by Tanya Ronder
He is screaming through the door.
The car door slams, CLARENCE comes running downstairs with the bags from the toilet and a bedraggled Phoebe. SERENA rushes in with BLUNDHILDE, their arms full of RACHEL’s luggage. SERENA wears a white furry coat, BLUNDHILDE wears RACHEL’s bear ears, the space seems peopled with bears.
SERENA. What are you doing, where’s Rache?
GORDON. Phoebe’s in the room, I’ve got her trapped.
CLARENCE. I’ve found Phoebe, Gordon, she was under the bath – look.
BLUNDHILDE tries to alert GORDON.
BLUNDHILDE. Did you see Rachel? She was in her new outfit, like a little polar bear…
From inside the room, RACHEL’s voice.
RACHEL (off). Mum?
SERENA. Jesus, Rache?
SERENA runs across, pushes GORDON. She speaks to RACHEL through the door.
I’m here, darling, I’m just letting you out. Clarence, take the knife, hold your brother.
SERENA reassures RACHEL.
Mummy’s here, I’m just here.
Once CLARENCE has GORDON, she unbolts the door revealing RACHEL, terrified, in a head-to-foot polar bear outfit.
It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay.
GORDON sinks down.
GORDON. Rachel.
End of Scene.
Scene Two
Sunday evening
GORDON is on the daybed with a blanket. The mood is utterly changed from the high octane of before. CLARENCE and BLUNDHILDE watch GORDON.
Full long beat. When he speaks he speaks quietly.
GORDON. Have you ever seen a hedgehog, Blundhilde?
BLUNDHILDE. No.
GORDON. There used to be thirty-four million on this island. D’you remember the one we found in the park with Dad?
CLARENCE. Yeah.
GORDON. I carried it home. Mum wouldn’t let us keep it ’cause of the fleas so we took it back. You ever been to Pompeii?
BLUNDHILDE. No.
CLARENCE. No.
GORDON. Serena and I had a lovely time on Capri when she was pregnant…
Beat.
Pompeii was lively, not Lexuses and laser shows, but you get the feeling they were living. ‘When I grow up I’m going to have an electric razor and buy a car magazine each week’, that’s what I used to want. Not much. We cling on for that. A home, flagon of wine on the porch, cobbled streets and one stone-benched whorehouse. They used to think that that eruption surprised the town but it didn’t, they knew it was coming, it rumbled for days, they saw the smoke but they didn’t leave. A few elite did, relocate, to homes on the hills. Do you think you’d go, when the alarm sounds, a noise you’d not heard before, would you run through the dark not knowing where you were running to?
Beat.
I can’t hear them any more, can you?
He means SERENA and RACHEL. They can’t.
Beat. SERENA comes out the room.
SERENA. Asleep.
CLARENCE. Okay?
SERENA. Full of questions. ‘Why does Daddy hate Phoebe?’
GORDON. Would you mind putting that light out, Blundhilde –it’s glaring at the wall for no reason.
She does.
Are there always this many on?
BLUNDHILDE. Yeah.
SERENA speaks quietly to CLARENCE.
SERENA. Everything okay, Clarence, calm?
BLUNDHILDE. My mum could be a really good person to talk to, Serena.
GORDON. I am all right, Serena.
He speaks to CLARENCE.
Do you remember the cameras with cartridge films?
CLARENCE. Yeah.
GORDON. Mum lent me hers for my first school trip, to the Isle of Wight, I was euphoric – what should I photograph, Charlie chucking up on the bus or save them all for the beach? Such decisions, such treasured, blurred results. Rache has thousands of pictures on her iPad mini. She gets so irritated when the thing updates. She’d have liked Mum’s camera.
A text comes in on BLUNDHILDE’s phone.
In Pompeii they just made those pictures on the walls.
Something bangs against the window, they all jump except for BLUNDHILDE.
SERENA. What the hell was that?
CLARENCE. Blimey.
SERENA. A stick?
Another bang.
Or stone! Not more breaking glass…
Something splats on the pane.
CLARENCE. I might be wrong but that looks like egg to me.
Splat.
GORDON. Two eggs.
Splat.
Three.
SERENA (to CLARENCE). You brought eggs.
CLARENCE. Yes, but they’re here.
Splat.
GORDON. Four.
SERENA goes to the door to confront whoever’s out there, BLUNDHILDE runs to block her.
BLUNDHILDE. It’s my girlfriend.
News to SERENA.
Ex-girlfriend, since yesterday.
Splat, another egg on the window.
GORDON. Five.
Splat.
Six, she’s a good shot.
SERENA. Why is your ex-girlfriend throwing eggs at our house?
Another splat on the window.
GORDON. Seven.
SERENA. She’ll wake Rachel!
Splat.
GORDON. Eight.
BLUNDHILDE opens the door.
BLUNDHILDE. Pepper Anne, stop! Pepper Anne?
There’s a short pause, no answer, so she closes the door, then another splat.
GORDON. Nine.
CLARENCE. Are you all right, Gord?
SERENA. You cannot bring your domestics in to our home-life like this!
SERENA goes to the door again, BLUNDHILDE blocks her.
BLUNDHILDE. It won’t work.
Splat.
SERENA. Have you texted or tweeted about the Phoebe incident?
BLUNDHILDE. No, I haven’t.
Splat.
GORDON. Eleven.
BLUNDHILDE throws the door open and shouts.
BLUNDHILDE. Pepper Anne, give it a break, I mean it, it’s not good timing!
SERENA marches over and shouts out.
SERENA. Fucking go away, you anarchists!
BLUNDHILDE. One anarchist, one person out there, twenty-three years old.
BLUNDHILDE closes the door.
SERENA. What is going on?
BLUNDHILDE. Okay, maybe it’s not the best timing, but.
BLUNDHILDE gets out the papers she hid earlier.
GORDON. Where did you find that document?
BLUNDHILDE. It was on the bed.
SERENA. Whose bed, our bed?
BLUNDHILDE. Your bag was open.
SERENA. Why did you take something from our room? Oh my god.
BLUNDHILDE. What? What?
SERENA. Have you – ?
BLUNDHILDE. Had sex with Gordon? You are more ridiculous than I thought.
SERENA. What did you just say?
CLARENCE. That was unlikely though, to be fair…
SERENA. Oh, just you tell me I’m ridiculous too, why don’t you, Clarence?
GORDON. He’s saying I’m ridiculous, not you.
Another egg on the window.
There’s the twelfth.
CLARENCE. Let’s hope she’s vegan.
BLUNDHILDE. She is.
CLARENCE. And stops at two boxes.
BLUNDHILDE holds the paper.
BLUNDHILDE. You’re my employers and, like, my London family but, this is so much worse than your husband having a stupid affair with anyone.
SERENA. D’you know what, you have undermined me since you damn well stepped into this house, telling me every day how I’m running things the wrong way.
BLUNDHILDE. I didn’t mean to undermine you…
SERENA. Then you slip in that you’ve been in to our bedroom and found a letter and when I remark that that’s a bit odd, you insult me. Well, you know what, you can open that door right up again and as
k your girlfriend –
CLARENCE. Ex-girlfriend.
SERENA. See if Pepper Anne will bail you out because I don’t want you sleeping –
GORDON. Serena –
SERENA. ONE MORE NIGHT UNDER OUR ROOF.
GORDON. Um, hang on…
SERENA. My husband has some kind of episode, terrorises our seven-year-old, my ex-drug-addict brother-in-law is my new best friend because there’s no one else around, we have an open house tomorrow with twenty-two viewings booked and she sets her militant ex-girlfriend up to egg our home, then tells me I’m fucking ridiculous.
CLARENCE. Serena…
GORDON. We can’t just throw Blundhilde out, Serena.
SERENA. Side with her, why don’t you, gentleman? Who smuggled an illegal pet in here, causing some fracture in your mind to gape open like that, who’s going to clean her girlfriend’s eggs off the windows, and who is in the best position to judge right now whether she should stay or go, me, or you, coming on all coherent.
BLUNDHILDE. Fine.
GORDON. Blundhilde…
BLUNDHILDE. That’s fine, I don’t care, but I’m not leaving till you’ve told them what you’ve done.
She addresses GORDON.
CLARENCE. Easy, Blundhilde.
BLUNDHILDE. What you’re doing to Rachel and me and everyone. How much did you pay, five million like they all spend on that shit, or a seat on the board promised to your Secretary of State bitch.
SERENA. Give me that.
SERENA tries to get the House of Commons-headed paper.
What do you mean ‘doing to Rache’?
BLUNDHILDE. Tell her, tell them.
SERENA. Gordon?
BLUNDHILDE. Or I will.
She starts to read.
‘A person has the right to use deep-level land in any way for the purposes of exploiting – ’
GORDON cuts her off.
GORDON. Okay, all it is, is part of this new bill I’ve been working on, with the Secretary of State, which the parent company asked for, which means we have to extract UK petroleum and shale gas.
BLUNDHILDE. And sell it for as much as possible, for as long as possible.
SERENA. A bill?
GORDON. So it’ll be law. To aid economic recovery, obviously.
SERENA. Right.
BLUNDHILDE. Obviously. Like making your stupid, filthy money is a built-in part of being human or something.
SERENA. Blundhilde.
BLUNDHILDE. He has basically made a document ruining Rachel’s future, forcing Britain to pump tonnes of water which there isn’t enough of to get new fossil fuels which we don’t need to sell and burn and heat the world. Shit. I save everything, the tiniest bit of plastic, I save, I have piles of mint wrappers in my room waiting to come down, I pick toilet rolls out from the upstairs bin. I break my brains working out where to put the lunch box when food is stuck to the sides, do coffee cups go in plastic or paper, what do I do with hardback notebooks when the cardboard has that layer of plastic on, receipts with staples, cling film with sticky labels, kitchen roll, padded envelopes…
She goes to the kitchen, gets the normal bin.
I bet this is full of stuff you’ve not separated.
SERENA. Don’t get the bins out, Blundhilde…
BLUNDHILDE. Look, that’s pure plastic, these shouldn’t be in here, you have to put them in there!
SERENA. Stop it, Blundhilde, put the bins away.
BLUNDHILDE. I won’t stop.
They have an in-out fight over stuff from the bin. CLARENCE tries to remind them that they’ll wake
RACHEL. CLARENCE. Girls, girls, Rachel…
SERENA. Give me that, for God’s sake…
BLUNDHILDE. What’s this doing here?
SERENA. It came wrapped around flowers, there’s metal inside.
BLUNDHILDE. So pull the middle out!
SERENA. Like I’m some kind of elf!
BLUNDHILDE. The borough you’re moving to?
SERENA. May be moving to.
BLUNDHILDE. Doesn’t collect mixed plastics, so I’m thinking, where will everything go? Like this, or these packs of seaweed, soft packs inside hard plastic inside big wrapping…
SERENA. Problem solved, you won’t be coming with us.
BLUNDHILDE. In Switzerland the customers started leaving toothpaste boxes on supermarket floors, that’s problem solving!
BLUNDHILDE finds some pizza in the wrong bin.
Why’s this in here?
SERENA. That’s so unhygienic…
BLUNDHILDE. I’m nineteen and I think about this all day long. Hummus pots need hot water to rinse properly but will they recycle it if it’s not clean? But what about the petrol for the truck that picks the recycling up…? Do iPads use more energy than paper? Is it better to rinse your cup or put it in the dishwasher? Which waits, on, everything waits, like semi-erect penises everywhere you look in case somebody might want to use something, day or night. I was so excited about coming to London, but you, you –
She addresses GORDON.
Fat, sweaty, white man –
CLARENCE. All right, Blundhilde –
BLUNDHILDE. Are shitting on our lives, you greedy fucking vandal.
SERENA. You cannot speak to your employers that way.
BLUNDHILDE. As you made perfectly clear, Serena, you are not my employers any more.
GORDON answers gently.
GORDON. Blundhilde, how did you get here, did you walk, or sail, or thumb a lift with a bird?
BLUNDHILDE. It was my first ever flight.
GORDON. And what fueled that plane, sunlight, was it, steam?
BLUNDHILDE. I loved it. I wish I could be a pilot. I wish I could spend money in Top Shop and fly all over the world, how cool would that be. I wish I didn’t carry around bamboo utensils in a recycled pouch.
Another splat at the window.
CLARENCE. She’s opened another box.
BLUNDHILDE throws the door open.
BLUNDHILDE. Pepper Anne, fuck off and go home, you’re a bully. I’ve just lost my job and I’m telling him, okay, I’m telling him.
She comes back.
In Iceland it’s easy to feel the world will go on for ever, with its sunshine which hides its teeth sometimes as clouds sweep over, but it’s incorrect.
SERENA. You’re not going to save the world with recycling, Blundhilde.
BLUNDHILDE. What am I meant to do? I can’t put a windmill on my land because I don’t have any land.
GORDON. You know the tower down from the South Bank with those three wind arms up top, know how long they lasted? Three days, then they turned the arms off ’cause every time they went round the floors shook, books fell off shelves, ketchup off tables.
BLUNDHILDE. You expect a baby to walk straight off, then stand and laugh when it falls?
Half beat.
You call shale, ‘natural’ gas, like ripping up something that has nestled at the centre of the earth since the dinosaurs with such force that it breaks all the ground and means you can set fire to the water –
GORDON. That wasn’t us, that was the US –
BLUNDHILDE. Is natural.
GORDON. That tower would be uninhabitable if we’d not stepped in.
BLUNDHILDE. You think living as we live is the only habitable? You and the other companies make so much money from keeping it like that.
GORDON. Come on, Blundhilde, do you blame the kids when their parents make them that way?
BLUNDHILDE. Are you calling yourself a kid, Gordon? You’re not, you’re a necrophiliac – is that the right word?
CLARENCE. Yeah.
BLUNDHILDE. Screwing a dying world.
SERENA. Christ.
Half beat.
GORDON. You think it’s just a matter of a few white blokes deciding to be decent?
BLUNDHILDE. Try it, your kid’s bear might stop haunting you.
She goes upstairs.
Beat.
CLARENCE. I’ll see if she needs a hand.
GORDON. Not see if your brother does.
CLARENCE. Do you need a hand?
Beat.
CLARENCE goes upstairs.
GORDON. Do you mind if I step outside?
SERENA. You mean you want a cigarette.
GORDON is sheepish.
Open a window.
GORDON. Pepper Anne might still be there…
Beat.
SERENA. I take it this law is bad for global warming?
GORDON. Yeah.
SERENA. Why’s the Government doing it?
GORDON. Money. Shale’s abundant and from British soil… And all their pensions are invested in fossil fuels.
SERENA. Blundhilde might tell the papers.
GORDON. Well, it’s their pensions too.
Beat.
I can’t believe earlier. I don’t know how to…
Half beat.
My sleep’s poison. I’m swimming in this river of treacly stuff, like the bile at the end of diarrhoea, spilling from a crack in this mountain that I need to try and mend. Rache has her green spangly goggles on. I try to swim to her but there are things in my way. She can’t see through her goggles. The things I’m passing are corpses, humans and bears. With plastic eyes. On the banks, up high, are daisies, tourists taking pictures and hedgehogs. Then I see Rache is holding Phoebe, trying to swim. ‘Rache!’, I yell, ‘drop her, let go of the bear!’ She still can’t see but Phoebe looks at me. Not caring if she takes her down.
CLARENCE carries BLUNDHILDE’s suitcase downstairs. BLUNDHILDE brings Iggie in his cage. She goes to the playroom.
SERENA. She’s sleeping, Blundhilde…
BLUNDHILDE goes in anyway.
CLARENCE. I hope you’re happy with the way the house is looking.
SERENA. Sorry, Clarence, I’ve not even said – it’s really smart, thank you.
CLARENCE. I’m pleased you’re pleased. I told Gordon that this job is my gift to you.
SERENA. Oh, that’s very generous…
CLARENCE. It’s just the paint. I’d like to be able to offer that too but, if I pick up the tab for that, it capsizes my finances.
GORDON. Knock it off your rehab bill.
SERENA. Gord.
Half beat.
CLARENCE. To be honest, the paint’s not even that good. Nice idea being water-based, but there’s been no investment in those technologies so you end up having to re-paint every couple of years, fine for us but not so good for the punters, ’specially with kids. They put their hand out to steady themselves and there’s a shiny patch for ever.