Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead. Arcadia

thousand words in the Observer to see me off the premises

with a pat on the bottom. You must know him. Bernard: As I say, I'm in your hands. hannah: Quite. Say please, then. Bernard: Please. hannah: Sit down, do. Bernard: Thank you.

(He takes a chair. She remains standing. Possibly she smokes; if

so, perhaps now. A short cigarette-holder sounds right, too. Or

brown-paper cigarillos.)

22

hannah: How did you know I was here?

Bernard: Oh, I didn't. I spoke to the son on the phone but he

didn't mention you by name . . . and then he forgot to

mention me. hannah: Valentine. He's at Oxford, technically. Bernard: Yes, I met him. Brideshead Regurgitated. hannah: My fiance.

(She holds his look.) Bernard: (Pause) I'll take a chance. You're lying. hannah: (Pause) Well done, Bernard. Bernard: Christ. hannah: He calls me his fiancee. Bernard: Why? hannah: It's a joke. Bernard: You turned him down?

hannah: Don't be silly, do I look like the next Countess of-BERNARD: No, no - a freebie. The joke that consoles. My tortoise

Lightning, my fiancee Hannah. hannah: Oh. Yes. You have a way with you, Bernard. I'm not

sure I like it. Bernard: What's he doing, Valentine? hannah: He's a postgrad. Biology. Bernard: No, he's a mathematician. hannah: Well, he's doing grouse. Bernard: Grouse?

hannah: Not actual grouse. Computer grouse. Bernard: Who's the one who doesn't speak?

HANNAH: GUS.

Bernard: What's the matter with him?

hannah: I didn't ask.

BERNARD: And the father sounds like a lot of fun.

hannah: Ah yes.

Bernard: And the mother is the gardener. What's going on

here? hannah: What do you mean? Bernard: I nearly took her head off- she was standing in a

trench at the time. hannah: Archaeology. The house had a formal Italian garden

23

until about 1740. Lady Croom is interested in garden history. I sent her my book - it contains, as you know if you've read it - which I'm not assuming, by the way - a rather good description of Caroline's garden at Brocket Hall. I'm here now helping Hermione.

Bernard: (Impressed) Hermione.

HANNAH: The records are unusually complete and they have never been worked on.

Bernard: I'm beginning to admire you.

Hannah: Before was bullshit?

Bernard: Completely. Your photograph does you justice, I'm not sure the book does. (She considers him. He waits, confident.)

hannah: Septimus Hodge was the tutor.

Bernard: (Quietly) Attagirl.

hannah: His pupil was the Croom daughter. There was a son at Eton. Septimus lived in the house: the pay book specifies allowances for wine and candles. So, not quite a guest but rather more than a steward. His letter of self-recommendation is preserved among the papers. I'll dig it out for you. As far as I remember he studied mathematics and natural philosophy at Cambridge. A scientist, therefore, as much as anything.

Bernard: I'm impressed. Thank you. And Chater?

hannah: Nothing.

Bernard: Oh. Nothing at all?

hannah: I'm afraid not.

Bernard: How about the library?

hannah: The catalogue was done in the 1880s. I've been through the lot.

Bernard: Books or catalogue?

hannah: Catalogue.

BERNARD: Ah. Pity.

hannah: I'm sorry.

Bernard: What about the letters? No mention?

hannah: I'm afraid not. I've been very thorough in your period because, of course, it's my period too.

BERNARD: Is it? Actually, I don't quite know what it is you're . . .

24

hannah: The Sidley hermit.

Bernard: Ah. Who's he?

hannah: He's my peg for the nervous breakdown of the Romantic

Imagination. I'm doing landscape and literature 1750 to 1834. Bernard: What happened in 1834? hannah: My hermit died. BERNARD: Of course. hannah: What do you mean, of course? BERNARD: Nothing. hannah: Yes, you do.

Bernard: No, no... However, Coleridge also died in 1834. hannah: So he did. What a stroke of luck. (Softening.) Thank

you, Bernard.

(She goes to the reading stand and opens Noakes's sketch book.)

Look-there he is.

(BERNARDgoes to look.)

Bernard: Mmm.

hannah: The only known likeness of the Sidley hermit.

Bernard: Very biblical.

hannah: Drawn in by a later hand, of course. The hermitage didn't yet exist when Noakes did the drawings.

Bernard: Noakes. . . the painter?

hannah: Landscape gardener. He'd do these books for his clients, as a sort of prospectus. (She demonstrates.) Before and after, you see. This is how it all looked until, say, 1810 - smooth, undulating, serpentine - open water, clumps of trees, classical boat-house -

Bernard: Lovely. The real England.

hannah: You can stop being silly now, Bernard. English landscape was invented by gardeners imitating foreign painters who were evoking classical authors. The whole thing was brought home in the luggage from the grand tour. Here, look - Capability Brown doing Claude, who was doing Virgil. Arcadia! And here, superimposed by Richard Noakes, untamed nature in the style of Salvator Rosa. It's the Gothic novel expressed in landscape. Everything but vampires. There's an account of my hermit in a letter by your illustrious namesake,

25

BERNARD: Florence?

hannah: What?

Bernard: No. You go on.

hannah: Thomas Love Peacock.

Bernard: Ah yes.

hannah: I found it in an essay on hermits and anchorites

published in the CornhillMagazine in the 186os. . . {She fishes for the magazine itself among the books on the table, and finds it.) . . . 1862 . . . Peacock calls him {S he quotes from memory.) 'Not one of your village simpletons to frighten the ladies, but a savant among idiots, a sage of lunacy.'

Bernard: An oxy-moron, so to speak.

hannah: {Busy) Yes. What?

BERNARD: Nothing.

hannah: {Having found the place) Here we are. 'A letter we have seen, written by the author of Headlong Hall nearly thirty years ago, tells of a visit to the Earl of Croom's estate, Sidley Park -'

BERNARD: Was the letter to Thackeray?

HANNAH: {Brought up short) I don't know. Does it matter?

Bernard: No. Sorry.

{But the gaps he leaves for her are false promises - and she is not

quick enough. Thaf show it goes.)

Only, Thackeray edited the Cornhill until '63 when, as you

know, he died. His father had been with the East India

Company where Peacock, of course, had held the position of

Examiner, so it's quite possible that if the essay were by

Thackeray, the letter. . . Sorry. Go on.

Of course, the East India Library in Blackfriars has most of

Peacock's letters, so it would be quite easy to . . . Sorry. Can I

look?

{Silently she hands him the Cornhill.)

Yes, it's been topped and tailed, of course. It might be worth . . .

Goon. I'm listening . . .

{Leafing through the essay, he suddenly chuckles.) Oh yes, it's

Thackeray all right. . .

{He slaps the book shut.) Unbearable . . .

{He hands it back to her.) What were you saying?

hannah: Are you always like this?

26

BERNARD: Like what?

HANNAH: The point is, the Crooms, of course, had the hermit under their noses for twenty years so hardly thought him worth remarking. As I'm finding out. The Peacock letter is still the main source, unfortunately. When I read this (the magazine in her hand) well, it was one of those moments that tell you what your next book is going to be. The hermit of Sidley Park was my ...

Bernard: Peg.

hannah: Epiphany.

Bernard: Epiphany, that's it.

hannah: The hermit was placed in the landscape exactly as one might place a pottery gnome. And there he lived out his life as a garden ornament.

Bernard: Did he do anything?

hannah: Oh, he was very busy. When he died, the cottage was stacked solid with paper. Hundreds of pages. Thousands. Peacock says he was suspected of genius. It turned out, of course, he was off his head. He'd covered every sheet with cabalistic proofs that the world was coming to an end. It's perfect, isn't it? A perfect symbol, I mean.

Bernard: Oh, yes. Of what?

hannah: The whole Romantic sham, Bernard! It's what happened to the Enlightenment, isn't it? A century of intellectual rigour turned in on itself. A mind in chaos suspected of genius. In a setting of cheap thrills and false emotion. The history of the garden says it all, beautifully. There's an engraving of Sidley Park in 1730 that makes you want to weep. Paradise in the age of reason. By 1760 everything had gone - the topiary, pools and terraces, fountains, an avenue of limes - the whole sublime geometry was ploughed under by Capability Brown. The grass went from the doorstep to the horizon and the best box hedge in Derbyshire was dug up for the ha-ha so that the fools could pretend they were living in God's countryside. And then Richard Noakes came in to bring God up to date. By the time he'd finished it looked like this (the sketch book). The decline from thinking to feeling, you see.

27

Bernard: {A judgement) That's awfully good.

(HANNAH looks at him in case of irony but he is professional.)

No, that'll stand up. hannah: Thank you.

BERNARD: Personally I like the ha-ha. Do you like hedges? hannah: I don't like sentimentality. Bernard: Yes, I see. Are you sure? You seem quite sentimental

over geometry. But the hermit is very very good. The

genius of the place. hannah: (Pleased) That's my title! Bernard: Of course. hannah: (Less pleased) Of course? Bernard: Of course. Who was he when he wasn't being a

symbol? hannah: I don't know.

BERNARD: Ah.

hannah: I mean, yet.

Bernard: Absolutely. What did they do with all the paper?

Does Peacock say? hannah: Made a bonfire. Bernard: Ah, well. hannah: I've still got Lady Croom's garden books to go

through. Bernard: Account books or journals? hannah: A bit of both. They're gappy but they span the

period. hannah: Really? Have you come across Byron at all? As a

matter of interest. hannah: A first edition of 'Childe Harold' in the library, and

English Bards, I think. Bernard: Inscribed? hannah: No.

BERNARD: And he doesn't pop up in the letters at all? hannah: Why should he? The Crooms don't pop up in his. BERNARD: (Casually) That's true, of course. But Newstead isn't

so far away. Would you mind terribly if I poked about a

bit? Only in the papers you've done with, of course.

(hannah twigs something.)

28

Hannah: Are you looking into Byron or Chater?

(chloE enters in stockinged feet through one of the side doors?

laden with an armful of generally similar leather-covered ledgers.

She detours to collect her shoes.) CHLOE: Sorry - just cutting through - there's tea in the pantry if

you don't mind mugs -Bernard: How kind. chloE: Hannah will show you. BERNARD: Let me help you. chloE: No, it's all right -

(BERNARD opens the opposite door for her.)

Thank you - I've been saving Val's game books. Thanks.

(BERNARD closes the door.) Bernard: Sweet girl. hannah: Mmm. Bernard: Oh, really? hannah: Oh really what?

(CHLOfi's door opens again and she puts her head round it.) chloE: Meant to say, don't worry if father makes remarks about

your car, Mr Nightingale, he's got a thing about - (and the

Nightingale now being out of the bag) ooh - ah, how was the

surprise? - not yet, eh? Oh, well - sorry - tea, anyway - so

sorry if I - (Embarrassed, she leaves again, closing the door.

Pause.) hannah: You absolute shit.

(She heads off to leave.) Bernard: The thing is, there's a Byron connection too.

(HANNAH stops andfaces him.) hannah: I don't care. Bernard: You should. The Byron gang are going to get their

dicks caught in their zip. hannah: (Pause) Oh really? Bernard: If we collaborate. hannah: On what? Bernard: Sit down, I'll tell you. hannah: I'll stand for the moment. Bernard: This copy of The Couch of Eros' belonged to Lord

Byron.

29

HANNAH: It belonged to Septimus Hodge.

Bernard: Originally, yes. But it was in Byron's library which was sold to pay his debts when he left England for good in 1816. The sales catalogue is in the British Library. 'Eros' was lot 74A and was bought by the bookseller and publisher John Nightingale of Opera Court, Pall Mall. . . whose name survives in the firm of Nightingale and Matlock, the present Nightingale being my cousin. (He pauses. H ANN ah hesitates and then sits down at the table.) I'll just give you the headlines. 1939, stock removed to Nightingale country house in Kent. 1945, stock returned to bookshop. Meanwhile, overlooked box of early nineteenth-century books languish in country house cellar until house sold to make way for the Channel Tunnel rail-link. 'Eros' discovered with sales slip from 1816 attached - photocopy available for inspection.

(He brings this from his bag and gives it to HANNAH who inspects it.)

HANNAH: All right. It was in Byron's library.

Bernard: A number of passages have been underlined. (HANNAH picks up the book and leafs through it.) All of them, and only them - no, no, look at me, not at the book - all the underlined passages, word for word, were used as quotations in the review of 'The Couch of Eros' in the Piccadilly Recreation of April 30th 1809. The reviewer begins by drawing attention to his previous notice in the same periodical of 'The Maid of Turkey'.

hannah: The reviewer is obviously Hodge. 'My friend

Septimus Hodge who stood up and gave his best on behalf of the Author.'

Bernard: That's the point. The Piccadilly ridiculed both books.

HANNAH: (Pause.) Do the reviews read like Byron?

Bernard: (Producing two photocopies from his case) They read a damn sight more like Byron than Byron's review of Wordsworth the previous year. (HANNAH glances over the photocopies.)

HANNAH: I see. Well, congratulations. Possibly. Two previously

30

unknown book reviews by the young Byron. Is that it? Bernard: No. Because of the tapes, three documents survived undisturbed in the book.

(He has been carefully opening a package produced from his bag. He has the originals. He holds them carefully one by one.) 'Sir - we have a matter to settle. I wait on you in the gun room. E. Chater, Esq.'

'My husband has sent to town for pistols. Deny what cannot be proven - for Charity's sake -1 keep my room this day.' Unsigned.

'Sidley Park, April nth 1809. Sir -1 call you a liar, a lecher, a slanderer in the press and a thief of my honour. I wait upon your arrangements for giving me satisfaction as a man and a poet. E. Chater, Esq.'

(Pause.)

hannah: Superb. But inconclusive. The book had seven years to find its way into Byron's possession. It doesn't connect Byron with Chater, or with Sidley Park. Or with Hodge for that matter. Furthermore, there isn't a hint in Byron's letters and this kind of scrape is the last thing he would have kept quiet about.

Bernard: Scrape?

hannah: He would have made a comic turn out of it.

Bernard: Comic turn, fiddlesticks! (He pauses for effect.) He killed Chater!

HANNAH: (A raspberry) Oh, really!

BERNARD: Chater was thirty-one years old. The author of two books. Nothing more is heard from him after 'Eros'. He disappears completely after April 1809. And Byron - Byron had just published his satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, in March. He was just getting a name. Yet he sailed for Lisbon as soon as he could find a ship, and stayed abroad for two years. Hannah, this is fame. Somewhere in the Croom papers there will be something -

hannah: There isn't, I've looked.

Bernard: But you were looking for something else! It's not

31

going to jump out at you like 'Lord Byron remarked wittily

at breakfast!' HANNAH: Nevertheless his presence would be unlikely to have

gone unremarked. But there is nothing to suggest that Byron

was here, and I don't believe he ever was. Bernard: All right, but let me have a look. hannah: You'll queer my pitch. Bernard: Dear girl, I know how to handle myself-hannah: And don't call me dear girl. If I find anything on

Byron, or Chater, or Hodge, I'll pass it on. Nightingale,

Sussex.

(Pause. She stands up.) Bernard: Thank you. I'm sorry about that business with my

name. hannah: Don't mention it... Bernard: What was Hodge's college, by the way? hannah: Trinity. BERNARD: Trinity?

hannah: Yes. (She hesitates.) Yes. Byron's old college. Bernard: How old was Hodge? hannah: I'd have to look it up but a year or two older than

Byron. Twenty-two .. . Bernard: Contemporaries at Trinity? hannah: (Wearily) Yes, Bernard, and no doubt they were both in

the cricket eleven when Harrow played Eton at Lords!

(BERNARD approaches her and stands close to her.) Bernard: (Evenly) Do you mean that Septimus Hodge was at

school with Byron? hannah: (Falters slightly) Yes ... he must have been ... as a

matter of fact. Bernard: Well, you silly cow.

(With a large gesture of pure happiness, BERNARD throws his

arms around HANNAH and gives her a great smacking kiss on the

cheek. CHLOE enters to witness the end of this.) chloE: Oh - erm ... I thought I'd bring it to you.

(She is carrying a small tray with two mugs on it.) BERNARD: I have to go and see about my car. hannah: Going to hide it?

32

BERNARD: Hide it? I'm going to sell it! Is there a pub I can put up

at in the village?

(He turns back to them as he is about to leave through the

garden.)

Aren't you glad I'm here?

(He leaves.) CHLOE: He said he knew you. HANNAH: He couldn't have. chloE: No, perhaps not. He said he wanted to be a surprise, but

I suppose that's different. I thought there was a lot of sexual

energy there, didn't you? hannah: What? chloE: Bouncy on his feet, you see, a sure sign. Should I invite

him for you? hannah: To what? No. chloE: You can invite him - that's better. He can come as your

partner. hannah: Stop it. Thank you for the tea. CHLOE: If you don't want him, I'll have him. Is he married? hannah: I haven't the slightest idea. Aren't you supposed to

have a pony? chloE: I'm just trying to fix you up, Hannah. hannah: Believe me, it gets less important. chloE: I mean for the dancing. He can come as Beau Brummel. hannah: I don't want to dress up and I don't want a dancing

partner, least of all Mr Nightingale. I don't dance. chloE: Don't be such a prune. You were kissing him, anyway. hannah: He was kissing me, and only out of general enthusiasm. chloE: Well, don't say I didn't give you first chance. My genius

brother will be much relieved. He's in love with you, I

suppose you know. hannah: (Angry) That's a joke! chloE: It's not a joke to him. hannah: Of course it is - not even a joke - how can you be so

ridiculous?

(GUS enters from thegardeny in his customary silent

awkwardness.) chloE: Hello, Gus, what have you got?

33

(gus has an apple, just picked, with a leaf or two still attached.

He offers the apple to HANNAH.) HANNAH: (Surprised) Oh! . . . Thank you! CHLOE: (Leaving) Told you.

(chloE closes the door on herself) hannah: Thank you. Oh dear.

34

SCENE THREE

The schoolroom. The next morning. Present are: THOMASINA, SEPTIMUS, JELLABY. We have seen this composition before: thomasina at her place at the table; Septimus reading a letter which has just arrived; jellaby waiting, having just delivered the letter. 'The Couch of Eros' is in front of Septimus, open, together with sheets of paper on which he has been writing. His portfolio is on the table. Plautus (the tortoise) is the paperweight. There is also an apple on the table now, the same apple from all appearances. SEPTIMUS: (With his eyes on the letter) Why have you stopped?

(THOMASINA is studying a sheet of paper, a 'Latin unseen' lesson.

She is having some difficulty.) THOMASINA: Solio insessa. . .in igne. . . seated on a throne... in

the fire. . . and also on a ship... sedebat regina... sat the

queen.. . SEPTIMUS: There is no reply, Jellaby. Thank you.

(He folds the letter up and places it between the leaves of'The

Couch of Eros'.) JELLABY: I will say so, sir. THOMASINA:. .. the wind smelling sweetly. . .purpureisvelis. ..

by, with or from purple sails -Septimus: (To jellaby) I will have something for the post, if you

would be so kind. jellaby: (Leaving) Yes, sir. THOMASINA:. . . was like as to- something -by, with or from

lovers -oh, Septimus! -musicatibiarumimperabat. . .music

of pipes commanded ... Septimus: 'Ruled' is better. thomasina: . . . the silver oars - exciting the ocean - as if - as if -

amorous -Septimus: That is very good.

(He picks up the apple. He picks off the twig and leaves, placing

these on the table. With a pocket knife he cuts a slice of apple, and

while he eats it, cuts another slice which he offers to Plautus.) 1HOMASINa: Regina reclinabat. . .the queen-was reclining-

35

praeter descriptionem - indescribably - in a golden tent. ..

like Venus and yet more -SEPTIMUS: Try to put some poetry into it. thomasina: How can I if there is none in the Latin? Septimus: Oh, a critic! thomasina: Is it Queen Dido? Septimus: No. thomasina: Who is the poet? Septimus: Known to you. thomasina: Known to me? Septimus: Not a Roman. thomasina: Mr Chater? Septimus: Your translation is quite like Chater.

(septimus picks up his pen and continues with his own

writing.) thomasina: I know who it is, it is your friend Byron. septimus: Lord Byron, if you please. thomasina: Mama is in love with Lord Byron. septimus: (Absorbed) Yes. Nonsense. thomasina: It is not nonsense. I saw them together in the

gazebo.

(Septimus's pen stops moving, he raises his eyes to her at last.)

Lord Byron was reading to her from his satire, and mama

was laughing, with her head in her best position. septimus: She did not understand the satire, and was showing

politeness to a guest. thomasina: She is vexed with papa for his determination to alter

the park, but that alone cannot account for her politeness to a

guest. She came downstairs hours before her custom. Lord

Byron was amusing at breakfast. He paid you a tribute,

Septimus. septimus: Did he? thomasina: He said you were a witty fellow, and he had almost

by heart an article you wrote about - well, I forget what, but

it concerned a book called The Maid of Turkey' and how

you would not give it to your dog for dinner. septimus: Ah. Mr Chater was at breakfast, of course. thomasina: He was, not like certain lazybones.

36

Septimus: He does not have Latin to set and mathematics to correct.

(He takes Thomasina*s lesson book from underneath Plautus and tosses it down the table to her.)

thomasina: Correct? What was incorrect in it? (She looks into the book.) Alpha minus? Pooh! What is the minus for?

Septimus: For doing more than was asked.

thomasina: You did not like my discovery?

Septimus: A fancy is not a discovery.

thomasina: A gibe is not a rebuttal.

(SEVTIMUS finishes what he is writing. He folds the pages into a letter. He has sealing wax and the means to melt it. He seals the letter and writes on the cover. Meanwhile - ) You are churlish with me because mama is paying attention to your friend. Well, let them elope, they cannot turn back the advancement of knowledge. I think it is an excellent discovery. Each week I plot your equations dot for dot, xs against.ys in all manner of algebraical relation, and every week they draw themselves as commonplace geometry, as if the world of forms were nothing but arcs and angles. God's truth, Septimus, if there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose? Do we believe nature is written in numbers?

Septimus: We do.

thomasina: Then why do your equations only describe the shapes of manufacture?

Septimus: I do not know.

thomasina: Armed thus, God could only make a cabinet.

SEPTIMUS: He has mastery of equations which lead into infinities where we cannot follow.

thomasina: What a faint-heart! We must work outward from the middle of the maze. We will start with something simple. (She picks up the apple leaf.) I will plot this leaf and deduce its equation. You will be famous for being my tutor when Lord Byron is dead and forgotten.

(SEPTIMUS completes the business with his letter. He puts the letter in his pocket.)

37

Septimus: (Firmly) Back to Cleopatra.

thomasina: Is it Cleopatra? -1 hate Cleopatra!

Septimus: You hate her? Why?

thomasina: Everything is turned to love with her. New love, absent love, lost love -1 never knew a heroine that makes such noodles of our sex. It only needs a Roman general to drop anchor outside the window and away goes the empire like a christening mug into a pawn shop. If Queen Elizabeth had been a Ptolemy history would have been quite different -we would be admiring the pyramids of Rome and the great Sphinx of Verona.

Septimus: God save us.

thomasina: But instead, the Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue. Oh, Septimus! - can you bear it? All the lost plays of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides - thousands of poems - Aristotle's own library brought to Egypt by the noodle's ancestors! How can we sleep for grief?

Septimus: By counting our stock. Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven from Sopocles, nineteen from Euripides, my lady! You should no more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, Uke travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew? I have no doubt that the improved steam-driven heat-engine which puts Mr Noakes into an ecstasy that he and it and the modern age should all coincide,

38

was described on papyrus. Steam and brass were not invented

in Glasgow. Now, where are we? Let me see if I can attempt a

free translation for you. At Harrow I was better at this than

Lord Byron.

(He takes the piece of paper from her and scrutinizes it, testing one

or two Latin phrases speculatively before committing himself.)

Yes - 'The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne...

burned on the water... the - something - the poop was

beaten gold, purple the sails, and - what's this? - oh yes, - so

perfumed that -thomasina: (Catching on and furious) Cheat! Septimus: (Imperturbably)'- the winds were lovesick with

them. ..' thomasina: Cheat! Septimus: '... the oars were silver which to the tune of flutes kept

stroke...' thomasina: (Jumping to her/eel)Cheat! Cheat! Cheat! SEPTIMUS: (As though it were too easy to make the effort worthwhile)

'... and made the water which they beat to follow faster, as

amorous of their strokes. For her own person, it beggared all

description - she did lie in her pavilion -'

(thomasina, in tears of rage, is hurrying out through the

garden.) thomasina: I hope you die!

(She nearly bumps into brice who is entering. She runs out of

sight, brice enters.) brice: Good God, man, what have you told her? Septimus: Told her? Told her what? brice: Hodge!

(SEPTIMUS looks outside the door, slightly contrite about

thomasina, and sees that chater is skulking out of view.) SEPTIMUS: Chater! My dearfellow! Don't hang back-come in,

sir!

(chater allows himself to be drawn sheepishly into the room,

where BRICE stands on his dignity.) chater: Captain Brice does me the honour-1 mean to say, sir,

whatever you have to say to me, sir, address yourself to

Captain Brice.

39

Septimus: How unusual. (To brice) Your wife did not appear

yesterday, sir. I trust she is not sick? brice: My wife? I have no wife. What the devil do you mean, sir?

(SEPTIMUS makes to reply, but hesitates, puzzled. He turns back

to CHATER.)

SEPTIMUS: I do not understand the scheme, Chater. Whom do I address when I want to speak to Captain Brice?

brice: Oh, slippery, Hodge - slippery!

Septimus: (To chater) By the way, Chater - (he interrupts

himself and turns back to BRICE, and continues as before) by the way, Chater, I have amazing news to tell you. Someone has taken to writing wild and whirling letters in your name. I received one not half an hour ago.

brice: (Angrily) Mr Hodge! Look to your honour, sir! If you cannot attend to me without this foolery, nominate your second who might settle the business as between gentlemen. No doubt your friend Byron would do you the service. (Septimus gives up the game.)

Septimus: Oh yes, he would do me the service. (His mood

changes, he turns to chater.) Sir -1 repent your injury. You are an honest fellow with no more malice in you than poetry.

chater: (Happily) Ah well! - that is more like the thing! (Overtaken by doubt.) Is he apologizing?

brice: There is still the injury to his conjugal property, Mrs Chater's-

chater: Tush, sir!

brice: As you will - her tush. Nevertheless -

(But they are interrupted by lady croom, also entering from the garden.)

lady croom: Oh - excellently found! Mr Chater, this will please you very much. Lord Byron begs a copy of your new book. He dies to read it and intends to include your name in the second edition of his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

CHATER: English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, your ladyship, is a doggerel aimed at Lord Byron's seniors and betters. If he intends to include me, he intends to insult me.

lady croom: Well, of course he does, Mr Chater. Would you rather be thought not worth insulting? You should be proud

40

to be in the company of Rogers and Moore and Wordsworth -ah! The Couch of Eros!' (For she has spotted Septimus's copy of the book on the table.)

Septimus: That is my copy, madam.

lady croom: So much the better - what are a friend's books for if not to be borrowed?

(Note: 'The Couch of Eros' now contains the three letters, and it must do so without advertising the fact. This is why the volume has been described as a substantial quarto.) Mr Hodge, you must speak to your friend and put him out of his affectation of pretending to quit us. I will not have it. He says he is determined on the Malta packet sailing out of Falmouth! His head is full of Lisbon and Lesbos, and his portmanteau of pistols, and I have told him it is not to be thought of. The whole of Europe is in a Napoleonic fit, all the best ruins will be closed, the roads entirely occupied with the movement of armies, the lodgings turned to billets and the fashion for godless republicanism not yet arrived at its natural reversion. He says his aim is poetry. One does not aim at poetry with pistols. At poets, perhaps. I charge you to take command of his pistols, Mr Hodge! He is not safe with them. His lameness, he confessed to me, is entirely the result of his habit from boyhood of shooting himself in the foot. What is that noise}

(The noise is a badly played piano in the next room. It has been going on for some time since thomasina left.)

Septimus: The new Broadwood pianoforte, madam. Our music lessons are at an early stage.

lady croom: Well, restrict your lessons to the piano side of the instrument and let her loose on the forte when she has learned something. (lady CROOM, holding the book, sails out back into the garden.)

brice: Now! If that was not God speaking through Lady Croom, he never spoke through anyone!

chater: (Awed) Take command of Lord Byron's pistols!

brice: You hear Mr Chater, sir - how will you answer him?

(SEPTIMUS has been watching lady c room's progress up the garden. He turns back.)

41

SEPTIMUS: By killing him. I am tired of him.

chater: (Startled) Eh?

brice: (Pleased) Ah!

Septimus: Oh, damn your soul, Chater! Ovid would have stayed a lawyer and Virgil a farmer if they had known the bathos to which love would descend in your sportive satyrs and noodle nymphs! I am at your service with a half-ounce ball in your brain. May it satisfy you - behind the boat-house at daybreak - shall we say five o'clock? My compliments to Mrs Chater -have no fear for her, she will not want for protection while Captain Brice has a guinea in his pocket, he told her so himself.

brice: You lie, sir!

Septimus: No, sir. Mrs Chater, perhaps.

brice: You lie, or you will answer to me!

Septimus: (Wearily) Oh, very well -1 can fit you in at five

minutes after five. And then it's off to the Malta packet out of Falmouth. You two will be dead, my penurious schoolfriend will remain to tutor Lady Thomasina, and I trust everybody including Lady Croom will be satisfied! (SEPTIMUS slams the door behind him.)

brice: He is all bluster and bladder. Rest assured, Chater, I will let the air out of him.

(brice leaves by the other door, chater's assurance lasts only a moment. When he spots the flaw .. .

chater: Oh! But...

(He hurries out after brice.)

42

SCENE FOUR

HANNAH and valentine. She is reading aloud. He is listening. Lightning, the tortoise, is on the table and is not readily distinguishable fromPlautus. In front ofValentine is Septimus's portfolio, recognizably so but naturally somewhat faded. It is open. Principally associated with the portfolio (although it may contain sheets of blank paper also) are three items: a slim maths primer; a sheet of drawing paper on which there is a scrawled diagram and some mathematical notations, arrow marks, etc.; and Thomasina9 s mathematics lesson book, i.e. the one she writes in, which valentine is leafing through as he listens to HANNAH reading from the primer. HANNAH: 'I, Thomasina Coverly, have found a truly wonderful method whereby all the forms of nature must give up their numerical secrets and draw themselves through number alone. This margin being too mean for my purpose, the reader must look elsewhere for the New Geometry of Irregular Forms discovered by Thomasina Coverly.' (Pause. She hands valentine the text book, valentine looks at what she has been reading.

From the next room, a piano is heard, beginning to play quietly, unintrusively, improvisationally.) Does it mean anything? valentine: I don't know. I don't know what it means, except

mathematically. hannah: I meant mathematically. valentine: (Now with the lesson book again) It's an iterated

algorithm. hannah: What's that?

valentine: Well, it's. . .Jesus. . . it's an algorithm that's been . . . iterated. How'm I supposed to... ? (He makes an effort.) The left-hand pages are graphs of what the numbers are doing on the right-hand pages. But all on different scales. Each graph is a small section of the previous one, blown up. Like you'd blow up a detail of a photograph, and then a detail of the detail, and so on, forever. Or in her case, till she ran out of pages.

43

HANNAH: Is it difficult?

valentine: The maths isn't difficult. It's what you did at school.

You have some x-and-.y equation. Any value for x gives you a

value fory. So you put a dot where it's right for both x andy.

Then you take the next value for x which gives you another

value fory> and when you've done that a few times you join

up the dots and that's your graph of whatever the equation

is. hannah: And is that what she's doing? valentine: No. Not exactly. Not at all. What she's doing is,

every time she works out a value for y, she's using that as her

next value for x. And so on. Like a feedback. She's feeding

the solution back into the equation, and then solving it again.

Iteration, you see. hannah: And that's surprising, is it? valentine: Well, it is a bit. It's the technique I'm using on my

grouse numbers, and it hasn't been around for much longer

than, well, call it twenty years.

(Pause.) hannah: Why would she be doing it? valentine: I have no idea.

(Pause.)

I thought you were doing the hermit. hannah: I am. I still am. But Bernard, damn him ...

Thomasina's tutor turns out to have interesting connections.

Bernard is going through the library like a bloodhound. The

portfolio was in a cupboard. valentine: There's a lot of stuff around. Gus loves going

through it. No old masters or anything .. . hannah: The maths primer she was using belonged to him - the

tutor; he wrote his name in it. valentine: (Reading) 'Septimus Hodge.' hannah: Why were these things saved, do you think? valentine: Why should there be a reason? hannah: And the diagram, what's it of? valentine: How would I know? hannah: Why are you cross? valentine: I'm not cross. (Pause.) When your Thomasina was

44

doing maths it had been the same maths for a couple of thousand years. Classical. And for a century after Thomasina. Then maths left the real world behind, just like modern art, really. Nature was classical, maths was suddenly Picassos. But now nature is having the last laugh. The freaky stuff is turning out to be the mathematics of the natural world.

HANNAH: This feedback thing?

valentine: For example.

hannah: Well, could Thomasina have -

valentine: (Snaps) No, of course she bloody couldn't!

hannah: All right, you're not cross. What did you mean you were doing the same thing she was doing? (Pause.) What are you doing?

valentine: Actually I'm doing it from the other end. She

started with an equation and turned it into a graph. I've got a graph - real data - and I'm trying to find the equation which would give you the graph if you used it the way she's used hers. Iterated it.

hannah: What for?

valentine: It's how you look at population changes in biology. Goldfish in a pond, say. This year there are x goldfish. Next year there'll bey goldfish. Some get born, some get eaten by herons, whatever. Nature manipulates the x and turns it into y.Theny goldfish is your starting population for the following year. Just like Thomasina. Your value fory becomes your next value for x. The question is: what is being done to x? What is the manipulation? Whatever it is, it can be written down as mathematics. It's called an algorithm.

hannah: It can't be the same every year.

valentine: The details change, you can't keep tabs on

everything, it's not nature in a box. But it isn't necessary to know the details. When they are all put together, it turns out the population is obeying a mathematical rule.

hannah: The goldfish are?

valentine: Yes. No. The numbers. It's not about the behaviour offish. It's about the behaviour of numbers. This thing works for any phenomenon which eats its own numbers -

45

measles epidemics, rainfall averages, cotton prices, it's a natural phenomenon in itself. Spooky.

HANNAH: Does it work for grouse?

valentine: I don't know yet. I mean, it does undoubtedly, but it's hard to show. There's more noise with grouse.

hannah: Noise?

valentine: Distortions. Interference. Real data is messy.

There's a thousand acres of moorland that had grouse on it, always did till about 1930. But nobody counted the grouse. They shot them. So you count the grouse they shot. But burning the heather interferes, it improves the food supply. A good year for foxes interferes the other way, they eat the chicks. And then there's the weather. It's all very, very noisy out there. Very hard to spot the tune. Like a piano in the next room, it's playing your song, but unfortunately it's out of whack, some of the strings are missing, and the pianist is tone deaf and drunk -1 mean, the noisel Impossible!

hannah: What do you do?

valentine: You start guessing what the tune might be. You try to pick it out of the noise. You try this, you try that, you start to get something - it's half-baked but you start putting in notes which are missing or not quite the right notes .. . and bit by bit.. . (He starts to dumdi-da to the tune of'Happy Birthday'.) Dumdi-dum-dum, dear Val-en-tine, dumdi-dum-dum to you - the lost algorithm!

hannah: (Soberly) Yes, I see. And then what?

valentine: I publish.

hannah: Of course. Sorry. Jolly good.

valentine: That's the theory. Grouse are bastards compared to goldfish.

hannah: Why did you choose them?

valentine: The game books. My true inheritance. Two hundred years of real data on a plate.

hannah: Somebody wrote down everything that's shot?

valentine: Well, that's what a game book is. I'm only using from 1870, when butts and beaters came in.

hannah: You mean the game books go back to Thomasina's time?

46

valentine: Oh yes. Further. (And then getting ahead of her thought.) No - really. I promise you. I promise you. Not a schoolgirl living in a country house in Derbyshire in eighteen-something!

hannah: Well, what was she doing?

valentine: She was just playing with the numbers. The truth is, she wasn't doing anything.

hannah: She must have been doing something.

valentine: Doodling. Nothing she understood.

HANNAH*. A monkey at a typewriter?

valentine: Yes. Well, a piano.

(HANNAH picks up the algebra book and reads from it.)

hannah: \ . . a method whereby all the forms of nature must give up their numerical secrets and draw themselves through number alone.' This feedback, is it a way of making pictures of forms in nature? Just tell me if it is or it isn't.

valentine: (Irritated) To me it is. Pictures of turbulence -growth - change - creation - it's not a way of drawing an elephant, for God's sake!

hannah: I'm sorry.

(She picks up an apple leaf from the table. She is timid about

pushing the point.)

So you couldn't make a picture of this leaf by iterating a

whatsit?

valentine: (Off-hand) Oh yes, you could do that.

hannah: (Furiously) Well, tell me! Honestly, I could kill you!

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

47

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,,y0w 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!9)

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 pencilsl (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) Vail 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, chlo? 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, apiece of paper in her hand.)

hannah: Bernard . . .! Val. . .

Bernard: Do you mind?

(HANNAHpwte her piece ofpaper downin front ofValentine.)

chloE: (Angrily)Hannah).

hannah: What?

53

CHLOE: She's so rudel

HANNAH: (Taken aback) What? Am I?

valentine: Bernard's reading us his lecture.

HANNAH: Yes, Iknow. (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: Hannahl Shut up!

hannah: (Sitting down) Yes, sorry.

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

chlo?: 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 -' (h ann ah'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.

chlo?: 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

55

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 -1 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 "The Maid of Turkey" in the Piccadilly Recreation, Did Septimus Hodge have any connection with the London periodicals? No. Did Byron?

56

Yes! He had reviewed Wordsworth two years earlier, he was to review Spencer two years later. And do we have any clue as to Byron's opinion of Chater the poet? Yes! Who but Byron could have written the four lines pencilled into Lady Croom's copy of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers' -

HANNAH: Almost anybody.

BERNARD: Darling T

hannah: Don't call me darling.

Bernard: Dickhead, then, is it likely that the man Chater calls his friend Septimus Hodge is the same man who screwed his wife and kicked the shit out of his last book?

hannah: Put it like that, almost certain.

chlo?: (Earnestly) You've been deeply wounded in the past, haven't you, Hannah?

hannah: Nothing compared to listening to this. Why is there nothing in Byron's letters about the Piccadilly reviews?

Bernard: Exactly. Because he killed the author.

hannah: But the first one, The Maid of Turkey', was the year before. Was he clairvoyant?

chloE: Letters get lost.

Bernard: Thank you! Exactly! There is a platonic letter which confirms everything - lost but ineradicable, like radio voices rippling through the universe for all eternity. 'My dear Hodge - here I am in Albania and you're the only person in the whole world who knows why. Poor C! I never wished him any harm - except in the Piccadilly, of course - it was the woman who bade me eat, dear Hodge! - what a tragic business, but thank God it ended well for poetry. Yours ever, B.-PS. Burn this.'

valentine: How did Chater find out the reviewer was Byron?

Bernard: (Irritated) I don't know, I wasn't there, was I? (Pause. To hannah) You wish to say something?

hannah: Moi?

chloE: I know. Byron told Mrs Chater in bed. Next day he dumped her so she grassed on him, and pleaded date rape.

Bernard: (Fastidiously) Date rape? What do you mean, date rape?

hannah: April the tenth.

57

(BERNARD cracks. Everything becomes loud and overlapped as BERNARD threatens to walk out and is cajoled into continuing.)

Bernard: Right! - forget it!

hannah: Sorry-

Bernard: No - I've had nothing but sarcasm and childish interruptions -

valentine: What did I do?

Bernard: No credit for probably the most sensational literary discovery of the century -

chloE: I think you're jolly unfair - they're jealous, Bernard -

hannah: I won't say another word -

valentine: Yes, go on, Bernard - we promise.

BERNARD: {Finally) Well, only if you stop feeding tortoisesl

valentine: Well, it's his lunch time.

Bernard: And on condition that I am afforded the common courtesy of a scholar among scholars -

hannah: Absolutely mum till you're finished -

BERNARD: After which, any comments are to be couched in terms of accepted academic -

hannah: Dignity - you're right, Bernard.

Bernard: - respect.

hannah: Respect. Absolutely. The language of scholars. Count on it.

(Having made a great show of putting his pages away, BERNARD reassembles them and finds his place, glancing suspiciously at the other three for signs of levity.)

Bernard: Last paragraph. 'Without question, Ezra Chater issued a challenge to somebody. If a duel was fought in the dawn mist of Sidley Park in April 1809, his opponent, on the evidence, was a critic with a gift for ridicule and a taste for seduction. Do we need to look far? Without question, Mrs Chater was a widow by 1810. If we seek the occasion of Ezra Chater's early and unrecorded death, do we need to look far? Without question, Lord Byron, in the very season of his emergence as a literary figure, quit the country in a cloud of panic and mystery, and stayed abroad for two years at a time when Continental travel was unusual and dangerous. If we seek his reason - do we need to look far?

58

(No mean performer, he is pleased with the effect of his peroration. There is a significant silence.)

hannah: Bollocks.

chlo?: Well, I think it's true.

hannah: You've left out everything which doesn't fit. Byron had been banging on for months about leaving England - there's a letter in February -

BERNARD: But he didn't go, did he?

hannah: And then he didn't sail until the beginning of July!

Bernard: Everything moved more slowly then. Time was

different. He was two weeks in Falmouth waiting for wind or something -

hannah: Bernard, I don't know why I'm bothering - you're arrogant, greedy and reckless. You've gone from a glint in your eye to a sure thing in a hop, skip and a jump. You deserve what you get and I think you're mad. But I can't help myself, you're like some exasperating child pedalling its tricycle towards the edge of a cliff, and I have to do something. So listen to me. If Byron killed Chater in a duel I'm Marie of Romania. You'll end up with so much fame you won't leave the house without a paper bag over your head.

valentine: Actually, Bernard, as a scientist, your theory is incomplete.

Bernard: But I'm not a scientist.

valentine: (Patiently) No, as a scientist-

BERNARD: (Beginning to shout) I have yet to hear a proper argument.

hannah: Nobody would kill a man and then pan his book. I

mean, not in that order. So he must have borrowed the book, written the review, posted it, seduced Mrs Chater, fought a duel and departed, all in the space of two or three days. Who would do that?

BERNARD: Byron.

hannah: It's hopeless.

Bernard: You've never understood him, as you've shown in your novelette.

hannah: In my what?

BERNARD: Oh, sorry - did you think it was a work of historical

59

revisionism? Byron the spoilt child promoted beyond his

gifts by the spirit of the age! And Caroline the closet

intellectual shafted by a male society! valentine: I read that somewhere -hannah: It's his review. Bernard: And bloody well said, too!

(Things are turning a little ugly and Bernard seems in a mood

to push them that way.)

You got them backwards, darling. Caroline was Romantic

waffle on wheels with no talent, and Byron was an

eighteenth-century Rationalist touched by genius. And he

killed Chater. hannah: (Pause) If it's not too late to change my mind, I'd like

you to go ahead. Bernard: I intend to. Look to the mote in your own eye! - you

even had the wrong bloke on the dust-jacket! hannah: Dust-jacket? valentine: What about my computer model? Aren't you going

to mention it? Bernard: It's inconclusive. valentine: (To hannah) The Piccadilly reviews aren't a very

good fit with Byron's other reviews, you see. hannah: (To Bernard) What do you mean, the wrong bloke? Bernard: (Ignoring her) The other reviews aren't a very good fit

for each other, are they? valentine: No, but differently. The parameters -Bernard: (Jeering) Parameters! You can't stick Byron's head in

your laptop! Genius isn't like your average grouse. valentine: (Casually) Well, it's all trivial anyway. Bernard: What is? valentine: Who wrote what when ... Bernard: Trivial? valentine: Personalities. Bernard: I'm sorry - did you say trivial? valentine: It's a technical term. Bernard: Not where I come from, it isn't. valentine: The questions you're asking don't matter, you see.

It's like arguing who got there first with the calculus. The

60

English say Newton, the Germans say Leibnitz. But it doesn't matter. Personalities. What matters is the calculus. Scientific progress. Knowledge.

Bernard: Really? Why?

valentine: Why what?

BERNARD: Why does scientific progress matter more than personalities?

valentine: Is he serious?

Hannah: No, he's trivial. Bernard-

valentine: (Interrupting, to BERNARD) Do yourself a favour, you're on a loser.

BERNARD: Oh, you're going to zap me with penicillin and pesticides. Spare me that and I'll spare you the bomb and aerosols. But don't confuse progress with perfectibility. A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an urgent need. There's no rush for Isaac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotle's cosmos. Personally, I preferred it. Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God's crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can't think of anything more trivial than the speed of light. Quarks, quasars - big bangs, black holes - who gives a shit? How did you people con us out of all that status? All that money? And why are you so pleased with yourselves?

CHLOE: Are you against penicillin, Bernard?

Bernard: Don't feed the animals. (Back to valentine) I'd push the lot of you over a cliff myself. Except the one in the wheelchair, I think I'd lose the sympathy vote before people had time to think it through.

hannah: (Loudly) What the hell do you mean, the dust-jacket?

Bernard: (Ignoring her) If knowledge isn't self-knowledge it isn't doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing 'When Father Painted the Parlour'? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you. 'She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.' There you are, he wrote it after coming home from a party. (With offensive politeness.) What is it that you're doing with

61

grouse, Valentine, I'd love to know?

(valentine stands up and it is suddenly apparent that he is

shaking and close to tears.) valentine: (To chloE) He's not against penicillin, and he knows

I'm not against poetry. (To Bernard) I've given up on the

grouse. hannah: You haven't, Valentine! valentine: (Leaving) I can't do it. HANNAH: Why? valentine: Too much noise. There's just too much bloody noisel

(On which, valentine leaves the room. chloE, upset and in

tears, jumps up and briefly pummels BERNARD ineffectually with

her fists.) chloE: You bastard, Bernard!

(She follows valentine out and is followed at a run by GUS.

Pause.) HANNAH: Well, I think that's everybody. You can leave now, give

Lightning a kick on your way out. Bernard: Yes, I'm sorry about that. It's no fun when it's not

among pros, is it? hannah: No. BERNARD: Oh, well. . . (he begins to put his lecture sheets away in his

briefcase, and is thus reminded. . .) do you want to know about

your book jacket? 'Lord Byron and Caroline Lamb at the

Royal Academy'? Ink study by Henry Fuseli? hannah: What about it? Bernard: It's not them. HANNAH: (She explodes) Who says!?

(BERNARD brings the Byron Society Journal/rom his briefcase.) BERNARD: This Fuseli expert in the Byron Society Journal. They

sent me the latest... as a distinguished guest speaker. HANNAH: But of course it's them! Everyone knows -BERNARD: Popular tradition only. (He is finding the place in the

journal.) Here we are. 'No earlier than 1820'. He's analysed it.

(Offers it to her.) Read at your leisure. HANNAH: (She sounds like BERNARD jeering) Analysed it? BERNARD: Charming sketch, of course, but Byron was in

Italy. . .

62

HANNAH: But, Bernard -1 know it's them.

BERNARD: How?

hannah: How? It just is. 'Analysed it', my big toe!

Bernard: Language!

hannah: He's wrong.

BERNARD: Oh, gut instinct, you mean?

hannah: (Flatly) He's wrong.

(BERNARD snaps shut his briefcase.) Bernard: Well, it's all trivial, isn't it? Why don't you come? hannah: Where? Bernard: With me. hannah: To London? What for? Bernard: What for. hannah: Oh, your lecture. Bernard: No, no, bugger that. Sex. hannah: Oh . . . No. Thanks . . . (then, protesting) Bernardl BERNARD: You should try it. It's very underrated. hannah: Nothing against it. BERNARD: Yes, you have. You should let yourself go a bit. You

might have written a better book. Or at any rate the right

book. hannah: Sex and literature. Literature and sex. Your

conversation, left to itself, doesn't have many places to go.

Like two marbles rolling around a pudding basin. One of

them is always sex. Bernard: Ah well, yes. Men all over. hannah: No doubt. Einstein - relativity and sex. Chippendale -

sex and furniture. Galileo - 'Did the earth move?' What the

hell is it with you people? Chaps sometimes wanted to marry

me, and I don't know a worse bargain. Available sex against

not being allowed to fart in bed. What do you mean the right

book? BERNARD: It takes a romantic to make a heroine of Caroline

Lamb. You were cut out for Byron.

(Pause.) hannah: So, cheerio. Bernard: Oh, I'm coming back for the dance, you know. Chloe

asked me.

63

hannah: She meant well, but I don't dance.

Bernard: No, no - I'm going with her.

hannah: Oh, I see. I don't, actually.

Bernard: I'm her date. Sub rosa. Don't tell Mother.

hannah: She doesn't want her mother to know?

BERNARD: No - / don't want her mother to know. This is my first experience of the landed aristocracy. I tell you, I'm boggle-eyed.

hannah: Bernard! - you haven't seduced that girl?

Bernard: Seduced her? Every time I turned round she was up a library ladder. In the end I gave in. That reminds me -1 spotted something between her legs that made me think of you. (He instantly receives a sharp stinging slap on the face but manages to remain completely unperturbed by it. He is already producing from his pocket a small book. His voice has hardly hesitated.)

The Peaks Traveller and Gazetteer -James Godolphin 1832 -unillustrated, I'm afraid. (He has opened the book to a marked place.) Sidley Park in Derbyshire, property of the Earl of Croom...'

hannah: (Numbly) The world is going to hell in a handcart.

Bernard: 'Five hundred acres including forty of lake - the Park by Brown and Noakes has pleasing features in the horrid style - viaduct, grotto, etc - a hermitage occupied by a lunatic since twenty years without discourse or companion save for a pet tortoise, Plautus by name, which he suffers children to touch on request.' (He holds out the book for her.) A tortoise. They must be a feature. (After a moment hannah takes the book.)

hannah: Thank you.

(valentine comes to the door.)

valentine: The station taxi is at the front.. .

Bernard: Yes . . . thanks . . . Oh - did Peacock come up trumps?

hannah: For some.

Bernard: Hermit's name and cv?

(He picks up and glances at the Peacock letter.) 'My dear Thackeray . . .' God, I'm good.

64

{He puts the letter down.)

Well, wish me luck - {Vaguely to valentine) Sorry about

. . . you know . . . {and to hannah) and about your . . .

valentine: Piss off, Bernard.

Bernard: Right.

(BERNARD goes.)

hannah: Don't let Bernard get to you. It's only performance art, you know. Rhetoric, they used to teach it in ancient times, like PT. It's not about being right, they had philosophy for that. Rhetoric was their chat show. Bernard's indignation is a sort of aerobics for when he gets on television.

valentine: I don't care to be rubbished by the dustbin man. {He has been looking at the letter.) The what of the lunatic? (hannah reclaims the letter and reads it for him.)

hannah: The testament of the lunatic serves as a caution against French fashion ... for it was Frenchified mathematick that brought him to the melancholy certitude of a world without light or life ... as a wooden stove that must consume itself until ash and stove are as one, and heat is gone from the earth.'

valentine: {Amused, surprised) Huh!

hannah: 'He died aged two score years and seven, hoary as Job and meagre as a cabbage-stalk, the proof of his prediction even yet unyielding to his labours for the restitution of hope through good English algebra.'

valentine: That's it?

hannah: {Nods) Is there anything in it?

valentine: In what? We are all doomed? {Casually.) Oh yes, sure - it's called the second law of thermodynamics.

hannah: Was it known about?

valentine: By poets and lunatics from time immemorial.

hannah: Seriously.

valentine: No.

hannah: Is it anything to do with ... you know, Thomasina's discovery?

valentine: She didn't discover anything.

hannah: Her lesson book.

valentine: No.

65

hannah: A coincidence, then?

valentine: What is?

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.

66

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!

67

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.

68

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 despatched 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: When did he do so?

jellaby: As he was leaving, your ladyship.

(jellaby leaves. septimus/>«# 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.

70

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?

7i

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: -1 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.)

r

SCENE SEVEN

valentine and CHLOE are at the table. GUS is in the room.

CHLOfi 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. chlo?: 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 -1 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.

73

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'. CHLOfi: (Pleased) Let's see.

(HANNAH gives her the paper, smiles atGUS.) 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. CHLOfi: All right. hannah: What a fool. CHLOfi: 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 CHLOfi out, hesitates, smiles at her.) CHLOfi: (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 about 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

74

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 books9.)

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 the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a

75

drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.

(She looks over valentine's shoulder at the computer screen.

Reacting) Oh!, but. . . how beautiful! valentine: The Coverly set. hannah: The Coverly set! My goodness, Valentine! valentine: Lend me a finger.

(He takes her finger and presses one of the computer keys several

times.)

See? In an ocean of ashes, islands of order. Patterns making

themselves out of nothing.

I can't show you how deep it goes. Each picture is a detail of the

previous one, blown up. And so on. For ever. Pretty nice, eh? hannah: Is it important? valentine: Interesting. Publishable. hannah: Well done! valentine: Not me. It's Thomasina's. I just pushed her

equations through the computer a few million times further

than she managed to do with her pencil.

(From the old portfolio he takes Thomasina's lesson book and gives

it to HANNAH. The piano starts to be heard.)

You can have it back now. hannah: What does it mean? valentine: Not what you'd like it to. HANNAH: Why not?

valentine: Well, for one thing, she'd be famous. hannah: No, she wouldn't. She was dead before she had time to

be famous . .. valentine: She died? hannah: . . .burned to death.

valentine: (Realizing) Oh. .. the girl who died in the fire! hannah: The night before her seventeenth birthday. You can see

where the dormer doesn't match. That was her bedroom

under the roof. There's a memorial in the Park. valentine: (Irritated) I know-it's my house.

(valentine turns his attention back to his computer, hannah

goes back to her chair. She looks through the lesson book.) hannah: Val, Septimus was her tutor -he and Thomasina would

have-

?6

valentine: You do yours. (Pause. Two researchers.

LORD AUGUSTUS, fifteenyears old, wearing clothes ofi8i2,

bursts in through the non-music room door. He is laughing. He

dives under the table. He is chased into the room by

thomasina, aged sixteen and furious. She spots AUGUSTUS

immediately.) thomasina: You swore! You crossed your heart!

(AUGUSTUS scampers out from under the table and THOMASINA

chases him around it.) Augustus: I'll tell mama! I'll tell mama! thomasina: You beast!

{She catches Augustus as Septimus enters from the other

door, carrying a book, a decanter and a glass, and his portfolio.) Septimus: Hush! What is this? My lord! Order, order!

(thomasina and Augustus separate.)

I am obliged.

(SEPTIMUS goes to his place at the table. He pours himself a

glass of wine.) Augustus: Well, good day to you, Mr Hodge!

(He is smirking about something.

thomasina dutifully picks up a drawing book and settles down

to draw the geometrical solids.

SEPTIMUS opens his portfolio.) Septimus: Will you join us this morning, Lord Augustus? We

have our drawing lesson. Augustus: I am a master of it at Eton, Mr Hodge, but we only

draw naked women. Septimus: You may work from memory. thomasina: Disgusting! Septimus: We will have silence now, if you please.

(From the portfolio SEPTIMUS takes Thomasina's lesson book

and tosses it to her; returning homework. She snatches it and

opens it.) thomasina: No marks?! Did you not like my rabbit equation? Septimus: I saw no resemblance to a rabbit. thomasina: It eats its own progeny.

77

Septimus: (Pause) I did not see that.

(He extends his hand for the lesson book. She returns it to him.) thomasina: I have not room to extend it.

(SEPTIMUS and HANNAH turn the pages doubled by time.

AUGUSTUS indolently starts to draw the models.) hannah: Do you mean the world is saved after all? valentine: No, it's still doomed. But if this is how it started,

perhaps it's how the next one will come. hannah: From good English algebra? Septimus: It will go to infinity or zero, or nonsense. thomasina: No, if you set apart the minus roots they square

back to sense.

(SEPTIMUS turns the pages.

THOMASINA starts drawing the models.

HANNAH closes the lesson book and turns her attention to her

stack of'garden books'.) valentine: Listen - you know your tea's getting cold. hannah: I like it cold. valentine: (Ignoring that) I'm telling you something. Your tea

gets cold by itself, it doesn't get hot by itself. Do you think

that's

odd?

HANNAH: No.

valentine: Well, it is odd. Heat goes to cold. It's a one-way street. Your tea will end up at room temperature. What's happening to your tea is happening to everything everywhere. The sun and the stars. It'll take a while but we're all going to end up at room temperature. When your hermit set up shop nobody understood this. But let's say you're right, in 18-whatever nobody knew more about heat than this scribbling nutter living in a hovel in.Derbyshire.

hannah: He was at Cambridge - a scientist.

valentine: Say he was. I'm not arguing. And the girl was his pupil, she had a genius for her tutor.

hannah: Or the other way round.

valentine: Anything you like. But not thisl Whatever he thought he was doing to save the world with good English

78

algebra it wasn't this! hannah: Why? Because they didn't have calculators? valentine: No. Yes. Because there's an order things can't

happen in. You can't open a door till there's a house. hannah: I thought that's what genius was. valentine: Only for lunatics and poets.

(Pause.) hannah: 'I had a dream which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air . ..' valentine: Your own? hannah: Byron.

(Pause. Two researchers again.) thomasina: Septimus, do you think that I will marry Lord

Byron? Augustus: Who is he? thomasina: He is the author of 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage',

the most poetical and pathetic and bravest hero of any book I

ever read before, and the most modern and the handsomest,

for Harold is Lord Byron himself to those who know him,

like myself and Septimus. Well, Septimus? SEPTIMUS: (Absorbed) No.

(Then he puts her lesson book away into the portfolio and picks

up his own book to read.) thomasina: Why not?

Septimus: For one thing, he is not aware of your existence. thomasina: We exchanged many significant glances when he

was at Sidley Park. I do wonder that he has been home

almost a year from his adventures and has not written to me

once. Septimus: It is indeed improbable, my lady. Augustus: Lord Byron?! - he claimed my hare, although my

shot was the earlier! He said I missed by a hare's breadth.

His conversation was very facetious. But I think Lord Byron

will not marry you, Thorn, for he was only lame and not

blind.

79

Septimus: Peace! Peace until a quarter to twelve. It is intolerable

for a tutor to have his thoughts interrupted by his pupils. Augustus: You are not my tutor, sir. I am visiting your lesson by

my free will. Septimus: If you are so determined, my lord.

(thomasina laughs at that, the joke is for her, Augustus, not

included, becomes angry.) Augustus: Your peace is nothing to me, sir. You do not rule

over me. thomasina: (Admonishing) Augustus! Septimus: I do not rule here, my lord. I inspire by reverence for

learning and the exaltation of knowledge whereby man may

approach God. There will be a shilling for the best cone and

pyramid drawn in silence by a quarter to twelve at the earliest. Augustus: You will not buy my silence for a shilling, sir. What I

know to tell is worth much more than that.

(And throwing down his drawing book and pencil, he leaves the

room on his dignity, closing the door sharply. Pause. SEPTIMUS

looks enquiringly at THOMASINA.) thomasina: I told him you kissed me. But he will not tell. Septimus: When did I kiss you? thomasina: What! Yesterday! Septimus: Where? thomasina: On the lips! Septimus: In which county? thomasina: In the hermitage, Septimus! Septimus: On the lips in the hermitage! That? That was not a

shilling kiss! I would not give sixpence to have it back. I had

almost forgot it already. thomasina: Oh, cruel! Have you forgotten our compact? Septimus: God save me! Our compact? thomasina: To teach me to waltz! Sealed with a kiss, and a

second kiss due when I can dance like mama! SEPTIMUS: Ah yes. Indeed. We were all waltzing like mice in

London. thomasina: I must waltz, Septimus! I will be despised if I do not

waltz! It is the most fashionable and gayest and boldest

invention conceivable - started in Germany!

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Septimus: Let them have the waltz, they cannot have the calculus.

thomasina: Mama has brought from town a whole book of waltzes for the Broad wood, to play with Count Zelinsky.

Septimus: I need not be told what I cannot but suffer. Count Zelinsky banging on the Broadwood without relief has me reading in waltz time.

thomasina: Oh, stuff! What is your book?

Septimus: A prize essay of the Scientific Academy in Paris. The author deserves your indulgence, my lady, for you are his prophet.

thomasina: I? What does he write about? The waltz?

Septimus: Yes. He demonstrates the equation of the propagation of heat in a solid body. But in doing so he has discovered heresy - a natural contradiction of Sir Isaac Newton.

thomasina: Oh! - he contradicts determinism?

Septimus: No!... Well, perhaps. He shows that the atoms do not go according to Newton.

(Her interest has switched in the mercurial way characteristic of her-she has crossed to take the book.)

thomasina: Let me see - oh! In French?

Septimus: Yes. Paris is the capital of France.

thomasina: Show me where to read.

(He takes the book back from her and finds the page for her. Meanwhile, the piano music from the next room has doubled its notes and its emotion.)

thomasina: Four-handed now! Mama is in love with the Count.

Septimus: He is a Count in Poland. In Derbyshire he is a piano tuner.

(She has taken the book and is already immersed in it. The piano music becomes rapidly more passionate, and then breaks off suddenly in mid-phrase. There is an expressive silence next door which makes SEPTIMUS raise his eyes. It does not register with thomasina. The silence allows us to hear the distant regular thump of the steam engine which is to be a topic. A few moments later LADY CROOM enters from the music room, seeming surprised and slightly flustered to find the schoolroom occupied. She collects herself, closing the door behind her. And remains watching,

81

aimless and discreet, as though not wanting to interrupt the lesson. SEPTIMUS has stood, and she nods him back into his chair.

CHLOfi, in Regency dress, enters from the door opposite the music

room. She takes in valentine and HANNAH but crosses without

pausing to the music room door.) CHLOfi: Oh!-where's Gus? valentine: Dunno.

(CHLOfi goes into the music room.) lady croom: (Annoyed) Oh! - Mr Noakes's engine!

(She goes to the garden door and steps outside.

CHLOfi re-enters.) CHLOfi: Damn.

lady croom: (Calls out) Mr Noakes! valentine: He was there not long ago... lady croom: Halloo!

CHLOfi: Well, he has to be in the photograph - is he dressed? hannah: Is Bernard back? CHLOfi: No-he's late!

(The piano is heard again, under the noise of the steam engine.

lady croom steps back into the room.

CHLOfi steps outside the garden door. Shouts.) Gus! lady croom: I wonder you can teach against such a disturbance

and I am sorry for it, Mr Hodge.

(CHLOfi comes back inside.) valentine: (Getting up) Stop ordering everybody about. lady croom: It is an unendurable noise. valentine: The photographer will wait.

(But, grumbling, he follows CHLOfi out of the door she came in by,

and closes the door behind them, hannah remains absorbed.

In the silence, the rhythmic thump can be heard again.) lady croom: The ceaseless dull overbearing monotony of it! It

will drive me distracted. I may have to return to town to

escape it. Septimus: Your ladyship could remain in the country and let

Count Zelinsky return to town where you would not hear him. lady croom: I mean Mr Noakes's engine! (Semi-aside to

82

Septimus.) Would you sulk? I will not have my daughter study sulking. thomasina: (Not listening) What, mama?

(thomasina remains lost in her book, lady croom returns to close the garden door and the noise of the steam engine subsides.

HANNAH closes one of the 'garden books', and opens the next. She is making occasional notes.

The piano ceases.) lady croom: (To thomasina) What are we learning today?

(Pause.) Well, not manners. Septimus: We are drawing today.

(lady croom negligently examines what thomasina had

started to draw.) lady croom: Geometry. I approve of geometry. Septimus: Your ladyship's approval is my constant object. lady croom: Well, do not despair of it. (Returning to the window

impatiently.) Where is 'Culpability' Noakes? (She looks out

and is annoyed.) Oh! - he has gone for his hat so that he may

remove it.

(She returns to the table and touches the bowl of dahlias.

HANNAH sits back in her chair, caught by what she is reading.) For the widow's dowry of dahlias I can almost forgive my brother's marriage. We must be thankful the monkey bit the husband. If it had bit the wife the monkey would be dead and we would not be first in the kingdom to show a dahlia. (HANNAH, still reading the garden book, stands up.) I sent one potted to Chatsworth. The Duchess was most satisfactorily put out by it when I called at Devonshire House. Your friend was there lording it as a poet.

(HANNAH leaves through the door, following valentine and CHLOE.)

Meanwhile, thomasina thumps the book down on the table.) thomasina: Well! Just as I said! Newton's machine which would knock our atoms from cradle to grave by the laws of motion is incomplete! Determinism leaves the road at every corner, as I knew all along, and the cause is very likely

83

hidden in this gentleman's observation. lady croom: Of what? thomasina: The action of bodies in heat. lady croom: Is this geometry? thomasina: This? No, I despise geometry!

(Touching the dahlias she adds, almost to herself.) The

Chater would overthrow the Newtonian system in a

weekend. Septimus: Geometry, Hobbes assures us in the Leviathan, is the

only science God has been pleased to bestow on mankind. lady croom: And what does he mean by it? Septimus: Mr Hobbes or God?

lady croom: I am sure I do not know what either means by it. thomasina: Oh, pooh to Hobbes! Mountains are not pyramids

and trees are not cones. God must love gunnery and

architecture if Euclid is his only geometry. There is another

geometry which I am engaged in discovering by trial and

error, am I not, Septimus? Septimus: Trial and error perfectly describes your enthusiasm,

my lady. lady croom: How old are you today? thomasina: Sixteen years and eleven months, mama, and three

weeks. lady croom: Sixteen years and eleven months. We must have

you married before you are educated beyond eligibility. thomasina: I am going to marry Lord Byron. lady croom: Are you? He did not have the manners to mention

it. thomasina: You have spoken to him?! lady croom: Certainly not. thomasina: Where did you see him? lady croom: (With some bitterness) Everywhere. thomasina: Did you, Septimus? Septimus: At the Royal Academy where I had the honour to

accompany your mother and Count Zelinsky. thomasina: What was Lord Byron doing? lady croom: Posing. Septimus: (Tactfully) He was being sketched during his visit. . .

84

by the Professor of Painting ... Mr Fuseli.

lady croom: There was more posing at the pictures than in them. His companion likewise reversed the custom of the Academy that the ladies viewing wear more than the ladies viewed - well, enough! Let him be hanged there for a Lamb. I have enough with Mr Noakes, who is to a garden what a bull is to a china shop. (This as noakes enters.)

thomasina: The Emperor of Irregularity!

(She settles down to drawing the diagram which is to be the third item in the surviving portfolio.)

lady croom: Mr Noakes!

noakes: Your ladyship -

lady croom: What have you done to me!

noakes: Everything is satisfactory, I assure you. A little behind, to be sure, but my dam will be repaired within the month -

lady croom: (Banging the table) Hush!

(In the silence, the steam engine thumps in the distance.) Can you hear, Mr Noakes?

noakes: (Pleased and proud) The Improved Newcomen steam pump - the only one in England!

lady croom: That is what I object to. If everybody had his own I would bear my portion of the agony without complaint. But to have been singled out by the only Improved Newcomen steam pump in England, this is hard, sir, this is not to be borne.

noakes: Your lady-

lady croom: And for what? My lake is drained to a ditch for no purpose I can understand, unless it be that snipe and curlew have deserted three counties so that they may be shot in our swamp. What you painted as forest is a mean plantation, your greenery is mud, your waterfall is wet mud, and your mount is an opencast mine for the mud that was lacking in the dell. (Pointing through the window.) What is that cowshed?

noakes: The hermitage, my lady?

lady croom: It is a cowshed.

noakes: Madam, it is, I assure you, a very habitable cottage,

85

properly founded and drained, two rooms and a closet under

a slate roof and a stone chimney -lady croom: And who is to live in it? noakes: Why, the hermit. lady croom: Where is he? noakes: Madam? lady croom: You surely do not supply a hermitage without a

hermit? noakes: Indeed, madam-lady croom: Come, come, Mr Noakes. If I am promised a

fountain I expect it to come with water. What hermits do you

have? noakes: I have no hermits, my lady. lady croom: Not one? I am speechless. noakes: I am sure a hermit can be found. One could advertise. lady croom: Advertise? noakes: In the newspapers. lady croom: But surely a hermit who takes a newspaper is not a

hermit in whom one can have complete confidence. noakes: I do not know what to suggest, my lady. Septimus: Is there room for a piano? noakes: (Baffled) A piano? lady croom: We are intruding here - this will not do, Mr

Hodge. Evidently, nothing is being learned. (To noakes)

Come along, sir! thomasina: Mr Noakes - bad news from Paris! noakes: Is it the Emperor Napoleon? THOMASINA: No. (She tears the page off her drawing blocky with her

'diagram' on it.) It concerns your heat engine. Improve it as

you will, you can never get out of it what you put in. It

repays eleven pence in the shilling at most. The penny is for

this author's thoughts.

(She gives the diagram to SEPTIMUS who looks at it.) noakes: (Baffled again) Thank you, my lady.

(noakes goes out into the garden.) lady croom: (To Septimus) Do you understand her? Septimus: No. lady croom: Then this business is over. I was married at

86

seventeen. Ce soir ilfaut qu'on parlefrangais,je te demande, Thomasina, as a courtesy to the Count. Wear your green velvet, please, I will send Briggs to do your hair. Sixteen and eleven months . . .! (She follows noakes out of view.)

thomasina: Lord Byron was with a lady?

Septimus: Yes.

thomasina: Huh!

(Now Septimus retrieves his book from thomasina. He turns the pages, and also continues to study Thomasina3s diagram. He strokes the tortoise absently as he reads, thomasina takes up pencil and paper and starts to draw Septimus with Plautus.)

Septimus: Why does it mean Mr Noakes's engine pays eleven pence in the shilling? Where does he say it?

thomasina: Nowhere. I noticed it by the way. I cannot remember now.

Septimus: Nor is he interested by determinism -

thomasina: Oh . .. yes. Newton's equations go forwards and backwards, they do not care which way. But the heat equation cares very much, it goes only one way. That is the reason Mr Noakes's engine cannot give the power to drive Mr Noakes's engine.

Septimus: Everybody knows that.

thomasina: Yes, Septimus, they know it about engines!

SEPTIMUS: (Pause. He looks at his watch.) A quarter to twelve. For your essay this week, explicate your diagram.

thomasina: I cannot. I do not know the mathematics.

Septimus: Without mathematics, then.

(thomasina has continued to draw. She tears the top page from her drawing pad and gives it to SEPTIMUS.)

thomasina: There. I have made a drawing of you and Plautus.

SEPTIMUS: (Looking at it) Excellent likeness. Not so good of me. (thomasina laughs, and leaves the room. AUGUSTUS appears at the garden door. His manner cautious and diffident. SEPTIMUS does not notice him for a moment. SEPTIMUS gathers his papers together.)

Augustus: Sir .. .

Septimus: My lord . . . ?

87

AUGUSTUS: I gave you offence, sir, and I am sorry for it. Septimus: I took none, my lord, but you are kind to mention it. Augustus: I would like to ask you a question, Mr Hodge.

(Pause.) You have an elder brother, I dare say, being a

Septimus? Septimus: Yes, my lord. He lives in London. He is the editor of

a newspaper, the Piccadilly Recreation. (Pause.) Was that

your question?

(AUGUSTUS, evidently embarrassed about something, picks up

the drawing of Septimus.) Augustus: No. Oh ... it is you? ... I would like to keep it.

(Septimus inclines his head in assent.) There are things a

fellow cannot ask his friends. Carnal things. My sister has

told me ... my sister believes such things as I cannot, I

assure you, bring myself to repeat. Septimus: You must not repeat them, then. The walk between

here and dinner will suffice to put us straight, if we stroll by

the garden. It is an easy business. And then I must rely on

you to correct your sister's state of ignorance.

(A commotion is heard outside - Bernard's loud voice in a sort

of agony.) Bernard: (outside the door) Oh no - no - no - oh, bloody hell! -Augustus: Thank you, Mr Hodge, I will.

(Taking the drawing with him, Augustus allows himself to be

shown out through the garden door, and SEPTIMUS follows him.

BERNARD enters the room, through the door HANNAH left by. VALENTINE comes in with him, leaving the door open and they are followed by HANNAH who is holding the 'garden book'.)

Bernard: Oh, no - no -

hannah: I'm sorry, Bernard.

Bernard: Fucked by a dahlia! Do you think? Is it open and shut? Am I fucked? What does it really amount to? When all's said and done? Am I fucked? What do you think, Valentine? Tell me the truth.

valentine: You're fucked.

Bernard: Oh God! Does it mean that?

hannah: Yes, Bernard, it does.

88

Bernard: I'm not sure. Show me where it says. I want to see it. No - read it - no, wait. . .

(Bernard sits at the table. He prepares to listen as though listening were an oriental art.) Right.

HANNAH: (Reading) 'October ist, 1810. Today under the direction of Mr Noakes, a parterre was dug on the south lawn and will be a handsome show next year, a consolation for the picturesque catastrophe of the second and third distances. The dahlia having propagated under glass with no ill effect from the sea voyage, is named by Captain Brice 'Charity' for his bride, though the honour properly belongs to the husband who exchanged beds with my dahlia, and an English summer for everlasting night in the Indies.' (Pause.)

Bernard: Well it's so round the houses, isn't it? Who's to say what it means?

hannah: (Patiently) It means that Ezra Chater of the Sidley Park connection is the same Chater who described a dwarf dahlia in Martinique in 1810 and died there, of a monkey bite.

Bernard: (Wildly) Ezra wasn't a botanist! He was a poet!

hannah: He was not much of either, but he was both.

valentine: It's not a disaster.

Bernard: Of course it's a disaster! I was on 'The Breakfast Hour'!

valentine: It doesn't mean Byron didn't fight a duel, it only means Chater wasn't killed in it.

BERNARD: Oh, pull yourself together! - do you think I'd have been on 'The Breakfast Hour' if Byron had missedl

hannah: Calm down, Bernard. Valentine's right.

BERNARD: (Grasping at straws) Do you think so? You mean the Piccadilly reviews? Yes, two completely unknown Byron essays - and my discovery of the lines he added to 'English Bards'. That counts for something.

hannah: (Tactfully) Very possible - persuasive, indeed.

Bernard: Oh, bugger persuasive! I've proved Byron was here and as far as I'm concerned he wrote those lines as sure as he shot that hare. If only I hadn't somehow . . . made it all

89

about killing Chater. Why didn't you stop me?! It's bound to

get out, you know -1 mean this - this gloss on my discovery -

I mean how long do you think it'll be before some botanical

pedant blows the whistle on me? HANNAH: The day after tomorrow. A letter in The Times, Bernard: You wouldn't. HANNAH: It's a dirty job but somebody -Bernard: Darling. Sorry. Hannah-hannah: - and, after all, it is my discovery. Bernard: Hannah. hannah: Bernard. Bernard: Hannah. hannah: Oh, shut up. It'll be very short, very dry, absolutely

gloat-free. Would you rather it were one of your friends? Bernard: (Fervently) Oh God, no! hannah: And then inyour letter to The Times-Bernard: Mine? hannah: Well, of course. Dignified congratulations to a

colleague, in the language of scholars, I trust. Bernard: Oh, eat shit, you mean? hannah: Think of it as a breakthrough in dahlia studies.

(CHLOfi hurries in from the garden.) chloE: Why aren't you coming?! - Bernard! And you're not

dressed! How long have you been back?

(Bernard looks at her and then at valentine and realizes for

the first time that valentine is unusually dressed.) Bernard: Why are you wearing those clothes? chloE: Do be quick!

(She is already digging into the basket and producing odd

garments for BERNARD.)

Just put anything on. We're all being photographed. Except

Hannah. hannah: I'll come and watch.

(valentine and chloE help Bernard into a decorative coat

and fix a lace collar round his neck.) chloE: (To hannah) Mummy says have you got the theodolite? valentine: What are you supposed to be, Chlo? Bo-Peep? chloE: Jane Austen!

90

valentine: Of course.

HANNAH: {To CHLOfi) Oh - it's in the hermitage! Sorry. Bernard: I thought it wasn't till this evening. What photograph? chloE: The local paper of course - they always come before we

start. We want a good crowd of us - Gus looks gorgeous -Bernard: {Aghast) The newspaper!

{He grabs something like a bishop's mitre from the basket and

pulls it down completely over his face.

(Muffled) I'm ready!

{And he staggers out with valentine and chloE, followed by

HANNAH.

A light change to evening. The paper lanterns outside begin to glow. Piano music from the next room.

SEPTIMUS enters with an oil lamp. He carries Thomasina}s

algebra primer, and also her essay on loose sheen. He settles

down to read at the table. It is nearly dark outside, despite the

lanterns.

THOMASINA enters, in a nightgown and barefoot, holding a

candlestick. Her manner is secretive and excited.) Septimus: My lady! What is it? thomasina: Septimus! Shush!

{She closes the door quietly.)

Now is our chance! Septimus: For what, dear God?

{She blows out the candle and puts the candlestick on the table.) thomasina: Do not act the innocent! Tomorrow I will be

seventeen!

{She kisses septimus/h// on the mouth.)

There! Septimus: Dear Christ!

thomasina: Now you must show me, you are paid in advance. SEPTIMUS: {Understanding) Oh! thomasina: The Count plays for us, it is God-given! I cannot be

seventeen and not waltz. Septimus: But your mother -thomasina: While she swoons, we can dance. The house is all

abed. I heard the Broadwood. Oh, Septimus, teach me now!

9i

Septimus: Hush! I cannot now!

thomasina: Indeed you can, and I am come barefoot so mind

my toes. Septimus: I cannot because it is not a waltz. thomasina: It is not? Septimus: No, it is too slow for waltzing. thomasina: Oh! Then we will wait for him to play quickly. Septimus: My lady -thomasina: Mr Hodge!

(She takes a chair next to him and looks at his work.)

Are you reading my essay? Why do you work here so late? Septimus: To save my candles. thomasina: You have my old primer. Septimus: It is mine again. You should not have written in it.

(She takes it, looks at the open page.) thomasina: It was a joke. Septimus: It will make me mad as you promised. Sit over there.

You will have us in disgrace.

(thomasina gets up and goes to the furthest chair.) thomasina: If mama comes I will tell her we only met to kiss,

not to waltz. Septimus: Silence or bed. thomasina: Silence!

(SEPTIMUS pours himself some more wine. He continues to read

her essay.

The music changes to party music from the marquee. And there

are fireworks - small against the sky, distant flares of light like

exploding meteors.

Hannah enters. She has dressed for the party. The difference is not, however, dramatic. She closes the door and crosses to leave by the garden door. But as she gets there, valentine is entering. He has a glass of wine in his hand.)

HANNAH: Oh . . .

(But valentine merely brushes past her, intent on something,

and half-drunk.) valentine: (To her) Got it!

(He goes straight to the table and roots about in what is now a

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considerable mess of papers, books and objects. HANNAH turns back, puzzled by his manner. He finds what he has been looking for - the 'diagram'.

Meanwhile, Septimus reading Thomasina's essay, also studies

the diagram.

SEPTIMUS and valentine study the diagram doubled by

time.) valentine: It's heat. hannah: Are you tight, Val? valentine: It's a diagram of heat exchange. Septimus: So, we are all doomed! thomasina: (Cheerfully) Yes. valentine: Like a steam engine, you see -

(HANNAH fills Septimus's glass from the same decanter, and sips

from it.)

She didn't have the maths, not remotely. She saw what

things meant, way ahead, like seeing a picture. Septimus: This is not science. This is story-telling. thomasina: Is it a waltz now? Septimus: No.

(The music is still modern.) valentine: Like a film. hannah: What did she see? valentine: That you can't run the film backwards. Heat was

the first thing which didn't work that way. Not like Newton.

A film of a pendulum, or a ball falling through the air -

backwards, it looks the same. hannah: The ball would be going the wrong way. valentine: You'd have to know that. But with heat - friction - a

ball breaking a window -hannah: Yes.

valentine: It won't work backwards. hannah: Who thought it did? valentine: She saw why. You can put back the bits of glass but

you can't collect up the heat of the smash. It's gone. Septimus: So the Improved Newtonian Universe must cease and

grow cold. Dear me.

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valentine: The heat goes into the mix.

(He gestures to indicate the air in the room, in the universe.) thomasina: Yes, we must hurry if we are going to dance. valentine: And everything is mixing the same way, all the time,

irreversibly. . . Septimus: Oh, we have time, I think.

valentine: . . . till there's no time left. That's what time means. Septimus: When we have found all the mysteries and lost all the

meaning, we will be alone, on an empty shore. thomasina: Then we will dance. Is this a waltz? Septimus: It will serve.

(He stands up.) thomasina: (Jumping up) Goody!

(SEPTIMUS takes her in his arms carefully and the waltz lesson,

to the music from the marquee, begins.

BERNARD, in unconvincing Regency dress, enters carrying a

bottle.) Bernard: Don't mind me, I left my jacket...

(He heads for the area of the wicker basket.) valentine: Are you leaving?

(BERNARD is stripping offhis period coat. He is wearing his own

trousers, tucked into knee socks and his own shirt.) Bernard: Yes, I'm afraid so. hannah: What's up, Bernard? Bernard: Nothing I can go into -valentine: Should I go? BERNARD: No, I'm going!

(valentine and hannah watch Bernard struggling into his

jacket and adjusting his clothes.

SEPTIMUS, holding thomasina, kisses her on the mouth. The waltz lesson pauses. She looks at him. He kisses her again, in earnest. She puts her arms round him.) thomasina: Septimus ...

(SEPTIMUS hushes her. They start to dance again, with the slight awkwardness of a lesson.

CHLOE bursts in from the garden.)

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chloE: I'll kill her! I'll kill her!

Bernard: Oh dear.

valentine: What the hell is it, Chlo?

chloE: (Venomously) Mummy!

Bernard: (To valentine) Your mother caught us in that

cottage. chloE: She snooped!

Bernard: I don't think so. She was rescuing a theodolite. chloE: I'll come with you, Bernard. Bernard: No, you bloody won't. chloE: Don't you want me to?

Bernard: Of course not. What for? (To valentine) I'm sorry. chloE: (In furious tears) What are you saying sorry to him for? Bernard: Sorry to you too. Sorry one and all. Sorry, Hannah -

sorry, Hermione - sorry, Byron - sorry, sorry, sorry, now

can I go?

(chloE stands stiffly, tearfully.) chloE: Well...

(thomasina and Septimus dance.) hannah: What a bastard you are, Bernard.

(CHLOE rounds on her.) CHLOE: And you mind your own business! What do you know

about anything? hannah: Nothing.

chloE: (to Bernard) It was worth it, though, wasn't it? Bernard: It was wonderful.

(CHLOE goes out, through the garden door, towards the party.) hannah: (An echo) Nothing. valentine: Well, you shit. I'd drive you but I'm a bit sloshed.

(VALENTINE follows chloE out and can be heard outside

calling (Chlo!Chlo!') Bernard: A scrape. hannah: Oh . .. (she gives up) Bernard! BERNARD: I look forward to The Genius of the Place. I hope you

find your hermit. I think out front is the safest.

(He opens the door cautiously and looks out.) hannah: Actually, I've got a good idea who he was, but I can't

prove it.

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Bernard: (With a carefree expansive gesture) Publish! (He goes out closing the door.

SEPTIMUS and thomasina are now waltzing freely. She is

delighted with herself) thomasina: Am I waltzing? Septimus: Yes, my lady.

(He gives her a final twirl, bringing them to the table where he

bows to her. He lights her candlestick.

HANNAH goes to sit at the table, playing truant from the party. She pours herself more wine. The table contains the geometrical solids, the computer, decanter, glasses, tea mug, Hannah's research books, Septimus's books, the two portfolios, Thomasina's candlestick, the oil lamp, the dahlia, the Sunday papers. . .

GUS appears in the doorway. It takes a moment to realize that he is not Lord Augustus; perhaps not until HANNAH sees him.)

Septimus: Take your essay, I have given it an alpha in blind faith. Be careful with the flame.

thomasina: I will wait for you to come.

Septimus: I cannot.

thomasina: You may.

Septimus: I may not.

thomasina: You must.

Septimus: I will not.

(Sheputs the candlestick and the essay on the table.)

thomasina: Then I will not go. Once more, for my birthday. (SEPTIMUS and thomasina start to waltz together.

GUS comes forward, startling HANNAH.) hannah: Oh! - you made me jump.

(GUS looks resplendent. He is carrying an old and somewhat

tattered stiff-backed folio fastened with a tape tied in a bow. He

comes to hannah and thrusts this present at her.)

Oh...

(She lays the folio down on the table and starts to open it. It

consists only of two boards hinged, containing Thomasina's

drawing.)

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'Septimus holding Plautus'. (To gus) I was looking for that.

Thank you.

(gus nods several times. Then, rather awkwardly, he bows to

her. A Regency bow, an invitation to dance.)

Oh, dear, I don't really . . .

(After a moments hesitation, she gets up and they hold each

other, keeping a decorous distance between them, and start to

dance, rather awkwardly.

Septimus and thomasina continue to dance, fluently, to the piano.)

END