Brian Friel Plays 1 (54 page)

   (
He
gathers
the
empty
bottles
on
the
table
and
drops
them
into
a
waste-paper
basket.
As
he
does.
)
Ups and downs – losses and gains – roundabouts and swings – isn’t that it?

   And if that night in Llanbethian was one of the high spots, I suppose the week we spent in that village in Sutherland was about as bad a patch as we ever struck. For
Gracie it was. Certainly for Gracie. And for me, too, I think. Oh, that’s going back a fair few years. About the time he really began to lose control of the drinking. Anyway, there we were away up in Sutherland – what
was
the name of that village? Inverbuie? Inverbervie? Kinlochbervie? – that’s it! – Kinlochbervie! – very small, very remote, right away up in the north of Sutherland, about as far north as you can go in Scotland, and looking across at the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides.

   I’ll always remember our first sight of that village. We climb up this long steep hill through this misty fog and when we get to the top we stop; and away down below us in the valley – there’s Kinlochbervie; and it is just bathed in sunshine. First time we’ve seen the sun in about a month. And now here’s this fantastic little village sitting on the edge of the sea, all blue and white and golden, and all lit up and all sparkling and all just heavenly. And Gracie she turns to me and she says, ‘Teddy,’ she says, ‘this is where my baby’ll be born.’ Even though she wasn’t due for three more weeks. But she was right. That’s where the baby was born.

   Okay. We head down into the valley and just about two miles out of the village the front axle goes thrackk! Terrific. Frank, he’s out cold in the back. So I leave Gracie sunbathing herself on a stone wall and I hikes it into Kinlochbervie to get help.

   That was a Tuesday morning. The following Friday we’re still there, still waiting for a local fisherman called Campbell who’s out in his trawler to come back’ cause he’s the only local who owns a tractor and we’re depending on his mother who happens to be deaf as a post to persuade him when he comes back to tow us the thirty-five miles to the nearest village where there’s a blacksmith but there’s a chance, too, that this blacksmith might not be at home when we get there because his sister, Annie, she’s getting married to a postman in Glasgow and the blacksmith may be the best man. One of those situations – you know. (
Shouts
) ‘Are you sure this blacksmith can fix axles, dear
heart?’ ‘Och, Annie, she’s a beautiful big strong girl with brown eyes.’

   Right. We hang about. And since funds are low – as usual – Gracie and Frank they sleep in the van and I’m kipping in a nearby field. I don’t mind; the weather’s beautiful. Saturday passes – no Campbell. Sunday passes – no Campbell. And then on Sunday evening … the baby’s born.

(
Very
slowly
he
goes
for
another
beer,
opens
it,
pours
it.
As
he
does
this
he
whistles
a
few
lines
of
‘
The
Way
You
Look
Tonight’
through
his
teeth.
Then
with
sudden
anger.
)

   Christ, you’ve got to admit he really was a bastard in many ways! I know he was drinking heavy – I know – I know all that! But for Christ’s sake to walk away deliberately when your wife’s going to have your baby in the middle of bloody nowhere – I mean to say, to do that deliberately, that’s some kind of bloody-mindedness, isn’t it? And make no mistake, dear heart: it was deliberate, it was bloody-minded. ’Cause as soon as she starts having the pains, I go looking for him, and there he is heading up the hill, and I call after him, and I know he hears me, but he doesn’t answer me. Oh, Christ, there really was a killer instinct deep down in that man!

(
Pause.
He
takes
a
drink,
puts
the
glass
down
on
the
table
and
looks
at
it.
)

   I don’t know … I don’t know how we managed. God, when I think of it. Her lying on my old raincoat in the back of the van … shouting for him, screaming for him … all that blood … her bare feet pushing, kicking against my shoulders … ‘Frank!’ she’s screaming, ‘Frank! Frank!’ and I’m saying, ‘My darling, he’s coming – he’s coming, my darling – he’s on his way – he’ll be here any minute’ … and then that – that little wet thing with the black face and the black body, a tiny little thing, no size at all … a boy it was …

   (
Pause.
) And afterwards she was so fantastic – I mean she was so bloody fantastic. She held it in her arms, just sitting there on the roadside with her back leaning against the
stone wall and her legs stretched out in front of her, just sitting there in the sun and looking down at it in her arms. And then after about half an hour she said, ‘It’s time to bury it now, Teddy.’ And we went into a nearby field and I had to chase the cows away’ cause they kept following us and I dug the hole and I put it in the hole and I covered it up again. And then she asked me was I not going to say no prayers over it and I said sure, why not, my darling, I said; but not being much of a praying man I didn’t know right what to say; so I just said this was the infant child of Francis Hardy, Faith Healer, and his wife, Grace Hardy, both citizens of Ireland, and this was where their infant child lies, in Kinlochbervie, in Sutherland; and God have mercy on all of us, I said.

   And all the time she was very quiet and calm. And when the little ceremony was concluded, she put her two white hands on my face and brought me to her and kissed me on the forehead. Just once. On the forehead.

   And later that evening I made a cross and painted it white and placed it on top of the grave. Maybe it’s still there. You never know. About two miles south of the village of Kinlochbervie. In
a field on the left-hand side of the road as you go north. Maybe it’s still there. Could still well be. Why not? Who’s to say?

   (
Pause.
) Oh, he came back all right; just before it was dark. Oh, sure. Sober as a judge, all spruced up, healthy-looking, sunburned, altogether very cocky; and full of old chat to me about should we have a go in the Outer Hebrides or maybe we should cross over to the east coast or should we plan a journey even further north now that the weather was so good – you know, all business, things he never gave a damn about. And he seemed so – you know – so on top of things, I thought for a while, I thought: My God, he doesn’t know! He genuinely doesn’t know! But then suddenly in the middle of all this great burst of interest I see him glancing into the van with the corner of the eye – not that there was anything to see; I had it all washed out by then – but it was the way he done it and the way he kept on talking at the
same time that I
knew
that
he
knew; and not only that he knew but that he knew it all right down to the last detail. And even though the old chatter never faltered for a minute, whatever way he kept talking straight into my face, I knew too that – oh, I don’t know how to put it – but I got this feeling that in a kind of way – being the kind of man he was – well somehow I got the feeling, I
knew
that he
had
to keep talking because he had suffered all that she had suffered and that now he was … about to collapse. Yeah. Funny, wasn’t it? And many a time since then I get a picture of him going up that hill that Sunday afternoon, like there’s some very important appointment he’s got to keep, walking fast with his head down and pretending he doesn’t hear me calling him. And I’ve thought maybe – course it was bloody minded of him! I’m not denying that! – but maybe being the kind of man he was, you know, with that strange gift he had, I’ve thought maybe – well, maybe he had to have his own way of facing things …

   Oh, I don’t know. None of my business, was it? None of my concern, thank the Lord, except in so far as it might affect the performance of my client. Listen to me, dear heart, I’ll give you this for nothing, the best advice you’ll ever get – the
one
rule I’ve always lived by: friends is friends and work is work and never the twain shall meet as the poet says. Okay? Okay.

   (
With
a
glass
in
his
hand
he
goes
slowly
up
stage
until
he
is
standing
beneath
the
poster.
As
he
goes
he
hums
the
lines
‘Some
day
when
I’m
awf
’
ly
low,
When
the
world
is
cold’.
He
reads.
) The Fantastic Francis Hardy, Faith Healer: One Night Only. Nice poster though, isn’t it? A lifetime in the business and that’s the only memento I’ve kept. That’s a fact. See some people in our profession? – they hoard everything: press-clippings, posters, notices, photographs, interviews – they keep them all. Never believed in that though. I mean the way I look at it, you’ve got to be a realist, you know, live in the present. Look at Sir Laurence – you think he spends his days poring over old albums? No, we don’t have time for that. And believe me
I’ve had my share of triumphs and my share of glory over the years; and I’m grateful for that. But I mean it doesn’t butter no parsnips for me today, does it?

   And do you know, dear heart, it was almost thrown out! Well, I mean it
was
thrown out – I just happened to spot it in this pile of stuff that Gracie’s landlord had dumped outside for the dustmen. I’d come straight from the morgue in Paddington, and the copper there he’d given me her address; and there I was, walking along the street, looking for number 27; and there it is, lying on the footpath where her landlord had dumped it. I mean, if it had been raining, it would have been destroyed, wouldn’t it? But there it was, neat as you like. And just as I was picking it up, this city gent he’s walking past and he says, ‘How dare you steal private property, Sir!’ (
In
a
fury.
) And I caught him by the neck and I put my fist up to his face and I said to him, I said to him, ‘You open your fucking mouth once more, mate, just once fucking more, and I’ll fucking well make fucking sausage meat of you!’

   (
Pause
while
he
controls
himself
again
)
If you’ll pardon the language, dear heart. But I just went berserk. I mean half an hour before, this copper he’d brought me to Paddington and I’m still in a state of shock after that. And besides it’s only – what? – twelve months since the whole County Donegal thing: that night in the Ballybeg pub and then hanging about waiting for the trial of those bloody Irish Apaches and nobody in the courtroom understands a word I’m saying – they had to get an interpreter to explain to the judge in English what the only proper Englishman in the place was saying! God!

   And I’m still only getting over all that when this copper comes up here one morning while I’m shaving and I opens the door and he asks me my name and I tell him and then he says I’m to go to Paddington with him rightaway to …

   (
He
stops
suddenly
and
stares
for
a
long
time
at
the
audience.
Then:–
)
Tell you what – why don’t I go back twelve months and tell you first about that night in Ballybeg? Why don’t I do that? Why not? (
He
gets
another
bottle,
opens
it,
pours
it.
)
It was the last day of August and 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.

   (
He
takes
a
drink
and
leaves
the
glass
down.
Pause.
)
You see that night in that pub in Ballybeg? You know how I spent that night? I spent the whole of that night just watching them. Mr and Mrs Frank Hardy. Side by side. Together in Ireland. At home in Ireland. Easy; relaxed; chatting; laughing. And it was like as if I was seeing them for the first time in years and years – no! not seeing them but
remembering
them
Funny thing that, wasn’t it? I’m not saying they were strangers to me – strangers! I mean, Frank and Gracie, how could they be strangers to
me
!
– but it was like as if I was seeing them as they were once, as they might have been all the time – like if there was never none of the bitterness and the fighting and the wettings and the bloody van and the smell of the primus stove and the bills and the booze and the dirty halls and that hassle that we never seemed to be able to rise above. Like away from all that, all that stuff cut out, this is what they could be.

   And there they were, the centre of that big circle round that big lounge, everybody wanting to talk to them, them talking to everybody, now and then exchanging an odd private word between themselves, now and then even touching each other very easy and very casual.

   And she was sitting forward in this armchair. And she was all animation and having a word with everybody and laughing all the time. And she was wearing this red dress. And her hair it was tied back with a black ribbon. And how can I tell you how fantastic she looked?

   And then sometime around midnight someone said, ‘Why don’t you sing us a song, Gracie?’ And as natural as you like, as if she done it every day of the week, she stood up and she sang an Irish song called ‘Believe me if all those endearing young charms/Which I gaze on so fondly today’ – Christ, I don’t mean that’s the title; that’s the whole
first verse for Christ’s sake. And it wasn’t that she was a sensational singer – no, no, she wasn’t. I mean she had this kind of very light, wavery kind of voice – you know, like the voice of a kid of ten or eleven. But she stands up there in that Irish pub, in that red dress and with her hair all back from her face; and she’s looking at him as she’s singing; and we’re all looking at her; and the song – it sort of comes out of her very simple and very sweet, like in a way not as if she’s performing but as if the song’s just sort of rising out of her by itself. And I’m sitting there just outside the circle, sitting there very quiet, very still. And I’m saying to myself. ‘O Jesus, Teddy boy … Oh my Jesus … What are you going to do?’