Three Plays

by Craig Higginson

  CELIA: My job is to pass on what I know until you can speak for yourself. It’s not to tell you about myself.

  PIERRE: Then change your job.

  CELIA: You should’ve been content with what you had before you came here.

  PIERRE: I want what you have.

  CELIA: Oh, and what’s that?

  PIERRE: The world.

  CELIA laughs.

  PIERRE: You’re beautiful, clever, rich. Most of all, you’re white. You can go anywhere, always a bit higher than everything else.

  CELIA: That’s not a very nice thing to say.

  PIERRE: Maybe you don’t see it because for you it’s normal. Or you do see it, but you don’t like it to be said. You don’t know what it is to be made always a bit lower than everything. Always – suspicious.

  CELIA: The only person who can free you from that feeling is you. There are bigots everywhere – and they’ll always pick on something, whoever you are.

  PIERRE: You could try to help. By letting me in. By telling about yourself. As an equal. A friend.

  CELIA: We’re student and teacher. You came here so I could correct your grammar.

  PIERRE: That’s not why I came.

  CELIA: Okay – you wanted to express yourself. Aren’t you doing that? Aren’t you getting from me exactly what you wanted?

  PIERRE: Not exactly.

  CELIA: Then what do you want – exactly?

  PIERRE: I’ll tell you when you’re – softer.

  CELIA: Listen, I’ve never been softer in my life.

  Silence.

  CELIA: Present tense plus present tense. Try to think of an example.

  PIERRE: (Still trying to draw her.) Keep still. You keep moving your head.

  CELIA: Can’t you give it a break?

  PIERRE: I’m accustomed to drawing birds – not English girls.

  CELIA: The zero conditional.

  PIERRE: If he gives himself, she will give herself?

  CELIA: Is that what you prepared for me? Anyway – you’re wrong. You’ve slipped into the future simple. It should be: if he gives, she gives. But the zero conditional is not very common. Such clear causality is rare.

  PIERRE: You’re – losing me.

  CELIA: The zero conditional is used for things like scientific experiments. Not everyday life. If you heat water to a hundred degrees, it boils. Humans need a greater deal of uncertainty to express themselves. They don’t obey the laws of Science.

  PIERRE: (Still drawing.) Stop moving!

  CELIA: I want to see for myself.

  She comes over to look at the drawing. He hides it.

  PIERRE: Not yet!

  She sits.

  PIERRE: Look towards the sky.

  CELIA: It’s called the ceiling.

  He continues drawing.

  CELIA: What about the model for the first conditional?

  PIERRE: Present simple plus future simple? If he likes her, she will like him?

  CELIA: Correct, but slightly presumptuous. It could be: if he likes her, she will consider him.

  He continues drawing her for a while.

  PIERRE: Why do you not want to talk about yourself?

  CELIA: Can’t you accept that I am what you see? Isn’t that enough?

  PIERRE: You said we must make up stories to represent ourselves.

  CELIA: Well then I’ll make it up in the present. With you. As we go along. Why should stories from the past – whether hideous or dull – represent us? Can’t we free ourselves from what happened? Or do we always have to drag it along behind us – like some sort of hideous afterbirth? You didn’t choose what happened to you. And neither did I.

  PIERRE: What happened to you?

  CELIA: Nothing.

  PIERRE: Then what did you do?

  Silence.

  PIERRE: Or not do?

  Silence.

  CELIA: Tell me the model for the second conditional.

  PIERRE: Past simple plus – present simple? I can’t remember.

  She gets up – pretending to walk towards the kitchen.

  PIERRE: What are you doing?

  She snatches the pad from him.

  CELIA: And who is that supposed to be!

  PIERRE: Don’t you like it?

  CELIA: It looks like an illustration from a magazine.

  PIERRE picks up her phone.

  PIERRE: You have seven missed calls.

  CELIA: Give that back!

  PIERRE holds out the phone – and they swap the phone and the pad.

  CELIA: My mother is the only person who phones me these days. For your information. And Monsieur Levi.

  PIERRE: How do I know this Monsieur Levi isn’t your lover?

  CELIA: He’s as blind as a bat.

  PIERRE: He doesn’t need eyes in order to kiss you.

  CELIA: Well, I would have to tear mine out in order to kiss him.

  PIERRE: And you have no other students?

  CELIA: I told you: my only other student at the moment is you.

  PIERRE tears up his sketch of CELIA.

  CELIA: Why did you do that?

  PIERRE: I must start again.

  CELIA: That is such a violent thing to do to me.

  PIERRE: You said it wasn’t you.

  CELIA: Well, it’s as close as you could get.

  PIERRE: I want to make it look more alive.

  CELIA: You mean me – you want me to look more alive.

  He starts again.

  CELIA: The second conditional is past simple plus future simple. If he wanted to draw her, she would let him.

  PIERRE: If he wanted to draw her, she would let him?

  CELIA: Yes.

  He continues drawing.

  CELIA: Don’t look at the drawing. Look at me and let your hand move across the page.

  He starts again.

  CELIA: It’s called contour drawing. You don’t concern yourself with the page – you only look at the subject. It’s supposed to help you to see directly, without interpretation.

  He does this for a while.

  CELIA: Let’s see.

  He hands her the drawing. She looks at it and laughs. He looks at it with her.

  PIERRE: The eye looks a bit like yours, don’t you think?

  CELIA: (Laughing.) Which bit of this pile of spaghetti are you referring to exactly?

  PIERRE: And the way the hair falls – there.

  He touches her hair and pushes a strand of it back.

  CELIA: You’re very sweet, you know that?

  PIERRE: If he wanted –

  CELIA: What?

  PIERRE: The second conditional. If he wanted to –

  CELIA: Yes?

  PIERRE: Touch her. She would let him?

  Silence.

  PIERRE: Is that correct?

  Silence.

  CELIA: Yes. No.

  PIERRE: No?

  Silence.

  PIERRE: Yes?

  CELIA: I meant that was the correct use of the second conditional.

  PIERRE: Yes?

  CELIA: No.

  Silence.

  CELIA: She would not let him touch her if he wanted to.

  PIERRE says nothing.

  CELIA: You see, you can swap the clauses around with conditionals. They still work.

  Silence.

  CELIA: I think we’d better stop – for today.

  PIERRE: I am paying for one hour and a half.

  CELIA: I don’t like being paid for this.

  Silence.

  PIERRE: You think I don’t understand?

  CELIA: What?

  PIERRE: Everything.

  CELIA: How can you – when I don’t myself?

  PIERRE: Everyone knows everything. But we hide from it.

  CELIA: Your English is improving.

  She is trembling slightly.

  PIERRE: Why are you shaking?

  CELIA: That’s good. The present continuous.

  PIERRE: C’est pas le moment de me faire un cours d’anglais. (This is not the m
oment for an English lesson.)

  CELIA: It’s exactly the moment for an English lesson.

  PIERRE: I want to kiss you.

  CELIA: The third conditional. We haven’t done it yet. It requires the past perfect and the present perfect with the – the subjunctive. I forget.

  PIERRE: If he had touched her, then she might – have wanted it?

  CELIA: Yes – something along those lines.

  PIERRE touches her face.

  CELIA: I grew up in Primrose Hill. With my brother. And my mother. Did I tell you that?

  PIERRE: Now you want to talk?

  Her whole body is shuddering slightly.

  CELIA: We lived in Chalcott Square.

  PIERRE: It sounds pretty.

  CELIA: We had a Japanese garden at the back. My brother and I had the job of collecting the snails. We would take them to the railway bridge in a bucket and let them go in the willowherb.

  PIERRE: How lovely.

  CELIA: Are you listening?

  PIERRE: You throw the snails in the willowherb.

  CELIA: My mother was often away.

  PIERRE: Why away?

  CELIA: For months at a time. In Africa somewhere. Writing her next book.

  PIERRE: Ah yes.

  CELIA: She was always a little in love with African men. She said she found them sexy. I think she had several affairs. But she always left them there – where she’d found them.

  PIERRE: Very sensible.

  CELIA: She’d come back from each trip with gifts for me and Oliver. Dolls made from beads. Carved wooden figures with straw coming out their heads.

  PIERRE: (Ironic.) Black magic.

  CELIA: She’d find you – alluring. And want to know everything about you. She’d probably put you in a book. You know her books have been translated into nine different languages? Perhaps you’ve read one of them. She’s popular throughout Europe.

  PIERRE: Are you nervous? Your whole body – it is shaking.

  CELIA: My father was a surgeon. I was always a bit – dim. Around him.

  PIERRE: Dim?

  CELIA: Out of focus as well as stupid. Like we were not where he was. He left when we were about ten.

  PIERRE takes her hand.

  CELIA: Both my parents are considered a great success. Olly too. I’ve somehow become the family flop. Sitting here, teaching people like you. It’s not what anyone imagined for me. I was supposed to be – exceptional. I was going to be an actress, then a novelist. I won’t even manage being a mother at this rate. And as for teaching English –

  PIERRE: Celia, I’m not here to learn English.

  CELIA: We shouldn’t even be doing this.

  PIERRE: Because you’re my teacher? I’m not a child.

  CELIA: Please – don’t.

  She withdraws her hand.

  PIERRE: Alright. I won’t touch. But we can speak. Yes?

  CELIA: Yes.

  PIERRE: Tell me a thing you have never told to anyone. Something – dangerous. I want to know everything about you.

  CELIA: People say that but they never really mean it.

  PIERRE: I gave a secret part of me. Now I want one from you.

  They stare at each other.

  CELIA: Do you know how to keep your mouth shut?

  PIERRE demonstrates how he can keep his mouth shut – and nods.

  CELIA: Well, I suppose I could tell you that I take things. Is that enough?

  PIERRE: What do you take?

  CELIA: Sometimes things from shops.

  PIERRE: What things from shops?

  CELIA: Oh, silly things. Nail varnish. Lip balm. A nail file.

  PIERRE: Why?

  CELIA: I suppose I imagine I’m not worthy.

  PIERRE: To buy it?

  CELIA: Of buying it for myself. I’ve never bothered to understand it. But I take things. From shops and from places I stay. Mostly from relatives – and from friends. Usually things they wouldn’t even miss. Like a comb, or soap. Sometimes I take a book.

  PIERRE: When did it begin?

  CELIA: Start. You say start. It started when I was about twelve, thirteen.

  Silence.

  CELIA: We could talk about it all day and not get to the bottom of it.

  PIERRE: Which of these books did you take?

  CELIA: That one there. Rilke’s poems. I took that from my father’s study.

  PIERRE: After he left or before?

  CELIA: After, of course.

  PIERRE: But that’s not stealing.

  CELIA: I took Sons and Lovers from a friend who lives in Surrey. From her parents’ house, in fact. I take books whenever I go there. Rebecca’s parents is where I got most of my Virginia Woolf. Would you like me to carry on? For a while I worked at a bookshop. I stole a great many books from there. All my Everyman’s Library. That entire row.

  PIERRE: You must try to stop.

  CELIA: I am.

  PIERRE: Good.

  Silence.

  PIERRE: Why do you do it?

  CELIA: I suppose I like the thrill. Living with the guilt. Having something I can focus on and feel particularly bad about. I mean bad in a particular sense – rather than just generally.

  Silence.

  CELIA: Now you – you tell me something.

  PIERRE: My secret? But I already have.

  CELIA: Another one then.

  PIERRE: I – can’t think of a small one.

  CELIA: Only big ones?

  PIERRE: (Laughing.) Yes!

  Silence.

  CELIA: Alright. A big one then.

  PIERRE: I have one that is involved with you.

  CELIA: Oh yes?

  PIERRE: It’s that I saw you first wearing a yellow dress.

  CELIA: Which yellow dress?

  PIERRE: The one that is simple – your arms bare (demonstrating) to here – going to the length of your knees.

  CELIA: Ah that. Yes – I stole that dress from Le Bon Marché!

  PIERRE: Well, you were wearing it when I saw you at the Sorbonne, putting up your notices. It was still September then. Autumn.

  CELIA: Oh.

  Silence.

  CELIA: When you first came here, you said there was this girl. In the Luxembourg Gardens. The girl you were watching. Me?

  PIERRE: I used to see you at the Sorbonne.

  CELIA: I’ve never bought sheep’s milk cheese from Spain in my life.

  PIERRE: Well, I made that bit up.

  CELIA: I don’t even remember going food shopping around there. Why would I? There’s a perfectly good place next door.

  PIERRE: When I first saw you at the Sorbonne, I took down your number and your address. When you disappeared, I called – but there was no reply.

  CELIA: There rarely is!

  PIERRE: So I decided to come up here. To see where you live.

  CELIA: The psychologists call it scopophilia. It’s an illness. There’s the pleasure of looking and the pleasure of being looked at. Would you describe yourself as a voyeur?

  PIERRE: It was seeing you that made me into that.

  CELIA: Right, so it’s all my fault!

  PIERRE: For being beautiful. Yes!

  Silence.

  CELIA: So you came up here to look at me. What happened next?

  PIERRE: You left the apartment and went into the supermarket. I followed you in – and then I turned and left.

  CELIA: And you only did this the once?

  PIERRE: Maybe the twice.

  CELIA: (Rather pleased, in spite of herself.) How absolutely hideous.

  PIERRE: I know it wasn’t right. I wanted to call again. But I had become too – nervous.

  CELIA: Not as nervous as I would have been!

  PIERRE: I thought: if I can get that English girl to like me, I can be alright.

  Silence.

  CELIA: Should I be calling the police?

  PIERRE: I’m not dangerous.

  Silence.

  CELIA: When you were watching me. What did I do?

  Even PIERR
E can sense she’s relenting.

  PIERRE: Many things. Like brushing your hair by the window. It was longer then. Reading your books at Le Refuge. Walking to the Cimetière de Montmartre – to Truffaut’s grave. Buying goat milk cheese and tartelettes citron (lemon tarts).

  CELIA: I think I should definitely be calling the police!

  PIERRE: I followed you up the hill to Montmartre once. You stopped outside Au Lapin Agile and took off your sandals. You went past the grape vines, up through the tourist shops. It was getting dark. Sacré Couer was lit up on the hill. Outside, there were people playing the drums, smoking hashish, kissing – but you went up the stairs and into the church, and sat near the front, staring at the huge Christ in the dome, with his arms spread wide. The altar was made of gold. There was a single nun standing in front of it. She lifted her arms and started to sing. Like an angel. It was as if you were about to step up into heaven. The nun, she lifted her arms again and all the people in the church started to sing.

  CELIA: I remember how beautiful it was. It made one imagine there could be a God. I’m not sure I like the idea of you watching me right then.

  PIERRE: I could see how alone you looked. Sitting there, so upright, with the drums playing outside. It’s why I was finally courageous enough to phone. I thought with you I might have a chance.

  CELIA: I should probably be booting you out.

  PIERRE: Should you?

  CELIA: Somehow, I’m not afraid of you at all. You’re about as dotty as me!

  PIERRE: You aren’t ‘dotty’.

  CELIA: You have no idea.

  Silence.

  CELIA: I want to look at your feet.

  PIERRE: What?

  CELIA: My grandmother always said – you can judge a man by his hands and his feet. I’ve already seen your hands. Now I want to look at your feet.

  PIERRE, amused, takes off his shoes and his socks.

  CELIA: So you followed me, did you – with those feet?

  PIERRE: With those feet. What do you think?

  She touches them, feels his soles.

  CELIA: I say ‘those’. You say ‘these’. Because they belong to you.

  PIERRE: They can belong to you if you like.

  CELIA: Granny always said: ‘Never trust a man with soft hands and feet!’

  PIERRE laughs.

  PIERRE: In Pouilly my feet were firm, but I’m a Parisian now.

  CELIA: A flâneur (one who walks around idly), with lovely long toes.

  PIERRE: Now yours.

  CELIA: My what?

  PIERRE: My grandmother said – before you marry a girl, you must look at her feet.

  CELIA: Marriage? Let’s not get carried away!

  She puts out her feet and allows him to remove her shoes for her.