Catastrophe Practice (18 page)

Smudger has put a hand in front of the plate-glass. He looks to the left. There is no shadow
.

Norbert and Geordie have come up behind Harry
.

Waldorf and Smudger join them
.

After a time Harry turns and looks at the shelter, left
.

He moves on and stands in front of the Char
.

Norbert raises the dust sheet over the machine, quickly, and looks behind it
.

Harry speaks facing the Char
.

We now come to the hall of mirrors, where everyone sees what they like. The man on the meat hook, with his balls against his eyes —

He stares at the Char
.

Geordie cries —

Geordie is looking at the gothic doorway, left
.

Harry moves on. He stands looking down at Sophie and Bert
.

Bert is squatting watching Sophie, as Harry had done, as if he were an artist and she were his model
.

Waldorf and Smudger have moved across the stage to the gothic door, left. Smudger puts a hand on the handle of the door. Waldorf puts out a hand as if to stop him
.

Harry notices them
.

Waldorf and Smudger pretend to fight, like fractious children, as if to cover what they have been doing. Then they join Norbert and Geordie, who have followed Harry
.

Norbert has taken his hand from Geordie's shoulder. Geordie has stopped acting as if he were ill
.

Harry looks down at Bert and Sophie
.

He turns out of the wings, left, and returns with a photographer's lamp which he sets up on its stand by the group watching Bert and Sophie. He points it down at Sophie
.

— And never again.

He takes the wire of the lamp and goes behind the bar and seems to plug it in there. Then he sits on a stool at the bar with his back to the audience. The Four who are round Sophie and Bert watch them as if in uncertainty
.

Harry speaks to the Char who is behind the bar
.

The Barman leaves his position in front of the machine and goes and stands in front of the plate-glass window looking up at the flies
.

Geordie puts out a hand and touches the photographer's lamp
.

Norbert squats down and looks at Sophie. Geordie switches on the lamp
.

The lights above the stage go out
.

Sophie reclines in the circle of light
.

Bert stands, stiffly, and joins Harry at the bar
.

Bert sits with Harry at the bar
.

The Char moves from behind the bar. She goes to the shelter of tables and chairs, left, and drags from it, with difficulty, its covering of the original curtain. She drags this over to the Barman, right. They look up at the flies above the plate-glass window
.

Waldorf, Smudger and Norbert are squatting on the perimeter of the circle of light, watching Sophie:
.

Harry calls out savagely —

The Barman crosses to the old shelter, left. He takes from this a chair, which he carries over to the Char, right. The Char sits on it. The Barman arranges the old curtain around her as if it were a cloak. Then he stands back and looks at her. It is as if she might be a figure in a church. Harry murmurs —

— Humiliation. Redemption —

The Four remain squatting around Sophie
.

After a time —

Sophie kneels, facing front. She puts her hands across her breasts
.

Smudger bends down and puts his ear against Sophie's stomach —

Waldorf, on his knees, comes behind Sophie and puts his hands on the fastening of her brassiere at the back
.

Smudger straightens. He takes hold, delicately, of the straps of Sophie's brassiere from the front. Gently, as if they are defusing a bomb, they try to take off Sophie's brassiere without disturbing her breasts or arms
.

They manage to get Sophie's brassiere off. Smudger holds it up, with finger and thumb, at arm's length. He stands. He looks at it
.

Smudger moves to the front of the stage as if to drop the brassiere down over the footlights. Waldorf'stands: follows him
.

Sophie remains with her arms across her breasts. She is gazing up at the back of the auditorium as if she has seen a vision there
.

Geordie is by the lamp
.

Norbert remains kneeling
.

As Smudger reaches the footlights the brassiere seems to jerk out of his hand: he grabs at it; half catches it; succeeds in tossing it to Waldorf, who catches it
.

Then it seems to jerk out of Waldorf's hand. Waldorf ducks; Smudger ducks; as if a huge bird were flying above them (Waldorf has screwed up the brassiere in his hand.)

Then Waldorf and Smudger straighten, and look out over the audience as if the bird had flown away there
.

They are half smiling; as if it had been a game. Geordie and Norbert have remained still
.

Sophie remains staring out over the auditorium. In the confusion, Harry has changed places with the Barman, right, so that it is he who is standing in front of the Char, looking down on her
.

The Barman has gone behind the bar: then he has gone off stage — if possible without being seen. After a time Geordie turns off the photographer's lamp. The stage is now lit just by a faint light coming from beyond the plate-glass window
.

After a time the Char looks up at Harry
.

He puts his hand in the breast pocket of his overcoat as if to find money or a chequebook
.

Harry says mockingly —

— A crate of champagne? A donation to your favourite charity?

The Char smiles
.

Harry moves round stage. He goes in and out of the figures of the others who have remained in the positions they were in when the photographer's lamp went out
.

He acts —

He looks at the audience —

— I have seen — children with dogs' heads and fins of fishes —

He looks at Waldorf and Smudger —

— The skull of the observatory — the spire open to the wind —

He looks at Norbert and Geordie —

— The lights in the sky like pin-tables —

He looks at Sophie —

— Five paces to the wire, and five paces back again —

After a time Bert speaks from the bar —

Harry feels in his pockets. Then he goes to Bert and mimes holding out a packet
.

Bert mimes taking a cigarette
.

Bert mimes lighting the cigarette
.

Harry mimes putting the packet away. He

watches Bert
.

Do you ever see her now?

Bert moves from the bar. He bangs his arms about as if he is cold. Then he seems to remember he is supposed to be holding a cigarette. He mimes brushing burning ash off his clothes
.

Bert mimes smoking, keeping his hands cupped round the cigarette as if it were after dark and he did not want to be seen
.

I don't agree with what they're doing here, you know —

Harry watches him as if amused
.

Bert half sings what seems to be a line of a song —

Harry seems to finish the couplet —

Bert mimes dropping his cigarette on the ground and stamping on it He looks at the plate-glass, right. He murmurs —

Then he goes over to Sophie who is still kneeling looking over the audience as if she were entranced. He clasps his hands to his head and acts dramatically —

Oh my God! What have they done to you? —

The light from behind the plate-glass becomes brighter. He looks at it
.

He acts —

— You must walk — ! Don't let me down — !

He waits
.