Silence.
EDWARD: But why would you think of artists as monstrous?
BROWNYN: I suppose I was talking about the need for a fundamental selfishness. The way you’re required to put your internal world – the dictates of your internal world – first.
EDWARD: And if necessary hand your own children over as some kind of sacrifice?
She sighs, impatient.
EDWARD: In psycho-analysis it’s called an unholy exchange. Handing over something you want in order to get some other, more forbidden thing that at that moment you want more.
Silence.
EDWARD: When you were talking about Emily earlier, telling me how she gives herself away too easily – well it reminded me of that passage you wrote. It made me wonder: who handed whom over first?
Silence.
BROWNYN: This is ridiculous.
EDWARD: Did you ever ask Emily about this man – this poet?
BROWNYN: Not that I remember.
EDWARD: What if you were right? What if something unspeakable really was taking place in your sitting-room, while you were up there in your ivory tower, lost in your own imaginings?
BROWNYN: Every artist must feel that guilt. It doesn’t mean I didn’t love my children. Or that I failed to protect them.
EDWARD: Yet you didn’t even try to get to the bottom of what was going on. Would you like me to read the next paragraph?
She shrugs.
EDWARD: ‘As ‘X’ was about to leave, I told Emily to go next door and look for Jo. I made myself some coffee and went back upstairs. But the day was ruined. I couldn’t get back into it. The will to return to where I had been flying so effortlessly moments before was gone.’ Why do you think the will was gone? The day ruined? What happened between that man and your little girl, Mrs Blackburne? I think you know far more about all this than you’re letting on.
BROWNYN: Get out!
EDWARD: I’m sorry?
BROWNYN: Get out of my house!
EDWARD stands.
EDWARD: Tell me something else: what book is worth one child’s happiness?
BROWNYN: I never asked you to come in here.
EDWARD: I am your biographer. You gave me access to your private papers. You said I could say whatever I liked.
BROWNYN: Well I’m sure I never said you could make it up!
EDWARD: I’m a reader. That’s what I do. I look very carefully at what people like you write – the so-called ‘great’ writers – and I form connections. That’s my job. I’m sorry if it offends you.
BROWNYN: Where is Emily? Please – call her.
EDWARD: Emily is out buying the milk.
BROWNYN: Why do you want to torture us?
EDWARD: Torture? We’re simply talking, Mrs Blackburne. Exchanging a few words. How can that be hurtful?
Silence.
EDWARD: There’s a theory about writers – that at the heart of everything they write there’s a single preoccupation. One they rework over and over again. Most of the time, they’re unaware of it. If they became aware of it, they would probably have no need to write. The theory suggests that they only write in order to find out what it is they want to write about. The longer this takes, the more books they produce.
BROWNYN: Who are you, Mr Smith?
Silence.
EDWARD: You know what your preoccupation is? Guilt. The anatomy of guilt. I used to think it was the collective guilt of all your people. You were like a surgeon, cutting through the hypocrisy of the times with a carefully honed sentence. But it was your own guilt that you were trying to comprehend, wasn’t it? All the rest – the politics of the time, any social injustices – those were just the trappings, the excuse, a way of making what you were doing seem more respectable.
Silence.
BROWNYN: I feel very tired. I think I would like to rest.
EDWARD: Of course.
BROWNYN: Will you let yourself out?
EDWARD: Eventually – yes.
Silence.
BROWNYN: I would like to ask you a favour, Mr Smith.
EDWARD: Dr Smith. Yes?
BROWNYN: Please leave me and my family alone.
EDWARD: I’m sorry. It’s too late for that: I’ve opened your wooden chest. Do you want to know who gave me the key?
Silence.
EDWARD: I am in love with Emily. I want to marry her.
BROWNYN: You can marry Emily if you have to, but then you must forget about your book.
EDWARD laughs.
EDWARD: Are you trying to barter with me now, Mrs Blackburne?
BROWNYN: I only mean if you love each other. If it’s what she wants to do. But your book. Putting words into people’s mouths. Making them guilty of a thing you have only imagined. You know what that is? Nothing more than gossip.
EDWARD: That poet whose name you scribbled out. Is he still alive?
BROWNYN: He died in solitary confinement. He was tortured by the police. He was a very good man.
EDWARD: Was he really? A ‘very good man’?
Silence.
EDWARD: I suppose we’ll never know, will we? You never bothered to find out.
He walks out.
She doesn’t move.
BROWNYN: Emily?
Silence.
BROWNYN: Emily?
The light fades to darkness.
Part Three
BRONWYN’s sitting room. Later that day, around midnight. The room is dimly lit. There is an empty bottle of wine and two glasses.
EMILY and EDWARD are entwined on the couch, under a blanket.
EMILY: My first memory is of driving in convoy through the Rhodesian bush. I remember looking through the acacias, trying to spot a terrorist. It felt as if it was the same tree being repeated, again and again, but it wasn’t the tree that was the same each time, it was the fear that stood behind it.
Silence.
EMILY: Later I learned to call terrorists freedom fighters, but the old word still sits somewhere behind the new word for me – like that fear behind every tree.
Silence.
EMILY: Did your father fight in the war?
EDWARD: My dad was a drunk. He spent most of his time lying inside the garden shed on an old couch. I once saw a spider crawling right over his mouth and he didn’t even twitch.
EMILY: My father was a pilot. I remember having lunch one day at the Victoria Falls Hotel with a pilot friend of his. We sat outside, listening to that song “In the Jungle”, and I made an elaborate sculpture out of straws of a giraffe. Everyone admired it. Later that afternoon we all drove to the airport. My father’s friend was flying one Viscount back to Salisbury and we were flying in the other. I wanted to be in my father’s friend’s plane because it had curtains in the windows. A week later as he was flying out of Kariba, he and his plane were shot down by a group of guerrillas. The survivors – some of them babies and children – were bayonetted and shot. Unspeakable things were done to their bodies.
EDWARD: Why are you telling me this?
EMILY: In half a life, look how far we’ve come. I wonder what my father would have said if he could see us now.
EDWARD: It’s interesting that the death of your father should have given your mother the freedom to write. And that your mother should write from the exact opposite perspective from the one she’d grown up with. Did your father die in the war?
EMILY: Apparently, he became delusional, paranoid. My mother told me he injected himself with morphine not long after that Viscount was shot down. But she never talks about it.
EDWARD: Another thing she doesn’t like to talk about.
EMILY: What do you mean? What else is there?
He kisses her.
EMILY: Ouch.
EDWARD: What?
EMILY: You’re scratching me.
EDWARD: Sorry, it’s this damn belt.
He manages to remove his trousers.
They kiss.
EDWARD: At the conference – when did you know we’d have sex?
; EMILY: As soon as you asked your question. And you?
EDWARD: As soon as I saw you sitting up there at the podium.
EMILY: What was it that attracted you?
EDWARD: The way you carried yourself. So upright. The way you tossed your hair back over your shoulder, like an afterthought. You were someone who didn’t seem to pay much attention to the past. You were only interested in moving on.
EMILY: You’re a strange man.
EDWARD: You don’t know the half of it.
He removes some of her clothing during the following.
EMILY: The odd thing is, I remember my father’s friend at lunch that day, but not my father. Where my father is meant to be, there’s only a blank space. Perhaps he wasn’t even there in the first place.
EDWARD: You have no other memories of him?
EMILY: Several images, but I might have got those from photographs. I clearly remember standing on his feet as he walked along the corridor of our house – towards the light of the front stoep. He was moaning like some sea monster while I was laughing. But even that I might have dreamed. Who knows what happened and what didn’t, right?
EDWARD: Did anyone ever tell you that you talk too much?
Silence.
They are about to make love.
EDWARD: Are you with me, Emily?
EMILY: What?
EDWARD: Are you here with me?
EMILY: Where else would I be?
They stop moving.
EMILY: You can carry on.
EDWARD: Are you sure?
EMILY: Of course. Carry on.
He carries on.
Silence.
He stops.
EDWARD: I’m sorry.
He moves away from her.
EDWARD: I can’t.
Silence.
EMILY: What’s wrong?
EDWARD: I don’t want to ‘carry on’.
Silence.
EMILY: Perhaps you’ve had too much wine.
Silence.
EMILY: You drank most of the bottle.
Silence.
EMILY: Maybe we could just talk.
They lie there.
EMILY: What would you like to talk about?
EDWARD: I’m sorry.
He gets up, puts on his trousers, picks up the bottle, sees it’s empty.
EDWARD: I feel like my father.
EMILY: How so?
EDWARD: He was always looking at the bottom of bottles he’d just drunk.
EMILY: Well, you at least have something to celebrate.
EDWARD: I do?
EMILY: Today you got my job.
Silence.
EDWARD: We both know you were the better candidate.
EMILY: That isn’t true.
EDWARD: I was simply the darker candidate.
Silence.
EDWARD: Why aren’t you more pissed off about it?
EMILY: Who would you like me to be pissed off with? You? The panel? The country? Cecil Rhodes?
EDWARD: You’re so damn passive.
EMILY: I am?
EDWARD pours himself some whisky. He downs it.
EMILY: Whenever we have sex, why do you always have to be drunk?
Silence.
EMILY: (Pulling on some clothes.) What happened today?
EDWARD: What are you talking about?
EMILY: When I got home, you were in the garage and my mother was lying in my bed, holding onto my pillow. It looked like she’d been crying. And neither of you wanted to talk.
EDWARD: Nothing happened. I was just – preoccupied.
Silence.
EDWARD: Do you think she’ll recover?
EMILY: This afternoon in the bath she was talking in a language I couldn’t understand. There was some French in it, some German and Spanish. She sounded like Finnegan’s Wake.
EDWARD: She still has a fundamentally European head. Which is quite an accomplishment these days, don’t you think?
EMILY: What’s wrong, Edward?
Silence.
EDWARD: Are you secretly wishing she was dead?
EMILY: Why would you say such a thing?
EDWARD: Well you seem to hate her so much.
EMILY: What gives you that idea?
EDWARD: Why else did you give me that key?
EMILY: The key to the chest? Why not? I didn’t actually think she has anything to hide. Perhaps a love letter from a married man or two – but nothing else.
EDWARD: Is that really what you thought?
Silence.
EMILY: What did you find?
EDWARD: Today we talked about a poet. Someone who was killed in detention. Do you remember him staying in this house? (Sarcastic.) Like me – he was black.
EMILY: We’ve always had lots of writers coming and going around here.
EDWARD: Apparently the two of you liked to talk in this room. He used to sit on that couch. He used to make you laugh. Do you remember what you laughed about?
EMILY: Why is this so important?
EDWARD: Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t. Maybe it’s killed everything.
EMILY: You aren’t making any sense.
EDWARD: Have you read those notebooks before? Did you want me to find the passages about him? Was it you who scratched out his name?
EMILY: I have never read those books in my life. As a girl I might have – but I could never read her writing. Even now I find it difficult. What do you mean – scratched out his name?
EDWARD: Maybe you saw that man’s name written there and you hated it so much, or feared it so much, that you wanted to scribble it out.
EMILY: What are you trying to tell me, Edward? That something took place between me and that man?
EDWARD: Your mother suspects it.
He goes over to the chest and takes out the top notebook. He tosses it in her lap and switches on a lamp.
EDWARD: The page is marked. Read it.
She opens the book, looks at it.
EMILY: What am I looking at?
EDWARD: God knows. An idea for a novel, perhaps. Or perhaps it’s the moment your mother destroyed your life.
EMILY: (Looking at the passage.) I have no memory of – any of this.
EDWARD: That’s what she said.
EMILY: Aren’t all parents the same? Suspecting every adult who shows too much interest in their child? It doesn’t mean anything happened.
EDWARD: It doesn’t mean it didn’t.
Silence.
EMILY: If I was interfered with in some way, surely I’d remember it.
EDWARD: Yes, I imagine you would.
EMILY: Yet – I don’t.
Silence.
EDWARD: These things can be repressed.
Silence.
EDWARD: Tell me, Emily. What do you see in me?
EMILY: Right now, a lot of drink.
EDWARD: Why did you give yourself over to me so easily?
EMILY: At the conference? I liked the question you asked about my mother. I thought it was intelligent.
EDWARD: And you like intelligent black men? Like your mother?
EMILY: Edward – let’s not say anything we might regret.
Silence.
EDWARD: It was all too easy. To seduce you. At first I couldn’t believe my luck. Until today I even thought that it might have been love, or the start of something like love. But do you know what you just did to me? You made me feel – dirty. Even though you weren’t actually enjoying it, you wanted me to carry on. Why? Why would you do that to yourself?
EMILY: I suppose I’m still feeling pissed off about the job.
EDWARD: But you told me you didn’t want it. You encouraged me to apply for it!
EMILY: What did you expect me to say? ‘That’s my job – not yours – and I got there first’?
Silence.
EDWARD: But you have a whole life in New York. You said you don’t even want to live in this country.
EMILY: Well, as it happens I can only work in the department as long as I’m doing my PhD
. And I handed my thesis in last month.
Silence.
EMILY: All my belongings are in boxes at a friend’s apartment, ready to be shipped back. At the moment, this house is the closest I have to a home.
EDWARD: Why didn’t you tell me that?
EMILY: Because maybe I didn’t want to seem too desperate.
Silence.
EDWARD: (Coming closer to her.) Listen, Emily. I think we need to talk.
EMILY: About what?
EDWARD: About my book.
EMILY: Really? That’s about all we ever talk about. Can’t we talk about something else?
EDWARD: I’m afraid it’s going to take a different course.
EMILY: (Ironic.) What – have you decided to write a novel instead?
EDWARD: And I’ll need your support. Because your mother isn’t going to like it.
Silence.
EMILY: You are asking me to gang up on my mother– is that it?
EDWARD: It will take courage from you. To stand up at last and speak the truth.
EMILY: What on earth are you talking about?
EDWARD: Admit it, Emily – you’re fucked up. You have a reputation for sleeping around. God – even your mother says so.
Silence.
EDWARD: But I want to help you. I want us to get to the truth.
EMILY: So you can write about it – and sell lots of books?
EDWARD: No, I love you. I want to reach you – and make everything alright.
EMILY: Tell me something, when did you decide you wanted to write this book? When you asked me that question at the conference or before that? Did you come to the conference in the first place because you knew I’d be there? Did you think you’d come and seduce me first?
EDWARD: That isn’t how it happened.
EMILY: I think that’s exactly how it happened.
Silence.
EMILY: I’ve been watching you. You barely miss a Silence.
EDWARD: What’s that supposed to mean?
EMILY: Underneath your great torrent of words, you have a blank look. Like you’re already half dead. Have you ever actually meant anything you’ve said?
EDWARD: I have only ever tried to get to the truth.
EMILY: You go around using words like ‘love’ and ‘truth’. But when you say those words, I find myself wanting to laugh. It’s becoming clearer and clearer to me that you wouldn’t recognise love or truth if they were staring you in the face.
Silence.
EDWARD: I know that your mother handed you over to the world before you were ready. I know she gave you up so she could write. And while the rest of the world was holding her up as this model of virtue, this great champion of free speech, she was busy suppressing the truth about what she’d allowed in her own house. Don’t you think it’s time someone exposed that? She’s only ever served herself – and you, Emily, you were the sacrifice!
Three Plays Page 12