The Peach Season

by Debra Oswald

  KIERAN: No.

  SHEENA: So you can’t tell her we’re going. Tell me you understand that.

  KIERAN: I understand that.

  SHEENA: Okay. Midnight—be back here and we go.

  KIERAN goes off.

  SHEENA slumps for a moment, exhausted. Then she drags herself up and starts hauling stuff out of the shack, ready to go.

  JOE enters.

  JOE: I left your car down by the gate.

  SHEENA: How will you get back into town?

  JOE: I’ll stay the night at Mum’s. Wouldn’t mind to escape for a night. Where’s Kieran?

  SHEENA: He goes off in a sook when he has to do something he doesn’t want to do.

  JOE: You explained to him—

  SHEENA: Kieran knows he doesn’t have any choice, unless he wants to get arrested.

  JOE: You know, Sheena, you made things harder for him by skipping town.

  SHEENA: By the time I found him, he’d already missed those court dates.

  JOE: The cops want to question him about some other matters.

  SHEENA: Those morons broke into a vet science lab. Stole a shitload of ketamine. A security guard got bashed.

  JOE: Do you know if Kieran was part of it?

  SHEENA: He was there. Trailing after Mick like a brain-damaged puppy. With Kieran’s record, he’d end up in jail for a serious deal like that, wouldn’t he?

  JOE shrugs, nods.

  Jail for a soft kid like Kieran.

  JOE: Yeah. I know.

  SHEENA: He needed rescuing. I rescued him.

  JOE: What will you do now?

  SHEENA: Go back to what we were doing before: driving round the west—figure eights on the map.

  JOE: But in the long run…

  SHEENA: I guess keep Kieran alive and out of major trouble. That’s all I can do.

  JOE: Well, good luck.

  SHEENA: Deep down I always thought Kieran was doomed. But the last few weeks, he’s been so grounded, really got into the work, he’s—I dunno…

  JOE: I don’t think he’s doomed.

  SHEENA: Ohh… he’s gonna hate my guts for making him leave. The next few weeks will be shitful. Kieran miserable, blaming me.

  She starts to cry. JOE fumbles to get out a hanky for her.

  Ta. You’re a kind man, you know.

  JOE: You reckon? Not so sure about that.

  SHEENA: At least you think about what’s going on for other people.

  JOE: For all the good that does.

  SHEENA: It’s more than most people do. Kieran thinks the best of everyone so they take advantage of him. He doesn’t know what people are really after.

  JOE: But you do?

  SHEENA: Yeah. [Laughing] They still end up taking advantage of me, but. Y’know, I’ve been a bit jealous—watching him and Zoe. Even if they are kidding themselves. I wouldn’t mind kidding myself like that for a little while.

  JOE’s mobile phone rings.

  JOE: Sorry.

  He looks at the caller ID, then switches off the phone. He feels SHEENA looking at him and smiles, shaking his head.

  SHEENA: What?

  JOE: The way you look at me—like you can read what’s going on in my mind.

  SHEENA: I can’t really. It’s just a thing I do with my face to make it seem like I’ve sussed people.

  She exaggerates a suspicious gimlet stare.

  JOE: [laughing] Well, it works.

  SHEENA: Yeah, freaks people out, so they blurt stuff out without me doing anything.

  JOE: I was just thinking… I guess I’m unnerved by the idea that—I’ve got people I have to worry about, responsibilities, history I have to remember. You get used to censoring yourself, talking yourself out of impulses. After a while, you lose connection with something inside. I can’t explain it—sorry.

  SHEENA: No, I think I get you.

  JOE looks at SHEENA, hoping she understands. Then suddenly he slides closer and they kiss. When they stop kissing, JOE turns away a little.

  Now you’re thinking, this is a mistake, this’ll cause problems. I mean, you’re right, we probably shouldn’t—

  JOE: I’m thinking how incredibly soft your mouth is.

  SHEENA: Oh.

  They kiss again, more passionately.

  I’ve got two beers left inside. Do you want one?

  JOE: Yeah.

  SHEENA and JOE exit, going into the shack.

  SCENE NINE

  Night.

  DOROTHY appears in her nightie.

  DOROTHY: [to the audience] On the radio, the forecast for the next day was forty-two degrees. Heavy rain, then hot temperatures—you know what can happen? The fruit cooks on the trees. True. I wouldn’t believe if I never saw it one year. I made up the spare bed for Joe, but Joe never showed up.

  A torch beam cuts through the darkness. It is CELIA running around the yard with a torch.

  CELIA: Zoe! Zoe! Are you out here?

  DOROTHY: [to the audience] I saw a car pass by my house just before midnight.

  CELIA runs towards the shack with the torch, calling ZOE.

  SHEENA emerges, wrapping a sheet around herself.

  CELIA: Is Zoe down here?

  SHEENA: No, I thought she was—

  CELIA hears another person inside the shack.

  CELIA: Kieran? Kieran! Do you know where Zoe is?

  But it is JOE who appears, hastily doing up his jeans. CELIA stops, taking this in. SHEENA runs past her into the darkness.

  JOE: Celia…

  CELIA: Do you know where Kieran is?

  JOE: Sheena thought he was cooling off and he’d be back.

  CELIA: You don’t know where he is?

  JOE: No, we should’ve, uh… I’m sorry.

  CELIA turns away from JOE and resumes calling out, sweeping the torch through the yard and orchard.

  CELIA: [calling] Zoe! Zoe!

  The torch beam picks up SHEENA’s face.

  SHEENA: My car’s gone.

  CELIA is frozen for a moment.

  JOE: It’ll be fine. We can—

  CELIA: I’ll find her. I’ll find her.

  CELIA runs into the darkness with the torch.

  END OF ACT ONE

  ACT TWO

  SCENE ONE

  DOROTHY enters, rugged up in warm clothes.

  DOROTHY: [to the audience] One thing I never liked about Australia is the seasons. In summer, grey-green leaves and grey-brown grass. Winter, the grey-green leaves still stuck there on the trees. You don’t call that a season. The year has got no rhythm to swing a person through. But here around the orchards, the trees are bare, so it looks like winter.

  After Sandor died, I had one consoling idea in my head: now, apart from Josef of course, I have just me to worry about. I can suit to myself. Eat sardines and chocolate mousse every night if I want. But I am going to be honest to you here—I did not eat many mousse. I drank vodka. Because the consoling idea was not so consoling. The vodka did a better job.

  It was a couple of seasons after Sandor died when Celia said, ‘Dorothy, I need help with packing the fruit’. I knew this is a plan that Celia and Josef cooked up to get me out and busy. But it happens that I am bloody good at it. So the year goes like this: Summer and autumn, I am up at five to work for Celia. Sober. Winter, back to my little underworld, with vodka and silly television shows to keep me company. There was a kind of swing and rhythm to the year. This winter is different. As you can see: sober. I have to be because there are people who need an eye kept onto them.

  JOE enters and comes over to give DOROTHY a kiss.

  JOE: Thought you might be prowling around up here. I dropped off some bags on your back porch.

  DOROTHY: What bags? Bags of what?

  JOE: We’re sorting through stuff in the house. There were some things Fiona thought you might be able to use.

  DOROTHY: Are these ‘things’ items of over-priced, foolish junk Fiona bought and now throws out so she can buy new?

  JOE: Basically, yes.


  DOROTHY: Will they be useful to me?

  JOE: No. Except as a physical reminder of your contempt for Fiona.

  DOROTHY: Then drop the bags at the Salvation Army in town, will you?

  JOE nods. DOROTHY scrutinises him carefully.

  Josef. What’s going on?

  JOE: About what?

  DOROTHY: You tell me about what.

  JOE: Fiona asked me to move out.

  DOROTHY: Ah. Is this for permanent?

  JOE: Yes, it’s permanent.

  DOROTHY: You didn’t have to confess to the sex.

  JOE looks at her—he did have to.

  It’s only that one intercourse—months ago, we’re talking about. Isn’t it?

  JOE: Yes.

  DOROTHY: The woman, Sheena—she wouldn’t have told. Celia was gone away. I would never tell. So why—?

  JOE: I felt I had no choice.

  DOROTHY: So you confess and Fiona marches you to the counselling every week for three months. Now suddenly she decides to throw you out like the garbage?

  JOE: The decision was mutual in many ways.

  DOROTHY: I always knew this is what she will do in the end.

  JOE: As you made very clear.

  DOROTHY: But she wanted her months of watching you writhe with the guilt first.

  JOE: Mum—

  DOROTHY: I keep my mouth shut. Where will you live?

  JOE: At the pub until I find somewhere.

  DOROTHY: You are always welcome to live with me. Or you could travel, now that you’re a single man again. Have some fun.

  He looks at her pointedly.

  You don’t want to be far from the children.

  JOE: Of course I don’t.

  JOE walks over to look at the orchard.

  DOROTHY: [to the audience] There are men who can live apart from their children with no great suffering. Josef is not one of them. Do I wish he didn’t love his children so much? Sometimes. It’s strange to find yourself wishing that your child was a less deep feeling man, more petty and selfish. But you don’t like to see something tearing at his insides.

  JOE: The orchard’s a mess.

  DOROTHY: Of course. More than three months abandoned.

  JOE: It’s a problem if the trees are left overgrown for this long, isn’t it?

  DOROTHY: This is why the ginger-haired boy and his cousin should come and do the urgent work.

  JOE: I could organise that for Celia.

  DOROTHY: [shaking her head] I suggested this.

  JOE: She can’t think about anything.

  DOROTHY: No.

  DOROTHY grabs JOE’s face to scrutinise him.

  JOE: Mum. Please. Don’t.

  DOROTHY: You’re not eating. Stay for dinner.

  JOE: I can’t. I have to pick up Hamish from soccer.

  DOROTHY: Ah. Of course. Well, let me parcel up some food for you to take back to your sad, little hotel room of shame.

  JOE: Oh no, I’ll—uh—okay. Thanks, Mum, that’d be lovely.

  JOE exits, leaving DOROTHY to address the audience as the light fades to night.

  DOROTHY: [to the audience] The night Zoe ran away with the boy, Celia drove off looking for them. Oh—I should tell you that the sister gave back the money in the envelope. No one would say she was a charming girl, but she was a person of honour. So now Celia is gone, searching for her daughter. The rest of the peaches she has left to rot. A few times Zoe has sent Celia an email—‘Don’t worry’. Nothing else. Every day Celia rings me up. ‘Has Zoe come home?’ Every day, it breaks my heart. No. I have to say no. When I hang up the phone, she is still here. [Indicating her own head] Sometimes, it’s like tuning in to a radio station I cannot bear. Where you must hear the childless mother’s cry tear through the night.

  SCENE TWO

  Night.

  CELIA appears out of the darkness. She and DOROTHY speak directly to the audience.

  CELIA: Every day I wake up in yet another motel room and for a few seconds I’m disoriented. Then the shock of it hits me fresh: my daughter is missing. But the world goes on.

  DOROTHY: As if the universe is—unbelievably—not toxic and dead.

  CELIA: My body continues to operate—blood and nerves and complex chemicals hum along…

  DOROTHY: As if nothing has changed.

  CELIA: When I started searching, I had plans, leads. Towns where Zoe knew someone or towns with backpacker hostels and picking work.

  DOROTHY: Nothing.

  CELIA: I left photos with people, I followed up any sighting of them or the car.

  DOROTHY: Nothing.

  CELIA: All logic has leaked out of my searching. I wander shopping centres and railway stations for eighteen hours a day, hoping I’ll see her walk past. Yesterday I heard a woman screeching and I realised that woman was me.

  DOROTHY: Screaming at strangers in the street.

  CELIA: How dare they smile and drink coffee and go about their lives as if my daughter wasn’t missing. When Paul, my husband, was killed, my first impulse was—I’ll kill myself. But I was pregnant with Zoe. I remember being angry—that an escape route had been closed to me.

  DOROTHY: Once you have a child, that option is annulled.

  CELIA: Missing my husband… the pain would hit me in waves, knocking me off my feet.

  DOROTHY: You can never predict when.

  CELIA: But at the same time there was Zoe, this little creature who needed things—practical things—right now. And brought me such joy.

  DOROTHY: It’s astonishing the way two such strong feelings can exist inside your body at the same time.

  CELIA: I try to save my energy for the night, when I really have to concentrate.

  DOROTHY: Because night-time is when bad things happen to people.

  CELIA: Wherever Zoe is.

  CELIA and DOROTHY remain onstage as light comes up on:

  A carpark. KIERAN and ZOE enter, breathless, laughing, gulping for air from running.

  ZOE: Feel my heart. Feel my heart.

  She presses KIERAN’s hand against her chest.

  Pounding like it’s going to explode.

  They laugh, getting their breath back. They break open a packet of jelly dinosaurs and chomp on them.

  KIERAN: You hurt yourself going over the fence?

  ZOE: No—oh, a bit. Scratch from the barbed wire on the top.

  KIERAN kisses her leg where she scratched it.

  KIERAN: Lucky that security guard was a pudgy, old guy or we’d be rooted.

  ZOE: He didn’t see us come into the carpark.

  KIERAN: Nuh. We’re sweet.

  ZOE: [with a laugh] I can’t believe you did that!

  KIERAN: You wanted jelly dinosaurs.

  ZOE: Yeah, but I didn’t think you’d run in and grab them.

  KIERAN: No money. I left that ten bucks back at Mick’s.

  ZOE: They taste better this way.

  They chomp more dinosaurs.

  Whoo—the ground’s moving—like I’m on a boat.

  KIERAN: That’s the not sleeping.

  ZOE: How long have we been awake this time?

  KIERAN: It must be—yeah, three days. Awake three days.

  ZOE: Sorry if I was a bit weird before, at the house.

  KIERAN: You don’t wanna worry about the shit Mick goes on with. He comes across like a scary guy and his girlfriend—

  ZOE: Jade. I feel sorry for her.

  KIERAN: Me too. Poor old Jade. But Mick’s all noise. He’d never do anything.

  ZOE: That older guy—with the dead-fish eyes—

  KIERAN: Yeah, his brain rotted in his skull years ago. You’re a fast runner. And a good climber. Couldn’t believe how you went over that fence like a monkey. Hey—what’s wrong?

  ZOE is suddenly panicky and whoosy.

  ZOE: I’m seasick… no, dizzy—the ground’s falling away under me.

  KIERAN grabs her and eases her down to ground.

  KIERAN: It’s okay… the ground, see? Solid.


  ZOE: I feel really weird. I feel really weird.

  KIERAN: Reckon we need to sleep. Awake too many days in a row. It can do your head in. Mick and the guys in that house—that’s how they live. Everything gets out of whack. Oh, shit… you look white, you’re shaking.

  ZOE: Let’s fuck.

  She leads KIERAN offstage.

  Over here—there’s some grass. Let’s fuck right now.

  They exit.

  DOROTHY and CELIA, speaking directly to the audience.

  CELIA: Every day I wake up around midday to ring the police and hospitals.

  DOROTHY: Then to wait by the phone through the night.

  CELIA: I couldn’t bear the idea that I was sunk into mindless sleep, at the exact moment that Zoe was facing some monster.

  DOROTHY: Sheena, she phoned here, out of some blue. ‘Have you seen my brother?’

  SHEENA appears.

  SHEENA: I cut dead any feelings for Kieran. The night he buggered off. ‘That’s it. I can’t care what happens to him anymore. I just want the car back.’

  DOROTHY: You must try to get on with your own life.

  SHEENA: I went back up the Gold Coast. The Dickless Wonder wasn’t with anyone else—who’d have him?—so we ended up back together. Well, that idea turned out to be pretty ordinary. Normally, I could’ve used Kieran as the excuse to break it off with the Wonder but not this time—seeing as I don’t care about Kieran anymore.

  DOROTHY: Sometimes you have to make a decision for your own sake.

  SHEENA: I announced to the guy, ‘You’re a Dickless Wonder and I’m leaving’. Ended up staying on the Gold Coast. It’s ugly as sin and full of arseholes, but there’s work. Streets full of people day or night.

  DOROTHY: So there’s always noise you can disappear into.

  SHEENA: One time I saw some girl stumbling through the traffic with a bellyful of Bacardi Breezers. Looked a bit like Zoe. Another time I saw a kid who walked exactly like Kieran. But fuck it. I can’t let myself wonder where he is.

  DOROTHY: Or else you’re up all night.

  CELIA: All night, I conjure up images of what might be happening to her and run through the scenes of danger in my head.

  DOROTHY: As if such vigilance is crucial.

  CELIA: I summon up images of danger, examine them.