Brian Friel Plays 1

by Brian Friel

  EAMON: A party in Vienna.

  CASIMIR: Yes, yes, yes indeed, Eamon! That’s what it’ll be – a party in Vienna!

  (CLAIRE switches off the cassette.)

  CLAIRE: (Calmly) I’m suddenly sick of Chopin – isn’t that strange? Just suddenly sick of him. I don’t think I’ll ever play Chopin again.

  (Silence. Then EAMON begins to sing softly.)

  EAMON: ‘Oh don’t you remember Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt …’

  WILLIE: I’m telling you, Eamon, that aul’ bus isn’t going to wait for you, you know.

  ALICE: ‘Sweet Alice with hair so brown …’

  (EAMON and ALICE sing together.)

  ‘She wept with delight when you gave her a smile

  And trembled with fear at your frown …’

  (While they are singing the line above.)

  JUDITH: I keep thinking I hear sounds from that speaker.

  (WILLIE begins to rise.)

  WILLIE: I’ll take it down now.

  JUDITH: Don’t touch it! (Softer) Not just now. Not just at this moment.

  (CASIMIR has walked round to EAMON and ALICE and sings with them. All three:)

  ‘In the old church yard in the valley, Ben Bolt

  In a corner obscure and alone

  They have fitted a slab of granite so grey

  And sweet Alice lies under the stone…’

  (While they are singing, UNCLE GEORGE has entered the study. He puts his small case on the ground and his coat across a chair and sits with his hands on his lap. He has all the patience in the world. As he sings CASIMIR glances over the house. CLAIRE begins to hum. One has the impression that this afternoon – easy, relaxed, relaxing – may go on indefinitely.

  WILLIE: I’m telling you – they’re going to miss it!

  JUDITH: No, they won’t.

  WILLIE: They’re cutting it close then. Jaysus they’re cutting it very close.

  SINGERS: ‘They have fitted a slab of granite so grey

  And sweet Alice lies under the stone …’

  (Before the song ends bring the lights down slowly to dark.)

  FAITH HEALER

  for Anne again

  CHARACTERS

  FRANK

  GRACE

  TEDDY

  Faith Healer was first produced at the Longacre Theatre, New York, on 5 April 1979. The cast was as follows:

  FRANK James Mason

  GRACE Clarissa Kaye

  TEDDY Donal Donnelly

  Direction José Quintero

  PART ONE

  FRANK

  The stage is in darkness. Brief pause.

  Then out of this darkness comes FRANK’s incantation, ‘Aberarder, Aberayron …’ At the end of the second line bring up lights very slowly, first around him and then gradually on the whole set. Throughout this opening incantation he is standing down stage left, feet together‚ his face tilted upwards, his eyes shut tight, his hands in his overcoat pockets, his shoulders hunched.*

  He is middle-aged; grey or greying; pale, lined face. The overcoat is unbuttoned, the collar up at the back; either navy or black, and of heavy-nap material; a good coat once but now shabby, stained, slept-in. Underneath he is wearing a dark suit that is polished with use; narrow across the shoulders; sleeves and legs too short. A soiled white shirt. A creased tie. Vivid green socks.

  Three rows of chairs – not more than fifteen seats in all – occupy one third of the acting area stage left. These seats are at right-angles to the audience.

  On the back drop is a large poster:

  The Fantastic Francis Hardy

  Faith Healer

  One Night Only

  This poster is made of some fabric, linen perhaps, and is soiled and abused.

  FRANK: (Eyes closed)

  Aberarder, Aberayron,

  Llangranog, Llangurig,

  Abergorlech, Abergynolwyn,

  Llandefeilog, Llanerchymedd,

  Aberhosan, Aberporth …

  All those dying Welsh villages. (Eyes open.) I’d get so tense before a performance, d’you know what I used to do? As we drove along those narrow, winding roads I’d recite the names to myself just for the mesmerism, the sedation, of the incantation –

  Kinlochbervie, Inverbervie,

  Inverdruie, Invergordon,

  Badachroo, Kinlochewe,

  Ballantrae, Inverkeithing,

  Cawdor, Kirkconnel,

  Plaidy, Kirkinner …

  Welsh – Scottish – over the years they became indistinguishable. The kirks or meeting-houses or schools – all identical, all derelict. Maybe in a corner a withered sheaf of wheat from a harvest thanksgiving of years ago or a fragment of a Christmas decoration across a window – relicts of abandoned rituals. Because the people we moved among were beyond that kind of celebration.

  Hardly ever cities or towns because the halls were far too dear for us. Seldom England because Teddy and Gracie were English and they believed, God help them, that the Celtic temperament was more receptive to us. And never Ireland because of me –

  I beg your pardon – The Fantastic Francis Hardy, Faith Healer, One Night Only. (A slight bow.) The man on the tatty banner. (He takes off his overcoat, selects an end chair from one of the rows, and throws the coat across it. This chair and coat will be in the same position at the opening of Part Four.)

  When we started out – oh, years and years ago – we used to have Francis Hardy, Seventh Son of a Seventh Son across the top. But it made the poster too expensive and Teddy persuaded me to settle for the modest ‘fantastic’. It was a favourite word of his and maybe in this case he employed it with accuracy. As for the Seventh Son – that was a lie. I was in fact the only child of elderly parents, Jack and Mary Hardy, born in the village of Kilmeedy in County Limerick where my father was sergeant of the guards. But that’s another story …

  The initials were convenient, weren’t they? FH – Faith Healer. Or if you were a believer in fate, you might say my life was determined the day I was christened. Perhaps if my name had been Charles Potter I would have been … Cardinal Primate; or Patsy Muldoon, the Fantastic Prime Minister. No, I don’t mock those things. By no means. I’m not respectful but I don’t mock.

  Faith healer – faith healing. A craft without an apprenticeship, a ministry without responsibility, a vocation without a ministry. How did I get involved? As a young man I chanced to flirt with it and it possessed me. No, no, no, no, no – that’s rhetoric. No; let’s say I did it … because I could do it. That’s accurate enough. And occasionally it worked – oh, yes, occasionally it did work. Oh, yes. And when it did, when I stood before a man and placed my hands on him and watched him become whole in my presence, those were nights of exultation, of consummation – no, not that I was doing good, giving relief, spreading joy – good God, no, nothing at all to do with that; but because the questions that undermined my life then became meaningless and because I knew that for those few hours I had become whole in myself, and perfect in myself, and in a manner of speaking, an aristocrat, if the term doesn’t offend you.

  But the questionings, the questionings … They began modestly enough with the pompous struttings of a young man: Am I endowed with a unique and awesome gift? – my God, yes, I’m afraid so. And I suppose the other extreme was Am I a con man? – which of course was nonsense, I think. And between those absurd exaggerations the possibilities were legion. Was it all chance? – or skill? – or illusion? – or delusion? Precisely what power did I possess? Could I summon it? When and how? Was I its servant? Did it reside in my ability to invest someone with faith in me or did I evoke from him a healing faith in himself? Could my healing be effected without faith? But faith in what? – in me? – in the possibility? – faith in faith? And is the power diminishing? You’re beginning to masquerade, aren’t you? You’re becoming a husk, aren’t you? And so it went on and on and on. Silly‚wasn’t it? Considering that nine times out of ten nothing at all happened. But they persisted right to the end, those nagging, tormenting, maddeni
ng questions that rotted my life. When I refused to confront them, they ambushed me. And when they threatened to submerge me, I silenced them with whiskey. That was efficient for a while. It got me through the job night after night. And when nothing happened or when something did happen, it helped me to accept that. But I can tell you this: there was one thing I did know, one thing I always knew right from the beginning – I always knew, drunk or sober, I always knew when nothing was going to happen.

  Teddy. Yes, let me tell you about Teddy, my manager. Cockney. Buoyant. Cheerful. Tiny nimble feet. Dressed in cord jacket, bow-tie, greasy velour hat. I never knew much about his background except that he had been born into show business. And I never understood why he stayed with me because we barely scraped a living. But he had a devotion to me and I think he had a vague sense of being associated with something … spiritual and that gave him satisfaction. If you met him in a bar he’d hold you with those brown eyes of his. ‘I’ve ’andled some of the most sensational properties in my day, dear ’eart, believe me. But I’ve threw ’em all up for Mr ’ardy ’ere, ’cos ’e is just the most fantastic fing you’ve ever seen.’ And listening to him I’d almost forget what indeed he had given up to tour with us – a Miss Mulatto and Her Three Pigeons, and a languid whippet called Rob Roy who took sounds from a set of bagpipes. Humbling precedents, if I were given to pride. And he believed all along and right up to the end that somewhere one day something ‘fantastic’ was going to happen to us. ‘Believe me, dear ’eart,’ perhaps when we had barely enough petrol to take us to the next village, ‘believe me, we are on the point of making a killing.’ He was a romantic man. And when he talked about this killing, I had a fairy-tale image of us being summoned to some royal bedroom and learned doctors being pushed aside and I’d raise the sleeping princess to life and we’d be wined and dined for seven days and seven nights and sent on our way with bags of sovereigns. But he was a man of many disguises. Perhaps he wasn’t romantic. Perhaps he knew that’s what I’d think. Perhaps he was a much more perceptive man than I knew.

  And there was Grace, my mistress. A Yorkshire woman. Controlled, correct, methodical, orderly. Who fed me, washed and ironed for me, nursed me, humoured me. Saved me, I’m sure, from drinking myself to death. Would have attempted to reform me because that was her nature, but didn’t because her instincts were wiser than her impulses. Grace Dodsmith from Scarborough – or was it Knaresborough? I don’t remember, they all sound so alike, it doesn’t matter. She never asked for marriage and for all her tidiness I don’t think she wanted marriage – her loyalty was adequate for her. And it was never a heady relationship, not even in the early days. But it lasted. A surviving relationship. And yet as we grew older together I thought it wouldn’t. Because that very virtue of hers – that mulish, unquestioning, indefatigable loyalty – settled on us like a heavy dust. And nothing I did, neither my bitterness nor my deliberate neglect nor my blatant unfaithfulness, could disturb it.

  We’d arrive in the van usually in the early evening. Pin up the poster. Arrange the chairs and benches. Place a table inside the door for the collection. Maybe sweep the place out. Gracie’d make tea on the primus stove. Teddy’d try out his amplifying system. I’d fortify myself with some drink. Then we’d wait. And wait. And as soon as darkness fell, a few would begin to sidle in –

  Penllech, Pencader,

  Dunvegan, Dunblane,

  Ben Lawers, Ben Rinnes,

  Kirkliston, Bennane …

  Teddy and his amplifying system: I fought with him about it dozens of times and finally gave in to him. Our row was over what he called ‘atmospheric background music’. When the people would have gathered Teddy would ask them – he held the microphone up to his lips and assumed a special, reverential tone – he’d ask them to stay in their seats while I moved among them. ‘Everybody’ll be attended to, dear ’eart. Relax. Take it easy. And when Mr ’ardy gets to you, no need to tell ’im wot’s bovvering you – Mr ’ardy knows. Just trust ’im. Put yourself in ’is ’ands. And God bless you all. And now, dear ’eart – Mr ‘ardy, Faif ’ealer!’ At which point I’d emerge – and at the same moment Teddy’d put on his record.

  And as I’d move from seat to seat, among the crippled and the blind and the disfigured and the deaf and the barren, a voice in the style of the thirties crooned Jerome Kern’s song:

  Lovely, never, never change,

  Keep that breathless charm,

  Won’t you please arrange it,

  ’Cause I love you

  Just the way you look tonight.

  Yes; we were always balanced somewhere between the absurd and the momentous.

  (Moving through seats) And the people who came – what is there to say about them? They were a despairing people. That they came to me, a mountebank, was a measure of their despair. They seldom spoke. Sometimes didn’t even raise their eyes. They just sat there, very still, assuming that I divined their complaints. Abject. Abased. Tight. Longing to open themselves and at the same time fearfully herding the anguish they contained against disturbance. And they hated me – oh, yes, yes, yes, they hated me. Because by coming to me they exposed, publicly acknowledged, their desperation. And even though they told themselves they were here because of the remote possibility of a cure, they knew in their hearts they had come not to be cured but for confirmation that they were incurable; not in hope but for the elimination of hope; for the removal of that final, impossible chance – that’s why they came – to seal their anguish, for the content of a finality.

  And they knew that I knew. And so they defied me to endow them with hopelessness. But I couldn’t do even that for them. And they knew I couldn’t. A peculiar situation, wasn’t it? No, not peculiar – eerie. Because occasionally, just occasionally, the miracle would happen. And then – panic – panic – panic! Their ripping apart! The explosion of their careful calculations! The sudden flooding of dreadful, hopeless hope! I often thought it would have been a kindness to them not to go near them.

  And there was another thing about them. When Teddy was introducing me, I would look at them and sometimes I got a strange sense that they weren’t there on their own behalf at all but as delegates, legati, chosen because of their audacity; and that outside, poised, mute, waiting in the half-light, were hundreds of people who held their breath while we were in the locality. And I sometimes got the impression, too, that if we hadn’t come to them, they would have sought us out.

  We were in the north of Scotland when I got word that my mother had had a heart attack. In a village called Kinlochbervie, in Sutherland, about as far north as you can go in Scotland. A picturesque little place, very quiet, very beautiful, looking across to the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides; and we were enjoying a few days rest there. Anyhow, when the news came, Teddy drove me down to Glasgow. Gracie wanted to come with me and couldn’t understand when I wouldn’t take her. But she used her incomprehension as fuel for her loyalty and sent me off with a patient smile.

  It was my first time home in twenty years. My father had retired and was living in a housing estate outside Dublin. When he opened the door he didn’t recognize me – I had to tell him who I was. Then he shook my hand as if I were an acquaintance and led me up to the bedroom.

  She was exactly as I remembered her – illness hadn’t ravaged her. Sleeping silently. Her skin smooth and girlish, her chin raised as if in expectation. Jesus, I thought, O my Jesus, what am I going to do?

  ‘She looks nice,’ he said.

  ‘Yes‚’ I said. ‘She looks great.’

  He cleared his throat.

  ‘She passed away quietly. You missed her by approximately one hour and ten minutes,’ as if he were giving evidence. And then he cried.

  And I felt such overwhelming relief that when he cried, I cried easily with him.

  Twelve years later I was back in Ireland again; with Teddy and Gracie. Things had been lean for a long time. Or as Teddy put it, ‘If we want to eat, we’ve got to open up new territory, dear ’eart. You’
ve cured ’em all ’ere. Come on – let’s go to the lush pickings of Ireland.’ And I agreed because I was as heartsick of Wales and Scotland as they were. And the whiskey wasn’t as efficient with the questions as it had been. And my father had died in the meantime. And I suppose because I always knew we would end up there. So on the last day of August we crossed from Stranraer to Larne and drove through the night to County Donegal. And there we got lodgings in a pub, a lounge bar, really, outside a village called Ballybeg, not far from Donegal Town.

  There was no sense of home-coming. I tried to simulate it but nothing stirred. Only a few memories, wan and neutral. One of my father watching me through the bars of the day-room window as I left for school – we lived in a rented house across the street. One of playing with handcuffs, slipping my hands in and out through the rings. One of my mother making bread and singing a hymn to herself: ‘Yes, heaven, yes, heaven, yes, heaven is the prize.’ And one of a group of men being shown over the barracks – I think they were inspectors from Dublin – and my father saying, ‘Certainly, gentlemen, by all means, gentlemen, anything you say, gentlemen.’ Maybe one or two other memories. They evoked nothing.

  When we came downstairs to the lounge in the pub we got caught up in the remnants of a wedding party – four young men, locals, small farmers, whose friend had just gone off on his honeymoon a few hours earlier. Good suits. White carnations. Dark, angular faces. Thick fingers and black nails. For a while they pretended to ignore us. Then Ned, the biggest of them, asked bluntly who we were and what we were. Teddy told them. ‘Dear ’eart … the … most … sensational … fantastic.’ And either at the extravagance of the introduction or because of an unease they suddenly exploded with laughter and we were embraced. We formed a big circle and drank and chatted. Gracie sang – ‘Ilkley Moor’? – something like that. Teddy entertained them with tales of our tours ranging from the outrageous to the maudlin and ended with his brown eyes moist with tears: ‘Dear ’earts, the insights it ’as given me into tortured ’umanity.’ And I told myself that I was indeed experiencing a home-coming. All irony was suspended.