JUNE: This arm comes in through the shower curtain and it’s a mug and then I see Jack’s face and he’s totally white, just so scared, like I’ve really frightened him.
JACK: She pulls me in.
JUNE: And we stand under the water like that. Hours, it feels like. Just feelin ourselves come back. We got in bed, a big bed.
JACK snuggles against JUNE’S neck and slowly begins to sleep.
JUNE: And he just held me like that all night.
ADAM: Well, that’s probably enough detail on this subject.
JUNE: No, listen. I was embarrassed, really. Like, he must’ve been able to feel my big bum and see me ugly scars. I wondered if we’d get into it, if he’d want to —
ADAM: (demurring) June, really.
JUNE: And I didn’t know if I’d want to. I think I did want to, and now I of course I wish.
Light on BEN leaning in the doorway, drunk, hollow-eyed, malevolent.
JUNE: Except that Ben came in.
ADAM: What?
JUNE: I woke up and he was there in the doorway.
BEN: Came to in the kitchen. Felt crook.
JUNE: For a moment I thought he was a coat hangin on the back of the door.
BEN: Like really crook. And I went to the bathroom and there’s water and clothes everywhere and a wetty half out the door.
JUNE: And I guess that’s what he’s like anyway, Ben.
BEN: Followed all the water to the big room.
JUNE: He kind of hung there, starin.
BEN: Just wanted to see what happened. If he was alright.
JUNE: Maybe if Will had been there he’d’ve filled up and become somethin – that’s what I thought – maybe he’d do whatever it was he was thinkin about wantin to do. But he needed Will there to push him on.
BEN: And I guess I wanted to say something.
JUNE: Just starin.
ADAM: You woke him? You woke Jack?
JUNE: I don’t even know if he was asleep. He was behind me. He didn’t say anythin. I guess I felt safe. So I shut my eyes.
ADAM: And Ben’s still there?
JUNE: No. He was suddenly.
BEN: Nothing.
JUNE: It was like, like . . . I closed my eyes and I’d killed him.
ADAM: They weren’t his friends.
JUNE: I think he knew it. That weekend he saw it.
ADAM: I always saw it, right from the start. But it suited me. Their fathers, you see. Good school, good networks, good grounding. The Golden Triangle.
JUNE: I don’t follow you.
ADAM: I wanted the best for him. You gotta do everything you can to maximize a kid’s chances. You’re parachuting them into hostile territory the moment they’re born. You want him mixing with the right people, even if they’re shits, because that’s who they’ll have to get on with if they want to crack a few nuts in the big smoke.
JUNE: It must be embarrassin, then. Findin out about him and me.
ADAM: Not at all. I’m glad of it.
JUNE: Now. Yeah, now you’re glad. But a year or two ago you wouldna been, I bet.
ADAM: Well, a year or two ago I didn’t know you.
JUNE: All you’d need to know is I’m a bushpig from the IGA. Just imagine. He falls in love. She’s pregnant.
ADAM: But it didn’t happen, Christ. You said nothing happened.
JUNE: Everythin happened, everythin important to me.
Jack (Paul Ashcroft) and June (Whitney Richards) in rehearsal
SCENE 12
The lawyer’s office. BEN and WILL sit in their new suits. There is no lawyer to hear them now. After a moment JACK appears behind them. JUNE lurks at a distance.
JACK: At dawn she’s gone. The girl.
BEN: Jack was spewin.
WILL: Angry as.
BEN: At us. For fuck’s sake.
WILL: As if it’s our fault she does a runner in the wee hours.
BEN: And that’s the truth. That’s why. He gets the chick into bed, something happens – or nothing happens, knowing him – and she takes off.
WILL: I mean, shit, she’s from the country. She’s expecting a bit of action.
BEN: But she’s off.
WILL: Like she was something to brag about.
JUNE: It was just too much. Too much to take in. I should have stayed. But I was so embarrassed. I was a mess. And hurtin all over. I didn’t want him to wake up and be horrified.
JACK: I can’t believe it. This girl. She’s just gone. And all I’ve got is the smell of her. Woodsmoke, salt, wet wool, soap. I just. It’s like I’ve been shot. It’s so humiliating. It bloody hurts.
JUNE: If I’d stayed. If I had the guts. Why didn’t I? Why couldn’t I keep him? Keep him alive?
BEN: He just cuts sick and wants to go home, right there and then, moment he wakes up.
WILL: We’re like half asleep and he’s chuckin our stuff in the car.
BEN: Down the steps, everywhere.
WILL: Callin us fifty kinds of shithead.
BEN: Piled us into the car and just fanged it.
WILL: Like he was tryin to scare us or something. I mean, you’ve seen the road there, through the forest.
JACK: Fucked everything up. Those bastards.
BEN: Man, I was brickin it. We’re takin bends on two wheels. He’s doin it deliberately, like he’s gettin us to crack. Like he’s tryin to force somethin out of us.
WILL: Like what, for instance? What the fuck’s he want from us?
BEN: I don’t know. Like some kind of apology, maybe?
WILL: Nothing to apologize for.
BEN: I dunno. I feel bad.
WILL: That’s a hangover, you goose.
BEN: The trees flash by. The morning light flickering through like an epileptic fit. Want to chuck but I’m too scared to move, the car’s sliding on the bends and he’s like a maniac at the wheel. Hasn’t even put a seatbelt on, I’m shitting myself.
JUNE: I can’t tell him, the father. I know I killed him.
JACK: I know I’m doing something stupid. But they’re afraid and I like that. The rage feels good. Believe me, it doesn’t choose you; you choose it. You just let it have you. That’s what I’m doing. I know it’s stupid and dangerous, I know it’s wrong. But I like it. I don’t have the guts to stop, to get what I really want.
WILL: No shit, I think I’m gonna die. I think about grabbing the wheel, but mate, that’s the movies. One side’s the valley and the high side’s all trees the size of fuck knows what.
BEN: I can still see it coming at me. Pink and green. Bigger every second.
WILL: Drifting. Everyone real quiet like we don’t believe it’s happening.
Sound of a hideous impact. BEN and WILL are at the mercy of forces beyond their control. The world comes apart around them in slow motion.
JACK: It just grew out of the ground in half a second. It’s like the very moment I see it I’m there, in it, mixed against it, half here, there, present, gone, panicked, calm. Out here in the sappy bracken and that cat-pissy smell of understorey you get beneath the karris. And you can hear the sea like the tide of blood going out between your ears, and there’s no time to feel sorry and stupid, no time to take the moment back, only to feel. The ground is still shaking. And I can hear them, every living thing. Beetles and slaters working through the leaf litter.
BEN: Fuck, it was awful.
WILL: And he’s not movin out there.
BEN: But he’s saying something. I can’t hear it over the rain.
WILL: And I just wanna run. But I can’t feel me feet. And Ben’s like touching the roof, the doors, like it’s not real. Coz it’s all out of shape. We’re scrunched in, trapped in this thing like a screwed-up bit of paper, like a used tissue.
BEN: Will was bawling.
WILL: Fucking liar.
JACK: There’s rain falling. Falling such a long way. I watch the rain come down from beyond the trees. And just . . . feel.
Light on MARY.
MARY: Jack?
 
; ADAM: (off) Chrissake, Mary, what is it?
MARY: No. Please.
ADAM: (off) I have to answer it. What if it’s business?
MARY: Why do I keep remembering it this way, as if we were in bed, when the call actually came at 10.36 on a Tuesday morning? I wasn’t even home. Neither was Adam. Both at work, of course. But it’s what you’ve been dreading. The midnight call. You’ve lived it a thousand times already, trained yourself for it. It’s just one long wait for the axe to fall. So when it comes.
The phone rings once.
MARY: When it comes.
The phone rings again, twice.
MARY: Then it’s midnight wherever you are. And you know.
ADAM: (off) Mary, darling, it’s me.
MARY: You know.
ADAM: (off) I’m in a taxi. I’ll be there in five minutes. Mary?
MARY: And it – renders you a creature.
ADAM: (off) Love? You still with me? You there?
MARY: Something shameful, shocking, disgusting. But it’s real. You recognize it, you know yourself in it and it’s a kind of relief. To know you’re real. You don’t feel old and superfluous that moment. You feel like a girl with a swollen belly and a vein worming wild across her temple. Pushing. They tell you you’re supposed to recover your self, to individuate. And it’s true. You need your own life. So you inch towards it, or seize it. Of course you want it. It’s expected. As if, in the wake of childbirth, you need civilizing. Schedules and peer reviews, KPIs and sales targets. That’s what you need. Steely smiles, tears in the stairwell. But the sense memory lingers. Of being full. No man can give you that, no sisterly friendship, no intellectual triumph can compete with that sense of being filled up. Engorged sounds gluttonous, revolting. Replete, that’s the word. Replete with your baby. You feel him completely, he’s of you, in you, he fills you entirely. Pressing against your backbone, your lungs, your bladder, rolling, floating, swimming in you. At first it’s just the idea of him but then he grows, bigger, more insistent than any idea, so big he’s frightening, he owns you, possesses you and it’s terrible. Love. It’s a horror. Because there it is, waiting, the call, and when it comes your legs give way. The world is black and red and you bellow and writhe and press your head against the steel to bring it on, to finish the job. But you don’t bloody die. You just writhe there in your own slippery mess, full again, full of nothing.
MARY is reduced to a puddle of grief.
BEN: Did you see her? His mum. At the funeral.
WILL: Fucksake, stop talking about the funeral.
JUNE: I wasn’t invited. Why would they invite me? No one knew.
BEN: It was awful. I couldn’t bear it.
WILL: I didn’t look. Just shut up about it.
JUNE: But I went anyway. Lurking.
BEN: I mean, it’s like proper people, our kinda people. And she’s making this noise.
WILL: Leave off, willya?
BEN: I can feel me old man’s hand on me arm like a pincer. And people are embarrassed, annoyed really, even the priest. You know, he does all the heavy hitters’ funerals. And I’m just keepin it together and she goes down.
MARY gives a rending groan. It goes on so long it’s unbearable. The boys writhe in discomfort.
WILL: Enough!
JUNE: And I just want to lie there with her. On the floor. It’s like she’s calving. I think of a cow in a paddock, the way steam comes off her when she’s pushin, steam like a blanket over her, and the moan goes up the valley through the trees.
MARY: Jack? I’m afraid, Jack, what will I do?
BEN: Horrible.
JUNE: It’s awesome. A kind of fight she’s havin. I wanna be like her, a hero. I’m jealous. I hate her. No one saw me.
BEN: And right at the end, when everyone’s filing out, wiping their sweaty hands on their pants and thinking: Thank Christ that’s over, I see her. The bushpig.
WILL: I mean, what the hell was she doing there? Hadn’t been for her he’d still be alright. What right did she have? What, she drives five hours just to look at what she’s done? Why didn’t he just let her go, let her drift off to Antarctica? Turn into an iceberg, the fat bitch.
BEN: Man, I went cold.
WILL: She did us a favour. It was a heads-up.
BEN: Oh, bullshit. You were lawyered up by the Wednesday.
WILL: (suddenly amused) You ungrateful bastard.
BEN: Okay, he’s my lawyer, too. But why didn’t you say?
WILL: Was I conscious?
BEN: Why couldn’t you tell ’em? When the fireys’re cutting us out. Why? Mate, why’nt you tell ’em he’s lying out there in the bush?
WILL: Shit, I dunno. First I was scared. I could smell petrol. I thought we’d get cooked alive in there, trussed up like pigs. That’s all I could think. And then later I’m angry, coz he’s nearly killed us. And then I’m in the ambulance and they’ve got that space blanket thing on me and I’m suddenly warm and safe, and I’m thinking: Thank fuck, thank fuck, and honest to God, no bullshit, I just forget he’s out there.
BEN: What?
WILL: Jack. Fucksake, I forgot he’s even out there. (begins to weep) I didn’t remember him at all. How could I forget he’s out there?
For a moment they are naked to the horror before them. They are children again.
And JACK MANSFIELD fades from view.
SCENE 13
The beach house the same night. ADAM and JUNE at the end of her story.
ADAM: You’re one out of the box, you know.
JUNE: Yeah, the IGA box.
ADAM: I think you’ve got the wrong impression about us, June.
JUNE: No. I think I’m a realist.
ADAM: Those boys. If you wanted to press charges.
JUNE: No.
ADAM: I mean, we’d do everything in our power. Lawyers, everything.
JUNE: I don’t need it.
ADAM: But if you did. I mean to say you should treat us like family. What? What are you smiling at?
JUNE: Nothin.
ADAM: Maybe you can swing by now and then? Would you do that?
JUNE: Oh. I dunno. Maybe.
ADAM: Or come up to the city for a visit? Meet Mary?
JUNE: I don’t think so. Actually, you know, I think I’ll head off.
ADAM: Stay. Please.
JUNE: Nah, I’m off.
ADAM: Oh. Right.
JUNE: That’s it.
ADAM: (struggling to place June’s evening of wine-tasting within her account) But June, before you go, there’s just one thing.
JUNE hesitates.
JUNE: Yeah?
ADAM: Nothing. Just . . . thanks. For telling me. I feel like we owe you something.
JUNE: Nah. Nothin. Seeya.
ADAM gets up to see her out and watches her go.
ADAM: In the end I can’t ask it, because I don’t want an answer that’ll break the spell. But what’s the point of asking? Maybe it’s all just bullshit, a fantasy, every bit of her story, and she’s made it up to let herself feel better, give us something honourable to hang onto. Lonely girl, unhappy life. After all, she said she wanted to give us something. What the hell. I believe her. Need to. I just . . . choose to.
SCENE 14
The beach in golden sunlight. Sound of surf and gulls. MARY sits on a towel at the beach, barefoot in a summer dress and hat. She reads a book. Enter JACK as a boy. He’s ten years old in boardshorts and a rash-vest, his nose and cheeks daubed with zinc cream, a boogie-board under his arm as he runs to her. The moment she hears him she has a towel at the ready. At stage left, JUNE assembles a shrine of her own at the foot of the karri tree.
JACK: Mum! Mum? Hey, Mum. Did you see?
MARY: Of course, darling. Did you think I’d sit here all day and not watch?
She wraps him up and dabs him dry.
JACK: I went left. All the way to the beach. I did a reo.
MARY: Like a god.
JACK: What?
MARY: Like a little golden god.
&nbs
p; They begin to walk off and JACK stoops to pick up a thong.
JACK: Hey, look.
MARY: Leave it, love. It’s just rubbish.
JACK: It’s got barnacles on it.
They pause again.
JACK: What? What’re you lookin at?
MARY: The colour of joy.
JACK: You’re a nut.
MARY: I’ll have you know I’m a very important person, I have my own car space at work.
JACK: Nah, you’re a nut.
MARY: Yes I am. Thank you for noticing. Jack love, it’s just a thong.
JUNE places a single thong on the tree where the scar has congealed. She stares out to sea.
JACK: Hey, maybe the other one will float in too.
MARY: Maybe.
Fade slowly to black.
Jack (Paul Ashcroft)
Production Notes
Shrine was first produced by the Black Swan State Theatre Company, premiering at the Heath Ledger Theatre at the State Theatre Centre of Western Australia on 31 August 2013. On 19 and 20 September 2013 it was performed at the Albany Entertainment Centre, and from 26–29 September it played at the Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre, as part of the Collected Works: Australia 2013 program for the Centenary of Canberra celebrations.
CAST AND CREW
Paul Ashcroft JACK MANSFIELD
John Howard ADAM MANSFIELD
Luke McMahon WILL
Sarah McNeill MARY MANSFIELD
Will McNeill BEN
Whitney Richards JUNE FENTON
Kate Cherry DIRECTOR
Trent Suidgeest SET AND LIGHTING DESIGNER
Kyle Bockmann ASSOCIATE LIGHTING DESIGNER
Ben Collins SOUND DESIGNER
Fiona Bruce COSTUME DESIGNER
Emily McLean ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
Chrissie Parrott MOVEMENT DIRECTOR
Michael Maclean STAGE MANAGER
Emily Stokoe ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER
Marie Nitschke-McGregor WARDROBE ASSISTANT/DRESSER
Artsworkshop SET CONSTRUCTION
June (Whitney Richards) in rehearsal
Adam (John Howard)
Mary (Sarah McNeill)
From left: Will (Luke McMahon), Ben (Will McNeill), Jack (Paul Ashcroft) and Adam (John Howard)