Silence.
EMILY: Fortunately for me, my mother had closed all the windows.
EDWARD: Why are you telling me this?
EMILY: Does every story have to have a reason?
EDWARD: Yes.
Silence.
EMILY: Well – maybe you were wrong about my mother. In your book. Maybe she knew when to open and when to close the windows.
Silence.
EMILY: And the door to our house.
EDWARD: I wish I could believe that.
EMILY: I did get around to reading her journals, by the way. Why didn’t you tell me that they were full of things about me – me and my sister? And why didn’t you mention them in your book?
EDWARD: All that obsessive recording she did, it was only so she could use you for some novel she planned to write. She wanted all the authentic details written down before she forgot.
EMILY: And yet she never did use those details in any of her books, did she? She published nearly thirty novels, but only rarely did a detail from those journals find its way into any one of them.
Silence.
EMILY: Perhaps the problem with your book is the problem with most criticism. The source material never quite manages to fit into the argument.
EDWARD: (Looking at Bronwyn.) Are you sure she can’t understand us?
EMILY: She left this room long ago.
Silence.
He moves away.
EDWARD: What are your plans?
EMILY: I’ve applied for a job at a university in Perth.
EDWARD: Really? And you’re still prepared to risk telling me about a vacancy?
EMILY: Oh, I wouldn’t tell you if the application deadline hadn’t already passed.
They smile.
EDWARD: And your mother?
EMILY: If she’s still here, I’ll take her with me.
EDWARD: You think she’d be able to leave this house?
EMILY: She was never very sentimental about property. And these days she doesn’t even know her own name. She usually thinks I’m the nurse.
EDWARD: But the previous Bronwyn – she wouldn’t like the idea of it.
Silence.
EMILY: Well, I might have stayed. If the university had given me that job.
Silence.
EMILY: I want to be near my sister and her children. Is that so terrible?
EDWARD: And will you ever come back to South Africa?
EMILY: Perhaps now and again – for research.
EDWARD: In order to look for something that might not exist?
Silence.
EMILY: And you, Edward?
Silence.
EMILY: Have you been enjoying my job?
EDWARD: You know me. I’ve never been much good at happiness.
EMILY: Actually, I didn’t know that about you.
Silence.
EMILY: Would you like something to drink?
EDWARD: Water, thanks.
EMILY: Alright.
She leaves. He stands there, glances across at BRONWYN. She stares at him. He tries to smile. He waves. She simply looks back at him, with no change in her expression.
EMILY enters with two glasses of water.
EDWARD: When my book came out, I felt depressed.
She hands him a glass of water. He drinks all of it.
EMILY: It didn’t exactly go down well with the critics. In fact, I’ve yet to meet one of my mother’s old acquaintances who admits to having read it. If they have a copy, they’re probably keeping it hidden under a cushion somewhere. Like they used to do with pornography.
EDWARD: Is it as bad as that?
EMILY: Why do you think you felt so depressed afterwards? Because you’d underestimated my mother – or because you’d underestimated yourself?
Silence.
EDWARD: I never actually betrayed your trust.
EMILY: All you said was that something terrible had been done to me as a child because of my mother’s neglect. You mention a prominent poet – and withhold his name as if you know it but out of some ethical compunction have decided not to disclose it. Your argument is that my mother was cold, hard, a narcissist – yet you ignore those hundreds of journals that are about little more than her children, and her friends, and all the things in the world she loved.
Silence.
EDWARD: Maybe you don’t remember what happened to you, but who’s to say it didn’t happen?
EMILY: Because I would feel it somewhere in my body. Those were your words, and I think they’re accurate. Which also makes me wonder – how is it you can be so accurate? And how is it that you allowed that idea – which was little more than a rumour – to ruin not only your book but your career, your life?
EDWARD: What are you saying?
EMILY: Was it your father? Did he hurt you when he was drunk?
EDWARD: I see where this is going.
EMILY: We’ve had sex, Edward. I know you can only get aroused when you’re drunk. I have felt parts of you that perhaps no one else has experienced, and I have glimpsed them time and again, like hideous phantoms, peering from behind every paragraph of your book.
EDWARD: I thought you only paged through it in a bookshop.
EMILY: I might have read some sections more carefully than others.
Silence.
EDWARD: So this is why you asked me here? To hear my confession?
Silence.
EDWARD: You want me to tell you I was raped, is that it? While my father was lying drunk in his garden hut, I was up in the house, with the big white boss, being abused? Is that the sordid little story you want me to trot out?
EMILY: I don’t know, Edward – is it?
EDWARD: Naturally that’s why I hate white people. I’m walking around with this big ungovernable wound. And that is why I’m incapable of governing myself – and writing a level-headed, sensible book. And perhaps that’s why no black man will ever be capable of governing anything – because we’re all too emotional, too angry, too wounded by the past ever to be sensible about anything again?
EMILY: I never said – any of that.
EDWARD: You don’t need to. I know how you people think.
Silence.
EDWARD: Well I can tell you now: you aren’t going to get my story, or get off on my story. I’m not ready to spill my guts all over this floor for your entertainment. My people have given enough. And I’m not going to make myself acceptable, digestible, comprehensible to you!
EMILY: Then why are you so upset? If there’s no truth in what I’m saying, why does what I say make you so passionate?
EDWARD: I am not answerable to you.
Silence.
EMILY: You know why I asked you to come here? Because I liked you before. I wanted to find a reason to like you again.
EDWARD: So you dredged up an explanation for my bad behaviour? My bitterness? People are not so simple.
EMILY: Perhaps you should have told yourself that when you tried to represent my mother’s life.
Silence.
EMILY: How does it feel – having your own methods turned back on you?
EDWARD: (Losing it suddenly.) What are you trying to do to me!
Silence.
EDWARD: I have to leave.
He heads towards the door.
EMILY: I was pregnant.
He stops.
EMILY: With your child.
Silence.
EDWARD: Where – is it?
EMILY: Gone.
EDWARD: You killed it?
EMILY: I lost it.
Silence.
EMILY: I miscarried after six months.
Silence.
EMILY: He was a boy. I saw him, and he was perfect. The only thing he lacked was a life.
EDWARD: And he – he was ours?
EMILY: He was. He was almost ours. But the spark inside him floated off. In the end, we weren’t the right – starting place.
EDWARD stands there, completely bereft, trying to breathe.
Dur
ing the following, he sits, his head in his hands, trying to contain his grief.
BROWNYN: ‘Once upon a time, there was an old woman who sat in the top of a tall house that overlooked a difficult city. She told stories to herself, but she intended them for other people. Her stories were translated into many languages and her books migrated all over the world. One of these books landed in the lap of a young man called Edward. He was from the old woman’s country, but he was far from home. The young man read her stories and decided to change his life. He continued to travel the world with the old woman’s words flying around inside him, creating little pathways in his head that soon became his own.’
Silence.
EDWARD: I’m sorry.
Silence.
EDWARD: What should I do?
Silence.
EMILY: I don’t know. But you could stay for supper, if you like.
Silence.
EMILY: We could talk. Or not talk. We could do whatever felt right.
EDWARD looks up at her.
EDWARD: Did it hurt?
EMILY: Yes.
Silence.
EMILY: And it hasn’t stopped.
BROWNYN: ‘One day, the young man met a woman. She was holding a glass of water. The young man stepped forward and took the glass, and he started to drink.’
EDWARD: Emily?
EMILY: Yes?
EDWARD: I’d like to tell it to you – my story. If you’re still interested.
EMILY: Of course I am.
Silence.
EDWARD: It isn’t easy.
EMILY: Who said it had to be?
They manage a smile.
BRONWYN starts typing again as the light fades to darkness.
The End.
Author Biography
Craig Higginson is an internationally acclaimed writer who lives in Johannesburg. His plays have been performed and produced at the National Theatre (London), the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Trafalgar Studios (London’s West End), the Traverse Theatre (Edinburgh), the Stadsteater (Stockholm), Salisbury Theatre, the Citizens Theatre (Glasgow), Live Theatre (Newcastle), Next Theatre (Chicago), Theatre 503 and the Finborough Theatre (both London), the Market Theatre (Johannesburg) and several other theatres and festivals around the world. He was one of ten playwrights from around the world to be commissioned for his play Little Foot by the National Theatre (London) for the 2012 Connections Festival. He is currently adapting The Mission Song for John le Carre’s production company The Ink Factory (London and LA) and for Headlong in the UK – for production in 2017. His new play The Red Door will also be produced and published in 2016.
Craig’s awards in the UK and South Africa include the Sony Gold Award for the Best Radio Drama in the UK, an Edinburgh Fringe First, the UJ Award for South African Literature in English and Naledi Awards for Best South African play and Best Children’s Play. His plays are published by Oberon Books and Methuen (London) and Wits Press (South Africa) and his novels by Picador Africa (Johannesburg) and Mercure de France (Paris).
His plays include: Laughter in the Dark, Lord of the Flies, Truth in Translation (co-writer), Dream of the Dog, Ten Bush (co-writer), The Jungle Book, The Girl in the Yellow Dress, Little Foot and The Imagined Land. His novels include: The Hill, Last Summer, The Landscape Painter and The Dream House, which was published in English in April 2015 – and will appear in 2016 in French. Last Summer will appear in French in 2017.
Craig was born in Zimbabwe and has lived in London, Stratford-upon-Avon, Paris and Johannesburg. He is married with one daughter.
Other plays for young audiences by the same author
The Jungle Book
9781849430104
Little Foot
9781849434003
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Three Plays Page 14