Three Plays: The Last Carnival; Beef, No Chicken; and A Branch of the Blue Nile
his whole culture as if it were a sunset,
because all embarkation is a fantasy. You see
those pilgrims in the painting? They can’t move.
It’s like some paralyzed moment in a carnival.
Sometimes he paints like a perfume manufacturer,
but when he’s great … what an elegy to the light,
what a piercing sadness! He died young.
And you feel it, every stroke like a goodbye.
See? In the meantime, Miss W., Santa Rosa
is what you and I have for our paradise.
[He is drawing]
AGATHA
Why do you come down to the studio so early?
If I’m up then, your light’s already on.
VICTOR
Because it’s cool in the darkness in the hills.
Because then money and villainy are still asleep.
Where’re the kids today?
AGATHA
In town. I told you
that Oswald was taking them to the races.
We told you about it since last Saturday.
VICTOR
Oh! And why didn’t you go with them? Keep still.
AGATHA
Because you wanted me here to finish the sitting.
VICTOR
And, being British, you always finish what you start?
AGATHA
Doesn’t seem particularly British to me.
VICTOR
A difference in temperament, then, Miss W.
I rarely finish what I start. There’s despair:
a queue of unfinished canvases, face to the wall.
AGATHA
I suppose it’s artistic to talk about despair.
Thank God I’ve no talent; it seems to sadden people.
I’d better get back to me book.
VICTOR
You’d rather read your book than talk to me?
AGATHA
Don’t be silly. It was getting embarrassing.
[The clapping and chanting outside fade]
VICTOR
[Hums the chant]
“Come, let we dance the cocoa, come let we dance…”
[He returns to the easel. AGATHA holds up the book]
AGATHA
This is a very fine novel. Trinidadian. You read it?
VICTOR
It’s bound to be provincial and bitter. No.
[AGATHA puts on glasses, scans the book’s back jacket]
Don’t read too many novels, Miss Willett.
You’ll look around you and all you’ll see is fiction,
some colorful backwater of the Empire.
Both of us want to see what we believe,
and if you look hard enough it will become that,
the way I can’t help seeing Santa Rosa.
It’s very very hard to see things as they are.
AGATHA
You mean those women out there aren’t poor?
VICTOR
Yes. But not in the way you think they are.
AGATHA
What other way is there?
VICTOR
The way you see them.
AGATHA
And how is that?
VICTOR
You’re moved by poverty
as some minds are by music. That’s to your credit.
But there’s no fear of your becoming a snob.
You’ll always have working-class hands, Miss Willett.
AGATHA
Sorry. Why bother to paint them, then?
VICTOR
Sorry. I said that because I find hands hard to draw.
AGATHA
Don’t take your frustration with the drawing
out on me. I can’t see why you’re dissatisfied.
I believe in your talent, Mr. De …
VICTOR
Victor.
AGATHA
I believe in your talent, Victor …
[Shudders]
Brrrrrr …
I believe time will reward your industry.
VICTOR
I’m honored.
[He holds her]
AGATHA
You’re used to all this, you see.
But I’m not, you see, and there’s the difference.
I don’t want to grow affected. I don’t want
to put on airs. But sometimes I find
all of that beauty out there so stifling
I’m afraid it’ll suffocate my conscience.
I’m just a Cockney bint from Putney, sir, but
I do resent being used. I do rather resent
your performing for me as if I were your journal.
You’ve made my hands feel very awkward now.
VICTOR
Do you want to leave? It’s just been seven months.
AGATHA
No. I like it here. I like it very much.
[VICTOR takes her hands]
VICTOR
You do? Trinidad or Santa Rosa?
AGATHA
Both. They’re one and the same.
VICTOR
What about Port of Spain?
[He kisses both hands]
AGATHA
Port of Spain, as well. Yes.
[Looking away]
Also, I’m very fond of you. But I believe …
I believe it is my duty to help others,
my comrades, of whatever colour, with less than me.
I believe, for whatever my layman’s judgement is worth,
that you can be one of the greatest painters in …
VICTOR
In Trinidad …
AGATHA
I believe the God I don’t believe in
will reward you, because of your hard work.
I’m going to change, then go for a long walk.
A British walk … Yes. I’m quite fond of you.
VICTOR
Then what shall we do about that fondness, love?
[Victor puts down his brushes, walks towards her, cups her face in his hands]
SCENE 3
The verandah, brilliant moonlight. OSWALD sits in a white wicker chair next to a bottle of gin. An antique, electrified Victrola is playing Meyerbeer’s L’Africaine, sung by Gigli. The lights dim, the record groans to a halt. Distant steel band music.
OSWALD
Oh, Christ!
[He goes to the far corner of the verandah and shouts]
Ra-fay-yell! What the arse going on?
RAFAEL’S VOICE
The generator pulling too much load, Mr. Ozzie!
She might break down.
OSWALD
I go break down! Send up some lamps!
Send some for Mr. Victor so he could work!
RAFAEL’S VOICE
I done that long days! Jean coming with the lamps!
[JEAN, a young maid, enters, carrying two large lamps. She sets a lamp down near OSWALD’s chair, then uses another chair to hang an old-fashioned lamp from its chain]
JEAN
Rafael send me with these. Mr. Ozzie, Agatha say she taking a hot bath, and she coming downstairs to give you dinner just now.
OSWALD
Who say? “Agatha!” Jean?
JEAN
Miss Agatha, Mr. Oswald.
OSWALD
Just Oswald, Miss Jean.
JEAN
I tell Miss Willett I can’t call her her first name.
She does correct me and force me every time.
So it does slip me. I ain’t like calling she
by she first name either. But she say we equal.
OSWALD
So, Miss Jean, tell me; I see a set of benches
and a old blackboard on the back verandah;
this is the second Saturday I notice them.
Miss Willett running some sort of school on the verandah?
I wouldn’t know, you see, ’cause my Saturdays
is for the Queen’s Park Hotel, and the races.
That wha
t she been doing?
JEAN
Yes, Mr. Oswald.
OSWALD
What, children from the village or what?
JEAN
Sydney and me, but it have old people, too.
She does give us books and t’ing. And some talks
does be about politics. British Empire,
Village council; principle of government …
She does teach us our rights …
OSWALD
Okay, Jean.
Good night, Jean. Careful going home,
don’t let jumbie hold you.
JEAN
[Laughing]
I ain’t ’fraid spirits.
Night, Mr. Oswald.
[AGATHA enters in a terry-cloth bathrobe and a turban, and Indian slippers]
AGATHA
Good night, Jean.
JEAN
Good night.
[Exits]
OSWALD
We go have to ease up
on them luxurious hot-water baths for a bit.
The Delco pulling too much heat.
AGATHA
Back to rationing, eh?
OSWALD
The kids asleep?
AGATHA
Ay. They drop like chickens
once it gets dark.
OSWALD
They don’t drop like chickens, nuh,
they drop like the price of cocoa these days.
I ain’t know what I go tell the bank Monday.
AGATHA
They were splashing around in the river all afternoon bathing their horses.
[She pours herself a drink]
OSWALD
Was Sydney there with them?
AGATHA
Why not? He’s the best rider of the bunch.
OSWALD
He’s getting too tall to be a jockey, though.
AGATHA
A jockey? That’s what’s ahead of him?
OSWALD
What else?
A rancher?
AGATHA
God, but it hurts, though!
To see them go their ways with every sunset.
No matter how green, how wonderful their day,
stoning mangoes, playing cricket, swimming,
and, like today, washing those lovely horses
under the bamboos, with Sydney grooming them
the way you treat your Humber. When it’s sunset,
they go their ways: Sydney to his room in the yard,
Clodia and Tony bathed and prayed and powdered
up to their clean linen. It breaks my heart.
“Night, Sydney, night, Miss Aggie, till tomorrow.”
[Silence]
I’m tired too. Why? I was out dancing the cocoa.
That’s why I was dawdling in the bath so long.
[Removes her slippers, sniffs her feet]
I’m glad I never knew how they did it in England.
Someone over there’s going to be drinkin’ this.
I was with the women, dancing, trampling the beans.
There’re these long trays out in the sun, you see …
OSWALD
I know how it’s done.
And that makes you one with black women, I suppose?
Then you come back and luxuriate in the bath.
AGATHA
Well, I can’t reek of the bloody thing all night.
It’d rub off on Victor; or, come scrub my back.
OSWALD
You’re a very fragrant Communist, sweetheart.
AGATHA
I’m not a Communist, dolt! Ah, Mother’s ruin!
[Drinks the gin]
You think all socialists stink?
What a moon!
I’m feeling drunk on this gin-colored moonlight!
Moon’s like a bloody searchlight. The war’s over,
but I still get nightmares over the buzz bombs.
They arch over England, hit, then the explosions
turn into palm trees, and I wake up in Santa Rosa!
Know who lost the First War? The working class.
Officers and privates, yeomen and gentlemen,
meanwhile, the privates who dropped their aitches
dropped like flies in the mud. By the Armistice,
in spite of Flanders and the Somme, old England
went back to what it was. The ones who won
were the officers and gentlemen. Granddad
used to wheeze that to me with his poisoned lungs.
’E got badly gassed. He was a bitter veteran.
A Putney socialist. Gin rest his soul.
[OSWALD rises, reaches up for a lamp, offers it to her]
OSWALD
Here. Why you just don’t burn this damn place?
AGATHA
[She rehangs the lamp]
Try and understand me, Oswald, won’t you?
I’d spin the globe at school, in geography;
there was red for the empire—the whole universe
looked like it had scarlet fever—red for the colonies,
orange for the Dominions, one-seventh of the world.
One-seventh of the ruddy globe! Your federation’s coming.
Seriously! Why not offer your labourers
a share in the estate?
OSWALD
A welfare state in the bush?
Besides, what would they offer me as capital?
AGATHA
Their labour. I know you think I’m a pain.
All right. Let’s change the subject.
My employer wishes me to change the subject.
What happened to Victor’s wife, Brierly?
OSWALD
He didn’t tell you? She went away. Do you mind
if we don’t discuss it? I don’t like gossip
to get into my drinks.
AGATHA
Went away. Where?
OSWALD
Heaven, presumably. We always tell the children heaven.
Since she was a good Catholic and a local white
from a good family, I would say heaven.
AGATHA
Good family. What’s a good family? Good Christ!
No. What’s a good family? One with ancestors?
Lineage? Even a bloody ape’s got lineage.
The types who come drinking here on Sundays,
vomiting or pissing in my garden beds,
are they good family?
OSWALD
They been here long.
AGATHA
So’ve the bloody frogs.
[She giggles]
OSWALD
Drink your gin, Willett …
AGATHA
What happened to Brierly? How did she die?
OSWALD
You getting predictable. You falling into
a cat’gory, Willett …
AGATHA
Cat-e-gory. The way you say it
sounds like a town in Canada. How?
OSWALD
Malaria.
AGATHA
Malaria? I thought we’d eradicated malaria.
We have everywhere else in the world.
OSWALD
Pardon me, madam, that we still so backward!
There were other complications. She was pregnant.
It weakened her. Oh, Christ, Aggie, enough.
It’s moonlight. Leave the dead alone,
let the moonlight seep through the ground
to soothe their faces. Listen to that steel band.
[Steel-band music stops]
They’re playing classics now. I could have been a great
opera singer, you know? Ever hear me in the bath?
When I hit them L’Africaine, so!
[Sings]
O Par-a-dis- …
AGATHA
You loved her. Didn’t you?
Poor Oswald. Oswald? You did love her.
OSWALD
Poor Oswald, my arse. My godfather was drunk. Listen:
a toilet flushing or a man gargling … Ozzwuld, Ozwald.
The first-born always gets the first choice, sweetheart.
AGATHA
Did Victor know?
OSWALD
[Gargling]
Ozzwulld, Ozzwulld.
I generally inherit Victor’s toys. Ozwulld.
AGATHA
Well, Agatha’s no great name. A maiden aunt.
A spinster in a corner knitting patterns.
OSWALD
You ain’t no maiden.
AGATHA
Christ, you’re coarse. Aie!
[She runs off. OSWALD closes the ledgers, drinks more gin, closes his eyes. AGATHA returns, carrying a potted plant with a white bud]
I nearly forgot.
I found her hiding under some damp moss, in the hollow
of the old banyan. An old labourer told me
she opens in the moonlight, her bud unfolds
to the full moon. So frail … Is she an orchid?
OSWALD
He didn’t tell you what
country boys call her? White-woman-pussy. Bucolic, what?
You ain’t leaving her on this verandah, sweetheart.
AGATHA
Why not? [To the orchid] He doesn’t like you.
OSWALD
Why not? Bajacs, fire ants, termites!
I’ve asked you not to bring plants in the house.
Some of them ain’t domesticated, know what I mean?
Give me the damn thing! This ain’t Kew Gardens, madame.
Next thing the whole house is a skeleton.
You weren’t brought out here to change things, Willett!
AGATHA
It’s your land, sir. I meant it no offense.
[OSWALD throws away the plant]
OSWALD
Listen, Miss Joan of Arc of the cocoa trees,
Miss Willett, the missionary, knee-deep in pig shit,
Miss Willett teaching little black pickneys self-reliance,
Miss Willett dancing the cocoa like she crazy.
But Miss Willett after a sweaty day with the natives
climbing into a mahogany four-poster and reading
Marx by an antique lamp, glowing after her hot bath
in her porcelain tub … They need protection
from your third-class remorse.
AGATHA
I’m going to teach them.
Sydney’s going to be more than a bloody groom!
OSWALD
What the arse do you know about running an estate,
or the history of Trinidad, you and your
London School of Economics degree?
Look, woman, don’t mash up my moonlight, hear me?
You have Jean, a maid, calling me by my first name.
Or at least considering it. You had Sydney
eating at the dining table with Clodia and Tony.
You know who’s going to suffer? Not you,
not Clodia, not Tony, but Sydney. Anyway, George …
AGATHA
Damned if I’ll be ruled by what George says!
OSWALD
Sydney loves horses. He could be a great jockey.
He and the kids have a great time in the river