if I had – I wouldn’t remember her, the engram wouldn’t have lodged. But because subsequently I fell in love with her – that first day got replayed and replayed and is now significant, and thus remembered. You retrospectively add importance – to create a narrative – but at the time it wasn’t important at all.
NESSA. I think he’s suggesting that we’ve fallen from grace, Ike, and the whole thing was the fault of your little notebook.
ALBIN. No, what I mean is – you might both be wrong – right – wrong – either; equally. The notebook might not even have – or might as well – not have been there; neither of you cared if it was there at the time.
Beat.
IKE. It wasn’t an apple.
ALBIN. What?
IKE. It wasn’t an apple in the Garden of Eden.
KATE. Adam and Eve bit the apple.
IKE. The Bible only ever says ‘forbidden fruit’ – it never says apple, actually – Albin.
NESSA. So it could have been a banana?
ALBIN. Exactly – the apple wasn’t even there, it was a metaphor for –
NESSA. Sex gone wrong.
ALBIN. The memory has been rewritten with years and years of misinterpretation.
NESSA. Much like your notebook, Ike.
IKE. And God told them about it right from the get-go – warned them, so it was always significant.
Beat.
KATE. Okay – why don’t we play Pictionary?
NESSA. Hey, Al, pink bird, one leg? The beast with two backs?
IKE. Stop calling him Al – it’s excruciating.
ALBIN. I don’t mind it, it’s friendly.
IKE. Careful what you wish for.
KATE. Stop it! Both of you.
NESSA. It’s okay, Kate, we’re just stretching our legs.