Shrine

  ADAM: Yeah, you look enthusiastic.

  JUNE: Nah, it’s gunna work.

  ADAM: So why’d you gob it up so quick?

  JUNE: Well, I don’t really drink wine.

  ADAM: So why am I asking your opinion? Jesus.

  JUNE: But it’s good fruit. Structure’s there.

  JUNE wipes her mouth indelicately and settles for dumping her wet clothes in a heap. She sets her glass back on the table. ADAM is agitated, all at sea.

  ADAM: Well, there’s whisky.

  JUNE: I’m fine.

  ADAM: Something to warm you up.

  JUNE: Milo?

  ADAM: Milo?

  JUNE: Sorry.

  ADAM: There isn’t any Milo.

  JUNE: There used to be.

  ADAM has a half-hearted look in the pantry. And finds a tin of Milo.

  ADAM: Well, I’ll be damned. I’ll . . . the kettle.

  JUNE moves to the window and surveys the bay.

  ADAM: Wild out there.

  JUNE: Yeah, it’s rough.

  ADAM: Some days you thank God you’re not a sailor, eh?

  JUNE: I spose.

  ADAM: Storm like that, the swell, the ugly confused sea, the gale forcing you in against the cliffs. Nowhere safe to put in. Night falling. It’d be purgatory.

  JUNE: I . . . I guess.

  ADAM: Horrible.

  JUNE: I guess.

  ADAM: Thoughts like that really cheer me up.

  JUNE: What?

  ADAM takes up the glass she’s left on his table and drinks it off in a gulp. JUNE reacts with dismay. She can’t decide if he’s so drunk he doesn’t remember that she’s spat in it or if he’s done it to unnerve her. Either way she’s rattled. Unable to disguise how much he’s enjoying himself, ADAM pours her a mug of Milo and brings it to her.

  ADAM: So. You don’t drink my wine.

  JUNE: Any wine. It’s not personal.

  ADAM: Beer, I suppose. And bourbon.

  JUNE: Nah. Nothin now.

  ADAM retreats a little, retrieves his own glass.

  ADAM: You’re a puzzle, June.

  JUNE: Coz I don’t drink?

  ADAM: Why would you climb over a locked gate?

  JUNE: Wanted to talk to you.

  ADAM: And what about me, the householder, what about what I wanted?

  JUNE: I was angry. I wasn’t thinkin.

  ADAM: Angry? At me? Girlie, you’ve still got your job. I can buy and sell what I want. I don’t have to answer to the likes of you.

  JUNE: It’s not about that.

  ADAM: Well, what is it?

  JUNE: I was filthy coz ya did it again. Ya keep doin it over and over again – I’ve seen ya.

  ADAM: Doing what, exactly?

  JUNE: You know.

  ADAM: Risky thing to do in the country, June, approach a house uninvited, where you’re probably not welcome.

  JUNE: You don’t need to tell me!

  ADAM: Christ. Of course. I’m sorry. I’m a bit . . . I don’t know what I was thinking.

  JUNE: Doesn’t matter. Long time ago.

  ADAM takes a moment to regain his composure, to think past the fog of booze. He sits in an armchair and assembles himself as the man of the house.

  ADAM: So, what pressing affair did you want to see me about? In your moment of righteous anger.

  JUNE: Like I said. You. Kickin things over.

  ADAM: What?

  JUNE: On the highway. The bend. The cross. The stuff. Happens every time you’re down. You knock it over. I’ve seen you.

  ADAM: So, it’s you, then. The little roadside shrine. The beer cans, bourbon bottles, all the bogan placards.

  JUNE: You don’t understand.

  ADAM: Funny, June. I was picturing a Commodore, a muscle ute. Boys with stubby holders and beanies. NO FAT CHICKS sticker.

  JUNE: What?

  ADAM: A carload of country boys, June.

  JUNE: Only the once.

  ADAM: Once what?

  JUNE: And they weren’t country boys, neither. He didn’t really know any country boys. These guys showed up in a Range Rover.

  ADAM: A Range Rover?

  JUNE: Brand new, with P-plates. Four boys. Posh-lookin. It was them put it all up in the first place, the cross and all the rest. Two of them I recognized. They took pictures with their phones. Opened some cans and poured them out on the ground.

  ADAM: Grammar boys. Love their liturgical moment. There’s training for you.

  JUNE: But they never came back.

  ADAM: Never?

  JUNE: And you keep . . . I was comin to ask, actually to tell you.

  ADAM: Ah, peace be with you, boys. (he makes the sign of the cross in ironic blessing) And also with you.

  JUNE: Please. Stop.

  ADAM: What a fucking joke.

  JUNE: Stop that. Stop knockin everthin down! I want you to stop it!

  ADAM: What? You? You’re telling me?

  JUNE: Askin?

  ADAM: June, love. A boy’s life. A woman’s only child, a man’s son.

  JUNE: It’s a sacred place.

  ADAM: That squalid little shrine? A roadside cliché, that’s what it is. A sentimental white cross – you think that’s sufficient to the sacred memory of my son? And all the other dross hanging off it like birdshit – you think some spilled bourbon and a few moronic slogans speak for Jack and who he was? JACK LIVES HERE, you reckon that does him justice? YOU CAN GET IT FLYING, YOU CAN GET IT DYIN . . . MATTER OF FACT I GOT IT NOW. Or how about STAY A LITTLE LONGER, that’s a goodie. Eh? Eh? You know, his mother and I, June, we wouldn’t have minded if Jack’d stayed a little longer. See him grown up, married maybe, kids. Yes, some things are sacred, dearie, but they’re sacred to us, to the people who loved him.

  JUNE exits in tears. ADAM subsides into his chair, into memory and grief. For a moment he sings drunkenly.

  ADAM: And your mommy won’t mind . . . And your daddy won’t mind . . .

  Light fades as the refrain from ‘Stay (Just a Little Bit Longer)’ takes ADAM into memory.

  SCENE 7

  Darkness. An insistent knock at the door. ADAM lies adrift in his chair.

  MARY: (off) Don’t get up. Don’t get it.

  ADAM: But Mary.

  The knocking persists.

  MARY: (off) No. Please! Don’t ever get it.

  ADAM: Love?

  MARY: If we don’t answer the door it’ll never happen. It’ll just pass by.

  ADAM: But it keeps knocking.

  MARY: Always.

  ADAM: In my head.

  MARY: In my heart.

  ADAM: It’ll always be knocking.

  Lights up on MARY at stage right. She stands with her phone in a cold island of light. ADAM gropes for his phone, startled.

  ADAM: June?

  MARY: You’re asleep again. I can’t believe you can sleep, as if the world is alright. Who’s June?

  ADAM: What?

  MARY: Who is she? Tell me.

  ADAM: I tried to.

  MARY: You never say a thing.

  ADAM: It’s her. This business at the . . . scene, the roadside.

  MARY: I’ve told you, I don’t want to know about that.

  ADAM: You see?

  MARY: I don’t want to see it.

  ADAM: I know.

  MARY: What does she look like?

  ADAM: What possible difference could it make what she looks like? She’s a Fenton.

  MARY: All these months there’s a girl.

  ADAM: No. Well, yes.

  MARY: In town.

  ADAM: Well, she turned up. At the house.

  MARY: This total stranger, this creature, you’re talking to her?

  ADAM: Well —

  MARY: You bastard.

  ADAM: Don’t be jealous.

  MARY: Of course I’m jealous.

  ADAM: Christ, she’s a Fenton.

  MARY: Not just her. I’m jealous that you’re sleeping.

  ADAM: That’s not sleep, love, that’s anaesthesia. Ch
rist, I’m drinking the cellar just to get over the edge.

  MARY: And you’re talking to a stranger. Some girl.

  ADAM: I’ll tell you everything.

  MARY: Don’t. You won’t. I know you won’t.

  ADAM: I will. I’ll call you. Maybe I’ll write it down. Just settle down, love —

  MARY: I’ll never settle down.

  ADAM: You just need some rest, love. Sleep.

  MARY: Sleep, he says, take the pills. But I can’t sleep.

  ADAM: Please.

  MARY hangs up.

  MARY: This is what happens when you break the rules. A woman’s not supposed to invest so much. But I don’t care about the shop, don’t want to finish the bloody MA. I am his mother.

  ADAM: This is why they say don’t have them. I used to think that was sad, selfish. But that’s why people don’t have kids.

  MARY: Because of the fear.

  ADAM: Because you’re either afraid of them or afraid for them.

  MARY: Scared of this apocalypse, this annihilation.

  ADAM: And when they’re gone the hole they leave is bigger than the space they took. How can that be?

  MARY: I wish I’d listened. I’d still be myself. Childless, coherent, consistent, strong.

  Light up on JACK upstage. MARY flips the phone open again and dials.

  JACK: You know the drill. Leave a message. Love you, Mum. I know it’s you. You can’t keep doing this. Still love ya.

  A long, eerie beep. And JUNE is there at the roadside shrine. She strokes the burn scars on her belly, struggling to retain control.

  JUNE: It’s orright, you’re orright. See? June, you’re orright. You have to. You owe it to him. Just tell him, you stupid, ugly, fat bitch!

  Jack (Paul Ashcroft) and June (Whitney Richards)

  SCENE 8

  At the roadside two teenage boys in suits stand by the wounded tree and the shrine in dappled light. WILL has a sticking plaster on his forehead. BEN’S arm is in a sling. They pour out booze upon the earth at the foot of the cross. As if at the sound of an inquisitorial voice they turn to speak.

  WILL: Jack was at the wheel.

  BEN: Yeah, yes, it was Jack driving. Sir.

  Light on ADAM as their LAWYER. He stands in his livingroom like a barrister in chambers, his manner at once inquisitorial and conspiratorial.

  ADAM/LAWYER: And yet the Mansfield boy, his body was found outside the vehicle.

  WILL: No seatbelt?

  ADAM/LAWYER: And, of course, the car in three pieces.

  WILL: Right.

  BEN: Just shit – like, sorry, stuff.

  WILL: Everywhere.

  BEN: Clothes.

  WILL: Door.

  BEN: Boards.

  WILL: In bits.

  BEN: Bits.

  WILL: And it was raining. And quiet. For a long time it was quiet.

  BEN: Birds. I could hear the wind in the trees.

  ADAM/LAWYER: Were you conscious when the first vehicle arrived?

  BEN: Think so.

  WILL: I dunno. Don’t remember. But I remember the lights.

  BEN: The ambulance. The fireys.

  WILL: Yes, I remember the fireys.

  ADAM/LAWYER: As they cut you free?

  BEN: Right.

  ADAM/LAWYER: Yet it was several minutes before they found young Jack?

  WILL: I don’t know anything, we don’t know anything about that.

  ADAM/LAWYER: It’s in the record. That you, Will, that you told the paramedic Jack had already left the scene, that he’d gone for help or just run off.

  WILL: No. I don’t remember saying it. Maybe I did. I was pretty —

  ADAM/LAWYER: Concussed, yes it’s there in the record. Did you hear him say this, Ben? Did you hear Will say this?

  BEN: Um. I don’t, I don’t recall?

  Light on MARY at a distance.

  MARY: He always wore a seatbelt. You little shits.

  ADAM/LAWYER: Remind me again, son. What’re you studying?

  BEN: Geology. Sir.

  ADAM/LAWYER: And you, Will?

  WILL: Well. (shrugs) Law. Sir.

  ADAM/LAWYER: (pondering this) Your father, Ben?

  BEN: He’s flying back from China.

  ADAM/LAWYER: And Will, I spoke to your dad this morning.

  WILL: The office?

  ADAM/LAWYER: No, we both swim at North Cott every morning.

  WILL: You’ve got the corporate box, then. Eagles.

  ADAM/LAWYER: Hmm. Now, had you boys been drinking?

  BEN: Um.

  WILL: Yeah. Yes. All night.

  BEN: Fair bit. That’s why.

  WILL: Like why —

  ADAM/LAWYER: Why this other boy was driving. Because neither of you was in a fit state.

  WILL: Yeah, that’s it.

  ADAM/LAWYER: And how fast were you going?

  BEN: Don’t remember.

  ADAM/LAWYER: You were . . . what, passed out?

  WILL: Yeah, that’s it.

  ADAM/LAWYER: In the back, in the rear seat of the vehicle? With your seatbelt on?

  WILL nods carefully.

  ADAM/LAWYER: At 7.45. In the morning.

  BEN: I feel bad. That we, you know, left him to drive. Like, I feel a bit, you know, responsible?

  WILL: Like, we coulda told him to slow down?

  ADAM/LAWYER: If you hadn’t been asleep in the back.

  WILL: (cottoning on) Yeah.

  BEN: He was a good bloke, but.

  ADAM/LAWYER: Jack Mansfield?

  As if summoned, JACK appears at the forest edge.

  WILL: Yeah. We’ll . . . he’ll, you know, he’ll be missed. He’ll be sadly missed by all and sundry.

  MARY: Christ! I’ve heard politicians sound more sincere. You’re already suing us, you scum!

  ADAM: (as himself) It’s just the insurance company, love, it’s not personal.

  MARY: He’s not even cold and you want recompense for your injuries? Your interrupted pre-season? Your inability to drive yourself to uni, to lift a pint at Steve’s? When you left him out there in the rain so long he was beyond saving? You lying shitheads!

  The boys flinch and wince.

  ADAM: Mary, it’s only money. And it’s not even our money; it’s insurance.

  MARY: It’s the principle.

  ADAM: Just a process.

  MARY: Like grief, you mean? How do you let an outrage become a process? What species of domestication is this? Only a man could call a bushfire a process. Stand in your burning house and tell me that, why don’t you!

  The boys break themselves free from proceedings and begin their exit.

  BEN: Fuck.

  WILL: Women.

  BEN: Why’d you tell ’em?

  WILL: Fuck, man. Wouldn’t’ve made any difference. It was like fifteen minutes before anyone showed. He was rooted.

  BEN: But why’d you say it?

  WILL: I didn’t. I don’t remember saying it.

  BEN: Bullshit.

  WILL: Don’t be a pussy.

  WILL exits, pulling out his phone. BEN stares into the gloom of the forest as if into the fresh grave itself. He is haunted by his guilt, his collusion. The entire adult world of privilege and patronage has become clear to him. And amidst the shadows JACK MANSFIELD stands pale and silent.

  Adam (John Howard), Will (Luke McMahon) and Ben (Will McNeill)

  SCENE 9

  ADAM’S beach house at dusk next evening. He stares out the window, already a little drunk, a glass of wine in one hand and a pair of binoculars in the other.

  ADAM: Dolphins! Three, four, five, six of them. Winding round the Point in the last, faint light, backs shining, all surfing the same wave, just – yes! – bursting from the water like . . . like an actual moment of grace. And then suddenly gone. Mary, love, you should have seen it. (abruptly angry) You should have let yourself see it. Why the hell don’t you ever come down? He loved it here.

  Light on JUNE at the door. Her appearance is sudden enough to startle him. H
e spills wine, sets both glass and binoculars aside and tries to wipe himself down haplessly. JUNE bears a carton of groceries. She offers it and he accepts it clumsily.

  JUNE: I work two days at the IGA. Expired stuff. I thought maybe . . .

  ADAM: Oh. Great. That’s . . . that’s a lot of Sui Min noodles. And look, asparagus, from —

  JUNE: Peru.

  ADAM: Peru.

  JUNE: Makes your wee stink.

  ADAM: What?

  JUNE: Makes it smell like twenty-year-old semillon.

  ADAM: Semillon?

  JUNE: Sorry. That was kinda . . .

  ADAM: What makes your wee stink like semillon?

  JUNE: Asparagus.

  ADAM: Just the stuff from Peru?

  JUNE: No, all of it. I thought you’d know.

  ADAM: Well. Consider me freshly enlightened. How d’you know what an old semillon smells like, anyway?

  JUNE: Well.

  ADAM: I’m curious. You don’t mind me being a bit curious, do you?

  JUNE: I’m exaggeratin. About the wine, not the wee.

  ADAM: Sniff a lot of urine, do you?

  JUNE: What?

  ADAM: Seriously, I’m curious. About how you know what such an unfashionable wine smells like.

  JUNE: I’m a cellarhand, remember?

  ADAM: But we’ve never done a straight semillon.

  JUNE: Oh. That’s right.

  ADAM: And nothing twenty years old.

  JUNE: No. Doesn’t really smell like that, anyway. I dunno why I said it.

  ADAM: Thought you didn’t drink wine.

  JUNE: No. Not now.

  ADAM: So, the old semillons, where’d you come across them?

  JUNE: Um? Jack? Jack showed me.

  ADAM: Jack? My Jack?

  JUNE: He was tryin to explain.

  ADAM: But he didn’t know anything about wine.

  JUNE: Oh, nah, he knew a lot. Truly. And downstairs there’s heaps.

  ADAM: You’ve been in my cellar?

  JUNE: He showed me the old Peter Lehmanns and the Tyrell’s. A couple from Margaret River. One from Balingup. So different.

  ADAM: What d’you mean, he showed you?

  JUNE: Well, he opened them all and we tasted ’em. Sorry. I mean we didn’t drink the lot, we just spat, mostly. Maybe that’s worse, eh?

  ADAM: (still holding the box) I didn’t realize.

  JUNE: (warming to the task, feeding his excitement) You gotta love the Hunter Valley stuff. The old Elizabeths. The Lovedales. Labels all curled off. All gold in the glass.

  ADAM: Exactly. Gorgeous.

  JUNE: That pineappley, burnt-toasty kinda —