A Woman Clothed in Words (15 page)

Mako – Did they trick you? Tell me that.

Payly –
(hangdog)
Not exactly.

Mako – Then what, what, what?

Payly – You know what.

Mako – I want to hear you say it.

Payly – I never will.

Mako – You have to.

Payly – No.

Mako – Killing goldfish is one thing. Eating goldfish. What about...?

Payly – We were starving. They were starving. When you’re starving you’ll eat anything.

Mako – Anything?

Payly – Almost anything. And you’ll do almost anything to get it.

Mako – Four lousy turnips.

Payly – And three of them had worms in.

Mako – We ate those too.

Payly – Protein.

Mako – Oh God.

Payly – Oh food. Well that was the last of it. The very last. Goodbye to the turnips.

Mako – And that wasn’t all you said goodbye to.

Payly – So now it’s my fault. You ate the turnips too.

Mako – You ate more than I did.

Payly – I’m bigger than you.

Mako – And stupider.

Payly – And stronger.

Mako – You signed.

Payly – So did you.

Mako – Only after ...

Payly – After what?

Mako – You twisted my arm.

Payly – You gave in.

Mako – You hurt me. You hurt me. You hurt me.

~~~

Another bit. Mako and Payly in the water.

Mako – Remember

Payly – What?

Mako – Remember

Payly – What?

Mako – Remember

Payly – O for God’s sake...

Mako – Not that.

Payly – What then?

Mako – What was

Payly – When?

Mako – Before.

Payly – Before?

Mako – The time of the hills

Payly – And the grass

Mako – And the trees

Payly – And the birds

Mako – We still have them – the birds.

Payly – One perched on your head, remember?

Mako – How could I forget. It took me ages to wash my hair.

Payly – One dunk. That can hardly be described as ages.

Mako – You dunked me.

Payly – I had to. You were chicken.

Mako – Chicken. Those were birds too.

Payly – You could eat them. Fried with chips. Remember

Mako – Better to forget.

Payly – What’s gone is gone.

Mako – They’ve gone.

Mako – Long ago.

Payly – How long?

Mako – Ages.

Payly – A year?

Mako – More.

Payly – More than a year.

Mako – We let them go.

Payly – We waved them goodbye.

Mako – You cried.

Payly – You laughed.

Mako – It was funny.

Payly – How could it be funny?

Mako – Anything can be funny if you look at it the right way. Anything.

Payly – Not quite anything. Some things are sad.

Mako – Like you. You’re a sad sad Sally

And I wish you were more pally

Payly – You’re not going to start that again. That rhyming thing. I won’t play. I won’t.

Mako – Yes you will. It’s a good game

All the same

Payly – You’re to blame. It was your idea to let them go. You’re to blame.

Mako – I knew you would I knew you could
Join in the game.

Payly – And the green grass grew around around around

Mako – And the green grass grew around

Payly – Long ago

Mako – Not that long.

Payly – Once upon a time

Mako – Aha, now you want me to join in your game.

Payly – My game. What do you mean my game?

Mako – Once upon a time – the story game.

Payly – It’s not a game. Stories embody truth. That’s why they’re called stories.

Mako – You’ve got to be kidding.

Payly – That’s where the story began.

Mako – Forget it. I tell you. Forget it. Forget it. Forget it.

Payly – Forget them, you mean.

Mako – Yes Payly, yes, yes, yes.

Payly – Once upon a time

Mako – No. I’m not listening.

Payly – Yes you are. You can’t help yourself. You want to find out what happened next.

Mako – Nothing happened next.

Payly – Yes it did, we...

Mako – No we didn’t.

Payly – Yes we did. We...

Mako – We did then. What next? What happens next? Get on with it. What happens next? What? Do we stay? Do we leave? You storytellers think you know everything, so tell me. I’m listening ...

Payly – You’re listening. That’s something new. You never did that before.

Mako – I’m listening. Go on with the story. What happens next? How do we...

Payly – We don’t.

Mako – O God. What then. Something must happen. Something must be resolved.

Payly – There’s no resolution.

Mako – There has to be. Stories always resolve themselves.

Payly – Not this one.

~~~

Another scene. Amy sitting in the boat. It’s not obvious that Ronny is in the boat too, asleep in the bottom.

Amy –
(Fishes something out of the water with her hand)
I don’t care what they say, I’m brave. Because I can save things.
(She has saved a fish. It’s dead.
) But that could mean I’m careful, not brave. A saving person like my aunt – Aunt What’shername? It’s so long since I saw her I’ve forgotten her name. If I liked her better I’d have remembered. Guess guess – Aunt Judy? Auntie Ramona? Tante Evelina? Perhaps I really never had one and I just made them up, because I believe in what’s right and people should have aunts. They’re supposed to give you presents of things you don’t really want, and then you have to write and thank them –
Dear Aunt Whatever, Thank you so much for the bubble bath. I love it, it smells of buttercups
– and then they have to say your handwriting has improved a great deal since last year and then they ask you over, and you have to go because it was kind of them to ask you. And they teach you how to crochet lace and you get the tiny hook caught in your finger and they have to take you to the doctor to get the bloody thing out and they tell you don’t say bloody but it is.

That’s what happens when they ask you over. Over what? Evie ivie over. Evie Ivie, Evie Ivie over the sea to… Over the mountains, over the plain… And so there were aunts. And the mountains didn’t interfere with the aunts if the aunts promised not to disapprove of the mountains. If I had to choose between mountains and aunts? Aunt Ramona smelled of peppermints. Aunt Judy rode over the hills on a black stallion. Auntie Evelina – I mean Tante, she got mad if I called her Auntie – Tante Evelina swallowed a stick of macaroni. Swallowed a walking stick with a silver handle. It stuck in her throat for ever. Ever after she couldn’t say anything but “nein Liebchen, nein.” She smelled of…? She smelled of…? If I shut my eyes and sniff ah ah ah she smelled of mothballs and aniseed.

What is aniseed? It’s that one seed you find at the heart of things. If you suck all the sugar away you’ll get to it in the end. Suck suck. Take it out and look. It’s blue. Suck suck. Take it out and look. It’s green. Suck suck. It’s pink, then it’s yellow, then it’s purple. All you have to do is suck and look. And then at last it’s red and you know you’re coming to the end. Then you suck faster and faster and then slowly slowly and take it out after
every suck and wait for it to dry, then try again and in the end there it is, the seed and it’s hot and it tastes of ... it only tastes of itself after all. That’s like everything in the whole world, in the end everything ends up as small as a little brown seed. Or was it grey? Or is it black? After all those bright colours you can hardly tell. You can hardly see it. But you can taste it. You can feel it on your tongue. Then you spit it out because in the end you don’t want it. Who wants a seed burning a little hole in your tongue.

You couldn’t care less. All you want is to go home. But you’ve forgotten where that is. How to get there. Look –
Look a bird is flying. Three birds are flying. They’re flying away home. And look a cloud is moving across the sky. And you know it’s getting ready to rain on the place it’s going to and it’s probably your house. And it’s probably your garden. And you say one day I’ll go home. But there’s no such place. And if there was? I tell you if you’re sucking choose a colour and stop there. Take it out at green, say, and be happy with that. Take it out before everything goes red and you can’t stop. You can’t stop yourself trying to find that seed. That dead seed at the beginning. They boiled it when they made the candy. Right there in the candy factory they boiled the seed dead as a dead fish.

~~~

Another scene in the water with Payly and Mako.

Payly –
(Swims towards Mako)
I’ve thought about it.

Mako – What?

Payly – You know. What we talked about.

Mako – When?

Payly – You know.

Mako – No I don’t. When did we?

Payly – What?

Mako – Talk about it.

Payly – What do you mean
It
.

Mako – What you said. What you meant.

Payly – I didn’t say anything about meaning.

Mako – What you said. What you said you thought about.

Payly – Oh, that.

Mako – Yes.

Payly – I can’t get it out of my mind.

Mako – Do you mean it or do you mean them?

Payly – So now we’re back to meaning.

Mako – Yes.

Payly – Them, of course. Them them them.

Mako – It was to save them.

Payly – From the deep. From the inevitable.

Mako – Nothing is inevitable.

Payly – You believe that?

Mako – Everything can change. From moment to moment everything changes. The tide comes in. The tide goes out. There’s a dead calm then a gale.

Payly – The wind...

Mako – Yes the wind. Haven’t you noticed?

Payly – What do you mean?

Mako – It changes. You can’t trust it.

Payly – If you can’t trust the wind, who can you trust?

Mako – Hold up your finger.

Payly – Like this?

Mako – That’ll do.

Payly – Now what?

Mako – You can feel the wind blow on it. It blows cool and drying.

Payly – I see what you mean.

Mako – Now the other hand. Another finger.

Payly – You’re right. It’s blowing the other way. You can’t trust it. I’ll never trust it again.

Mako – If you can’t trust the wind...

Payly – Who can you trust? Certainly not yourself. Certainly not one another. There’s prevaricating. There’s lying. There’s lying in wait. There’s betrayal. Anybody can be a traitor, even the one you loved. The one you used to trust. The one you used to trust with your life.

Mako – Your husband. Your wife.

Payly – There you go. Making a game of it. Playing your rhyming game.

Mako – All the same

Payly – We’re to blame. We can’t get away from that.

She turns her back and moves away. He, after a pause, does the same.When she is out of sight he turns and pursues her offstage. However she appears at the other side of the stage.She’s swimming on her back like a sea otter, holding something on her belly.

Mako – You little darling. You little wet thing. You tiny wet thing. Well I found you. I rescued you and you are mine and you are a talisman. What’s a talisman? Just a word I rescued from a book, just something I found in the water. The word. The first word the last word. Torn from a book, a mind. What does it matter. The word became
(She lifts up the egg she is holding)
this. I suppose it could be hatched. But I’m not a bird. I suppose it could be eaten. But I’m not such a fool. If I ate it I wouldn’t have it. It would be gone and bits of its shell scattered on the water. Floating away on the waves and I’d be alone again. I wanted something of my own and this is what I found. I love it and that’s that. There goes Payly looking for drowned cities, lost churches whose bells toll under water at midnight. You believe in that? I don’t. I believe in what I can hold. This I can hold.

~~~

Another time. Another part of the whole.