Brian Friel Plays 1

by Brian Friel

  The doors and walls of the parlour are oak-panelled, and at ceiling height the walls are embattled. The furnishings are solid and dated, the atmosphere heavy and staid. A large conference table with a leather-covered top. A glass display cabinet. An old-fashioned radiogram on top of which sits a vase of artificial flowers. On one side of the door leading into the dressing-room stands a Union Jack flag. On the other side a large portrait of a forgotten civic dignitary. A grand baroque chair for the Mayor; several upright carved chairs for his guests.

  MICHAEL is twenty-two. Strong, regular features but not handsome.

  SKINNER is twenty-one. Very lean, very tense, very restless. He is described as ‘glib’ but the adjective is less than just. A quick volatile mind driving a lean body.

  LILY is forty-three. She has eleven children and her body has long since settled into its own comfortable contours. But poverty and child-bearing have not completely obliterated the traces of early prettiness.

  Time: 1970.

  Place: Derry City, Northern Ireland.

  ACT ONE

  The stage is in darkness except for the apron which is lit in cold blue.

  Three bodies lie grotesquely across the front of the stage – SKINNER on the left, LILY in the middle, MICHAEL on the right.

  After a silence has been established we hear in the very far distance the wail of an ambulance siren.

  A PHOTOGRAPHER, crouching for fear of being shot, runs on from the right and very hastily and very nervously photographs the corpses, taking three or four pictures of each. His flash-bulb eerily lights up the stage each time.

  When he gets the length of SKINNER, a PRIEST enters right, crouching like the PHOTOGRAPHER and holding a white handkerchief above his head. He gets down on his knees beside MICHAEL, hastily blesses him and mumbles prayers into his ear. He then moves on to LILY and to SKINNER and goes through the same ritual with each.

  While the PRIEST crouches beside MICHAEL, a spot picks out the JUDGE high up in the battlements. And at the same moment a POLICEMAN in dark glasses enters from the left, removes his cap and faces the JUDGE. The POLICEMAN reads from his notebook; the JUDGE takes notes.

  The JUDGE is English, in his early sixties; a quick fussy man with a testy manner.

  POLICEMAN: Hegarty, my lord.

  JUDGE: Speak up, Constable, please.

  POLICEMAN: Hegarty, my lord.

  JUDGE: Yes.

  POLICEMAN: Michael Joseph. Unmarried. Unemployed, Lived with his parents.

  JUDGE: Age?

  POLICEMAN: Twenty-two years, my lord.

  JUDGE: Was the deceased known to you personally, Constable B?

  POLICEMAN: No, my lord.

  JUDGE: And when you arrived at the body, did you discover any firearms on his person or adjacent to his person?

  POLICEMAN: I wasn’t the first to get there, my lord.

  JUDGE: Would you answer my question?

  POLICEMAN: I personally saw no arms, my lord.

  JUDGE: Thank you.

  (Three SOLDIERS in full combat uniform run on from right. Two of them grab MICHAEL by the feet and drag him off right, while a third, tense and scared, covers them with his rifle. The PHOTOGRAPHER runs off left. The PRIEST moves to LILY.)

  POLICEMAN: Doherty. Elizabeth. Married. Aged forty-three years.

  JUDGE: Occupation?

  POLICEMAN: Housewife, Also a cleaning woman. Deceased lived with her family in a condemned property behind the old railway – a warehouse that was converted into eight flats and …

  JUDGE: We are not conducting a social survey. Constable. Was the deceased known to you?

  POLICEMAN: No, my lord.

  JUDGE: And did you discover any firearms on her person or adjacent to her person?

  POLICEMAN: I wasn’t the first on the scene, my lord.

  JUDGE: I am aware of that, Constable.

  POLICEMAN: I saw no weapons, my lord.

  (The PRIEST moves on to SKINNER. The three SOLDIERS return and drag LILY off.)

  POLICEMAN: Fitzgerald. Adrian Casimir.

  JUDGE: Pardon?

  POLICEMAN: Fitzgerald …

  JUDGE: I’ve got that.

  POLICEMAN: Adrian Casimir.

  JUDGE: Yes.

  POLICEMAN: Aged twenty-one. Single. No fixed address.

  JUDGE: You mean he wasn’t native to the city?

  POLICEMAN: He was, my lord. But he moved about a lot. And we haven’t been able to trace any relatives.

  JUDGE: Had the deceased a profession or a trade?

  POLICEMAN: No, my lord.

  JUDGE: Was he bearing any firearms – when you got to him?

  POLICEMAN: Not when I got to him, my lord.

  JUDGE: And was he known to you personally, Constable B?

  POLICEMAN: Yes, my lord.

  JUDGE: As a terrorist?

  POLICEMAN: He had been in trouble many times, my lord. Petty larceny, disorderly behaviour – that sort of thing.

  JUDGE: I see. Thank you, Constable.

  (The PRIEST goes off left. The POLICEMAN follows him. The three SOLDIERS enter right and drag SKINNER away as before. A ceremonial hat (the Mayor’s) is lying beside SKINNER’s body. One of the SOLDIERS takes it off with him.)

  JUDGE: I should explain that I have permitted soldiers and policemen to give evidence under pseudonym so that they may not expose themselves to the danger of reprisal. And before we adjourn for lunch, may I repeat once more and make abundantly clear once more my words of the first day: that this tribunal of inquiry, appointed by her Majesty’s Government, is in no sense a court of justice. Our only function is to form an objective view of the events which occurred in the City of Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on the tenth day of February 1970, when after a civil rights meeting British troops opened fire and three civilians lost their lives. It is essentially a fact-finding exercise; and our concern and our only concern is with that period of time when these three people came together, seized possession of a civic building, and openly defied the security forces. The facts we garner over the coming days may indicate that the deceased were callous terrorists who had planned to seize the Guildhall weeks before the events of February 10th; or the facts may indicate that the misguided scheme occurred to them on that very day while they listened to revolutionary speeches. But whatever conclusion may seem to emerge, it must be understood that it is none of our function to make moral judgements, and I would ask the media to bear this in mind. We will resume at 2.30.

  (He leaves. Light up the full set. Offstage: a civil rights meeting is being held in Guildhall Square and is being addressed by a WOMAN. The amplification is faulty and we cannot hear what she is saying; but the speech sounds fiery and is punctuated by clapping and cheering. While the meeting is going on offstage, DR DODDS enters left and addresses the audience. An elderly American professor with an informal manner.)

  DODDS: Good evening. My name is Philip Alexander Dodds. I’m a sociologist and my field of study is inherited poverty or the culture of poverty or more accurately the subculture of poverty. And since I’ll be using these terms off and on, let me explain what I mean by them. I’m talking about those people who are at the very bottom of the socio-economic scale and more specifically about their distinctive way of life – a way of life which is common to ghetto or slum communities all over the Western world and which is transmitted from generation to generation. And the first thing to be said about this culture or way of life is that it has two aspects; it is the way the poor adapt to their marginal position in a society which is capitalistic, stratified into classes, and highly individuated; and it is also their method of reacting against that society. In other words it is the method they have devised to cope with the hopelessness and despair they experience because they know they’ll never be successful in terms of the values and goals of the dominant society. And once it comes into existence – this way of life, this culture – it is handed down from parents to children and to their children, and thus its perpetuation is ensured. Because by the time
children are six or seven they have usually taken on the basic values and attitudes of their subculture and aren’t psychologically geared to take advantage of changing conditions or increased opportunities that may occur in their lifetime.

  (Suddenly all sounds are drowned by the roar of approaching tanks. Their noise is deafening and fills the whole auditorium. They stop. Silence for five seconds. Then the WOMAN who is addressing the meeting:)

  WOMAN: Stand your ground! Don’t move! Don’t panic! This is your city! This is your city!

  (Her voice is drowned by shooting – rubber bullets and CS gas – and immediate pandemonium in the crowd. Panic. Screaming. Shouting. The revving of engines as tanks and water-cannon pursue fleeing groups. More rubber bullets and the quick plop of exploding gas-canisters. Very slowly the noise fades to background. As it does, DODDS resumes as calmly as before.)

  DODDS: People with a culture of poverty are provincial and locally orientated and have very little sense of history. They know only their own troubles, their own neighbourhood, their own local conditions, their own way of life; but they don’t have the knowledge or the vision or the ideology to see that their problems are also the problems of the poor in the ghettos of New York and London and Paris and Dublin – in fact all over the Western world. To give you some examples: they share a critical attitude to many of the values and institutions of the dominant class; they share a suspicion of government, a detestation of the police, and very often a cynicism to the church. But the very moment they acquire an objective view of their condition, once they become aware that their condition has counterparts elsewhere, from that moment they have broken out of their subculture, even though they may still be desperately poor. And any movement – trade union, religious, civil rights, pacifist, revolutionary – any movement which gives them this objectivity, organizes them, gives them real hope, promotes solidarity, such a movement inevitably smashes the rigid caste that encases their minds and bodies.

  (DODDS goes off left. As he leaves, a quick succession of shots – and MICHAEL staggers onstage right. He has been blinded by CS gas, can scarcely breathe, and is retching. Before he gets to the centre of the stage he collapses on his hands and knees and his forehead rests on the ground. Just as he drops, LILY enters right. She, too, is affected by gas, but not as badly as MICHAEL. She holds a handkerchief up to her streaming eyes and her free hand is extended in front of her as if she were blind. She, too, is gasping for breath. She bumps into MICHAEL on the ground and without a word staggers past him. SKINNER races on from right. He has been caught by a water-cannon – the upper half of his body is soaked. He is looking about frantically for somewhere to hide. He races past MICHAEL, then past LILY, and runs upstage. He discovers the door into the parlour and flings it open. He glances inside and then calls to LILY.)

  SKINNER: Hi! Missus! There’s a place up here!

  LILY: Where?

  SKINNER: Up here! Come on! Quick! Quick!

  LILY: Give me a hand, young fella. You’ll have to lead me.

  (He runs down to her, grabs her arm, and drags her roughly upstage.)

  SKINNER: Come on – come on – come on! Move, will you! Move!

  LILY: No need to pull the arm off me.

  SKINNER: Did you get a dose of the CS gas?

  LILY: D’you think I’m playing blind-man’s-bluff? God, you’re a rough young fella, too.

  SKINNER: In here. Quick. Watch the step.

  LILY: My good coat! Mother of God, will you watch my good coat!

  SKINNER: I should have left you to the soldiers.

  LILY: They’d be no thicker nor you.

  SKINNER: D’you want to go back to them, then?

  LILY: Don’t be so damned smart.

  SKINNER: There’s a chair behind you.

  LILY: I can manage myself.

  (She drops into a chair and covers her face with both hands.)

  LILY: O my God, that’s sore on the eyes. There’s someone else back there.

  SKINNER: Where?

  LILY: Just outside.

  (SKINNER rushes out of the room.)

  LILY: Where’s this, young fella? Whose house is this?

  (SKINNER finds MICHAEL on his hands and knees and gets down beside him.)

  SKINNER: Come on! Get up! They’re going wild out there!

  (MICHAEL groans.)

  SKINNER: Are you hurt? Did you get a rubber bullet?

  MICHAEL: Gas.

  SKINNER: You’re okay. Come on. You can’t lie here. Can you walk?

  MICHAEL: Leave me.

  (Sudden burst of rubber bullets, followed by screaming and the revving of armoured vehicles. SKINNER lies flat on his face until the burst is over. Then he suddenly grabs MICHAEL by the back of his jacket and drags him, face down and limp, up to the door and into the parlour. He drops him in the middle of the room, runs back to the door, locks it. As they enter, LILY uncovers her eyes momentarily.)

  LILY: I just thought it was a young fella. Is he hurted bad?

  (After locking the door, SKINNER moves around the room, examining it with quick, lithe efficiency.)

  SKINNER: No.

  LILY: (To MICHAEL) Did you get a thump of a baton, young fella?

  SKINNER: Gas.

  LILY: Maybe he got a rubber bullet in the stomach.

  SKINNER: Only gas.

  LILY: He might be bleeding internal.

  SKINNER: Gas! Are you deaf?

  LILY: I like to see the blood. As long as you can see the blood there’s always hope.

  SKINNER: He’ll come round.

  LILY: I seen a polisman split a young fella with a baton one Saturday evening on Shipquay Street. His head opened like an orange and the blood spurted straight up – you know like them pictures you see of whales, only it was red. And at twelve Mass the next day who was sitting in the seat in front of me but your man, fresh as a bap, and the neatest wee plaster from here to here, and him as proud of his-self. (MICHAEL gets himself into a sitting position on the floor.)

  MICHAEL: Aaaaagh.

  LILY: Are you all right, young fella?

  MICHAEL: I think so.

  LILY: (To SKINNER) I was afeard by the way he was twisting, the kidneys was lacerated.

  MICHAEL: That’s desperate stuff.

  LILY: It’s a help if you cross your legs and breathe shalla.

  MICHAEL: God – that’s awful.

  LILY: Did you walk into it or what?

  MICHAEL: A canister burst right at my feet.

  LILY: You should have threw your jacket over it. They come on us very sudden, didn’t they?

  MICHAEL: I don’t know what happened.

  LILY: What got into them anyway?

  SKINNER: Did no one tell you the march was banned?

  LILY: I knew the march was banned.

  SKINNER: Did you expect them to give you tea at the end of it?

  LILY: I didn’t expect them to drive their tanks through us and shoot gas and rubber bullets into us, young fella. It’s a mercy to God if no one’s hurted. (To MICHAEL) Where were you standing?

  MICHAEL: Beside the platform. Just below the speakers.

  LILY: I was at the back of the crowd, beside wee Johnny Duffy – you know – the window-cleaner – Johnny the Tumbler – and I’m telling him what the speakers is saying ’cos he hears hardly anything now since he fell off the ladder the last time. And I’m just after telling him ‘The streets is ours and nobody’s going to move us’ when I turn round and Jesus, Mary and Joseph there’s this big Saracen right behind me. Of course I took to my heels. And when I look back there’s Johnny the Tumbler standing there with his fists in the air and him shouting, ‘The streets is ours and nobody’s going to move us!’ And you could hardly see him below the Saracen. Lord, the chairman’ll enjoy that.

  (MICHAEL gets to his feet and sits in the chair.)

  LILY: Are you better?

  MICHAEL: I’m all right.

  LILY: Maybe you concussed yourself when you fell. If you feel yourself getting drowsy, shout �
�Help! Help!’

  MICHAEL: I’m fine.

  LILY: D’you know what they say? That that CS gas is a sure cure for stuttering. Would you believe that, young fella? That’s why Celia Cunningham across from us drags her wee Colm Damien into the thick of every riot from here to Strabane and him not seven till next May.

  (MICHAEL coughs again. She offers him a handkerchief.)

  LILY: Here.

  MICHAEL: Thanks.

  LILY: Cough hard.

  MICHAEL: I’m fine.

  LILY: If you don’t get it up, it seeps down through the lungs and into the corpuscles.

  MICHAEL: I’m over the worst of it.

  LILY: Every civil rights march Minnie McLaughlin goes on – she’s the floor above me – she wears a miraculous medal pinned on her vest. Swears to God it’s better nor a gas-mask.

  (MICHAEL chokes again, almost retches.)

  LILY: Good on you, young fella. Keep it rising. Anyways, last Wednesday week Minnie got hit on the leg with a rubber bullet and now she pretends she has a limp and the young fellas call her Che Guevara. If God hasn’t said it, she’ll be looking for a pension from the Dublin crowd.

  (SKINNER’s inspection is now complete – and he realizes where he is. He bursts into sudden laughter – a mixture of delight and excitement and malice.)

  SKINNER: Haaaaaaaaah!

  (Still laughing, he races right round the room, pounds on the door with his fists, runs downstage and does a somersault across the table.)

  LILY: Jesus, Mary and Joseph!

  SKINNER: Haaaaaaah!

  LILY: The young fella’s a patent lunatic!

  SKINNER: Haaaaaaah!

  LILY: Keep away from me, young fella!

  (SKINNER stops suddenly beside her and puts his face up to hers.)

  SKINNER: Do you know where you are, Missus?

  LILY: Just you lay one finger on me!

  SKINNER: Do you know where you’re sitting?

  LILY: I’m warning you!

  SKINNER: Look around – look around – look around.

  (To MICHAEL) Where are you? Where do you find yourself this Saturday afternoon? (To both) Guess – come on – guess – guess – guess. Ten-to-one you’ll never hit it. Fifty-to-one. A hundred-to-one.