Frank Roots, gal? What do you mean, roots?
Beatie (impatiently) Roots, roots, roots! Christ, Frankie, you’re in the fields all day, you should know about growing things. Roots! The things you come from, the things that feed you. The things that make you proud of yourself – roots!
Mr Bryant You got a family ent you?
Beatie I am not talking about family roots – I mean – the – I mean – Look! Ever since it begun the world’s bin growin’ hasn’t it? Things hev happened, things have bin discovered, people have bin thinking and improving and inventing but what do we know about it all?
Jimmy What is she on about?
Beatie (various interjections) What do you mean, what am I on about? I’m talking! Listen to me! I’m tellin’ you that the world’s bin growing for two thousand years and we hevn’t noticed it. I’m telling you that we don’t know what we are or where we come from. I’m telling you something’s cut us off from the beginning. I’m telling you we’ve got no roots. Blimey Joe! We’ve all got large allotments, we all grow things around us so we should know about roots. You know how to keep your flowers alive don’t you Mother? Jimmy – you know how to keep the roots of your veges strong and healthy. It’s not only the corn that need strong roots, you know, it’s us too. But what’ve we got? Go on, tell me, what’ve we got? We don’t know where we push up from and we don’t bother neither.
Pearl Well, I aren’t grumbling.
Beatie You say you aren’t – oh yes, you say so, but look at you. What’ve you done since you come in? Hev you said anythin’? I mean really said or done anything to show you’re alive? Alive! Blust, what do it mean? Do you know what it mean? Any of you? Shall I tell you what Susie said when I went and saw her? She say she don’t care if that ole atom bomb drop and she die – that’s what she say. And you know why she say it? I’ll tell you why, because if she had to care she’d have to do something about it and she find that too much effort. Yes she do. She can’t be bothered – she’s too bored with it all. That’s what we all are – we’re all too bored.
Mrs Bryant Blust woman – bored you say, bored? You say Susie’s bored, with a radio and television an’ that? I go t’hell if she’s bored!
Beatie Oh yes, we turn on a radio or a TV set maybe, or we go to the pictures – if them’s love stories or gangsters – but isn’t that the easiest way out? Anything so long as we don’t have to make an effort. Well, am I right? You know I’m right. Education ent only books and music – it’s asking questions, all the time. There are millions of us, all over the country, and no one, not one of us, is asking questions, we’re all taking the easiest way out. Everyone I ever worked with took the easiest way out. We don’t fight for anything, we’re so mentally lazy we might as well be dead. Blust, we are dead! And you know what Ronnie say sometimes? He say it serves us right! That’s what he say – it’s our own bloody fault!
Jimmy So that’s us summed up then – so we know where we are then!
Mrs Bryant Well if he don’t reckon we count nor nothin’, then it’s as well he didn’t come. There! It’s as well he didn’t come.
Beatie Oh, he thinks we count all right – living in mystic communion with nature. Living in mystic bloody communion with nature (indeed). But us count? Count Mother? I wonder. Do we? Do you think we really count? You don’ wanna take any notice of what them ole papers say about the workers bein’ all-important these days – that’s all squit! ’Cos we aren’t. Do you think when the really talented people in the country get to work they get to work for us? Hell if they do! Do you think they don’t know we ’ont make the effort? The ‘I’ll wait for you in the heavens blue’ writers don’t write thinkin’ we can understand, nor the painters don’t paint expecting us to be interested – that they don’t, nor don’t the composers give out music thinking we can appreciate it. ‘Blust,’ they say, ‘the masses is too stupid for us to come down to them. Blust,’ they say, ‘if they don’t make no effort why should we bother?’ So you know who come along? The slop singers and the pop writers and the film makers and women’s magazines and the Sunday papers and the picture-strip love stories – that’s who come along, and you don’t have to make no effort for them, it come easy. ‘We know where the money lie,’ they say, ‘hell we do! The workers’ve got it so let’s give them what they want. If they want slop songs and film idols we’ll give ’em that then. If they want words of one syllable, we’ll give ’em that then. If they want the third-rate, blust! We’ll give ’em that then. Anything’s good enough for them ’cos they don’t ask for no more!’ The whole stinkin’ commercial world insults us and we don’t care a damn. Well, Ronnie’s right – it’s our own bloody fault. We want the third-rate – we got it! We got it! We got it! We . . .
Suddenly Beatie stops as if listening to herself. She pauses, turns with an ecstatic smile on her face –
D’you hear that? D’you hear it? Did you listen to me? I’m talking. Jenny, Frankie, Mother – I’m not quoting no more.
Mrs Bryant (getting up to sit at table) Oh hell, I hed enough of her – let her talk a while she’ll soon get fed up.
The others join her at the table and proceed to eat and murmur.
Beatie Listen to me someone. (As though a vision were revealed to her.) God in heaven, Ronnie! It does work, it’s happening to me, I can feel it’s happening, I’m beginning, on my own two feet – I’m beginning . . .
The murmur of the family sitting down to eat grows as Beatie’s last cry is heard. Whatever she will do they will continue to live as before. As Beatie stands alone, articulate at last –
The curtain falls.
Music
‘I’ll wait for you in the heavens blue’ (pages 39–40)
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This edition published 2013 by Bloomsbury
First published by Methuen Drama in 2001 as part of Wesker Plays 1 Published in 2008 as part of The Methuen Drama Book of Plays from the Sixties Published in 2013 in this edition with a new cover and introductory material
© Arnold Wesker 1959, 2001, 2008, 2013
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Roots (Modern Plays) Page 8