Brian Friel Plays 1 (51 page)

ALICE:
(
Calls
)
Uncle George!

(
He
stops
just
as
he
is
about
to
make
his
retreat.
She
goes
to
him
.)

ALICE:
I want you to come to London with Eamon and me. You
wouldn’t have to talk. You wouldn’t ever have to say a word. But you’d be great company for me, just being there. I wouldn’t be lonely if you were there with me.

(
ALICE
reaches
forward
to
catch
his
hand
but
withdraws
again.
Long
pause.
Then –
)

GEORGE:
Haven’t been in London since the year nineteen and ten; to be precise the week Edward the Seventh died. Saw it all. That’s what
I
call a funeral.

ALICE:
Will you come? Please.

(
Short
pause.
)

GEORGE:
Another visit’s about due, I suppose. I’ll pack.

(
He
marches
off
the
way
he
came.
)

ALICE:
Thank you, Uncle George – thank you. (
Elated
,
to
EAMON
) He’s coming! (
To
all
)
He’s coming with us to London! Do you mind?

EAMON:
Where will he sleep?

ALICE:
On the divan – anywhere – he won’t mind – he never cared about his comfort. You’re sure you don’t mind?

EAMON:
He’ll be
my
keepsake.

(
WILLIE
enters through the study
.)

WILLIE:
Sorry I’m a bit late. Who needs a lift down to the bus?

ALICE:
Thanks, Willie. I suppose we should start moving.

CASIMIR:
Time enough yet, aren’t we?

JUDITH:
Anybody feel like something to eat?

WILLIE:
No time for eating now.

JUDITH:
(
To
EAMON
) A cup of tea?

EAMON:
No thanks.

JUDITH:
A drink?

EAMON:
Nothing.

ALICE:
How long a delay have you in London before your Hamburg flight?

CASIMIR:
An hour and a half.

ALICE:
We’ll stay with you at the airport and eat there.

JUDITH:
(To
WILLIE
) Uncle George is going with Alice and Eamon.

WILLIE:
Going where?

JUDITH:
London.

WILLIE:
You’re joking me. Are you serious?

JUDITH:
Yes.

WILLIE:
Jaysus, he’ll fair keep London in chat.

(
They
are
all
seated
again
:
CLAIRE
close
to
CASIMIR
;
WILLIE
beside
J
UDITH
;
EAMON
on
the
ground
at
Alice’s
feet
,
his
head
resting
against
her
leg
;
the
three
couples
spread
across
the
lawn.
There
is
an
unspoken
wish
to
protract
time
,
to
postpone
the
final
breaking
up.
CASIMIR
picks
up
the
cassette.
)

CASIMIR
:
What’ll it be?

CLAIRE:
Your pleasure.

CASIMIR:
My pleasure – right.

CLAIRE:
But not a test.

CASIMIR:
Not a test; no more tests; just my pleasure.

(
Pause.
)

WILLIE:
They gave him a nice enough wee send off, didn’t they?

JUDITH:
Yes.

WILLIE:
I was up in court before him once – did I ever tell you that one?

JUDITH:
What was that?

WILLIE:
First car I ever had. No tax, no insurance, no licence, no brakes, no nothing – buck all except that the damn thing kind of went. Jaysus. And I mind I swore a pack of lies to him.

JUDITH:
Were you fined?

WILLIE:
Let me off with a caution! He must have believed me. No, he didn’t. Knew damn well I was a liar. He just pretended he believed me. Jaysus, he was a strange bird. How are you?

JUDITH:
Slight headache. It’s nothing.

WILLIE:
I thought so – I was watching you in the chapel. Here.

JUDITH:
What’s that?

WILLIE:
Aspirin. Got them on the way up.

JUDITH:
Thanks. I’ll take them later.

(
Bedtime Waltz on the cassette
.)

WILLIE:
I don’t want to hustle yous; but if you’re getting the 3.30 you’d need
to start moving.

(
Nobody
hears
him.
)

CASIMIR:
You’re too young to remember Mother singing that.

CLAIRE:
Am I?

CASIMIR:
Oh, yes; much too young.

CLAIRE:
I think I remember her – I’m not sure. You’ll come back again for my wedding, won’t you?

CASIMIR:
Wouldn’t miss it for all the world. Three months time, isn’t it?

CLAIRE:
I wish it were tomorrow. I would love it would be tomorrow.

CASIMIR:
Three months? Oh my goodness three months’ll fly – just fly. We’ll all be back again before you know. What’s three months? Three months is nothing, nothing, nothing.

(
Brief
pause
.)

ALICE:
What are you thinking?

EAMON:
That in a way it’s as difficult for me as it is for you.

ALICE:
What is?

EAMON:
Leaving; leaving for good. I know it’s your home. But in a sense it has always been my home, too, because of granny and then because of you.

ALICE:
I don’t know what I feel. Maybe a sense of release; of not being pursued; of the possibility of – (
Short pause
) – of ‘fulfilment’. No. Just emptiness. Perhaps maybe a new start. Yes, I’ll manage.

EAMON:
Because you’re of that tradition.

ALICE:
What tradition?

EAMON:
Of discipline; of self-discipline – residual aristocratic instincts.

ALICE:
I’m
the alcoholic, remember.

EAMON:
So was Uncle George – once.

ALICE:
You and Judith always fight.

EAMON:
No, we don’t. When did you discover that?

ALICE:
I’ve always known it. And I think it’s because you love her. I think it’s because you think you love her; and that’s the same thing. No, it’s even more disturbing for you. And that’s why I’m not unhappy that this is all over – because love is possible only in certain contexts. And now that this is finished, you may become less unhappy in time.

EAMON:
Have we a context?

ALICE:
Let’s wait and see.

WILLIE:
Does nobody want to catch this bus?

JUDITH:
Don’t worry, Willie. They’ll make it.

(
CASIMIR
has
been
humming
with
the
cassette.
Now
he
stops
.)

CASIMIR:
What you must all do – what you must all do very soon – is come to Hamburg for a holiday! Helga and I have some wonderful friends you’ll enjoy meeting – novelists, poets, painters, musicians! – marvellous people! – and we’ll have a great reunion of the whole family! It will be like old times! Everybody’ll come next summer! Next summer in Hamburg!

EAMON:
A party in Vienna.

CASIMIR:
Yes, yes, yes indeed, Eamon! That’s what it’ll be – a party in Vienna!

(
CLAIRE
switches
off
the
cassette.
)

CLAIRE:
(
Calmly
)
I’m suddenly sick of Chopin – isn’t that strange? Just suddenly sick of him. I don’t think I’ll ever play Chopin again.

(
Silence.
Then
EAMON
begins
to
sing
softly.
)

EAMON:
‘Oh don’t you remember Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt …’

WILLIE:
I’m telling you, Eamon, that aul’ bus isn’t going to wait for you, you know.

ALICE:
‘Sweet Alice with hair so brown …’

(
EAMON
and
ALICE
sing
together
.)

(
While
they
are
singing
the
line
above.
)

JUDITH:
I keep thinking I hear sounds from that speaker.

(
WILLIE
begins
to
rise.
)

WILLIE:
I’ll take it down now.

JUDITH:
Don’t touch it! (
Softer
)
Not just now. Not just at this moment.

(
CASIMIR
has
walked
round
to
EAMON
and
ALICE
and
sings
with
them.
All
three
:)

(
While
they
are
singing
,
UNCLE GEORGE
has
entered
the
study.
He
puts
his
small
case
on
the
ground
and
his
coat
across
a
chair
and
sits
with
his
hands
on
his
lap.
He
has
all
the
patience
in
the
world.
As
he
sings
CASIMIR
glances
over
the
house.
CLAIRE
begins
to
hum.
One
has
the
impression
that
this
afternoon – easy
,
relaxed
,
relaxing – may
go
on
indefinitely.

WILLIE:
I’m telling you – they’re going to miss it!

JUDITH:
No, they won’t.

WILLIE:
They’re cutting it close then. Jaysus they’re cutting it very close.

SINGERS:
‘They have fitted a slab of granite so grey

(
Before the song ends bring the lights down slowly to dark.
)

for Anne again

FRANK
GRACE
TEDDY

FRANK:
(
Eyes closed
)

All those dying Welsh villages. (
Eyes
open
.) I’d get so tense before a performance, d’you know what I used to do? As we drove along those narrow, winding roads I’d recite the names to myself just for the mesmerism, the sedation, of the incantation –

Welsh – Scottish – over the years they became indistinguishable. The kirks or meeting-houses or schools – all identical, all derelict. Maybe in a corner a withered sheaf of wheat from a harvest thanksgiving of years ago or a fragment of a Christmas decoration across a window – relicts of abandoned rituals. Because the people we moved among were beyond that kind of celebration.

   Hardly ever cities or towns because the halls were far too dear for us. Seldom England because Teddy and Gracie were English and they believed, God help them, that the Celtic temperament was more receptive to us. And never Ireland because of me –

   I beg your pardon –
The
Fantastic
Francis
Hardy,
Faith
Healer,
One
Night
Only.
(
A
slight
bow
.)
The man on the tatty banner. (
He
takes
off
his
overcoat,
selects
an
end
chair
from
one
of
the
rows,
and
throws
the
coat
across
it.
This
chair
and
coat
will
be
in
the
same
position
at
the
opening
of
Part
Four
.)

   When we started out – oh, years and years ago – we used to have
Francis
Hardy,
Seventh
Son
of
a
Seventh
Son
across the top. But it made the poster too expensive and Teddy persuaded me to settle for the modest ‘fantastic’. It was a favourite word of his and maybe in this case he employed it
with accuracy. As for the Seventh Son – that was a lie. I was in fact the only child of elderly parents, Jack and Mary Hardy, born in the village of Kilmeedy in County Limerick where my father was sergeant of the guards. But that’s another story …

   The initials were convenient, weren’t they? FH – Faith Healer. Or if you were a believer in fate, you might say my life was determined the day I was christened. Perhaps if my name had been Charles Potter I would have been … Cardinal Primate; or Patsy Muldoon, the Fantastic Prime Minister. No, I don’t mock those things. By no means. I’m not respectful but I don’t mock.

   Faith healer – faith healing. A craft without an apprenticeship, a ministry without responsibility, a vocation without a ministry. How did I get involved? As a young man I chanced to flirt with it and it possessed me. No, no, no, no, no – that’s rhetoric. No; let’s say I did it … because I could do it. That’s accurate enough. And occasionally it worked – oh, yes, occasionally it
did
work. Oh, yes. And when it did, when I stood before a man and placed my hands on him and watched him become whole in my presence, those were nights of exultation, of consummation – no, not that I was doing good, giving relief, spreading joy – good God, no, nothing at all to do with that; but because the questions that undermined my life then became meaningless and because I knew that for those few hours I had become whole in myself, and perfect in myself, and in a manner of speaking, an aristocrat, if the term doesn’t offend you.

   But the questionings, the questionings … They began modestly enough with the pompous struttings of a young man:
Am
I
endowed
with
a
unique
and
awesome
gift?
– my God, yes, I’m afraid so. And I suppose the other extreme was
Am I
a
con
man?
– which of course was nonsense, I think. And between those absurd exaggerations the possibilities were legion. Was it all chance? – or skill? – or illusion? – or delusion? Precisely what power did I possess? Could I summon it? When and how? Was I its servant? Did
it reside in my ability to invest someone with faith in me or did I evoke from him a healing faith in himself? Could my healing be effected without faith? But faith in what? – in me? – in the possibility? – faith in faith? And is the power diminishing? You’re beginning to masquerade, aren’t you? You’re becoming a husk, aren’t you? And so it went on and on and on. Silly‚wasn’t it? Considering that nine times out of ten nothing at all happened. But they persisted right to the end, those nagging, tormenting, maddening questions that rotted my life. When I refused to confront them, they ambushed me. And when they threatened to submerge me, I silenced them with whiskey. That was efficient for a while. It got me through the job night after night. And when nothing happened or when something did happen, it helped me to accept that. But I can tell you this: there was one thing I did know, one thing I always knew right from the beginning – I always knew, drunk or sober, I always knew when nothing was going to happen.

   Teddy. Yes, let me tell you about Teddy, my manager. Cockney. Buoyant. Cheerful. Tiny nimble feet. Dressed in cord jacket, bow-tie, greasy velour hat. I never knew much about his background except that he had been born into show business. And I never understood why he stayed with me because we barely scraped a living. But he had a devotion to me and I think he had a vague sense of being associated with something … spiritual and that gave him satisfaction. If you met him in a bar he’d hold you with those brown eyes of his. ‘I’ve ’andled some of
the
most sensational properties in my day, dear ’eart, believe me. But I’ve threw ’em all up for Mr ’ardy ’ere, ’cos ’e is just the most fantastic fing you’ve ever seen.’ And listening to him I’d almost forget what indeed he had given up to tour with us – a Miss Mulatto and Her Three Pigeons, and a languid whippet called Rob Roy who took sounds from a set of bagpipes. Humbling precedents, if I were given to pride. And he believed all along and right up to the end that somewhere one day something ‘fantastic’ was going to happen to us. ‘Believe me, dear ’eart,’ perhaps when we
had barely enough petrol to take us to the next village, ‘believe me, we are on the point of making a killing.’ He was a romantic man. And when he talked about this killing, I had a fairy-tale image of us being summoned to some royal bedroom and learned doctors being pushed aside and I’d raise the sleeping princess to life and we’d be wined and dined for seven
days and seven nights and sent on our way with bags of sovereigns. But he was a man of many disguises. Perhaps he wasn’t romantic. Perhaps he knew that’s what I’d think. Perhaps he was a much more perceptive man than I knew.

   And there was Grace, my mistress. A Yorkshire woman. Controlled, correct, methodical, orderly. Who fed me, washed and ironed for me, nursed me, humoured me. Saved me, I’m sure, from drinking myself to death. Would have attempted to reform me because that was her nature, but didn’t because her instincts were wiser than her impulses. Grace Dodsmith from Scarborough – or was it Knaresborough? I don’t remember, they all sound so alike, it doesn’t matter. She never asked for marriage and for all her tidiness I don’t think she wanted marriage – her loyalty was adequate for her. And it was never a heady relationship, not even in the early days. But it lasted. A surviving relationship. And yet as we grew older together I thought it wouldn’t. Because that very virtue of hers – that mulish, unquestioning, indefatigable loyalty – settled on us like a heavy dust. And nothing I did, neither my bitterness nor my deliberate neglect nor my blatant unfaithfulness, could disturb it.

   We’d arrive in the van usually in the early evening. Pin up the poster. Arrange the chairs and benches. Place a table inside the door for the collection. Maybe sweep the place out. Gracie’d make tea on the primus stove. Teddy’d try out his amplifying system. I’d fortify myself with some drink. Then we’d wait. And wait. And as soon as darkness fell, a few would begin to sidle in –

   Teddy and his amplifying system: I fought with him about it dozens of times and finally gave in to him. Our row was over what he called ‘atmospheric background music’. When the people would have gathered Teddy would ask them – he held the microphone up to his lips and assumed a special, reverential tone – he’d ask them to stay in their seats while I moved among them. ‘Everybody’ll be attended to, dear ’eart. Relax. Take it easy. And when Mr ’ardy gets to you, no need to tell ’im wot’s bovvering you – Mr ’ardy knows. Just trust ’im. Put yourself in ’is ’ands. And God bless you all. And now, dear ’eart – Mr ‘ardy, Faif ’ealer!’ At which point I’d emerge – and at the same moment Teddy’d put on his record.

   And as I’d move from seat to seat, among the crippled and the blind and the disfigured and the deaf and the barren, a voice in the style of the thirties crooned Jerome Kern’s song:

Yes; we were always balanced somewhere between the absurd and the momentous.

(
Moving
through
seats
)
And the people who came – what is there to say about them? They were a despairing people. That they came to me, a mountebank, was a measure of their despair. They seldom spoke. Sometimes didn’t even raise their eyes. They just sat there, very still, assuming that I divined their complaints. Abject. Abased. Tight. Longing to open themselves and at the same time fearfully herding the anguish they contained against disturbance. And they hated me – oh, yes, yes, yes, they hated me. Because by coming to me they exposed, publicly acknowledged, their desperation. And even though they told themselves they were here because of the remote possibility of a cure, they
knew in their hearts they had come not to be cured but for confirmation that they were incurable; not in hope but for the elimination of hope; for the removal of that final, impossible chance – that’s why they came – to seal their anguish, for the content of a finality.

   And they knew that I knew. And so they defied me to endow them with hopelessness. But I couldn’t do even that for them. And they knew I couldn’t. A peculiar situation, wasn’t it? No, not peculiar – eerie. Because occasionally, just occasionally, the miracle would happen. And then – panic – panic – panic! Their ripping apart! The explosion of their careful calculations! The sudden flooding of dreadful, hopeless hope! I often thought it would have been a kindness to them not to go near them.

   And there was another thing about them. When Teddy was introducing me, I would look at them and sometimes I got a strange sense that they weren’t there on their own behalf at all but as delegates,
legati
, chosen because of their audacity; and that outside, poised, mute, waiting in the half-light, were hundreds of people who held their breath while we were in the locality. And I sometimes got the impression, too, that if we hadn’t come to them, they would have sought us out.

   We were in the north of Scotland when I got word that my mother had had a heart attack. In a village called Kinlochbervie, in Sutherland, about as far north as you can go in Scotland. A picturesque little place, very quiet, very beautiful, looking across to the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides; and we were enjoying a few days rest there. Anyhow, when the news came, Teddy drove me down to Glasgow. Gracie wanted to come with me and couldn’t understand when I wouldn’t take her. But she used her incomprehension as fuel for her loyalty and sent me off with a patient smile.

   It was my first time home in twenty years. My father had retired and was living in a housing estate outside Dublin. When he opened the door he didn’t recognize me – I had to tell him who I was. Then he shook my hand as if I were an
acquaintance and led me up to the bedroom.

   She was exactly as I remembered her – illness hadn’t ravaged her. Sleeping silently. Her skin smooth and girlish, her chin raised as if in expectation. Jesus, I thought, O my Jesus, what am I going to do?

   ‘She looks nice,’ he said.

   ‘Yes‚’ I said. ‘She looks great.’

   He cleared his throat.

   ‘She passed away quietly. You missed her by approximately one hour and ten minutes,’ as if he were giving evidence. And then he cried.

   And I felt such overwhelming relief that when he cried, I cried easily with him.

   Twelve years later I was back in Ireland again; with Teddy and Gracie. Things had been lean for a long time. Or as Teddy put it, ‘If we want to eat, we’ve got to open up new territory, dear ’eart. You’ve cured ’em all ’ere. Come on – let’s go to the lush pickings of Ireland.’ And I agreed because I was as heartsick of Wales and Scotland as they were. And the whiskey wasn’t as efficient with the questions as it had been. And my father had died in the meantime. And I suppose because I always knew we would end up there. So on the last day of August we crossed from Stranraer to Larne and drove through the night to County Donegal. And there we got lodgings in a pub, a lounge bar, really, outside a village called Ballybeg, not far from Donegal Town.

   There was no sense of home-coming. I tried to simulate it but nothing stirred. Only a few memories, wan and neutral. One of my father watching me through the bars of the
day-room
window as I left for school – we lived in a rented house across the street. One of playing with handcuffs, slipping my hands in and out through the rings. One of my mother making bread and singing a hymn to herself: ‘Yes, heaven, yes, heaven, yes, heaven is the prize.’ And one of a group of men being shown over the barracks – I think they were inspectors from Dublin – and my father saying, ‘Certainly, gentlemen, by all means, gentlemen, anything
you say, gentlemen.’ Maybe one or two other memories. They evoked nothing.