Three Plays

by Craig Higginson

CELIA: I want to help. A general fact. Not something I am only doing in the present. As a temporary activity.

  PIERRE: The present simple – yes.

  PIERRE takes out one of the notebooks. He hears CELIA coming and doesn’t have time to put it back. He hides it behind his back.

  CELIA enters. PIERRE stuffs the notebook into his trousers behind his back.

  CELIA: What was it?

  PIERRE: What?

  CELIA: What did you want to say?

  Silence.

  PIERRE: I am from Africa.

  CELIA: Like those – wasp birds?

  PIERRE: Oui, comme les guêpiers (Yes, like the bee-eaters)?

  CELIA: Did something bad happen to you. There in Africa?

  PIERRE: Something bad happens to many people – there in Africa.

  CELIA: Well, I wouldn’t be put off. I’m a good listener. My brother used to call me his agony aunt. He said I take a deep delight in the dark side. It was a joke, of course. Another English joke.

  PIERRE: Of course.

  CELIA: My mother has spent a lot of time in Africa. She’s a journalist. You know the Guardian newspaper?

  PIERRE: (Lying.) Yes.

  CELIA: She went all over the continent. Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, Rwanda. She loved it there. Where’s your family from originally? Is it somewhere – conflicted?

  PIERRE: Something like that.

  CELIA: Good. I mean, it’s good that you said ‘that’ and not ‘this’. I didn’t mean –

  Silence.

  PIERRE: I think I need time to – think. About my story. In English. Can I prepare it for another time?

  CELIA: If you like. It might be better to call it a day. I mean for today.

  PIERRE: Please – no.

  CELIA: I needn’t charge you. This can be an introductory session. A getting to know each other. Before the actual start.

  PIERRE: I want to continue with this lesson. Not call it a day. I must continue with practicing the passive.

  The kettle is boiling in the kitchen.

  Blackout.

  Part Two

  NARRATIVE TENSES

  CELIA’s apartment. There is thunder outside. Rain. CELIA is pouring fresh water into the daffodils when the phone rings.

  She picks up the phone.

  CELIA: Allô? (Hello)?

  Silence.

  CELIA: Oh hello, Mum.

  Silence.

  CELIA: He does?

  Silence.

  CELIA: Can’t he pick up the phone and tell me himself?

  Silence.

  CELIA: So what’s the big news?

  Silence.

  CELIA: He’s getting – ? No!

  Silence.

  CELIA: To whom?

  Silence.

  CELIA: I see.

  Silence.

  CELIA: I can’t talk about this right now, Mum. I have a student waiting in the sitting-room.

  Silence.

  CELIA: A boy.

  Silence.

  CELIA: He’s extremely attractive.

  Silence.

  CELIA: Oh Mum – really. Bye.

  She hangs up. On the table are a banana, a knife and a plate. She sits and cuts the banana in half. She starts to eat one of the halves. She stares ahead for a long time. Tears are streaming down her face.

  The doorbell rings. She wipes her eyes and goes to answer the door.

  PIERRE enters. There is no evidence that CELIA has been upset.

  PIERRE: Hello.

  CELIA: Is it still raining outside?

  PIERRE: It is.

  CELIA: Your hair is sparkling.

  PIERRE: Sparkling?

  CELIA: Glittering. Like there are little stars inside it.

  PIERRE: There are stars inside my hair?

  CELIA: Yes.

  Silence.

  CELIA: Come in.

  PIERRE: I will make myself at home.

  CELIA: You have to be invited to do that.

  PIERRE: Invited to relax?

  CELIA: I suppose the expression means that you can behave as you do at home. Not stand on formality.

  PIERRE: How ‘stand on’ formality?

  CELIA: It means that you can sit, I suppose – put your feet up. Though not literally, of course.

  PIERRE is thoroughly confused.

  PIERRE: Les anglais! (The English!)

  CELIA goes through to the kitchen area to fetch the coffee tray – the coffee has been made already. There are two ginger biscuits on a plate – and the same small mugs.

  PIERRE has CELIA’s notebook. He’s about to take it out to return it to the shelves when CELIA enters.

  CELIA: Black. No sugar.

  PIERRE: You remember.

  CELIA: Absolutely everything.

  They sit and take a moment to watch the rain outside. Then CELIA pours his coffee. Her hands are shaking slightly. She spills the coffee.

  CELIA: Damn.

  She takes the cloth from the tray and cleans up the coffee.

  CELIA: I don’t know what’s got into me today.

  PIERRE: You have cold?

  CELIA: You say ‘Are you cold?’ when you want to know if someone’s cold, and ‘Do you have a cold?’ if you think someone’s ill.

  PIERRE: Are you cold?

  CELIA: No.

  PIERRE: Do you have cold?

  CELIA: A cold. No.

  PIERRE: Then why do you shake your hands?

  CELIA: I don’t shake them. They are simply shaking themselves. Perhaps it’s my blood sugar. I have problems with that. But we use the present continuous. Because they are shaking now. If I say my hands shake, we are using the present simple and talking about a general habit or situation. And my hands, they don’t shake all the time. They don’t shake generally.

  PIERRE: The present continuous. I remember that.

  CELIA: You will remember it. In the future. Future simple.

  She passes him the coffee.

  PIERRE: You do this every time? With every student?

  CELIA: Sorry?

  PIERRE: Drink coffee. Eat the biscuits.

  CELIA: Sometimes. If people live across the river, I can agree to meet them half way. At a cafe. I usually take the bus to the Louvre. I have one student I meet near the Musée Rodin. He’s rather ancient. Italian. Monsieur Levi. He once said something – odd. I can only be happy as long as I do not know myself.

  Silence.

  CELIA: Ignorance is bliss. You know the expression?

  PIERRE: (Lying.) Yes.

  CELIA: You have been to the Musée, of course?

  PIERRE: No, never.

  CELIA: No wonder you’re not a proper artist! It’s one of my favourite places in Paris. The house where Rodin lived, the gardens running all around it. It’s the small marble works I love the most. They look as though they’re made of wax. They glow. I suppose they absorb the light around them somehow. Is that how it works?

  PIERRE: I don’t know.

  CELIA: ‘The Centuaress’ – the body of the woman melding into the body of a beast.

  Silence.

  CELIA: You can buy a season ticket for the gardens. We could have the lessons there if you liked.

  PIERRE: I prefer it here.

  He sips the coffee.

  CELIA: Is it how you like it?

  PIERRE: It is perfect.

  CELIA: Ginger biscuit?

  PIERRE: Thanks.

  He takes a biscuit.

  CELIA: (Rather proud.) That’s my breakfast.

  PIERRE: A biscuit is what you have for the breakfast?

  CELIA: And half a banana. Yes.

  They gaze at the other half of the banana still on the table.

  CELIA: You can have it if you like.

  PIERRE: Thanks.

  He picks up the remaining half of the banana and eats it. She watches him closely.

  CELIA: I never have anything else for breakfast.

  Silence – PIERRE eating.

  CELIA: So our grammar point for the day is narrative tenses.


  He says nothing.

  CELIA: Past simple, past continuous, past perfect. You know these terms?

  PIERRE: I know.

  CELIA: I’d like you to describe a day using the past tenses. It can be any kind of day. A happy day, a sad day, a boring day, a perfect day. But remember: we mainly narrate stories in the past simple.

  PIERRE considers.

  PIERRE: I describe a happy day.

  CELIA: Will describe. Future simple. Okay.

  PIERRE: When I wake. Sorry. Woke.

  CELIA: Up. You woke up. A modal verb in the past simple. Yes?

  PIERRE: When I woke up, I stretched myself with my arms wide and – got out of my bed.

  CELIA: Had you slept well? It’s an event even further back in time from the series of events being described, so it takes the past perfect tense.

  PIERRE: I had slept well.

  CELIA: Good.

  PIERRE: I had dreamed a dream.

  CELIA: You had dreamt it. What was it about?

  Silence.

  PIERRE: A girl. I had dreamt a beautiful girl.

  CELIA: I see. Go on. You got out of bed?

  PIERRE: I got out of bed. I went to the shower. I turned it on and stood under the water and I washed me.

  CELIA: Myself.

  PIERRE: Myself. Then I finished and I dried ‘myself’ with the towel.

  CELIA: What colour is your towel?

  PIERRE: It is a blue towel.

  CELIA: What kind of blue?

  PIERRE: Dark blue.

  CELIA: What kind of dark blue?

  PIERRE: Like the night.

  CELIA: Go on.

  PIERRE: Then I go to my bedroom and open my cupboard.

  CELIA: So you opened your cupboard.

  PIERRE: I opened my cupboard and took my clothes.

  CELIA: Describe your clothes.

  PIERRE: I took a green T-shirt. And a jean. A pair of jean.

  CELIA: Jeans.

  PIERRE: And my pullover, what is dark blue. Also like the night. And my socks.

  Silence.

  CELIA: The clothes you’re wearing now. Your happy day is today?

  PIERRE: Yes.

  CELIA: Go on. What else?

  PIERRE: Also I took my – what must I say for it?

  CELIA: What?

  PIERRE: Mon slip. My boxing shorts.

  CELIA: Boxer shorts. Underpants.

  PIERRE: Underpants.

  CELIA: And what colour are those?

  PIERRE: Blue. Those are blue.

  CELIA: Like the night?

  PIERRE: Like the day.

  Silence.

  CELIA: And what did you do then?

  PIERRE: I dressed me – myself – and I left my room.

  CELIA: Was the sun shining?

  PIERRE: No. The rain was raining. It was raining. My hair got wet. My hair was – sprinkling?

  CELIA: Sparkling.

  PIERRE: Sparkling.

  CELIA: And then?

  He looks at her directly.

  PIERRE: Then I went to the Metro. I catch the train to Lamarck Caulaincourt. Caught. I caught it. I get out the train and I take the lift up. Then I enter the light and go down the stairs, past that café where I like to go – Le Refuge.

  CELIA: I like to go there too!

  PIERRE: You do? And so I come here.

  CELIA: Yes, you came. And it was still raining.

  PIERRE: It was still raining. And when you arrived at the door and saw me, you said to me that I have stars inside my hair.

  CELIA: I did. You do. And then what happened?

  PIERRE: I am not sure.

  The phone buzzes. They do not move. CELIA glares at it.

  PIERRE: I do not mind. Please take it.

  She picks up the phone and answers.

  CELIA: Allô?

  She goes through to the bedroom.

  CELIA: Monsieur Levi? Je vais venir cet après-midi. Est-ce que ça va? (Hello. Mr Levi? I will come this afternoon. Is that okay?)

  PIERRE takes out the notebook he took during the previous lesson. He goes over to the bookshelves to replace the notebook – and is still doing so when CELIA re-enters and sees him.

  CELIA: (Still on the phone.) Merci, monsieur. Au revoir. (Thanks. Goodbye.) What are you doing, Pierre?

  PIERRE: I was looking at a book.

  CELIA: Why?

  PIERRE: I thought it was a workbook. With lessons inside.

  CELIA: I don’t believe that. You were prying through my private things.

  PIERRE: What is prying?

  CELIA: You know exactly what it means. What do you want?

  PIERRE: What?

  CELIA: What have you come here for?

  PIERRE: English lessons.

  CELIA: There’s some other thing going on here that I’m not even aware about, isn’t there?

  PIERRE: Maybe. It’s nothing – bad.

  CELIA: I have no idea who you are.

  Silence.

  PIERRE: Listen, I’m sorry I go through your stuff – went. I don’t mean to be prying.

  CELIA: It’s something you did by mistake, is that it?

  PIERRE: No, I was – uneasy.

  CELIA: Well, you’re not the only one. The way you come in here and look at everything. The way you look at me. Not as a student. Not as you should – were you polite. It makes me profoundly uneasy.

  PIERRE: Why, because I’m black?

  CELIA: What? That’s absolutely not what I’m talking about.

  PIERRE: Isn’t it? I think it’s the exact thing we’re talking about. Can I afford to pay? Why aren’t I learning Swahali?

  CELIA: I never even said that! You said that!

  PIERRE: I’m the one from the heart of darkness, yes?

  CELIA: Pierre, for God’s sake!

  PIERRE: Don’t worry. I’ve read that book. The cannibals that come out of the bush. The forest of heads on the sticks, all along the river. Open your books to page number twenty six! And me – the only dark one there!

  CELIA: I don’t know what you’re going on about. This has nothing to do with race – it’s about mutual respect!

  PIERRE: Exactly! You pretend you want to help. You act all nice. But deep down you are always thinking – thank God I’m not like him. Always needing help. Thank God I’m civilised!

  CELIA: This is – mad!

  PIERRE: I know it’s mad!

  CELIA: You’re turning me into something I’m not.

  PIERRE: And you aren’t doing the same to me?

  CELIA: Well, what are you then?

  PIERRE: I wish I knew!

  Silence.

  PIERRE: Whenever I close my eyes and stop, I see them. Even in the streets of Paris, or coming out the Metro. Always, I am carrying them in my head.

  CELIA: Who?

  PIERRE: They come when we are still asleep. Before the sun is come up.

  CELIA: Is this some sort of – dream?

  PIERRE: When they look at you, they don’t see you. They have too many ants inside their head.

  CELIA: But who are they?

  PIERRE: Boys mostly. All of them – blind.

  CELIA: I need you to explain yourself.

  PIERRE: I know you do.

  CELIA: I want to understand!

  PIERRE: They are the Interhamwe.

  CELIA: The who?

  PIERRE: You don’t even know who they are!

  CELIA: No. Are they phantoms? Spirits? What?

  PIERRE: They are like the walking dead – yes. But they carry guns. Children with guns who kill hundreds every week. The Interhamwe are the Hutu militias that are coming from Rwanda.

  CELIA: You are saying you’re from – Rwanda?

  PIERRE: No, the Congo. They ask for money. If you give, they kill you. If you don’t, they kill you. My father’s genitals they cut out and throw them in the yard. My mother and my sisters they rape.

  CELIA: I can’t –

  PIERRE: Because the sun is not come up, I slip away. Into the bush. Across the ol
d banana plantation.

  Silence.

  PIERRE: I ran away. I fled. I left them there to die!

  CELIA says nothing.

  PIERRE: Is that enough darkness for you?

  PIERRE is almost weeping with rage and remorse.

  PIERRE: Are you satisfied?

  Silence.

  PIERRE: All the people were killed. Even the dogs. Thrown on a mountain of bodies to be burned.

  CELIA: My God.

  PIERRE: I was taken by the medicins sans frontiers (doctors without borders). I was brought to France. Given to a white family in the Bourgogne. To be adopted. And that – is it. That is how I came to be at Pouilly.

  Silence.

  CELIA: Why are you telling me all this now?

  PIERRE: It’s what you want to hear, isn’t it?

  CELIA: No.

  Silence.

  CELIA: Yes.

  Silence.

  PIERRE: When you look at me, it’s what you expect.

  CELIA’s phone starts buzzing. They don’t move.

  CELIA: I don’t know what to expect.

  Silence.

  PIERRE: Who is this – Oliver?

  CELIA: What?

  PIERRE: I saw his name. In your book.

  CELIA: He’s my brother.

  PIERRE: He’s older than you?

  CELIA: Twenty minutes younger.

  PIERRE: And where is he now?

  CELIA: I really can’t talk about it.

  The phone is still buzzing.

  Blackout.

  Part Three

  THE CONDITIONAL

  CELIA’s apartment. Darkness. The phone is still buzzing. It stops.

  Light grows. CELIA is on the couch, posing, while PIERRE sketches her.

  The phone beeps.

  CELIA: Today we are learning about articulating conditions. If you do this, I do that. They’re called conditionals.

  PIERRE glances at her phone.

  PIERRE: Why do you never answer your phone?

  CELIA: Have you done your homework?

  PIERRE: It’s the way you look at it.

  CELIA: Have you prepared something?

  PIERRE: You think it will bite you?

  CELIA: We should probably start with the zero conditional.

  PIERRE: Or is there a person who wants to bite?

  CELIA: What’s the model for the zero conditional?

  PIERRE: Present tense plus present tense?

  CELIA: Give me an example.

  PIERRE: You never say about yourself. You make me say about myself. But you are always asking the questions.

  CELIA: I ask the questions because I am teaching you how to speak English. I already know how to speak it.

  PIERRE: So when you can speak English, there’s no longer a need to talk?