by David Hare
Jenny What about Malloy?
Curly Laying Malloy aside. That’s a very nice leg.
Jenny I’ve got another one just like it. What about Sarah?
Curly Laying Sarah aside. Listen, my dear …
Jenny What do you get out of it?
Curly Hopefully some change from a pound.
Jenny Listen – punk-face – I wouldn’t buy what you’ve got if it was on refrigerated display.
Curly I don’t suppose I’d be selling under those conditions. (Pause.) You come with me.
Jenny Me Jane.
Curly I’ll show you the world.
Jenny Take me to Eastbourne then. Tonight.
Curly It’s late.
Jenny Don’t you want to go?
Curly Go some time.
Jenny About how you were the best man for the job.
Curly All right. I’ll get Pat’s car.
Jenny I’ll get a wrap.
She laughs and moves to go.
Lassie meaty chunks.
Jenny exits.
Curly I was once stranded in Alaska for ten days with a single copy of G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica. And one copy of My Gun Is Quick. The work of Mickey Spillane. I was able in this period to make comparisons under scientific test conditions. The longest word in Principia Ethica is ‘contrahydrapallotistic’. The longest word in Spillane is ‘balloon’. Moore wins outright on length of sentence, number of words and ability to contradict yourself in the shortest space. Spillane won on one count only. It burns quicker.
Curly exits.
SCENE SEVEN
The Delafields’ drawing-room. Night.
Mrs Dunning is crocheting, Patrick reading. Peace. Patrick looks up, holds his look. Mrs Dunning looks across at him. They smile slightly. Patrick goes back to his book, sighs, puts it aside, gets up, sighs again.
Patrick Mrs Dunning.
Mrs Dunning smiles again, does not look up. He stands near her, does not touch her. She smiles at the crochet.
Mrs Dunning I love it when you call me that.
Patrick Hold on.
Patrick loosens his tie, then goes out by the side door. Mrs Dunning puts her crochet aside, kicks off her shoes, then pulls off the jumper she is wearing and folds it on the sofa. She takes off her skirt, folds that, then drops a string of pearls into a little heap on the table. She stands in a bra, pants, stockings and suspenders. She gapes a moment. Pause.
Mrs Dunning (quietly) Pat.
She listens for an answer, then goes back to the sofa, picks up her crochet, and continues to work. Pause. Curly comes in from the main door, sees her, looks at his feet Mrs Dunning sees him and half-smiles. He looks at her. Patrick comes in by the side entrance, wearing only trousers and socks. He stops when he sees Curly. Pause.
Curly I called in on the police.
Patrick Ah.
Curly No news of Sarah. I want to borrow the car.
Patrick takes the car keys out of his pocket and throws them lightly across the room. Curly catches the keys and goes out. Pause. Patrick stares a moment, then walks up and down. Pause.
Patrick Put your clothes on.
He moves to go out. Mrs Dunning turns away.
Before the start of the next scene the sound of the sea is heard.
SCENE EIGHT
The Crumbles. Night.
The curtain rises on a bare stage. At once, from downstage, soaking wet, Jenny comes running on, wearing a bathing costume.
Jenny Hallelujah.
Curly runs on, also fresh from the sea, also in a bathing costume.
Curly Hallelujah.
Curly cartwheels twice. Jenny does a handstand over. Curly turns her round in a wheel, then she runs towards his out-held hands. She steps up on to his shoulders. They stand in this position, looking out into the audience, as still as possible.
Jenny Right.
Curly So this is it.
Jenny The Crumbles.
Curly Christ.
Jenny It’s strange. (Pause.) It’s cold.
Curly Cold for September.
Jenny Cold for one o’clock in the morning.
Curly What do you see?
Jenny (with relish) I see suffering and pain and men not happy with their lot …
Curly Do you?
Jenny I do. I see heavy scowls and fists raised in anger, and I see tears of sorrow and of indignation. I see men with axes in their backs, acid steaming off their skins, needles in their eyeballs, tripping on barbed wire, falling on broken bottles. That’s what I see.
Curly Ah. Eastbourne. Quite unchanged.
Jenny I see the living dead.
Curly What do you see that’s nice?
Jenny Nice?
Curly Yeah. You know. Nice.
Jenny I see men – born happy. It just doesn’t show. Let me down.
She climbs down from Curly’s shoulders.
I’m going to get dressed.
Curly Stay.
Jenny Why?
Curly Sit.
Curly sits cross-legged. Jenny watches.
The colder you get the more you will enjoy being warm.
Jenny Oh yeah?
Curly The essence of pleasure is self-denial.
Curly puts a tattered paper bag on his head. Jenny just watches.
I come to England maybe once a year. It’s a shabby little island, delighted with itself. A few months ago I decided to return.
Jenny Where’s the whip?
Curly I was ready for England. I was attracted by news of the property racket. Slapping people on top of people like layers of lasagne. Think about what I’m saying. Don’t think about the cold.
Jenny Forget the cold. Listen to Curly.
Curly When I got back I found this country was a jampot for swindlers and cons and racketeers. Not just property.
Jenny goes out. Curly continues, unaware that she has gone.
Boarding-houses and bordellos and nightclubs and crooked charter flights, private clinics, horse-hair wigs and tin-can motor cars, venereal cafés with ice-cream made from whale blubber and sausages full of sawdust.
Jenny (off) Forget the cold. Listen to Curly.
Curly Money can be harvested like rotten fruit. People are aching to be fleeced. But those of us who do it must learn the quality of self-control.
Jenny reappears with duffel coat and sweater. She looks warm. She is carrying Curly’s clothes.
Jenny Curly, is that why you came back?
Curly Wherever I’ve travelled, wherever I’ve been, there’s been a tiny echo in my mind. The noise in my father’s office. The slight squelch of Dad’s hands in the meat.
Jenny Why did you come back?
She drops his towel near him. Curly takes his bag off.
Curly I came back because I’m ready. I’ve grown up.
Pause.
Jenny What about Sarah?
Curly Sarah. (Pause.) Yes, well. That as well.
Pause. He wraps himself in his towel.
When I went to get the car my father was with Mrs Dunning. I even detected a moment of shame. He’s getting old. The first crack in the pebble. It made me sad. You should see her thighs. Like putting your hand between two slices of liver.
Jenny You horrible little man. (Pause.) Sarah was wide open. An ever-open wound. Her face was so – open, it just begged to be kicked. You had to put the boot in. It’s …
Curly All right …
Jenny She was so naive. She used to tell Patrick your wealth is built on the suffering of the poor. And she expected an answer.
Curly All right.
Jenny (screaming) All right.
She throws his clothes to the ground.
Always ready with an innocent question. Why don’t you share what you’ve got? Why can’t people run their own lives? Why persist with a system you know to be wrong? How can you bear to be rich when so many people are poor?
Curly Did she say that?
Jenny Well, what did she expect? (Pause.) Christ Jesus. Doesn�
�t she know there’s a war on? She was asking for it.
Curly Do you know what Bernie said?
Pause.
Jenny No.
Curly Bernie Cornfeld said to me: ‘Curly,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing in this world so lovely it can’t be shat on.’
Jenny Right.
Curly Right.
Jenny And this is where she died. (She yells into the night air.) Return John Bloom to your kingdom. Jack Cotton, arise from your grave. Harry Hyams, claim your children.
Pause.
Curly You know your way around.
He sits on the ground.
Jenny (she sits) I know them all. Their names. And I wonder about …
Curly (smiling) The state of their souls.
Jenny (smiling) All right.
Pause.
Curly I called in on the police when I was getting the car. The railway tickets were first-class. (Pause.) Can you imagine …
Jenny Sarah?
Curly First …
Jenny Never. (Pause.) God. (Pause.) Have you spoken to him?
Curly Couldn’t. (Pause.) Look at the night.
Jenny Yeah.
Curly Just look at the water.
Jenny You don’t want to be like them, Curly.
Curly smiles thinly.
Do you? (Pause.) It’s such a beautiful night. Isn’t it lovely?
Curly This is the loveliest it gets.
He gets up and smiles.
I’ll take you home. You look wonderful.
Jenny Curly.
Curly Old bean.
Jenny Is that what you say?
Curly What?
Jenny Is that what you say to a girl you want? ‘Old bean’?
Curly Sure.
Jenny I see.
Curly Well … (Pause.) Let’s go.
Jenny Curly.
Curly What?
Jenny First-class.
Curly Yes, I know. (Pause.) It could have been Malloy.
Jenny No. Not his – manner. He would never. Especially with her. She wouldn’t allow him.
Curly So.
Jenny So.
Curly I’ve thought of nothing else.
Jenny Why didn’t you ask him?
Curly I will.
Jenny Are you afraid? (Pause.) That’s what I asked you. When we first met.
Curly This place gives me the creeps. (Pause.) Let’s go.
Jenny The essence of pleasure is self-denial.
She rises, picks up all his clothes and his car keys, and taunts him.
Curly Oh, Jenny, come on.
Jenny So.
Curly For Christ’s sake.
She throws the keys up in the air as a taunt and catches them herself.
Jenny Wrap up warm.
She heads out fast.
Curly Christ.
Jenny goes out with the keys and clothes.
Jenny (as she goes) Forget the cold. Listen to Curly …
Curly (bellowing after her) Patrick’s not the only man who travels first-class. (Pause. Bellowing) Christ. (Pause.) Christ. (Pause. Muttering) Christ. (Pause.) Control yourself. (Pause.) Control. (Pause.) I am a pebble. With self-control.
Pause. He drops the towel at his feet. The lights fade to a spot on Curly.
Eastbourne is a grey city. The lights shine less bright than in LA. I wanted to be on the Santa Monica freeway stopping over at Sloppy Joes for pastrami on rye and one cheese and tomato Anita Ek-burger. I wanted to be in Caracas paying $25 for a Venezuelan sauna. I wanted to be in the Persian mountains playing poker with Kurd guerrillas for lumps of hashish as big as a man’s brain. I wanted to be in that bar in Laos watching that old inverted sphincter puffing and inhaling, puffing and exhaling: a last inverted monument to human ingenuity that not even the Americans could bomb into submission.
The lights fade and music swells up, ‘We’ll Gather Lilacs’ – not the thin Lomax version, the full-bodied BBC Concert Orchestra – as the curtain falls.
Act Two
SCENE NINE
A Police Station. Day.
Apart from a single flat or cut-out to indicate the setting, the stage is bare except for the chair on which Jenny is sitting. A Policeman stands by her.
Policeman Spring of 1924 – April twelfth – a man called Patrick Mahon, lived in London, went to an ironmongers, bought a meat saw and a ten-inch knife. He then went to Waterloo station, collected his suitcase and then took a train to Eastbourne. Waiting in Eastbourne, a Miss Emily Kaye. A young stenographer he had met in London. The idea was to rent a small cottage on the beach to conduct what Mahon referred to as ‘a love experiment’. Miss Kaye had prepared for the experiment by selling some bonds she owned and giving them to Mr Mahon. The cottage they rented was on the stretch of beach known as the Crumbles. They moved in. The experiment lasted three days. On the following Tuesday, Mahon strangled her and dismembered her body. He packed some pieces tightly into old boxes and filled biscuit tins with her innards. He attempted to boil down her fat in open saucepans. In the middle of the night, in savage weather, with thunder crashing outside he placed her severed head on the fire. The intense heat of the flames caused the eyes of the dead woman to open. Mahon, a thirty-three-year-old soda fountain salesman, ran from the house. For the first time, horrified. He returned to London. Later he was arrested and executed. (Pause.) Would anyone in the family have heard that story before?
Jenny Well – Patrick’s the most highly educated.
A single cello plays.
SCENE TEN
The Hospital Grounds. Day.
Max is discovered, in black, his hands in his pockets. Curly appears, in quite a big overcoat.
Curly Glad you could make it. How was the funeral, Max?
Max Subdued.
Curly Anyone there?
Max Just Malloy’s mother.
Curly No one else?
Max And Jenny.
Curly And Jenny – ah.
Max Yes.
Curly How was that?
Max What?
Curly In black. Did that give you any kind of buzz?
Max Listen …
Curly Uh. Ignore it. Proceed. I’d like to hear your alibi for the night Sarah disappeared.
Max It’s dull.
Curly I’m sure it’s dull. That’s not the point.
Max That’s a terrible cold you’ve got.
Curly Now you mention it, yes. I got left out on the beach, you see. Reconstructing the crime. Alibi.
Max I spent the evening with a man called Hart. H-a-r-t. A vet. Well, not a vet exactly. Michael Hart is a spiritualist. He claims that through animals we may talk to the other side.
Curly Go on.
Max The dead. Animals have a psychic flair for communicating with the dead.
Curly I see. So your alibi can be confirmed by a reliable dog.
Max No. No. Confirmed by your father. It was at his house.
Curly Yes?
Max You should talk to him.
Curly just stares at him.
It was Sarah’s idea. I was working on a series about modern religions. Also Sarah’s idea. She loved shopping around. She suggested taking Hart and his famous Alsatian to Patrick’s. The idea was she would come with me. I just wanted to get her in the same room as her father. But she funked out – so – I was left with Mr Delafield. He wanted to communicate with his dead wife – your mother. I thought the whole thing was in very bad taste. Patrick was quite serious throughout. Hart’s Alsatian kept snarling at him – then fell asleep. Without Sarah the whole exercise was hollow.
Curly She knew you were both there?
Max Oh, yes. She pushed us into it.
Curly And she went off to Eastbourne meanwhile?
Max We later found out. Yes.
Curly Did it occur to you afterwards she could have planned suicide all along and set you two up as a final gag?
Max Yes.
Curly Rather an elaborate gag.
Max Yes.
Curly Mutter
ing away at an Alsatian.
Max But typical.
Curly From what you say.
Max Typical of her.
Curly No longer a nutcase?
Max smiles. Pause.
Max Check with your father, eh?
Curly Yaar. (Pause.) As Brigadier-General Bolivar Vallarino of Panama said to me: ‘Put it there, pal.’
They shake hands. Salute.
Max What’s it to be? Tomorrow – same time, same place?
Curly I don’t think so, I don’t think I want to see you again, Max. Something of the magic has died.
Max Well, well.
Curly heads out.
Abandoning the investigation?
Curly (turning back) Thinking about it.
Max That’s what your father said you’d do.
Curly Did he say that?
Max He said being back in England made you want a nice job.
Curly I’m looking for an opening certainly.
Max I don’t know what arms salesmen usually move on to.
Curly Allied Professions. The Church, you know, the Law.
He waves.
Max See you some day.
Curly Not if I see you first.
He sings.
Keep young and beautiful
It’s your duty to be beautiful
Keep young and beautiful
If you want to be loved.
The lights fade to blackout.
SCENE ELEVEN
The Shadow of the Moon bar. Night.
In the darkness, Max follows on immediately with Curly’s song from the previous scene.
Max
Keep young and beautiful
It’s your duty to be beautiful
Keep young and beautiful
If you want to be loved.
The lights come up on the bar scene. Jenny is discovered behind the bar. She turns as she hears the singing. Max dances on.
Jenny I thought you were Curly.
Max What I say is: the world is a rice pudding. It’s just waiting to be skinned.
Jenny You’ve met him too?