Hannah: (Reading) 'He died aged two score years and seven.' That was in 1834. So
he was born in 1787. So was the tutor. He says so in his letter to Lord Croom when
he recommended himself for the job: 'Date of birth - 1787.' The hermit was born in
the same year as Septimus Hodge.
Valentine: (Pause) Did Bernard bite you in the leg?
Hannah: Don't you see? I thought my hermit was a perfect symbol. An idiot in the
landscape. But this is better. The Age of Enlightenment banished into the Romantic
wilderness! The genius of Sidley Park living on in a hermit's hut!
Valentine: You don't know that.
Hannah: Oh, but I do. I do. Somewhere there will be something . .. if only I can
find it.
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SCENE SIX
The room is empty.
A reprise: early morning - a distant pistol shot - the sound of the crows.
Jellaby enters the dawn-dark room with a lamp. He goes to the windows and looks
out. He sees something. He returns to put the lamp on the table, and then opens one
ofthefrench windows and steps outside.
Jellaby: (Outside) Mr Hodge!
(Septimus comes in, followed by Jellaby, who closes the garden door. Septimus is
wearing a greatcoat.)
Septimus: Thank you, Jellaby. I was expecting to be locked out. What time is it?
Jellaby: Half past five.
Septimus: That is what I have. Well! - what a bracing experience! (He produces
two pistols from inside his coat and places them on the table.) The dawn, you
know. Unexpectedly lively. Fishes, birds, frogs ... rabbits . . . (he produces a dead
rabbit from inside his coat) and very beautiful. If only it did not occur so early in the day. I have brought Lady Thomasina a rabbit. Will you take it?
Jellaby: It's dead.
Septimus: Yes. Lady Thomasina loves a rabbit pie.
(Jellaby takes the rabbit without enthusiasm. There is a little blood on it.)
Jellaby: You were missed, Mr Hodge.
Septimus: I decided to sleep last night in the boat-house. Did I see a carriage
leaving the Park?
Jellaby: Captain Brice's carriage, with Mr and Mrs Chater also.
Septimus: Gone?!
Jellaby: Yes, sir. And Lord Byron's horse was brought round at four o'clock.
Septimus: Lord Byron too!
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Jellaby: Yes, sir. The house has been up and hopping.
Septimus: But I have his rabbit pistols! What am I to do with his rabbit pistols?
Jellaby: You were looked for in your room.
Septimus: By whom?
Jellaby: By her ladyship.
Septimus: In my room?
Jellaby: I will tell her ladyship you are returned. (He starts to leave.)
Septimus: Jellaby! Did Lord Byron leave a book for me?
Jellaby: A book?
Septimus: He had the loan of a book from me.
Jellaby: His lordship left nothing in his room, sir, not a coin.
Septimus: Oh. Well, I'm sure he would have left a coin if he'd had one. Jellaby -
here is a half-guinea for you.
Jellaby: Thank you very much, sir.
Septimus: What has occurred?
Jellaby: The servants are told nothing, sir. Septimus: Come, come, does a half-
guinea buy nothing any more?
Jellaby: (Sighs) Her ladyship encountered Mrs Chater during the night.
Septimus: Where?
Jellaby: On the threshold of Lord Byron's room.
Septimus: Ah. Which one was leaving and which entering?
Jellaby:Mrs Chater was leaving Lord Byron's room.
Septimus: And where was Mr Chater?
Jellaby: Mr Chater and Captain Brice were drinking cherry brandy. They had the
footman to keep the fire up until three o'clock. There was a loud altercation
upstairs, and -
(Lady Croom enters the room.)
Lady Croom: Well, Mr Hodge.
Septimus: My lady.
Lady Croom: All this to shoot a hare?
Septimus: A rabbit. (She gives him one of her looks.) No, indeed, a hare, though
very rabbit-like -
(Jellaby is about to leave.)
Lady Croom: My infusion.
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Jellaby: Yes, my lady.
(He leaves, Lady Croom is carrying two letters. We have not seen them before.
Each has an envelope which has been opened. She flings them on the table.)
Lady Croom: How dare you!
Septimus: I cannot be called to account for what was written in private and read
without regard to propriety.
Lady Croom: Addressed to me!
Septimus: Left in my room, in the event of my death -
Lady Croom: Pah! - what earthly use is a love letter from beyond the grave?
Septimus: As much, surely, as from this side of it. The second letter, however, was
not addressed to your ladyship.
Lady Croom: I have a mother's right to open a letter addressed by you to my
daughter, whether in the event of your life, your death, or your imbecility. What do
you mean by writing to her of rice pudding when she has just suffered the shock of
violent death in our midst?
Septimus: Whose death?
Lady Croom: Yours, you wretch!
Septimus: Yes, I see.
Lady Croom: I do not know which is the madder of your ravings. One envelope full
of rice pudding, the other of the most insolent familiarities regarding several parts
of my body, but have no doubt which is the more intolerable to me.
Septimus: Which?
Lady Croom: Oh, aren't we saucy when our bags are packed! Your friend has gone
before you, and I have dispatched the harlot Chater and her husband - and also my
brother for bringing them here. Such is the sentence, you see, for choosing
unwisely in your acquaintance. Banishment. Lord Byron is a rake and a hypocrite,
and the sooner he sails for the Levant the sooner he will find society congenial to
his character.
Septimus: It has been a night of reckoning.
Lady Croom: Indeed I wish it had passed uneventfully with you and Mr Chater
shooting each other with the decorum due to a civilized house. You have no secrets
left, Mr Hodge. They
69
spilled out between shrieks and oaths and tears. It is fortunate that a lifetime's
devotion to the sporting gun has halved my husband's hearing to the ear he sleeps
on.
Septimus: I'm afraid I have no knowledge of what has occurred.
Lady Croom: Your trollop was discovered in Lord Byron's room.
Septimus: Ah. Discovered by Mr Chater?
Lady Croom: Who else?
Septimus: I am very sorry, madam, for having used your kindness to bring my
unworthy friend to your notice. He will have to give an account of himself to me,
you may be sure, (Before Lady Croom can respond to this threat, Jellaby enters the
room with her 'infusion'. This is quite an elaborate affair: a pewter tray on small
feet on which there is a kettle suspended over a spirit lamp. There is a cup and
saucer and the silver 'basket containing the dry leaves for the tea. Jellaby places
the tray on the table and is about to offer further assistance with it.)
Lady Croom: I will do it.
Jellaby: Yes, my lady. (To Septimus) Lord Byron left a letter for you with the valet, sir.
Septimus: Thank you.
(Septimus takes the letter off the tray, Jellaby prepares to leave, Lady Croom eyes
the letter.)
Lady Croom: Wh
en did he do so?
Jellaby: As he was leaving, your ladyship.
(Jellaby leaves. Septimus puts the letter into his pocket.)
Septimus: Allow me.
(Since she does not object, he pours a cup of tea for her. She accepts it.)
Lady Croom: I do not know if it is proper for you to receive a letter written in my
house from someone not welcome in it.
Septimus: Very improper, I agree. Lord Byron's want of delicacy is a grief to his
friends, among whom I no longer count myself. I will not read his letter until I have
followed him through the gates. (She considers that for a moment.)
Lady Croom: That may excuse the reading but not the writing.
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Septimus: Your ladyship should have lived in the Athens of Pericles! The
philosophers would have fought the sculptors for your idle hour!
Lady Croom: (Protesting) Oh, really! . . . (Protesting less.) Oh really. . . (Septimus has taken Byron's letter from his pocket and is now setting fire to a corner of it
using the little flame from the spirit lamp.) Oh . . . really . . .
(The paper blazes in Septimus's hand and he drops it and lets it burn out on the
metal tray.)
Septimus: Now there's a thing - a letter from Lord Byron never to be read by a
living soul. I will take my leave, madam, at the time of your desiring it.
Lady Croom: To the Indies?
Septimus: The Indies! Why?
Lady Croom: To follow the Chater, of course. She did not tell you?
Septimus: She did not exchange half-a-dozen words with me.
Lady Croom: I expect she did not like to waste the time. The Chater sails with
Captain Brice.
Septimus: Ah. As a member of the crew?
Lady Croom: No, as wife to Mr Chater, plant-gatherer to my brother's expedition.
Septimus: I knew he was no poet. I did not know it was botany under the false
colours.
Lady Croom: He is no more a botanist. My brother paid fifty pounds to have him
published, and he will pay a hundred and fifty to have Mr Chater picking flowers in
the Indies for a year while the wife plays mistress of the Captain's quarters. Captain
Brice has fixed his passion on Mrs Chater, and to take her on voyage he has not
scrupled to deceive the Admiralty, the Linnean Society and Sir Joseph Banks,
botanist to His Majesty at Kew.
Septimus:Her passion is not as fixed as his.
Lady Croom: It is a defect of God's humour that he directs our hearts everywhere
but to those who have a right to them.
Septimus: Indeed, madam. (Pause.) But is Mr Chater deceived?
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Lady Croom: He insists on it, and finds the proof of his wife's virtue in his eagerness to defend it. Captain Brice is not deceived but cannot help himself. He
would die for her.
Septimus: I think, my lady, he would have Mr Chater die for her.
Lady Croom: Indeed, I never knew a woman worth the duel, or the other way
about. Your letter to me goes very ill with your conduct to Mrs Chater, Mr Hodge. I
have had experience of being betrayed before the ink is dry, but to be betrayed
before the pen is even dipped, and with the village noticeboard, what am I to think
of such a performance?
Septimus: My lady, I was alone with my thoughts in the gazebo, when Mrs Chater
ran me to ground, and I being in such a passion, in an agony of unrelieved desire -
Lady Croom: Oh ...!
Septimus: -I thought in my madness that the Chater with her skirts over her head
would give me the momentary illusion of the happiness to which I dared not put a
face. {Pause.)
Lady Croom: I do not know when I have received a more unusual compliment, Mr
Hodge. I hope I am more than a match for Mrs Chater with her head in a bucket.
Does she wear drawers?
Septimus: She does.
Lady Croom: Yes, I have heard that drawers are being worn now. It is unnatural for
women to be got up like jockeys. I cannot approve. (She turns with a whirl of skirts
and moves to leave.) I know nothing of Pericles or the Athenian philosophers. I can spare them an hour, in my sitting room when I have bathed. Seven o'clock. Bring a
book.
(She goes out. Septimus picks up the two letters, the ones he wrote, and starts to
burn them in the flame of the spirit lamp.)
72
SCENE SEVEN
Valentine and Chloe are at the table. Gus is in the room.
Chloe is reading from two Saturday newspapers. She is wearing workaday period
clothes, a Regency dress, no hat.
Valentine is pecking at a portable computer. He is wearing unkempt Regency clothes, too.
The clothes have evidently come from a large wicker laundry hamper, from which
Gus is producing more clothes to try on himself. He finds a Regency coat and starts
putting it on.
The objects on the table now include two geometrical solids, pyramid and cone,
about twenty inches high, of the type used in a drawing lesson; and a pot of dwarf
dahlias (which do not look like modern dahlias).
Chloe: 'Even in Arcadia- Sex, Literature and Death at Sidley Park'. Picture of
Byron.
Valentine: Not of Bernard?
Chloe: 'Byron Fought Fatal Duel, Says Don'... Valentine, do you think I'm the first
person to think of this?
Valentine: No.
Chloe: I haven't said yet. The future is all programmed like a computer - that's a
proper theory, isn't it?
Valentine: The deterministic universe, yes.
Chloe: Right. Because everything including us is just a lot of atoms bouncing off
each other like billiard balls.
Valentine: Yes. There was someone, forget his name, 1820s, who pointed out that
from Newton's laws you could predict everything to come -I mean, you'd need a
computer as big as the universe but the formula would exist.
Chloe: But it doesn't work, does it?
Valentine: No. It turns out the maths is different.
Chloe: No, it's all because of sex.
Valentine: Really?
Chloe: That's what I think. The universe is deterministic all right, just like Newton
said, I mean it's trying to be, but the only thing going wrong is people fancying
people who aren't supposed to be in that part of the plan.
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Valentine: Ah. The attraction that Newton left out. All the way back to the apple in the garden. Yes. (Pause.) Yes, I think you're the first person to think of this.
(Hannah enters, carrying a tabloid paper, and a mug of tea.)
Hannah: Have you seen this? 'Bonking Byron Shot Poet'.
Chloe: (Pleased) Let's see.
(Hannah gives her the paper, smiles at Gus.)
Valentine: He's done awfully well, hasn't he? How did they all know?
Hannah: Don't be ridiculous. (To Chloe) Your father wants it back.
Chloe: All right.
Hannah: What a fool.
Chloe: Jealous. I think it's brilliant. (She gets up to go. To Gus) Yes, that's perfect, but not with trainers. Come on, I'll lend you a pair of flatties, they'll look period on
you -
Hannah: Hello, Gus. You all look so romantic.
(Gus following Chloe out, hesitates, smiles at her.)
Chloe: (Pointedly) Are you coming?
(She holds the door for Gus and follows him out, leaving a sense of her disapproval behind her.)
Hannah: The important thing is not to give two monkeys for what young people
think abo
ut you.
(She goes to look at the other newspapers. )
Valentine: (Anxiously) You don't think she's getting a thing about Bernard, do you?
Hannah: I wouldn't worry about Chloe, she's old enough to vote on her back.
'Byron Fought Fatal Duel, Says Don'. Or rather -(sceptically) 'Says Don!'
Valentine: It may all prove to be true.
Hannah: It can't prove to be true, it can only not prove to be false yet.
Valentine: (Pleased) Just like science.
Hannah: If Bernard can stay ahead of getting the rug pulled till he's dead, he'll be a success.
Valentine: Just like science... The ultimate fear is of posterity...
Hannah: Personally I don't think it'll take that long.
Valentine: . . .and then there's the afterlife. An afterlife would
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be a mixed blessing. 'Ah - Bernard Nightingale, I don't believe you know Lord
Byron.' It must be heaven up there.
Hannah: You can't believe in an afterlife, Valentine.
Valentine: Oh, you're going to disappoint me at last.
Hannah: Am I? Why?
Valentine: Science and religion.
Hannah: No, no, been there, done that, boring.
Valentine: Oh, Hannah. Fiancee. Have pity. Can't we have a trial marriage and I'll
call it off in the morning?
Hannah: (Amused) I don't know when I've received a more unusual proposal.
Valentine: (Interested) Have you had many?
Hannah: That would be telling.
Valentine: Well, why not? Your classical reserve is only a mannerism; and
neurotic.
Hannah: Do you want the room?
Valentine: You get nothing if you give nothing.
Hannah: I ask nothing.
Valentine: No, stay.
(Valentine resumes work at his computer, Hannah establishes herself among her
references at her end of the table. She has a stack of pocket-sized volumes, Lady
Croom's garden books.)
Hannah: What are you doing? Valentine?
Valentine: The set of points on a complex plane made by -
Hannah: Is it the grouse?
Valentine: Oh, the grouse. The damned grouse.
Hannah: You mustn't give up.
Valentine: Why? Didn't you agree with Bernard?
Hannah: Oh, that. It's all trivial - your grouse, my hermit, Bernard's Byron.
Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that
makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you
can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not