by David Hare
And nothing rhymes with orange
But
I love you
Never seen faces so empty etc.
Towards the end of the song Snead enters carrying two suitcases. He comes down towards Arthur at the very end.
Snead Sir.
Pause.
Left these.
Pause.
Left these behind.
Pause.
Sir.
Arthur Thank you, Mr Snead. Why are you frightened? Why’s everyone frightened?
Pause. Then a blackout. Then projections large in the blackout, one by one.
ANDREW SMITH NICKNAME PEYOTE
INHALED HIS OWN VOMIT
DIED IN A HOTEL ROOM IN SAN ANTONIO TEXAS
APRIL 17TH 1973
MAGGIE
ARTHUR
SARAFFIAN
THE BAND
ALIVE
WELL
LIVING IN ENGLAND
Then:
Maggie’s Song
Last orders on the Titanic
Set up the fol de rol
Tell the band to play that number
Better get it in your soul
Put the life boats out to sea
We’ve only got a few
Let the women and children drown
Man we’ve gotta save the crew
Because the ship is sinking
And time is running out
We got water coming in
Places we don’t know about
The tide is rising
It’s covering her name
The ship is sinking
But the music remains the same
Last orders on the Titanic
Put your life belts on
We can’t hear the captain shouting
Cos the band goes on and on
I only want to tell you
That you have my sympathy
But there has to be a sacrifice
And it isn’t going to be me
Because etc.
Last orders on the Titanic
Get up and paint your face
Deck hands in dungarees
And millionaires in lace
I only woke you baby
To say I love you so
But the water is up around
My knees goodbye I have to go
Because the ship is sinking etc.
The music remains the same
KNUCKLE
Characters
Curly Delafield
Jenny Wilbur
Grace Dunning
Patrick Delafield
Max Dupree
Barman
Storeman
Policeman
Porter
The Michael Lomax Trio
The main set is the Shadow of the Moon Club. The changes from scene to scene must always be very fast indeed. For this reason it is wiser not to drop a curtain between each scene.
Time – the present.
Knuckle was first presented by Michael Codron at the Comedy Theatre, London, on 4 March 1974. The cast was as follows:
Curly Delafield Edward Fox
Jenny Wilbur Kate Nelligan
Grace Dunning Shelagh Fraser
Patrick Delafield Douglas Wilmer
Max Dupree Malcolm Storry
Barman Leonard Kavanagh
Storeman David Jones
Policeman Stephen Gordon
Porter
The Michael Lomax Trio
Directed by Michael Blakemore
Settings by John Napier
Music by Marc Wilkinson
I had to admit that I lived for nights like these, moving across the city’s great broken body making connections among its millions of cells. I had a crazy wish or fantasy that some day before I died, if I had all the right neural connections, the city would come all the way alive. Like the Bride of Frankenstein.
Ross Macdonald
Act One
SCENE ONE
The Shadow of the Moon Club. Night.
There is a long, low bar; also a table, chairs and stools.
When the curtain rises, Jenny is sitting at a table, drinking and smoking. The Barman, Tom, is behind the bar. Lomax’s voice is heard on the loudspeakers.
Lomax (off) Ladies and Gentlemen, dance to the music of Michael Lomax and the Freshman Three.
A hick band starts playing ‘String of Pearls’, thin and distant. Curly strides into the bar.
Curly I’m having a lemonade.
Barman Fresh lemon, sir?
Curly Fresh lemon.
The Barman sets to. Jenny goes up to Curly.
Jenny Is your name Curly?
Curly (points to a table) Just a moment.
Jenny Hullo.
Curly And a Scotch.
Jenny goes and sits down. The Barman holds the glass against an upside-down whisky bottle.
Bottle.
Barman Sir?
Curly I want to look at the bottle.
The Barman hands over the bottle. Curly unscrews the measuring top and takes a wet wad out of it.
Blotting paper. That’s a terrible trick.
Barman Sir.
Curly If you do that again I’ll squeeze the lemon in your eye.
Barman Sir.
Curly And now I’ll have the bottle.
He carries the bottle over to Jenny’s table and puts it down. Jenny gives the Barman a nod. The Barman exits.
Got you a drink.
Jenny Thank you.
Pause.
You look like your sister.
Curly The Shadow of the Moon. Is this still the only club in Guildford?
He sits at the table.
Jenny This is it.
Curly Did Sarah come here?
Jenny You know Sarah?
Curly No, I don’t. That’s the whole point. I hadn’t seen her for twelve years. I haven’t seen anyone.
Jenny What made you come back?
Curly Was she friendly with men?
Jenny In a way. She went for a particular kind …
Curly I remember.
Jenny You know …
Curly Still the same kind?
Jenny These had a kind of Neanderthal gleam.
Curly That’s them. And she was only eight at the time.
Jenny Did your father ask you to do this?
Curly Where was she working?
Jenny She’d been working as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital.
Curly Dangerous job.
Jenny Have you seen your father?
Curly Not yet. I’m staying with Patrick from tonight.
Jenny I see.
Curly How long’s she been gone?
Jenny You take your conversation at a fair old lick.
Curly I’m transistorized. How long’s she been gone?
Jenny insists on a pause.
Jenny (stubbing out her cigarette) Eight weeks.
Curly Where exactly did she disappear?
Jenny Between Eastbourne and Pevensey Bay there’s a stretch of beach about a mile long. Just dune and shingle. It’s called the Crumbles.
Curly Had she been to Eastbourne before?
Jenny I don’t know.
Curly What do the police have to say?
Jenny They think if she did drown herself in Eastbourne it would be six weeks yet before she was washed up in Herne Bay. A tribute to the strength of the English Channel.
Curly And Sarah’s extraordinary buoyancy. Have a cigarette.
Jenny No, thank you.
Curly Was she suicidal?
Jenny I don’t know what it means.
Curly Down in the dumps.
He puts down the cigarettes. He never smokes himself.
Jenny She was a paranoid. Of a particularly lethal type.
Curly Go on.
Jenny I know you don’t like me, she used to say. Begging you to say, of course I like you. If you didn’t say that, she was finished. And if you did say it, she didn’t believe you. And once she c
ouldn’t believe that she couldn’t believe anything. Everything you said had black wings and a bloodstained beak.
Curly And she was the nurse.
Jenny Yes.
Curly Have a cigarette.
Jenny No, thank you.
She deliberately lights her own cigarette.
Curly But not what you’d call suicidal.
Jenny She was depressed. So. Everyone’s depressed. She used to say life was a plush abattoir. Fair enough.
Curly Fair enough.
Jenny She used to say – this is a very pretentious girl – she used to say she’d recognize a moment of happiness because – she remembered having one in 1965, and if another came along, she could compare.
Curly When was that?
Jenny Don’t know. One evening, before dusk. She felt happy. For about twenty minutes …
Curly Well …
Jenny Well – what she said – more than her fair share.
Pause. The music ends, followed by clapping.
Curly Special friends, did she have?
Jenny A journalist called Dupree.
Curly Who else?
Jenny Just me.
Curly Like her pretty well?
Jenny Pretty well.
Curly Have another drink.
Jenny No.
Curly Not happy. Not liked. Pretentious.
Jenny We all told her she was pretentious. And she said certainly I am. That’s because the world is unduly modest.
Curly Yes, well, there you are.
Jenny You left home much earlier she said.
Curly When I was fifteen.
Jenny She said you took four dozen rifles from the school cadet corps and sold them to the IRA.
Curly Old story. Not necessarily true.
Jenny Then sold the IRA to the British police.
Curly That sounds more like me. I was – loud. Had the second half of the pint. That sort of thing. Smoked twenty a day. But I’ve quietened down.
Lomax (off, over the mike) It’s Hawaiian night in the Paradise Room.
Curly gets up and helps himself to lemonade from behind the bar.
(off) Grass skirts, sweet music, and good food. The Paradise Room is situated on the first floor, just beyond William Tell’s Alpine Grotto. Hurry up to Heaven.
A xylophonist starts playing ‘Under A Blanket Of Blue’. Jenny does not look at Curly behind her.
Jenny Are you afraid?
Curly Why?
Jenny If she was dead does that frighten you?
Curly I’m not afraid.
Jenny They found a purse on the beach. And a coat. Which is how they know she was there. And inside the purse they found two railway tickets. Returns to Victoria. Which means she was with someone. Which may mean she was killed.
Curly Is that consistent?
Jenny What?
Curly Is that consistent with how she lived?
Jenny Sarah? Sure. Like all women. Hanging out for it …
Curly All right.
Jenny Longs to be raped. Is that not what you think?
Curly All right.
Jenny Well …
Pause.
Curly Did she live with you?
Jenny The machine grinds on.
Curly Did she live with you?
Jenny She moved into my flat. She left Guildford to avoid her father. She ran away to Surbiton. Don’t laugh. She couldn’t gesture as big as you. Venezuela, wherever it was …
Curly Peru …
Jenny She ran away to Surbiton. That’s the scale of her life.
Curly Had she been to Eastbourne before?
Jenny It’s nice to hear the old ones again.
Curly Had she been to Eastbourne before?
Jenny Often.
Curly Why?
Jenny You could breathe in Eastbourne. That’s what she said.
Curly You didn’t tell me that before.
Jenny I was waiting for you to uncurl your lip.
Curly That’s how I keep it. Catches crumbs. What do you do for a living?
Jenny I manage this club.
Curly Who owns it?
Jenny A man called Malloy. Runs it on the side.
Curly What else does he do?
Jenny What does everyone do in Guildford?
Curly Work in the City.
Jenny City. Right.
Curly Friend of Sarah’s.
Jenny Friend of us all. This is our home.
Curly I used to come here …
Jenny Yes?
Curly It was skiffle. In my day. One time I …
Jenny Pissed in a bottle and made them sell it as Martini.
Curly You knew.
Jenny You’re a legend.
Curly Sold like a bomb.
Jenny It’s changed since then. It used to be the club of clubs. We all came here. Young Guildford, with our coke and Benzedrine. For a lot of us it was paradise. Loud and lovely. Then it lost its way. The lushes moved in and the middle-aged voyeurs. Now it’s just a bomb site. Well, you can see …
Curly Why do you stay?
Jenny Not your business.
Curly I’m asking.
Jenny Do you know what Sarah said about you …?
Curly Nice girl.
Jenny She said whenever you stood up there were two greasy patches on the seat of your chair.
Pause. The music ends, followed by clapping.
Curly I’m here for her sake. That’s all.
Jenny Nobody asked you.
Curly And now I’m here I won’t be put off. Nobody told me, do you know? I read it for myself, in an English paper. I reckon I’m far enough away from you all –
Jenny Don’t count me …
Curly – to be the best person to find out what happened. I hold no brief for the Home Counties. Nor its inhabitants.
Jenny Best left to the police.
Curly They don’t have my equipment. The steel-tipped boot, you know, the knuckleduster.
Jenny I can tell you’ve been out of the country.
Lomax (off) Ladies and gentlemen, for each and every one of us there must surely come the day when – we’ll gather lilacs.
The band plays a reedy introduction to ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’.
Curly Dance?
Jenny Dance with you?
Curly It’s that or go home to my father.
Jenny You’re squat and ugly.
Curly I am repulsive. That is true.
Pause.
Jenny Well, there you are.
Curly What I say is: don’t piss in the well. One day you may want to drink from it.
Curly stands. Jenny begins to dance with him at arm’s length. The music swells to very loud.
SCENE TWO
The drawing-room of the Delafields’ Guildford house. Night.
Everything is just so. As the curtain rises, Mrs Dunning is sitting on the sofa, sorting clothes from a box on the floor into a suitcase on the coffee table. She is Scottish.
Curly comes through the door.
Curly Good evening. We haven’t met yet. My name is Curly. Patrick’s son Curly.
Mrs Dunning They let you into the country all right?
Curly No trouble. Where’s Pa?
Mrs Dunning Upstairs.
Curly Have you lived here long?
Mrs Dunning About a year.
Curly fingers casually through a pile of clothes.
Curly There seems very little point in storing clothes –
Mrs Dunning Yes …
Curly – that are well past wearing.
He holds up an article of clothing.
Mrs Dunning That’s a gymslip.
Curly She was twenty-one. White socks and a nice school blouse.
Mrs Dunning Excuse me.
She goes to the door.
Patrick. Somebody to see you.
Curly Your son.
Mrs Dunning I’ve given you your old room.
She sits again.
Curly Ah, next to the boiler
.
Mrs Dunning Your father is greatly looking forward to seeing you.
Pause.
Patrick is a very Christian man.
Patrick swings the door open.
Patrick Curly. How wonderful. How good to see you.
Curly I’m over here.
Patrick Of course you are.
Pause.
Well, Chara en thlipsae. In the heart of sadness joy. Sit down.
Curly Thank you.
He sits.
Patrick Have you met Mrs Dunning?
Curly Yes, indeed.
Patrick Grace as we call her. I mean, that’s her name. Grace.
Curly Sits pretty.
Patrick Good.
He sits. Pause.
Curly Pa …
Patrick Let me …
Curly The limits of the visit must be firmly set. You’re the second on a list of people I’m to see.
Patrick Fine.
Curly I saw Jenny.
Patrick Nice girl.
Curly Yes.
Patrick A brightly painted object.
Curly So tell me what you know.
Patrick It was good of you to come.
Curly I was between wars. I was happy to come.
Patrick As you say.
Curly Well?
Patrick I only know what you’ve read in the paper. They say fifteen thousand Englishmen disappear every year – are never seen again. Amazing.
Curly But this is different.
Patrick Because she disappeared by the seashore. Not the kind of place where people disappear.
Curly She’d had a row with you …
Patrick That was a year ago.
Curly She’d left home.
Patrick A year ago. She was twenty-one. She was bound to leave.
Curly What were the reasons?
Patrick Curly, take the light bulb out of my eyes. Goodness me. Let’s take it a little more slowly.
Curly She was suicidal.
Patrick Who says that?
Curly gets up.
Curly (to Mrs Dunning) He can’t be trusted. He drops people like eggs.
He picks up a photo of Sarah as a young girl from a shelf.
Patrick I’m not expected to run her life for her.
Mrs Dunning (holding it up) Exercise book.
Patrick That would have been quite wrong.
Mrs Dunning (reading) ‘Ah bonjour Monsieur le Corbeau que vous me semblez beau.’
Pause.
Curly Tell me the truth.