An assortment of clobber lies around: papers and washing, coats and basins, a tin wash-tub with shirts and underwear to be cleaned, Tilley lamps and Primus stoves. Washing hangs on a line in the room. It is September.
Jenny Beales is by the sink washing up. She is singing a recent pop song. She is short, fat and friendly, and wears glasses. A child’s voice is heard from the bedroom crying ‘Sweet, Mamma, sweet.’
Jenny (good-naturedly) Shut you up Daphne and get you to sleep now. (Moves to get a dishcloth.)
Child’s voice Daphy wan’ sweet, sweet, sweet.
Jenny (going to cupboard to get sweet) My word child, Father come home and find you awake he’ll be after you. (Disappears to bedroom with sweet.) There – now sleep, gal, don’t wan’ you grumpy wi’ me in the mornin’.
Enter Jimmy Beales. Also short, chubby, blond though hardly any hair left, ruddy complexion. He is a garage mechanic. Wears blue dungarees and an army pack slung over his shoulder. He wheels his bike in and lays it by the wall. Seems to be in some sort of pain – around his back. Jenny returns.
Waas matter wi’ you then?
Jimmy I don’ know gal. There’s a pain in my guts and one a’tween my shoulder blades I can hardly stand up.
Jenny Sit you down then an’ I’ll git you your supper on the table.
Jimmy Blust gal! I can’t eat yit.
Jimmy picks up a pillow from somewhere and lies down on the sofa holding pillow to stomach. Jenny watches him a while.
Jenny Don’t you know what ’tis yit?
Jimmy Well, how should I know what ’tis.
Jenny I told Mother about the pain and she says it’s indigestion.
Jimmy What the hell’s indigestion doin’ a’tween my shoulder blades then?
Jenny She say some people get indigestion so bad it go right through their stomach to the back.
Jimmy Don’t be daft.
Jenny That’s what I say. Blust Mother, I say, you don’t git indigestion in the back. Don’t you tell me, she say, I hed it!
Jimmy What hevn’t she hed.
Jenny returns to washing up while Jimmy struggles a while on the sofa. Jenny hums. No word. Then –
Jenny Who d’you see today?
Jimmy Only Doctor Gallagher.
Jenny (wheeling round) You see who?
Jimmy Gallagher. His wife driv him up in the ole Armstrong.
Jenny Well I go t’hell if that ent a rum thing.
Jimmy (rising and going to table; pain has eased) What’s that then?
Jenny (moving to get him supper from oven) We was down at the whist drive in the village and that Judy Maitland say he were dead. ’Cos you know he’ve hed a cancer this last year and they don’t give him no longer’n three weeks don’t you?
Jimmy Ole crows. They don’ wan’ nothin’ less than a death to wake them up.
Jenny No. No longer’n three weeks.
Girl’s voice (off) Yoo-hoo! Yoo-hoo!
Jimmy There’s your sister.
Jenny That’s her.
Girl’s voice (off) Yoo-hoo! Anyone home?
Jenny (calling) Come you on in gal, don’t you worry about yoo-hoo.
Enter Beatie Bryant, an ample, blonde, healthy-faced young woman of twenty-two years. She is carrying a case.
Jimmy Here she is.
Jenny (with reserve, but pleased) Hello, Beatrice – how are you?
Beatie (with reserve, but pleased) Hello, Jenny – how are you? What’s that lovely smell I smell?
Jenny Onions for supper and bread for the harvest festival.
Beatie Watcha Jimmy Beales, how you doin’ bor?
Jimmy Not so bad gal, how’s yourself?
Beatie All right you know. When you comin’ to London again for a football match?
Jimmy O blust gal, I don’ wanna go to any more o’ those things. Ole father Bryant was there in the middle of that crowd and he turn around an’ he say (imitating), ‘Stop you apushin’ there,’ he say, ‘stop you a-pushin’.’
Jenny Where’s Ronnie?
Beatie He’s comin’ down at the end of two weeks.
Jimmy Ent you married yit?
Beatie No.
Jimmy You wanna hurry then gal, a long engagement don’t do the ole legs any good.
Jenny Now shut you up Jimmy Beales and get that food down you. Every time you talk, look, you miss a mouthful! That’s why you complain of pain in your shoulder blades.
Beatie You bin hevin’ pains then Jimmy?
Jimmy Blust yes! Right a’tween my shoulder blades.
Jenny Mother says it’s indigestion.
Beatie What the hell’s indigestion doin’ a’tween his shoulder blades?
Jenny Mother reckon some people get indigestion so bad it go right through their stomach to the back.
Beatie Don’t talk daft!
Jenny That’s what I say. Blust Mother, I say, you don’t git indigestion in the back. Don’t you tell me, she say, I hed it!
Beatie What hevn’t she hed. How is she?
Jenny Still the same you know. How long you staying this time?
Beatie Two days here – two weeks at home.
Jenny Hungry gal?
Beatie Watcha got?
Jenny Watcha see.
Beatie Liver? I’ll hev it!
Beatie makes herself at home. Nearby is a pile of comics. She picks one up and reads.
Jenny We got some ice cream after.
Beatie (absorbed) Yearp.
Jenny Look at her. No sooner she’s in than she’s at them ole comics. You still read them ole things?
Jimmy She don’t change much do she?
Beatie Funny that! Soon ever I’m home again I’m like I always was – it don’ even seem I bin away. I do the same lazy things an’ I talk the same. Funny that!
Jenny What do Ronnie say to it?
Beatie He ent never bin here, not in the three years I know him so he don’t even know. But I’ll tell you. (She jumps up and moves around as she talks.) I used to read the comics he bought for his nephews and he used to get riled –
Now Beatie begins to quote Ronnie, and when she does she imitates him so well in both manner and intonation that in fact as the play progresses we see a picture of him through her.
‘Christ, woman, what can they give you that you can be so absorbed?’ So you know what I used to do? I used to get a copy of the Manchester Guardian and sit with that wide open – and a comic behind!
Jimmy Manchester Guardian? Blimey Joe – he don’ believe in hevin’ much fun then?
Beatie That’s what I used to tell him. ‘Fun?’ he say. ‘Fun? Playing an instrument is fun, painting is fun, reading a book is fun, talking with friends is fun – but a comic? A comic? for a young woman of twenty-two?’
Jenny (handing out meal and sitting down herself) He sound a queer bor to me. Sit you down and eat gal.
Beatie (enthusiastically) He’s alive though.
Jimmy Alive? Alive you say? What’s alive about someone who can’t read a comic? What’s alive about a person that reads books and looks at paintings and listens to classical music?
There is a silence at this, as though the question answers itself – reluctantly.
Well, it’s all right for some I suppose.
Beatie And then he’d sneak the comic away from me and read it his-self!
Jenny Oh, he didn’t really mind then?
Beatie No – ’cos sometimes I read books as well. ‘There’s nothing wrong with comics,’ he’d cry – he stand up on a chair when he want to preach but don’t wanna sound too dramatic.
Jimmy Eh?
Beatie Like this, look. (Stands on a chair.) ‘There’s nothing wrong with comics only there’s something wrong with comics all the time. There’s nothing wrong with football, only there’s something wrong with only football. There’s nothing wrong with rock ’n’ rolling, only God preserve me from the girl that can do nothing else!’ (She sits down and then stands up again, remembering something else.) Oh yes, ‘and there�
�s nothing wrong with talking about the weather, only don’t talk to me about it!’ (Sits down.)
Jimmy and Jenny look at each other as though she, and no doubt Ronnie, is a little barmy. Jimmy rises and begins to strap on boots and gaiters ready for going out to an allotment.
Jenny He never really row with you then?
Beatie We used to. There was a time when he handled all official things for me you know. Once I was in between jobs and I didn’t think to ask for my unemployment benefit. He told me to. But when I asked they told me I was short on stamps and so I wasn’t entitled to benefit. I didn’t know what to say but he did. He went up and argued for me – he’s just like his mother, she argues with everyone – and I got it. I didn’t know how to talk see, it was all foreign to me. Think of it! An English girl born and bred and I couldn’t talk the language – except for to buy food and clothes. And so sometimes when he were in a black mood he’d start on me. ‘What can you talk of?’ he’d ask. ‘Go on, pick a subject. Talk. Use the language. Do you know what language is?’ Well, I’d never thought before – hev you? – it’s automatic to you isn’t it, like walking? ‘Well, language is words,’ he’d say, as though he were telling me a secret. ‘It’s bridges, so that you can get safely from one place to another. And the more bridges you know about the more places you can see!’ (To Jimmy.) And do you know what happens when you can see a place but you don’t know where the bridge is?
Jimmy (angrily) Blust gal, what the hell are you on about.
Beatie Exactly! You see, you hev a row! Still, rows is all right. I like a row. So then he’d say: ‘Bridges! bridges! bridges! Use your bridges woman. It took thousands of years to build them, use them!’ And that riled me. ‘Blust your bridges,’ I’d say. ‘Blust you and your bridges – I want a row.’ Then he’d grin at me. ‘You want a row?’ he’d ask. ‘No bridges this time?’ ‘No bridges,’ I’d say – and we’d row. Sometimes he hurt me but then, slowly, he’d build the bridge up for me – and then we’d make love! (Innocently continues her meal.)
Jenny You’d what, did you say?
Beatie Make love. Love in the afternoon gal. Ever had it? It’s the only time for it. Go out or entertain in the evenings; sleep at night, study, work and chores in the mornings; but love – alert and fresh, when you got most energy – love in the afternoon.
Jimmy I suppose you take time off from work every afternoon to do it?
Beatie I’m talking about weekends and holidays – daft.
Jenny Oh, Beatie, go on wi’ you!
Beatie Well, go t’hell Jenny Beales, you’re blushin’. Ent you never had love in the afternoon? Ask Jimmy then.
Jenny (rising to get sweet) Shut you up gal and get on wi’ your ice cream. It’s strawberry flavour. Want some more James?
Jimmy (taking it in the middle of lacing up boots) Yes please, vanilla please. (Eating.) Good cream ent it? Made from the white milk of a Jersey cow.
Beatie This is good too – made from pink milk ent it?
Pause.
Jimmy Yearp! (Pause.) Come from a pink cow!
Pause. They are all enjoying the cream.
Jenny (eating) You remember Dickie Smart, Beatie?
Beatie (eating) Who?
Jenny (eating) We had a drink wi’ him in the Storks when you was down last.
Beatie (eating) Yearp.
Jenny (eating) Well, he got gored by a bull last Thursday. His left ear was nearly off, his knee were gored, his ribs bruised, and the ligaments of his legs torn.
Pause as they finish eating.
Beatie (euphemistically) He had a rough time then!
Jenny Yearp. (To Jimmy.) You off now?
Jimmy Mm.
Jenny collects dishes.
Beatie Still got your allotment Jimmy?
Jimmy Yearp.
Beatie Bit heavy-going this weather.
Jimmy That ent too bad just yit – few more weeks an’ the old mowld’ll cling.
Beatie Watcha got this year?
Jimmy Had spuds, carrots, cabbages, you know. Beetroot, lettuces, onions, and peas. But me runners let me down this year though.
Jenny I don’t go much on them old things.
Beatie You got a fair owle turn then?
Jimmy Yearp.
Jimmy starts to sharpen a reap hook.
Beatie (jumping up) I’ll help you wash.
Jenny That’s all right gal.
Beatie Where’s the cloth?
Jenny Here ’tis.
Beatie helps collect dishes from table and proceeds to help wash up. This is a silence that needs organising. Throughout the play there is no sign of intense living from any of the characters – Beatie’s bursts are the exception. They continue in a routine rural manner. The day comes, one sleeps at night, there is always the winter, the spring, the autumn, and the summer – little amazes them. They talk in fits and starts mainly as a sort of gossip, and they talk quickly too, enacting as though for an audience what they say. Their sense of humour is keen and dry. They show no affection for each other – though this does not mean they would not be upset were one of them to die. The silences are important – as important as the way they speak, if we are to know them.
Jenny What about that strike in London? Waas London like wi’out the buses?
Beatie Lovely! No noise – and the streets, you should see the streets, flowing with people – the city looks human.
Jimmy They wanna call us Territorials out – we’d soon break the strike.
Beatie That’s a soft thing for a worker to say for his mates.
Jimmy Soft be buggered, soft you say? What they earnin’ those busmen, what they earnin’? And what’s the farm worker’s wage? Do you know it gal?
Beatie Well, let the farm workers go on strike too then! It don’t help a farm labourer if a busman don’t go on strike do it now?
Jenny You know they’ve got a rise though. Father Bryant’s go up by six and six a week as a pigman, and Frank goes up seven ’n’ six a week for driving a tractor.
Jimmy But you watch the Hall sack some on ’em.
Jenny Thaas true Beatie. They’re such sods, honest to God they are. Every time there’s bin a rise someone gets sacked. Without fail. You watch it – you ask father Bryant when you get home, ask him who’s bin sacked since the rise.
Beatie One person they ’ont sack is him though. They ’ont find many men’d tend to pigs seven days a week and stay up the hours he do.
Jenny Bloody fool! (Pause.) Did Jimmy tell you he’ve bin chosen for the Territorials’ Jubilee in London this year?
Beatie What’s this then? What’ll you do there?
Jimmy Demonstrate and parade wi’ arms and such like.
Beatie Won’t do you any good.
Jimmy Don’t you reckon? Gotta show we can defend the country you know. Demonstrate arms and you prevent war.
Beatie (she has finished wiping up) Won’t demonstrate anything bor. (Goes to undo her case.) Present for the house! Have a hydrogen bomb fall on you and you’ll find them things silly in your hands. (Searches for other parcels.)
Jimmy So you say gal? So you say? That’ll frighten them other buggers though.
Beatie Frighten yourself y’mean. (Finds parcels.) Presents for the kid.
Jimmy And what do you know about this all of a sudden?
Jenny (revealing a tablecloth) Thank you very much Beatie. Just what I need.
Beatie You’re not interested in defending your country Jimmy, you just enjoy playing soldiers.
Jimmy What did I do in the last war then – sing in the trenches?
Beatie (explaining – not trying to get one over on him) Ever heard of Chaucer, Jimmy?
Jimmy No.
Beatie Do you know the MP for this constituency?
Jimmy What you drivin’ at gal – don’t give me no riddles.
Beatie Do you know how the British Trade Union Movement started? And do you believe in strike action?
Jimmy No to both those.
Beatie What
you goin’ to war to defend then?
Jimmy (he is annoyed now) Beatie – you bin away from us a long time now – you got a boy who’s educated an’ that and he’s taught you a lot maybe. But don’t you come pushin’ ideas across at us – we’re all right as we are. You can come when you like an’ welcome but don’t bring no discussion of politics in the house wi’ you ’cos that’ll only cause trouble. I’m telling you. (He goes off.)
Jenny Blust gal, if you hevn’t touched him on a sore spot. He live for them Territorials he do – that’s half his life.
Beatie (she is upset now) What’s he afraid of talking for?
Jenny He ent afraid of talking Beatie – blust he can do that, gal.
Beatie But not talk, not really talk, not use bridges. I sit with Ronnie and his friends sometimes and I listen to them talk about things and you know I’ve never heard half of the words before.
Jenny Don’t he tell you what they mean?
Beatie I get annoyed when he keep tellin’ me – and he want me to ask. (Imitates him half-heartedly now.) ‘Always ask, people love to tell you what they know, always ask and people will respect you.’
Jenny And do you?
Beatie No! I don’t! An’ you know why? Because I’m stubborn, I’m like Mother, I’m stubborn. Somehow I just can’t bring myself to ask, and you know what? I go mad when I listen to them. As soon as they start to talk about things I don’t know about or I can’t understand I get mad. They sit there, casually talking, and suddenly they turn on you, abrupt. ‘Don’t you think?’ they say. Like at school, pick on you and ask a question you ent ready for. Sometimes I don’t say anything, sometimes I go to bed or leave the room. Like Jimmy – just like Jimmy.
Jenny And what do Ronnie say to that then?
Beatie He get mad too. ‘Why don’t you ask me woman, for God’s sake why don’t you ask me? Aren’t I dying to tell you about things? Only ask!’
Jenny And he’s goin’ to marry you?
Beatie Why not?
Jenny Well I’m sorry gal, you mustn’t mind me saying this, but it don’t seem to me like you two got much in common.
Beatie (loudly) It’s not true! We’re in love!
Jenny Well, you know.
Roots (Modern Plays) Page 2