Page 6 of Arcadia

Valentine: If you knew the algorithm and fed it back say ten thousand times, each

  time there'd be a dot somewhere on the screen. You'd never know where to expect

  the next dot. But gradually you'd start to see this shape, because every dot will be

  inside the shape of this leaf. It wouldn't be a leaf, it would be a mathematical

  object. But yes. The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make

  everything the way it is. It's how nature creates itself, on every scale, the snowflake

  and the snowstorm. It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing

  almost nothing. People were talking about the end of physics. Relativity and

  quantum looked as if they were going to clean out the whole problem

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  between them. A theory of everything. But they only explained the very big and the

  very small. The universe, the elementary particles. The ordinary-sized stuff which

  is our Jives, the things people write poetry about - clouds -daffodils - waterfalls -

  and what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in - these things are full

  of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks. We're better at

  predicting events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the nucleus of an atom than

  whether it'll rain on auntie's garden party three Sundays from now. Because the

  problem turns out to be different. We can't even predict the next drip from a

  dripping tap when it gets irregular. Each drip sets up the conditions for the next, the

  smallest variation blows prediction apart, and the weather is unpredictable the same

  way, will always be unpredictable. When you push the numbers through the

  computer you can see it on the screen. The future is disorder. A door like this has

  cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It's the best

  possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is

  wrong. (Pause.)

  Hannah: The weather is fairly predictable in the Sahara.

  Valentine: The scale is different but the graph goes up and down the same way. Six

  thousand years in the Sahara looks like six months in Manchester, I bet you.

  Hannah: How much?

  Valentine: Everything you have to lose.

  Hannah: (Pause) No.

  Valentine: Quite right. That's why there was corn in Egypt. (Hiatus. The piano is

  heard again.)

  Hannah: What is he playing?

  Valentine: I don't know. He makes it up.

  Hannah: Chloe called him 'genius'.

  Valentine: It's what my mother calls him - only she means it. Last year some expert had her digging in the wrong place for months to find something or other - the

  foundations of Capability Brown's boat-house - and Gus put her right first go.

  48

  Hannah: Did he ever speak?

  Valentine: Oh yes. Until he was five. You've never asked about him. You get high

  marks here for good breeding.

  Hannah: Yes, I know. I've always been given credit for my unconcern.

  (Bernard enters in high excitement and triumph.)

  Bernard: English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. A pencilled superscription. Listen

  and kiss my cycle-clips! (He is carrying the book. He reads from it.) 'O harbinger

  of Sleep, who missed the press And hoped his drone might thus escape redress! The

  wretched Chater, bard of Eros' Couch, For his narcotic let my pencil vouch!' You

  see, you have to turn over every page.

  Hannah: Is it his handwriting?

  Bernard: Oh, come on.

  Hannah: Obviously not.

  Bernard: Christ, what do you want?

  Hannah: Proof.

  Valentine: Quite right. Who are you talking about?

  Bernard: Proof? Proof? You'd have to be there, you silly bitch!

  Valentine: (Mildly) I say, you're speaking of my fiancee.

  Hannah: Especially when I have a present for you. Guess what I found. (Producing

  the present for Bernard.) Lady Croom writing from London to her husband. Her

  brother, Captain Brice, married a Mrs Chater. In other words, one might assume, a

  widow.

  (Bernard looks at the letter.)

  Bernard: I said he was dead. What year? 1810! Oh my God, 1810!

  Well done, Hannah! Are you going to tell me it's a different Mrs Chater?

  Hannah: Oh no. It's her all right. Note her Christian name. Bernard: Charity.

  Charity . . .'Deny what cannot be proven for Charity's sake!'

  Hannah: Don't kiss me!

  Valentine: She won't let anyone kiss her.

  Bernard: You see! They wrote - they scribbled - they put it on paper. It was their

  employment. Their diversion. Paper is

  49

  what they had. And there'll be more. There is always more. We can find it!

  Hannah: Such passion. First Valentine, now you. It's moving.

  Bernard: The aristocratic friend of the tutor-under the same roof as the poor sod

  whose book he savaged - the first thing he does is seduce Chater's wife. All is

  discovered. There is a duel. Chater dead, Byron fled! P. s. guess what?, the widow

  married her ladyship's brother! Do you honestly think no one wrote a word? How

  could they not! It dropped from sight but we will write it again!

  Hannah: You can, Bernard. I'm not going to take any credit, I haven't done

  anything.

  (The same thought has clearly occurred to Bernard. He becomes instantly po-

  faced.)

  Bernard: Well, that's - very fair - generous -

  Hannah: Prudent. Chater could have died of anything, anywhere.

  (The pa-face is forgotten.)

  Bernard: But he fought a duel with Byron!

  Hannah: You haven't established it was fought. You haven't established it was

  Byron. For God's sake, Bernard, you >haven't established Byron was even here!

  Bernard: I'll tell you your problem. No guts.

  Hannah: Really?

  Bernard: By which I mean a visceral belief in yourself. Gut instinct. The part of

  you which doesn't reason. The certainty for which there is no back-reference.

  Because time is reversed. Tock, tick goes the universe and then recovers itself, but

  it was enough, you were in there and you bloody know.

  Valentine: Are you talking about Lord Byron, the poet?

  Bernard: No, you fucking idiot, we're talking about Lord Byron the chartered

  accountant.

  Valentine: (Unoffended) Oh well, he was here all right, the poet.

  (Silence.)

  Hannah: How do you know?

  Valentine: He's in the game book. I think he shot a hare. I read through the whole

  lot once when I had mumps - some quite interesting people -

  Hannah: Where's the book?

  50

  Valentine: It's not one I'm using - too early, of course -

  Hannah: 1809.

  Valentine: They've always been in the commode. Ask Chloe.

  (Hannah looks to Bernard. Bernard has been silent because he has been incapable

  of speech. He seems to have gone into a trance, in which only his mouth tries to

  work. Hannah steps over to him and gives him a demure kiss on the cheek. It works.

  Bernard lurches out into the garden and can be heard croaking for' Chloe...

  Chloe!)

  Valentine: My mother's lent him her bicycle. Lending one's bicycle is a form of

  safe sex, possibly the safest there is. My mother is in a flutter about Bernard, and

  he's no fool. He gave her a first edition of Horace Walpole, and now she's lent him

  her bicycle.
(He gathers up the three items [the primer, the lesson book and the

  diagram] and puts them into the portfolio.) Can I keep these for a while?

  Hannah: Yes, of course.

  (The piano stops. Gus enters hesitantly from the music room.)

  Valentine: (To Gus) Yes, finished . .. coming now. (To Hannah) I'm trying to work out the diagram. (Gus nods and smiles, at Hannah too, but she is preoccupied.)

  Hannah: What I don't understand is . . . why nobody did this feedback thing before

  - it's not like relativity, you don't have to be Einstein.

  Valentine: You couldn't see to look before. The electronic calculator was what the

  telescope was for Galileo.

  Hannah: Calculator?

  Valentine: There wasn't enough time before. There weren't enough pencils (He

  flourishes Thomasina's lesson book.) This took her I don't know how many days

  and she hasn't scratched the paintwork. Now she'd only have to press a button, the

  same button over and over. Iteration. A few minutes. And what I've done in a

  couple of months, with only a pencil the calculations would take me the rest of my life to do again - thousands of pages - tens of thousands! And so boring!

  Hannah: Do you mean - ?

  51

  (She stops because Gus is plucking Valentine's sleeve.) Do you mean - ?

  Valentine: All right, Gus, I'm coming.

  Hannah: Do you mean that was the only problem? Enough time? And paper? And

  the boredom?

  Valentine: We're going to get out the dressing-up box.

  Hannah: (Driven to raising her voice) Val! Is that what you're saying?

  Valentine: (Surprised by her. Mildly) No, I'm saying you'd have to have a reason

  for doing it. (Gus runs out of the room, upset.) (Apologetically) He hates people

  shouting.

  Hannah: I'm sorry. (Valentine starts to follow Gus.) But anything else?

  Valentine: Well, the other thing is, you'd have to be insane.

  (Valentine leaves.Hannah stays, thoughtful. After a moment, she turns to the>table

  and picks up the Cornhill Magazine. She looks into it briefly, then closes it, and

  leaves the room, taking the magazine with her. The empty room. The light changes

  to early morning. From a long way off, there is a pistol shot. A moment later there

  is the cry of dozens of crows disturbed from the unseen trees.)

  52

  ACT TWO

  SCENE FIVE

  Bernard is pacing around, reading aloud from a handful of typed sheets, Valentine,

  Chloe and Gus are his audience, Gus sits somewhat apart, perhaps less attentive,

  Valentine has his tortoise and is eating a sandwich from which he extracts shreds

  of lettuce to offer the tortoise.

  Bernard: 'Did it happen? Could it happen? Undoubtedly it could. Only three years

  earlier the Irish poet Tom Moore appeared on the field of combat to avenge a

  review by Jeffrey of the Edinburgh. These affairs were seldom fatal and sometimes

  farcical but, potentially, the duellist stood in respect to the law no differently from a murderer. As for the murderee, a minor poet like Ezra Chater could go to his death

  in a Derbyshire glade as unmissed and unremembered as his contemporary and

  namesake, the minor botanist who died in the forests of the West Indies, lost to

  history like the monkey that bit him. On April 16th 1809, a few days after he left

  Sidley Park, Byron wrote to his solicitor John Hanson: 'If the consequences of my

  leaving England were ten times as ruinous as you describe, I have no alternative;

  there are circumstances which render it absolutely indispensable, and quit the

  country I must immediately.' To which, the editor's note in the Collected Letters

  reads as follows: 'What Byron's urgent reasons for leaving England were at this

  time has never been revealed.' The letter was written from the family seat,

  Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire. A long day's ride to the north-west lay Sidley Park, the estate of the Coverlys- a far grander family, raised by Charles II to the

  Earldom of Croom . . .'

  (Hannah enters briskly, a piece of paper in her hand.)

  Hannah: Bernard . . .! Val. . .

  Bernard: Do you mind?

  (Hannah puts her piece of paper down in front of Valentine.)

  Chloe: (Angrily) Hannah!

  Hannah: What?

  53

  Chloe: She's so rude!

  Hannah: (Taken aback) What? Am I?

  Valentine: Bernard's reading us his lecture.

  Hannah: Yes, I know. (Then recollecting herself.) Yes -yes -that was rude. I'm sorry, Bernard.

  Valentine: (With the piece of paper) What is this?

  Hannah: (To Bernard) Spot on- the India Office Library. (To Valentine) Peacock's

  letter in holograph, I got a copy sent -

  Chloe: Hannah! Shut up!

  Hannah: (Sitting down) Yes, sorry.

  Bernard: It's all right, I'll read it to myself.

  Chloe: No.

  (Hannah reaches for the Peacock letter and takes it back.)

  Hannah: Go on, Bernard. Have I missed anything? Sorry. (Bernard stares at her

  balefully but then continues to read.)

  Bernard: The Byrons of Newstead in 1809 comprised an eccentric widow and her

  undistinguished son, the "lame brat", who until the age often when he came into the

  title, had been carted about the country from lodging to lodging by his vulgar hectoring monster of a mother -' (Hannah's hand has gone up) - overruled - 'and

  who four months past his twenty-first birthday was master of nothing but his debts

  and his genius. Between the Byrons and the Coverlys there was no social equality

  and none to be expected. The connection, undisclosed to posterity until now, was

  with Septimus Hodge, Byron's friend at Harrow and Trinity College-' (Hannah's

  hand goes up again) - sustained - (He makes an instant correction with a silver

  pencil.) 'Byron's contemporary at Harrow and Trinity College, and now tutor in

  residence to the Croom daughter, Thomasina Coverly. Byron's letters tell us where

  he was on April 8th and on April 12th. He was at Newstead. But on the 10th he was

  at Sidley Park, as attested by the game book preserved there: "April 10th 1809-

  forenoon. High cloud, dry, and sun between times, wind southeasterly. Self-

  Augustus - Lord Byron. Fourteen pigeon, one hare (Lord B.)." But, as we know

  now, the drama of life and death at Sidley Park was not about pigeons but about sex

  and literature.'

  54

  Valentine: Unless you were the pigeon.

  Bernard: I don't have to do this. I'm paying you a compliment.

  Chloe: Ignore him, Bernard - go on, get to the duel.

  Bernard: Hannah's not even paying attention.

  Hannah: Yes I am, it's all going in. I often work with the radio on.

  Bernard: Oh thanks!

  Hannah: Is there much more?

  Chloe: Hannah!

  Hannah: No, it's fascinating. I just wondered how much more there was. I need to

  ask Valentine about this (letter) - sorry, Bernard, go on, this will keep.

  Valentine: Yes - sorry, Bernard.

  Chloe: Please, Bernard!

  Bernard: Where was I?

  Valentine: Pigeons.

  Chloe: Sex.

  Hannah: Literature.

  Bernard: Life and death. Right. 'Nothing could be more eloquent of that than the

  three documents I have quoted: the terse demand to settle a matter in private; the

  desperate scribble of "my husband has sent for pistols"; and on April i ith, the gauntlet thrown down by the aggrieved
and cuckolded author Ezra Chater. The

  covers have not survived. What is certain is that all three letters were in Byron's

  possession when his books were sold in 1816 -preserved in the pages of "The

  Couch of Eros" which seven years earlier at Sidley Park Byron had borrowed from

  Septimus Hodge.'

  Hannah: Borrowed?

  Bernard: I will be taking questions at the end. Constructive comments will be

  welcome. Which is indeed my reason for trying out in the provinces before my

  London opening under the auspices of the Byron Society prior to publication. By

  the way, Valentine, do you want a credit? - 'the game book recently discovered

  by.'?

  Valentine: It was never lost, Bernard.

  Bernard: 'As recently pointed out by.' I don't normally like

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  giving credit where it's due, but with scholarly articles as with divorce, there is a

  certain cachet in citing a member of the aristocracy. I'll pop it in ad lib for the

  lecture, and give you a mention in the press release. How's that?

  Valentine: Very kind.

  Hannah: Press release? What happened to the Journal of English Studies?

  Bernard: That comes later with the apparatus, and in the recognized tone - very dry,

  very modest, absolutely gloat-free, and yet unmistakably 'Eat your heart out, you

  dozy bastards'. But first, it's 'Media Don, book early to avoid disappointment'.

  Where was I?

  Valentine: Game book.

  Chloe: Eros.

  Hannah: Borrowed.

  Bernard: Right.' - borrowed from Septimus Hodge. Is it conceivable that the letters

  were already in the book when Byron borrowed it?'

  Valentine: Yes.

  Chloe: Shut up, Val.

  Valentine: Well, it's conceivable.

  Bernard: 'Is it likely that Hodge would have lent Byron the book without first

  removing the three private letters?'

  Valentine: Look, sorry -I only meant, Byron could have borrowed the book without

  asking.

  Hannah: That's true.

  Bernard: Then why wouldn't Hodge get them back?

  Hannah: I don't know, I wasn't there.

  Bernard: That's right, you bloody weren't.

  Chloe: Go on, Bernard.

  Bernard: 'It is the third document, the challenge itself, that convinces. Chater "as a man and a poet", points the finger at his "slanderer in the press". Neither as a man nor a poet did Ezra Chater cut such a figure as to be habitually slandered or even

  mentioned in the press. It is surely indisputable that the slander was the review of