Mrs Bryant Don’t you tell me gal, I hed it!
Beatie Owee! The soap’s in me eyes – Mother, towel, the towel, quickly the towel!
Mrs Bryant hands in towel to Beatie. The washing-up is probably done by now, so Mrs Bryant sits in a chair, legs apart and arms folded, thinking what else to say.
Mrs Bryant You heard that Ma Buckley hev been taken to mental hospital in Norwich? Poor ole dear. If there’s one thing I can’t abide that’s mental cases. They frighten me – they do. Can’t face ’em. I’d sooner follow a man to a churchyard than the mental hospital. That’s a terrible thing to see a person lose their reason – that ’tis. Well, I tell you what, down where I used to live, down the other side of the Hall, years ago we moved in next to an old woman. I only had Jenny and Frank then – an’ this woman she were the sweetest of people. We used to talk and do errands for each other – Oh she was a sweet ole dear. And then one afternoon I was going out to get my washin’ in and I saw her. She was standin’ in a tub o’ water up to her neck. She was! Up to her neck. An’ her eyes had that glazed, wonderin’ look and she stared straight at me she did. Straight at me. Well, do you know what? I was struck dumb. I was struck dumb wi’ shock. What wi’ her bein’ so nice all this while, the sudden comin’ on her like that in the tub fair upset me. It did! And people tell me afterwards that she’s bin goin’ in an’ out o’ hospital for years. Blust, that scare me. That scare me so much she nearly took me round the bend wi’ her.
Beatie appears from behind the curtain in her dressing-gown, a towel round her head.
Beatie There! I’m gonna hev a bath every day when I’m married.
Beatie starts rubbing her hair with towel and fiddles with radio. She finds a programme playing Mendelssohn’s Fourth Symphony, the slow movement, and stands before the mirror, listening and rubbing.
(Looking at her reflection.) Isn’t your nose a funny thing, and your ears. And your arms and your legs, aren’t they funny things – sticking out of a lump.
Mrs Bryant (switching off radio) Turn that squit off!
Beatie (turning on her mother violently) Mother! I could kill you when you do that. No wonder I don’t know anything about anything. I never heard nothing but dance music because you always turned off the classics. I never knowed anything about the news because you always switched off after the headlines. I never read any good books ’cos there was never any in the house.
Mrs Bryant What’s gotten into you now gal?
Beatie God in heaven Mother, you live in the country but you got no – no – no majesty. You spend your time among green fields, you grow flowers and you breathe fresh air and you got no majesty. Your mind’s cluttered up with nothing and you shut out the world. What kind of a life did you give me?
Mrs Bryant Blust gal, I weren’t no teacher.
Beatie But you hindered. You didn’t open one door for me. Even his mother cared more for me than what you did. Beatie, she say, Beatie, why don’t you take up evening classes and learn something other than waitressing. Yes, she say, you won’t ever regret learnin’ things. But did you care what job I took up or whether I learned things? You didn’t even think it was necessary.
Mrs Bryant I fed you. I clothed you. I took you out to the sea. What more d’you want. We’re only country folk you know. We ent got no big things here you know.
Beatie Squit! Squit! It makes no difference country or town. All the town girls I ever worked with were just like me. It makes no difference country or town – that’s squit. Do you know when I used to work at the holiday camp and I sat down with the other girls to write a letter we used to sit and discuss what we wrote about. An’ we all agreed, all on us, that we started: ‘Just a few lines to let you know’, and then we get on to the weather and then we get stuck so we write about each other and after a page an’ half of big scrawl end up: ‘Hoping this finds you as well as it leaves me.’ There! We couldn’t say any more. Thousands of things happening at this holiday camp and we couldn’t find words for them. All of us the same. Hundreds of girls and one day we’re gonna be mothers, and you still talk to me of Jimmy Skelton and the ole woman in the tub. Do you know I’ve heard that story a dozen times. A dozen times. Can’t you hear yourself Mother? Jesus, how can I bring Ronnie to this house.
Mrs Bryant Blust gal, if Ronnie don’t like us then he –
Beatie Oh, he’ll like you all right. He like people. He’d’ve loved ole Stan Mann. Ole Stan Mann would’ve understood everything Ronnie talk about. Blust! That man liked livin’. Besides, Ronnie say it’s too late for the old ’uns to learn. But he says it’s up to us young ’uns. And them of us that know hev got to teach them of us as don’t know.
Mrs Bryant I bet he hev a hard time trying to change you gal!
Beatie He’s not trying to change me Mother. You can’t change people, he say, you can only give them some love and hope they’ll take it. And he’s tryin’ to teach me and I’m tryin’ to understand – do you see that Mother?
Mrs Bryant I don’t see what that’s got to do with music though.
Beatie Oh my God! (Suddenly.) I’ll show you. (Goes off to front room to collect pick-up and a record.) Now sit you down gal and I’ll show you. Don’t start ironing or reading or nothing, just sit there and be prepared to learn something. (Appears with pick-up and switches on.) You aren’t too old, just you sit and listen. That’s the trouble you see, we ent ever prepared to learn anything, we close our minds the minute anything unfamiliar appear. I could never listen to music. I used to like some on it but then I’d lose patience, I’d go to bed in the middle of a symphony, or my mind would wander ’cos the music didn’t mean anything to me so I’d go to bed or start talking. ‘Sit back woman,’ he’d say, ‘listen to it. Let it happen to you and you’ll grow as big as the music itself.’
Mrs Bryant Blust he talk like a book.
Beatie An’ sometimes he talk as though you didn’t know where the moon or the stars was.
Beatie puts on record of Bizet’s L’Arlésienne Suite.
Now listen. This is a simple piece of music, it’s not highbrow, but it’s full of living. And that’s what he say socialism is. ‘Christ,’ he say. ‘Socialism isn’t talking all the time, it’s living, it’s singing, it’s dancing, it’s being interested in what go on around you, it’s being concerned about people and the world.’ Listen Mother. (She becomes breathless and excited.) Listen to it. It’s simple isn’t it? Can you call that squit?
Mrs Bryant I don’t say it’s all squit.
Beatie You don’t have to frown because it’s alive.
Mrs Bryant No, not all on it’s squit.
Beatie See the way the other tune comes in? Hear it? Two simple tunes, one after the other.
Mrs Bryant I aren’t saying it’s all squit.
Beatie And now listen, listen, it goes together, the two tunes together, they knit, they’re perfect. Don’t it make you want to dance? (She begins to dance a mixture of a cossack dance and a sailor’s hornpipe.)
The music becomes fast and her spirits are young and high.
Listen to that Mother. Is it difficult? Is it squit? It’s light. It make me feel light and confident and happy. God, Mother, we could all be so much more happy and alive. Wheeeee . . .
Beatie claps her hands and dances on and her mother smiles and claps her hands and –
The curtain falls.
Act Three
Two weeks have passed. It is Saturday, the day Ronnie is to arrive. One of the walls of the kitchen is now pushed aside and the front room is revealed. It is low-ceilinged, and has dark-brown wooden beams. The furniture is not typical country-farmhouse type. There may be one or two Windsor-type straight-back chairs, but for the rest it is cheap utility stuff. Two armchairs, a table, a small bamboo table, wooden chairs, a small sofa, and a swivel bookcase. There are a lot of flowers around – in pots on the window ledge and in vases on the bamboo table and swivel case.
It is three in the afternoon, the weather is cloudy – it has been raining
and is likely to start again. On the table is a spread of food (none of this will be eaten). There are cakes and biscuits on plates and glass stands. Bread and butter, butter in a dish, tomatoes, cheese, jars of pickled onions, sausage rolls, dishes of tinned fruit – it is a spread! Round the table are eight chairs. Beatie’s paintings are hanging on the wall. The room is empty because Beatie is upstairs changing and Mrs Bryant is in the kitchen. Beatie – until she descends – conducts all her conversation from upstairs.
Beatie Mother! What you on at now?
Mrs Bryant (from kitchen) I’m just puttin’ these glass cherries on the trifle.
Beatie Well come on look, he’ll be here at four thirty.
Mrs Bryant (from kitchen) Don’t you fret gal, it’s another hour ’n’ half yet, the postman hevn’t gone by. (Enters with an enormous bowl of trifle.) There! He like trifle you say?
Beatie He love it.
Mrs Bryant Well he need to ’cos there’s plenty on it. (To herself, surveying the table.) Yes, there is, there’s plenty on it. (It starts to rain.) Blust, listen to that weather.
Beatie Rainin’ again!
Mrs Bryant (looking out of window) Raining? It’s rainin’ fit to drowned you. (Sound of bus.) There go the three-o’clock.
Beatie Mother get you changed, come on, I want us ready in time.
Mrs Bryant Blust you’d think it were the bloody Prince of Egypt comin’. (Goes upstairs.)
The stage is empty again for a few seconds. People are heard taking off their macs and exclaiming at the weather from the kitchen. Enter Frank and Pearl Bryant. He is pleasant and dressed in a blue pin-striped suit, is ruddy-faced and blond-haired. An odd sort of shyness makes him treat everything as a joke. His wife is a pretty brunette, young, and ordinarily dressed in plain, flowered frock.
Frank (calling) Well, where are you all? Come on – I’m hungry.
Pearl Shut you up bor, you only just had lunch.
Frank Well I’m hungry again. (Calling.) Well, where is this article we come to see?
Beatie He ent arrived.
Frank Well, he want to hurry, ’cos I’m hungry.
Beatie You’re always hungry.
Frank What do you say he is – a strong socialist?
Beatie Yes.
Frank And a Jew boy?
Beatie Yes.
Frank (to himself) Well, that’s a queer mixture then.
Pearl (calling) I hope he don’t talk politics all the time.
Frank Have you had a letter from him yet?
Pearl Stop it Frank, you know she hevn’t heard.
Frank Well that’s a rum boy friend what don’t write. (Looks at paintings, pauses before one of them and growls.)
Pearl Watch out or it’ll bite you back.
Beatie comes down from upstairs. She is dressed in her new frock and looks happy, healthy, and radiant.
Frank Hail there, sister! I was then contemplating your masterpiece.
Beatie Well don’t contemplate too long ’cos you aren’t hevin’ it.
Frank Blust! I’d set my ole heart on it.
Pearl That’s a nice frock Beatie.
Frank Where’s the rest of our mighty clan?
Beatie Jenny and Jimmy should be here soon and Susie and Stan mightn’t come.
Frank What’s wrong wi’ them?
Beatie Don’t talk to me about it ’cos I hed enough! Susie won’t talk to Mother.
Pearl That make nearly eighteen months she hevn’t spoke.
Beatie Why ever did you and Mother fall out Pearl?
Frank ’Cos Mother’s so bloody stubborn that’s why.
Pearl Because one day she said she wanted to change her Labour Tote man, that’s why, and she asked me to do it for her. So I said all right, but it’ll take a couple of weeks; and then she get riled because she said I didn’t want to change it for her. And then I ask her why didn’t she change him herself and she say because she was too ill to go all the way to see John Clayton to tell him, and then she say to me, why, don’t you think I’m ill? And I say – I know this were tactless o’ me – but I say, no Mother, you don’t look ill to me. And she didn’t speak to me since. I only hope she don’t snub me this afternoon.
Beatie Well, she tell me a different story.
Frank Mother’s always quarrelling.
Pearl Well I reckon there ent much else she can do stuck in this ole house on her own all day. And father Bryant he don’t say too much when he’s home you know.
Frank Well blust, she hevn’t spoke to her own mother for three years, not since Granny Dykes took Jenny in when she had that illegitimate gal Daphne.
Beatie Hell! What a bloody family!
Frank A mighty clan I say.
Jimmy and Jenny Beales now enter.
Jenny Hello Frankie, hello Pearl, hello Beatie.
Frank And more of the mighty clan.
Jenny Mighty clan you say? Mighty bloody daft you mean. Well, where is he?
Frank The mysterious stranger has not yet come – we await.
Jenny Well, I aren’t waitin’ long ’cos I’m hungry.
Pearl That’s all this family of Bryants ever do is think o’ their guts.
Frank (to Jimmy) Have you formed your association yit?
Jenny What association is this?
Frank What! Hevn’t he told you?
Jimmy Shut you up Frank Bryant or you’ll get me hung.
Frank Oh, a mighty association – a mighty one! I’ll tell ye. One day you see we was all sittin’ round in the pub – Jimmy, me, Starkie, Johnny Oats, and Bonky Dawson – we’d hed a few drinks and Jimmy was feelin’ – well, he was feelin’ – you know what, the itch! He hed the itch! He started complaining about ham, ham, ham all the time. So then Bonky Dawson say, blust, he say, there must be women about who feel the same. And Starkie he say, well ’course they are, only how do you tell? And then we was all quiet a while thinkin’ on it when suddenly Jimmy says, we ought to start an association of them as need a bit now and then and we all ought to wear a badge he say, and when you see a woman wearin’ a badge you know she need a bit too.
Jimmy Now that’s enough Frank or I’ll hit you over the skull.
Frank Now, not content wi’ just that, ole Jimmy then say, and we ought to have a password to indicate how bad off you are. So listen what he suggest. He suggest you go up to any one o’ these women what’s wearin’ a badge and you say, how many lumps of sugar do you take in your tea? And if she say ‘two’ then you know she ent too badly off, but she’s willin’. But if she say ‘four’ then you know she’s in a bad a state as what you are, see?
Long pause.
Jenny He’d hev a fit if she said she took sixteen lumps though wouldn’t he?
Pause.
Pearl Where’s mother Bryant?
Beatie Uptairs changin’.
Pearl Where’s father Bryant?
Beatie Tendin’ the pigs.
Frank You’re lucky to hev my presence you know.
Beatie Oh?
Frank A little more sun and I’d’ve bin gettin’ in the harvest.
Pearl Well, what did you think of that storm last night? All that thunder ’n’ lightnin’ and it didn’t stop once.
Beatie Ronnie love it you know. He sit and watch it for bloody hours.
Frank He’s a queer article then.
Jenny He do sound a rum ’un don’t he?
Beatie Well you’ll soon see.
Jimmy Hev he got any sisters?
Beatie One married and she live not far from here.
Pearl She live in the country? A town girl? Whatever for?
Beatie Her husband make furniture by hand.
Pearl Can’t he do that in London?
Beatie Ronnie say they think London’s an inhuman place.
Jimmy So ’tis, so ’tis.
Beatie Here come father Bryant.
Mr Bryant enters. He is in denims and raincoat, tired, and stooped slightly.
Frank And this be the male head of the mighty Bryan
t clan!
Mr Bryant Blust, you’re all here soon then.
Beatie Get you changed quick Father – he’ll be along any minute look.
Mr Bryant Shut you up gal, I’ll go when I’m ready, I don’t want you pushin’ me.
Mrs Bryant comes from upstairs. She looks neat and also wears a flowered frock.
Frank And this be the female head o’ the mighty Bryant clan!
Mrs Bryant Come on Bryant, get you changed – we’re all ready look.
Mr Bryant Blust, there go the other one. Who is he this boy, that’s what I wanna know.
Mrs Bryant He’s upset! I can see it! I can tell it in his voice. Come on Bryants, what’s the matters.
Mr Bryant There ent much up wi’ me, what you on about woman. (Makes to go.) Now leave me be, you want me changed look.
Mrs Bryant If there ent much up wi’ you, I’ll marry some other.
Frank Healey bin at you Pop?
Beatie The pigs dyin’?
Mrs Bryant It’s something serious or he wouldn’t be so happy lookin’.
Mr Bryant I bin put on casual labour.
Jenny Well isn’t that a sod now.
Mrs Bryant Your guts I suppose.
Mr Bryant I tell him it’s no odds, that there’s no pain. That don’t matters Jack, he says, I aren’t hevin’ you break up completely on me. You go on casual, he say, and if you gets better you can come on to the pigs again.
Mrs Bryant That’s half pay then?
Beatie Can’t you get another job?
Frank He’ve bin wi’ them for eighteen years.
Beatie But you must be able to do something else – what about cowman again?
Mr Bryant Bill Waddington do that see. He’ve bin at it this last six ’n’ half years.
Jenny It’s no good upsettin’ yourself Beatie. It happen all the time gal.
Jimmy Well, we told her when she was at ours didn’t we.
Mrs Bryant (to Mr Bryant) All right, get you on up, there ent nothin’ we can do. We’ll worry on it later. We always manage. It’s gettin’ late look.
Mr Bryant Can he swim? ’Cos he bloody need to. It’s rainin’ fit to drowned you. (Goes off upstairs.)
Roots (Modern Plays) Page 6