The Hanging
Page 4
CORROSSI: Sounds like you were having a nightmare.
IRIS: How do I know what’s real and what’s a dream?
In the boarding house we all dream the same thing. Night after night. We dream we’re being eaten. And we can’t move, we can’t scream, we can’t do anything. Does Mabel have dreams like that?
FLINT: —
IRIS: I doubt she’d tell you if she did.
FLINT: Are you friends with Hannah’s boyfriend?
IRIS: She doesn’t have a boyfriend.
Beat.
FLINT: Are you sure about that?
IRIS: I know everything about her.
Everything.
Once Hannah spread a rumour that we’re a ménage à trois. Do you know what that is?
FLINT: Yes.
IRIS: It’s French.
FLINT: Are you?
IRIS: Am I French?
FLINT: No, are you—?
IRIS: Je ne suis pas une lesbienne.
FLINT: I guess at an all girls’ school it’s hard to meet boys.
IRIS: It’s not, there’s a porthole!
IRIS covers her mouth.
FLINT: What’s that?
IRIS: I’m not supposed to say.
FLINT: Who says?
IRIS: The seniors.
FLINT: What’s the porthole?
IRIS: They make you swear on your future grave.
FLINT: What’s the porthole?
IRIS: What do I get if I tell you?
FLINT: Perhaps you get your friends back.
IRIS flares.
IRIS: What are you wearing?
FLINT: What am I—?
IRIS: What cologne?
FLINT: What’s the porthole, Iris?
IRIS: Not unless you tell me what you’re wearing.
CORROSSI: For God’s sake, tell her the brand so we can get on with this.
FLINT: Lynx.
IRIS: Thought so. Cheap but masculine.
I deplore feminine odours.*
CORROSSI: What did you say?
IRIS: Ms Corrossi wears a disgusting peppermint. It makes us want to vomit.
CORROSSI: And I wear it to peeve you, Iris. Now answer the detective’s question.
IRIS: It’s a window in the dinner hall that’s not alarmed.
On the first day of the school year the seniors send a message to all the Year Tens to meet them in the library. That’s when they tell you.
FLINT: About the porthole?
IRIS: Most of the seniors use the porthole to sneak out for ciggies and to pash the Princes boy behind the hydrangeas.
The Princes boys don’t have alarms on their dorms.
CORROSSI: That’s because Princes boys don’t have uteruses.
IRIS: At Maidstone everyone’s always whispering about running away.
FLINT: Not you.
IRIS: No.
FLINT: Why?
IRIS: It’s safe at Maidstone.
* Direct quote from the novel Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay.
FLINT: Safe from what?
IRIS shudders.
What is it?
IRIS: Tight squeeze, cool breeze, now I’ve got the shiverees.
I shouldn’t have told you that.
FLINT shows IRIS two photos.
FLINT: Do you know these boys?
CORROSSI looks up, alert.
CORROSSI: / What boys?
IRIS: No.
FLINT: You might want to take a look before you answer.
IRIS looks.
Their names?
Their names please, Iris.
Pause.
IRIS: That’s Xavier. That’s Sebastian.
FLINT: How do you know them?
IRIS: They’re Princes boys.
FLINT: Sebastian is Hannah’s boyfriend / correct—
IRIS: No he’s not.
FLINT: Didn’t she tell you?
IRIS: Did he say that?
FLINT: They’re in love.
IRIS: He’s a nasty little liar.
FLINT: I’ve evidence.
IRIS: No / you don’t.
FLINT: Videos she sent to him.
IRIS: He stole them.
FLINT: She says she loves him.
CORROSSI: / What?
IRIS: She did not.
FLINT consults his notebook, reads from it.
FLINT: Oh, my Sebastian, I still have the hope to touch you, to feel you, to love you, to seek you, to blend with you when we no longer exist! Leave me this hope, this consolation. It’s so sweet. / It assures me of eternity in you and with you.
CORROSSI: / It assures me of eternity in you and with you.
That’s Diderot.
IRIS: It’s not true.
FLINT: He’s lovesick.
CORROSSI: Sebastian?
FLINT: He can’t eat, he can’t sleep.
IRIS: It’s a lie.
FLINT: Hannah was pregnant.
CORROSSI / IRIS: —
FLINT: She had a termination.
CORROSSI: How do you know?
FLINT: Chaplain’s report.
IRIS: No.
CORROSSI: Hannah confided in the chaplain?
FLINT: Six months ago.
IRIS: She can’t have been.
CORROSSI: That’s confidential.
IRIS: You’re lying.
CORROSSI: You shouldn’t be saying this.
FLINT: I’m breaking the rules.
CORROSSI: On what grounds?
FLINT: I need to find those girls.
CORROSSI: By violating her privacy?
IRIS: It’s impossible.
FLINT: What about the porthole. She must have met Sebastian under the moonlight.
IRIS: While we were dreaming?
FLINT: Sounds like Hannah didn’t tell you everything.
IRIS: —
FLINT: You met them. The Princes boys.
IRIS: No.
FLINT: Yes. At Flinders Street Station. The night you disappeared.
IRIS: We’re not allowed to meet Princes boys outside school hours.
FLINT: You’re on the security cameras, Iris. The three of you in school uniform.
You remember, don’t you, meeting under / the clocks.
IRIS: The clocks.
FLINT: That’s right.
IRIS: Hannah counted them.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine.
Different places, different times.
CORROSSI: What did you say?
FLINT: What were you doing at Flinders Station? Where were you going?
IRIS: How do you know when the time and place is right?
CORROSSI: Who said that?
IRIS: Hannah …
CORROSSI: Right for what?
FLINT: On the security footage we can see Sebastian giving something to Hannah. What was it?
IRIS: Why don’t you ask them?
FLINT: I want to know the truth, / from you, Iris.
IRIS: The truth?
FLINT: What did the Princes boy give you?
IRIS: Three …
CORROSSI: What was the time right for, Iris?
IRIS: … little … white …
An echo of the landscape, the mouth, the abyss opening up.
FLINT: Three little white what?
IRIS: … holding hands and …
IRIS sees a vision in the space. She screams.
FLINT / CORROSSI: [together] Iris?
FLINT: Look at me.
IRIS returns to reality.
You remember.
IRIS: No—
FLINT: Yes.
IRIS: —a dream.
FLINT: Three little white pills, that’s what you were about to say.
Sebastian’s been suspended twice for dealing at school.
Traces of MDMA were found on your clothing and bag.
The Princes boys say they watched the three of you cross the road—
CORROSSI: The threshold …
FLINT: —and then you disappeared.
The boys swear that’s the last they saw of you.
Two days later you turn up. Alone. Frightened. No memory of what’s happened.
IRIS: Weird, isn’t it?
A knock on the door.
IRIS is startled.
FLINT: It’s okay. You’re safe.
FLINT goes to the door, collects the cake.
It’s all yours.
IRIS stares hungrily at the cake.
CORROSSI: You’re starving, aren’t you?
Edith.
IRIS glares at CORROSSI.
IRIS: I changed my mind.
CORROSSI: You want some, you know you do.
IRIS: I don’t.
CORROSSI: You’re like me. I love food. And cake, I could eat cake until the cows come home.
IRIS: I’m not like you.
CORROSSI: You’re not like them.
IRIS: I am.
CORROSSI: The right place, the right time. I know this game.
FLINT: What game?
IRIS: You can’t play.
FLINT: Where are the girls?
IRIS: I don’t remember.
FLINT: If you do, it’ll be real.
I know what that’s like.
IRIS: You don’t know anything.
FLINT: I know you haven’t always been inside the circle.
IRIS: We’ve been friends forever. We spent the whole September break together. Hannah and Ava stayed at our property.
FLINT: Bella Vista?
IRIS: Yes … Yes. It used to be a farm before my father bought it for a song. There was a lake. It was millions of miles deep. When the farm went broke the farmer’s daughter walked into the water. Just like Virginia Woolf. They never found her body, that’s how deep it was. Diving down, the water changed from viscous green to inky black. It was so cold we’d get goosebumps on our breasts. And every day of the holidays we played The Farmer’s Daughter. I always lost. I couldn’t hold my breath. Hannah stayed under forever, for an eternity. I’d scream.
Hannah! Hannah! Come back!
Then she’d break through the surface like a beautiful swan.
Now it’s all gone.
FLINT: Were you upset that your father sold it?
IRIS: Of course we were.
Now it’s just a big, black, gaping mouth.
CORROSSI: Coalmine.
IRIS: Ms Corrossi said it swallowed the future.
CORROSSI: A metaphor, that’s all.
IRIS: Ms Corrossi says we’re beyond the tipping point.
FLINT: Who’s we?
CORROSSI: Humanity, I meant.
IRIS: Ms Corrossi says we’ve already gone over the cliff but we’ve been running so fast that gravity hasn’t caught up. We’re suspended in mid-air. We haven’t fallen yet, but we will. It’s just a matter of time. You said we’re doomed and one day soon, we’ll pay for the sins of our fathers.
Beat.
FLINT: When did she say this?
IRIS: In our reading group.
CORROSSI is struck with a sudden fear.
CORROSSI: / What have you done?
FLINT: What reading group?
IRIS: Didn’t she tell you?
CORROSSI: / Tell me.
FLINT: Tell me what?
IRIS: About our special little reading group. Oh, I forgot, it was secret.
FLINT: What happened in these reading groups?
IRIS: Ms Corrossi gave us sickly sweet wine to drink.
CORROSSI: It’s called sherry.
FLINT: You gave them alcohol to drink?
CORROSSI: / No.
IRIS: Yes.
CORROSSI: Once. A special occasion.
IRIS: It made us sleepy.
CORROSSI: A sip, that’s all.
FLINT: Who else attended this reading group?
IRIS: Hannah, Ava. And me.
CORROSSI: More recently.
FLINT: So just the three girls who disappeared?
Beat.
CORROSSI: Yes.
FLINT: And you read books?
IRIS: That’s not all we did—
FLINT: / What else?
CORROSSI: What are you talking about?
IRIS: I should have told the Principal—
FLINT: / Why?
CORROSSI: What?
IRIS: —I should have tried to stop it.
FLINT: Stop what?
IRIS: Am I doomed?
CORROSSI: What have you done?
IRIS: She did what you wanted.
CORROSSI: / Where’s Hannah?
FLINT: Where are they?
IRIS: Is that all you want to know?
FLINT: No more games. The clock is ticking.
IRIS: That’s just it.
It’s not.
She gasps suddenly with horror.
I have to take my medication.
She runs.
FLINT: Wait.
IRIS stops.
IRIS: I know ‘they’ sent you.
FLINT: —
IRIS: Our fathers. I heard mine talking to you in the hospital.
CORROSSI: About what?
IRIS: You, Ms Corrossi. They were talking about you.
CORROSSI: What do you mean?
IRIS: They’re watching you.
IRIS is gone.
CORROSSI stares at FLINT.
CORROSSI: So it’s your job to sniff me out?
FLINT: They just want to find their daughters.
CORROSSI: And play ‘pin the blame on the teacher’.
FLINT: All roads lead back to this reading group.
CORROSSI: For God’s sake, it’s not a cult, a coven.
FLINT: What exactly is it then?
CORROSSI: We read books. We play the roles. That a crime?
FLINT: That depends.
CORROSSI: On what?
FLINT: On what happened in this reading group.
CORROSSI: What exactly are you accusing me of?
FLINT: When did the group start?
CORROSSI: I’m not here to be interviewed.
FLINT: I can make it official.
Beat.
CORROSSI: They began with Hannah.
FLINT: The Sunday tutorials?
CORROSSI: Then she invited Ava and later Iris.
It—changed.
FLINT: How?
CORROSSI: All their whispering, all their furtive, knowing glances.
They had a secret.
Beat.
They must have been planning this.
FLINT: Their disappearance?
CORROSSI: What else?
FLINT: And a book has inspired this?
CORROSSI: It would appear so—
FLINT: What book?
CORROSSI: —the time of year … the signs.
FLINT: What book, Ms Corrossi?
CORROSSI: Picnic at Hanging Rock. Read it?
FLINT: I’ve heard of it.
CORROSSI: St Valentine’s Day, turn of the century, four girls and a teacher go missing while picnicking at Hanging Rock. Two girls return, one almost immediately, the other a week later. Neither remembers what’s happened. Sound familiar?
FLINT: The others? What happened to them?
CORROSSI: Never found.
FLINT: No trace?
CORROSSI: It’s a mystery. That’s its terrible beauty.
FLINT: This book—
CORROSSI: We studied it, among others in our reading group.
FLINT: They’ve copied it.
CORROSSI: A parody perhaps.
FLINT: A prank?
CORROSSI: No, a parody is more sophisticated than a prank, a parody is an imitation for effect.
FLINT: What effect?
Beat.
CORROSSI: I don’t know.
FLINT: You’ve done this.
CORROSSI: No—
FLINT: You’ve inspired a dangerous idea.
CORROSSI: As far as I know they haven’t suffocated their siblings—
FLINT: —
CORROSSI: Jude the Obscure? Thomas Hardy? T
he last book we read in our group. If they re-enacted every event in every book they ever read—
FLINT: Clearly the activities of this group have endangered them.
CORROSSI: On the contrary, literature might save them.
FLINT: Save them from what, Ms Corrossi?
CORROSSI: We eat them. Our young. Nothing satiates our appetite for dead girls, does it? Their beautiful bodies decorated with a butterfly or a flower or deer antlers carefully arranged, just so. The murderer’s signature. The clue to finding the killer. We enjoy slicing and dicing girls almost as much as we love cooking shows.
FLINT: You think you’re their saviour.
CORROSSI: I’d do anything to protect them.
FLINT: All three or just Hannah?
Beat.
CORROSSI: And then we disappear. From a certain age … women fade. I watched it happen to my mother … as her crow’s feet appeared, as her breasts began to sag. No missing persons report, no search party …
Beat.
Most of the girls I teach look at me with loathing, disgust.
FLINT: And Hannah?
CORROSSI: She brought me flowers one end of term. Hydrangeas in a little pot. And she said to me, Ms Corrossi. I think you are divine. She was standing beside my desk at the time and the light from the window illuminated her features. Hannah was radiant. I could see she was full of desire.
FLINT: —
CORROSSI: I’m talking about Platonic desire, Detective. Plato’s idea. He was Socrates’ prized student. And Plato adored his pug-nosed pot-bellied teacher. You see the student may come to love or even fall in love with the teacher but what the student really desires is knowledge, it is the beauty of ideas. Plato even went so far as to say that the desire we have for beauty on this earth can never be truly satisfied until we die.
FLINT: Did you tell Hannah that?
CORROSSI: I may have at some time.
FLINT: You don’t think that’s dangerous?
CORROSSI: Should we incarcerate young minds as well as their bodies?
FLINT: If your relationship with Hannah was so special—
CORROSSI: I’m trying to explain it—
FLINT: She must have told you about the termination.
Beat.
CORROSSI: No.
FLINT: She didn’t.
Pause.
CORROSSI: One Sunday, she left my house for a few hours. This was before the others joined the group. We’d planned to read Mrs Dalloway but Hannah said she had something urgent she needed to do.
FLINT: And you let her, even though it was against the school rules.
CORROSSI: Fuck the rules.
Late that evening she rang the bell. She was distraught. I didn’t know what to do with her. I couldn’t return her to the boarding house, not like that. I drew a bath. She stood there swaying as I helped her undress. She was shaking as I lowered her into the steaming water. Then I called the school and I told the house mother. Hannah’s ill, she’s eaten something funny. I think it’s best she stay the night at my place. She slept in my bed. I on the couch. In the morning she was perfectly fine. I drove her to school. I asked her again what had happened. She said, I’m fine, Ms Corrossi, thank you, and she kissed me on the cheek and skipped off to school.