Simon Brooke
e59f160f70
for doing without. Reinitialising, history lost. And this time push to remote!
3629 lines
84 KiB
Plaintext
3629 lines
84 KiB
Plaintext
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Under Milk Wood
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A Play for Voices
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by
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Dylan Thomas
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First published 1954
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UNDER MILK WOOD
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[Silence]
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FIRST VOICE (_Very softly_)
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To begin at the beginning:
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It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless
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and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched,
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courters'-and-rabbits' wood limping invisible down to the
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sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea.
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The houses are blind as moles (though moles see fine to-night
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in the snouting, velvet dingles) or blind as Captain Cat
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there in the muffled middle by the pump and the town clock,
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the shops in mourning, the Welfare Hall in widows' weeds.
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And all the people of the lulled and dumbfound town are
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sleeping now.
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Hush, the babies are sleeping, the farmers, the fishers,
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the tradesmen and pensioners, cobbler, schoolteacher,
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postman and publican, the undertaker and the fancy woman,
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drunkard, dressmaker, preacher, policeman, the webfoot
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cocklewomen and the tidy wives. Young girls lie bedded soft
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or glide in their dreams, with rings and trousseaux,
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bridesmaided by glowworms down the aisles of the
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organplaying wood. The boys are dreaming wicked or of the
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bucking ranches of the night and the jollyrodgered sea. And
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the anthracite statues of the horses sleep in the fields,
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and the cows in the byres, and the dogs in the wetnosed
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yards; and the cats nap in the slant corners or lope sly,
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streaking and needling, on the one cloud of the roofs.
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You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.
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Only _your_ eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded
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town fast, and slow, asleep. And you alone can hear the
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invisible starfall, the darkest-beforedawn minutely dewgrazed
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stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the _Arethusa_, the
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_Curlew_ and the _Skylark_, _Zanzibar_, _Rhiannon_, the _Rover_,
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the _Cormorant_, and the _Star of Wales_ tilt and ride.
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Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional
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salt slow musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row,
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it is the grass growing on Llaregyb Hill, dewfall, starfall,
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the sleep of birds in Milk Wood.
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Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning in
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bonnet and brooch and bombazine black, butterfly choker and
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bootlace bow, coughing like nannygoats, sucking mintoes,
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fortywinking hallelujah; night in the four-ale, quiet as a
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domino; in Ocky Milkman's lofts like a mouse with gloves;
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in Dai Bread's bakery flying like black flour. It is to-night
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in Donkey Street, trotting silent, With seaweed on its
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hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot,
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text and trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours
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done by hand, china dog and rosy tin teacaddy. It is night
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neddying among the snuggeries of babies.
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Look. It is night, dumbly, royally winding through the
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Coronation cherry trees; going through the graveyard of
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Bethesda with winds gloved and folded, and dew doffed;
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tumbling by the Sailors Arms.
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Time passes. Listen. Time passes.
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Come closer now.
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Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the
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slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night. Only you
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can see, in the blinded bedrooms, the coms. and petticoats
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over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth,
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Thou Shalt Not on the wall, and the yellowing dickybird-watching
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pictures of the dead. Only you can hear and see, behind the
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eyes of the sleepers, the movements and countries and mazes
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and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes
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and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams.
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From where you are, you can hear their dreams.
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Captain Cat, the retired blind sea-captain, asleep in his
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bunk in the seashelled, ship-in-bottled, shipshape best
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cabin of Schooner House dreams of
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SECOND VOICE
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never such seas as any that swamped the decks of his _S.S.
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Kidwelly_ bellying over the bedclothes and jellyfish-slippery
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sucking him down salt deep into the Davy dark where the fish
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come biting out and nibble him down to his wishbone, and
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the long drowned nuzzle up to him.
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FIRST DROWNED
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Remember me, Captain?
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CAPTAIN CAT
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You're Dancing Williams!
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FIRST DROWNED
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I lost my step in Nantucket.
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SECOND DROWNED
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Do you see me, Captain? the white bone talking? I'm Tom-Fred
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the donkeyman...we shared the same girl once...her name was
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Mrs Probert...
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WOMAN'S VOICE
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Rosie Probert, thirty three Duck Lane. Come on up, boys,
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I'm dead.
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THIRD DROWNED
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Hold me, Captain, I'm Jonah Jarvis, come to a bad end, very
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enjoyable.
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FOURTH DROWNED
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Alfred Pomeroy Jones, sea-lawyer, born in Mumbles, sung
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like a linnet, crowned you with a flagon, tattooed with
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mermaids, thirst like a dredger, died of blisters.
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FIRST DROWNED
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This skull at your earhole is
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FIFTH DROWNED
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Curly Bevan. Tell my auntie it was me that pawned he ormolu
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clock.
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CAPTAIN CAT
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Aye, aye, Curly.
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SECOND DROWNED
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Tell my missus no I never
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THIRD DROWNED
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I never done what she said I never.
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FOURTH DROWNED
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Yes they did.
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FIFTH DROWNED
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And who brings coconuts and shawls and parrots to _my_
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Gwen now?
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FIRST DROWNED
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How's it above?
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SECOND DROWNED
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Is there rum and laverbread?
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THIRD DROWNED
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Bosoms and robins?
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FOURTH DROWNED
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Concertinas?
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FIFTH DROWNED
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Ebenezer's bell?
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FIRST DROWNED
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Fighting and onions?
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SECOND DROWNED
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And sparrows and daisies?
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THIRD DROWNED
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Tiddlers in a jamjar?
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FOURTH DROWNED
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Buttermilk and whippets?
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FIFTH DROWNED
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Rock-a-bye baby?
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FIRST DROWNED
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Washing on the line?
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SECOND DROWNED
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And old girls in the snug?
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THIRD DROWNED
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How's the tenors in Dowlais?
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FOURTH DROWNED
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Who milks the cows in Maesgwyn?
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FIFTH DROWNED
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When she smiles, is there dimples?
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FIRST DROWNED
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What's the smell of parsley?
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CAPTAIN CAT
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Oh, my dead dears!
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FIRST VOICE
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From where you are you can hear in Cockle Row in the spring,
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moonless night, Miss Price, dressmaker and sweetshop-keeper,
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dream of
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SECOND VOICE
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her lover, tall as the town clock tower, Samsonsyrup-gold-maned,
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whacking thighed and piping hot, thunderbolt-bass'd and
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barnacle-breasted, flailing up the cockles with his eyes
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like blowlamps and scooping low over her lonely loving
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hotwaterbottled body.
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MR EDWARDS
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Myfanwy Price!
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MISS PRICE
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Mr Mog Edwards!
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MR EDWARDS
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I am a draper mad with love. I love you more than all the
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flannelette and calico, candlewick, dimity, crash and merino,
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tussore, cretonne, crepon, muslin, poplin, ticking and twill
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in the whole Cloth Hall of the world. I have come to take
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you away to my Emporium on the hill, where the change hums
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on wires. Throw away your little bedsocks and your Welsh
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wool knitted jacket, I will warm the sheets like an electric
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toaster, I will lie by your side like the Sunday roast.
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MISS PRICE
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I will knit you a wallet of forget-me-not blue, for the
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money, to be comfy. I will warm your heart by the fire so
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that you can slip it in under your vest when the shop is
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closed.
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MR EDWARDS
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Myfanwy, Myfanwy, before the mice gnaw at your bottom drawer
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will you say
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MISS PRICE
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Yes, Mog, yes, Mog, yes, yes, yes.
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MR EDWARDS
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And all the bells of the tills of the town shall ring for
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our wedding.
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[_Noise of money-tills and chapel bells_
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FIRST VOICE
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Come now, drift up the dark, come up the drifting sea-dark
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street now in the dark night seesawing like the sea, to the
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bible-black airless attic over Jack Black the cobbler's
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shop where alone and savagely Jack Black sleeps in a
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nightshirt tied to his ankles with elastic and dreams of
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SECOND VOICE
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chasing the naughty couples down the grassgreen gooseberried
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double bed of the wood, flogging the tosspots in the
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spit-and-sawdust, driving out the bare bold girls from the
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sixpenny hops of his nightmares.
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JACK BLACK (_Loudly_)
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Ach y fi!
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Ach y fi!
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FIRST VOICE
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Evans the Death, the undertaker,
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SECOND VOICE
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laughs high and aloud in his sleep and curls up his toes as
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he sees, upon waking fifty years ago, snow lie deep on the
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goosefield behind the sleeping house ; and he runs out into
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the field where his mother is making welsh-cakes in the
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snow, and steals a fistful of snowflakes and currants and
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climbs back to bed to eat them cold and sweet under the
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warm, white clothes while his mother dances in the snow
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kitchen crying out for her lost currants.
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FIRST VOICE
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And in the little pink-eyed cottage next to the undertaker's,
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lie, alone, the seventeen snoring gentle stone of Mister
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Waldo, rabbitcatcher, barber, herbalist, catdoctor, quack,
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his fat pink hands, palms up, over the edge of the patchwork
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quilt, his black boots neat and tidy in the washing-basin,
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his bowler on a nail above the bed, a milk stout and a slice
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of cold bread pudding under the pillow; and, dripping in
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the dark, he dreams of
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MOTHER
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This little piggy went to market
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This little piggy stayed at home
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This little piggy had roast beef
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This little piggy had none
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And this little piggy went
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LITTLE BOY
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wee wee wee wee wee
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MOTHER
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all the way home to
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WIFE (_Screaming_)
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Waldo! Wal-do!
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MR WALDO
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Yes, Blodwen love?
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WIFE
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Oh, what'll the neighbours say, what'll the neighbours...
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FIRST NEIGHBOUR
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Poor Mrs Waldo
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SECOND NEIGHBOUR
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What she puts up with
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FIRST NEIGHBOUR
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Never should of married
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SECOND NEIGHBOUR
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If she didn't had to
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FIRST NEIGHBOUR
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Same as her mother
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SECOND NEIGHBOUR
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There's a husband for you
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FIRST NEIGHBOUR
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Bad as his father
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SECOND NEIGHBOUR
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And you know where he ended
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FIRST NEIGHBOUR
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Up in the asylum
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SECOND NEIGHBOUR
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Crying for his ma
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FIRST NEIGHBOUR
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Every Saturday
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SECOND NEIGHBOUR
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He hasn't got a log
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FIRST NEIGHBOUR
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And carrying on
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SECOND NEIGHBOUR
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With that Mrs Beattie Morris
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FIRST NEIGHBOUR
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Up in the quarry
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SECOND NEIGHBOUR
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And seen her baby
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FIRST NEIGHBOUR
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It's got his nose
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SECOND NEIGHBOUR
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Oh it makes my heart bleed
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FIRST NEIGHBOUR
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What he'll do for drink
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SECOND NEIGHBOUR
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He sold the pianola to
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FIRST NEIGHBOUR
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And her sewing machine
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SECOND NEIGHBOUR
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Falling in the gutter
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FIRST NEIGHBOUR
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Talking to the lamp-post
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SECOND NEIGHBOUR
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Using language
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FIRST NEIGHBOUR
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Singing in the w
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SECOND NEIGHBOUR
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Poor Mrs Waldo
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WIFE (_Tearfully_)
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...Oh, Waldo, Waldo!
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MR WALDO
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Hush, love, hush. I'm widower Waldo now.
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MOTHER (_Screaming_)
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Waldo, Wal-do!
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LITTLE BOY
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Yes, our mum?
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MOTHER
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Oh, what'll the neighbours say, what'll the neighbours...
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THIRD NEIGHBOUR
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Black as a chimbley
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FOURTH NEIGHBOUR
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Ringing doorbells
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THIRD NEIGHBOUR
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Breaking windows
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FOURTH NEIGHBOUR
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Making mudpies
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THIRD NEIGHBOUR
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Stealing currants
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FOURTH NEIGHBOUR
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Chalking words
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THIRD NEIGHBOUR
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Saw him in the bushes
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FOURTH NEIGHBOUR
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Playing mwchins
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THIRD NEIGHBOUR
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Send him to bed without any supper
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FOURTH NEIGHBOUR
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Give him sennapods and lock him in the dark
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THIRD NEIGHBOUR
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Off to the reformatory
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FOURTH NEIGHBOUR
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Off to the reformatory
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TOGETHER
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Learn him with a slipper on his b.t.m.
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ANOTHER MOTHER (_Screaming_)
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Waldo, Wal-do! what you doing with our Matti?
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LITTLE BOY
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Give us a kiss, Matti Richards.
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LITTLE GIRL
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Give us a penny then.
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MR WALDO
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I only got a halfpenny.
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FIRST WOMAN
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Lips is a penny.
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PREACHER
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Will you take this woman Matti Richards
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SECOND WOMAN
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Dulcie Prothero
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THIRD WOMAN
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Effie Bevan
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FOURTH WOMAN
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Lil the Gluepot
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FIFTH WOMAN
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Mrs Flusher
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WIFE
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Blodwen Bowen
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PREACHER
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To be your awful wedded wife
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LITTLE BOY (_Screaming_)
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No, no, no!
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FIRST VOICE
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Now, in her iceberg-white, holily laundered crinoline
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nightgown, under virtuous polar sheets, in her spruced and
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scoured dust-defying bedroom in trig and trim Bay View, a
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house for paying guests, at the top of the town, Mrs
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Ogmore-Pritchard widow, twice, of Mr Ogmore, linoleum,
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retired, and Mr Pritchard, failed bookmaker, who maddened
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by besoming, swabbing and scrubbing, the voice of the
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vacuum-cleaner and the fume of polish, ironically swallowed
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disinfectant, fidgets in her rinsed sleep, wakes in a
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dream, and nudges in the ribs dead Mr Ogmore, dead Mr
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Pritchard, ghostly on either side.
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MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
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Mr Ogmore!
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Mr Pritchard!
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It is time to inhale your balsam.
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MR OGMORE
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Oh, Mrs Ogmore!
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MR PRITCHARD
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Oh, Mrs Pritchard!
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MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
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Soon it will be time to get up.
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Tell me your tasks, in order.
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MR OGMORE
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I must put my pyjamas in the drawer marked pyjamas.
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MR PRITCHARD
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I must take my cold bath which is good for me.
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MR OGMORE
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I must wear my flannel band to ward off sciatica.
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MR PRITCHARD
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I must dress behind the curtain and put on my apron.
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MR OGMORE
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I must blow my nose.
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MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
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In the garden, if you please.
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|
|
|
MR OGMORE
|
|
|
|
In a piece of tissue-paper which I afterwards burn.
|
|
|
|
MR PRITCHARD
|
|
|
|
I must take my salts which are nature's friend.
|
|
|
|
MR OGMORE
|
|
|
|
I must boil the drinking water because of germs.
|
|
|
|
MR PRITCHARD
|
|
|
|
I must make my herb tea which is free from tannin.
|
|
|
|
MR OGMORE
|
|
|
|
And have a charcoal biscuit which is good for me.
|
|
|
|
MR PRITCHARD
|
|
|
|
I may smoke one pipe of asthma mixture.
|
|
|
|
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
|
|
|
|
In the woodshed, if you please.
|
|
|
|
MR PRITCHARD
|
|
|
|
And dust the parlour and spray the canary. IS
|
|
|
|
MR OGMORE
|
|
|
|
I must put on rubber gloves and search the peke for fleas.
|
|
|
|
MR PRITCHARD
|
|
|
|
I must dust the blinds and then I must raise them.
|
|
|
|
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
|
|
|
|
And before you let the sun in, mind it wipes its shoes.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
In Butcher Beynon's, Gossamer Beynon, daughter, schoolteacher,
|
|
dreaming deep, daintily ferrets under a fluttering hummock
|
|
of chicken's feathers in a slaughterhouse that has chintz
|
|
curtains and a three-pieced suite, and finds, with no surprise,
|
|
a small rough ready man with a bushy tail winking in a paper
|
|
carrier.
|
|
|
|
GOSSAMER BEYNON
|
|
|
|
At last, my love,
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
sighs Gossamer Beynon. And the bushy tail wags rude and ginger.
|
|
|
|
ORGAN MORGAN
|
|
|
|
Help,
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
cries Organ Morgan, the organist, in his dream,
|
|
|
|
ORGAN MORGAN
|
|
|
|
There is perturbation and music in Coronation Street! All
|
|
the spouses are honking like geese and the babies singing
|
|
opera. P.C. Attila Rees has got his truncheon out and is
|
|
playing cadenzas by the pump, the cows from Sunday Meadow
|
|
ring like reindeer, and on the roof of Handel Villa see the
|
|
Women's Welfare hoofing, bloomered, in the moon.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
At the sea-end of town, Mr and Mrs Floyd, the cocklers, are
|
|
sleeping as quiet as death, side by wrinkled side, toothless,
|
|
salt and brown, like two old kippers In a box.
|
|
|
|
And high above, in Salt Lake Farm, Mr Utah Watkins counts,
|
|
all night, the wife-faced sheep as they leap the knees on
|
|
the hill, smiling and knitting and bleating just like Mrs
|
|
Utah Watkins.
|
|
|
|
UTAH WATKINS (_Yawning_)
|
|
|
|
Thirty - four, thirty - five, thirty - six, forty - eight,
|
|
eighty-nine...
|
|
|
|
MRS UTAH WATKINS (_Bleating_)
|
|
|
|
Knit one slip one
|
|
Knit two together
|
|
Pass the slipstitch over...
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Ocky Milkman, drowned asleep in Cockle Street, is emptying
|
|
his churns into the Dewi River,
|
|
|
|
OCKY MILKMAN (_Whispering_)
|
|
|
|
regardless of expense,
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
and weeping like a funeral.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Cherry Owen, next door, lifts a tankard to his but nothing
|
|
flows out of it. He shakes the tankar ' It turns into a
|
|
fish. He drinks the fish.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
P.C. Attila Rees lumps out of bed, dead to the dar and still
|
|
foghorning, and drags out his helmet from under the bed;
|
|
but deep in the backyard lock-up of his slee a mean voice
|
|
murmurs
|
|
|
|
A VOICE (_Murmuring_)
|
|
|
|
You'll be sorry for this in the morning,
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
and he heave-ho's back to bed. His helmet swashes in the dark.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Willy Nilly, postman, asleep up street, walks fourteen miles
|
|
to deliver the post as he does every day of the night, and
|
|
rat-a-tats hard and sharp on Mrs Willy Nilly.
|
|
|
|
MRS WILLY NILLY
|
|
|
|
Don't spank me, please, teacher,
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
whimpers his wife at his side, but every night of her married
|
|
life she has been late for school.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Sinbad Sailors, over the taproom of the Sailors Arms, hugs
|
|
his damp pillow whose secret name is Gossamer Beynon.
|
|
|
|
A mogul catches Lily Smalls in the wash-house.
|
|
|
|
LILY SMALLS
|
|
|
|
Ooh, you old mogul!
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Mrs Rose Cottage's eldest, Mae, peals off her pink-and-white
|
|
skin in a furnace in a tower in a cave in a waterfall in a
|
|
wood and waits there raw as an onion for Mister Right to
|
|
leap up the burning tall hollow splashes of leaves like a
|
|
brilliantined trout.
|
|
|
|
MAE ROSE COTTAGE (_Very close and softly, drawing
|
|
out the words_)
|
|
|
|
Call me Dolores
|
|
Like they do in the stories.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Alone until she dies, Bessie Bighead, hired help, born in
|
|
the workhouse, smelling of the cowshed, snores bass and
|
|
gruff on a couch of straw in a loft in Salt Lake Farm and
|
|
picks a posy of daisies in Sunday Meadow to put on the grave
|
|
of Gomer Owen who kissed her once by the pig-sty when she
|
|
wasn't looking and never kissed her again although she was
|
|
looking all the time.
|
|
|
|
And the Inspectors of Cruelty fly down into Mrs Butcher
|
|
Brynon's dream to persecute Mr Beynon for selling
|
|
|
|
BUTCHER BEYNON
|
|
|
|
owlmeat, dogs' eyes, manchop.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Mr Beynon, in butcher's bloodied apron, spring-heels down
|
|
Coronation Street, a finger, not his own, in his mouth.
|
|
Straightfaced in his cunning sleep he pulls the legs of
|
|
his dreams and
|
|
|
|
BUTCHER BEYNON
|
|
|
|
hunting on pigback shoots down the wild giblets.
|
|
|
|
ORGAN MORGAN (_High and softly_)
|
|
|
|
Help!
|
|
|
|
GOSSAMER BEYNON (_Softly_)
|
|
|
|
My foxy darling.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Now behind the eyes and secrets of the dreamers in the
|
|
streets rocked to sleep by the sea, see the
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
titbits and topsyturvies, bobs and buttontops, bags and
|
|
bones, ash and rind and dandruff and nailparings, saliva
|
|
and snowflakes and moulted feathers of dreams, the wrecks
|
|
and sprats and shells and fishbones, whale-juice and moonshine
|
|
and small salt fry dished up by the hidden sea.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
The owls are hunting. Look, over Bethesda gravestones one
|
|
hoots and swoops and catches a mouse by Hannah Rees, Beloved
|
|
Wife. And in Coronation Street, which you alone can see it
|
|
is so dark under the chapel in the skies, the Reverend Eli
|
|
Jenkins, poet, preacher, turns in his deep towards-dawn
|
|
sleep and dreams of
|
|
|
|
REV. ELI JENKINS
|
|
|
|
Eisteddfodau.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
He intricately rhymes, to the music of crwth and pibgorn,
|
|
all night long in his druid's seedy nightie in a beer-tent
|
|
black with parchs.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Mr Pugh, schoolmaster, fathoms asleep, pretends to be sleeping,
|
|
spies foxy round the droop of his nightcap and pssst! whistles up
|
|
|
|
MR PUGH
|
|
|
|
Murder.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Mrs Organ Morgan, groceress, coiled grey like a dormouse,
|
|
her paws to her ears, conjures
|
|
|
|
MRS ORGAN MORGAN
|
|
|
|
Silence.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
She sleeps very dulcet in a cove of wool, and trumpeting
|
|
Organ Morgan at her side snores no louder than a
|
|
spider.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Mary Ann Sailors dreams of
|
|
|
|
MARY ANN SAILORS
|
|
|
|
The Garden of Eden.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
She comes in her smock-frock and clogs
|
|
|
|
MARY ANN SAILORS
|
|
|
|
away from the cool scrubbed cobbled kitchen with the
|
|
Sunday-school pictures on the whitewashed wall and the
|
|
farmers' almanac hung above the settle and the sides of
|
|
bacon on the ceiling hooks, and goes down the cockleshelled
|
|
paths of that applepie kitchen garden, ducking under the
|
|
gippo's clothespegs, catching her apron on the blackcurrant
|
|
bushes, past beanrows and onion-bed and tomatoes ripening
|
|
on the wall towards the old man playing the harmonium in
|
|
the orchard, and sits down on the grass at his side and
|
|
shells the green peas that grow up through the lap of her
|
|
frock that brushes the dew.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
In Donkey Street, so furred with sleep, Dai Bread, Polly
|
|
Garter, Nogood Boyo, and Lord Cut-Glass sigh before the
|
|
dawn that is about to be and dream of
|
|
|
|
DAI BREAD
|
|
|
|
Harems.
|
|
|
|
POLLY GARTER
|
|
|
|
Babies.
|
|
|
|
NOGOOD BOYO
|
|
|
|
Nothing.
|
|
|
|
LORD CUT-GLASS
|
|
|
|
Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Time passes. Listen. Time passes. An owl flies I home past
|
|
Bethesda, to a chapel in an oak. And the dawn inches up.
|
|
|
|
[_One distant bell-note, faintly reverberating_
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Stand on this hill. This is Llaregyb Hill, old as the hills,
|
|
high, cool, and green, and from this small circle, of stones,
|
|
made not by druids but by Mrs Beynon's Billy, you can see all
|
|
the town below you sleeping in the first of the dawn.
|
|
|
|
You can hear the love-sick woodpigeons mooning in bed. A dog
|
|
barks in his sleep, farmyards away. The town ripples like a
|
|
lake in the waking haze.
|
|
|
|
VOICE OF A GUIDE-BOOK
|
|
|
|
Less than five hundred souls inhabit the three quaint streets
|
|
and the few narrow by-lanes and scattered farmsteads that
|
|
constitute this small, decaying watering-place which may,
|
|
indeed, be called a 'backwater of life' without disrespect
|
|
to its natives who possess, to this day, a salty individuality
|
|
of their own. The main street, Coronation Street, consists,
|
|
for the most part, of humble, two-storied houses many of which
|
|
attempt to achieve some measure of gaiety by prinking
|
|
themselves out in crude colours and by the liberal use of
|
|
pinkwash, though there are remaining a few eighteenth-century
|
|
houses of more pretension, if, on the whole, in a sad state
|
|
of disrepair. Though there is little to attract the hillclimber,
|
|
the healthseeker, the sportsman, or the weekending motorist,
|
|
the contemplative may, if sufficiently attracted to spare
|
|
it some leisurely hours, find, in its cobbled streets and
|
|
its little fishing harbour, in its several curious customs,
|
|
and in the conversation of its local 'characters,' some of
|
|
that picturesque sense of the past so frequently lacking in
|
|
towns and villages which have kept more abreast of the times.
|
|
The River Dewi is said to abound in trout, but is much poached.
|
|
The one place of worship, with its neglected graveyard, is of
|
|
no architectural interest.
|
|
|
|
[_A cock crows_
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
The principality of the sky lightens now, over our green
|
|
hill, into spring morning larked and crowed and belling.
|
|
|
|
[_Slow bell notes_
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Who pulls the townhall bellrope but blind Captain Cat? One
|
|
by one, the sleepers are rung out of sleep this one morning
|
|
as every morning. And soon you shall see the chimneys' slow
|
|
upflying snow as Captain Cat, in sailor's cap and seaboots,
|
|
announces to-day with his loud get-out-of-bed bell.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
The Reverend Eli Jenkins, in Bethesda House, gropes out of
|
|
bed into his preacher's black, combs back his bard's white
|
|
hair, forgets to wash, pads barefoot downstairs, opens the
|
|
front door, stands in the doorway and, looking out at the
|
|
day and up at the eternal hill, and hearing the sea break
|
|
and the gab of birds, remembers his own verses and tells
|
|
them softly to empty Coronation Street that is rising and
|
|
raising its blinds.
|
|
|
|
REV. ELI JENKINS
|
|
|
|
Dear Gwalia! I know there are
|
|
Towns lovelier than ours,
|
|
And fairer hills and loftier far,
|
|
And groves more full of flowers,
|
|
|
|
And boskier woods more blithe with spring
|
|
And bright with birds' adorning,
|
|
And sweeter bards than I to sing
|
|
Their praise this beauteous morning.
|
|
|
|
By Cader Idris, tempest-torn,
|
|
Or Moel yr Wyddfa's glory,
|
|
Carnedd Llewelyn beauty born,
|
|
Plinlimmon old in story,
|
|
|
|
By mountains where King Arthur dreams,
|
|
By Penmaenmawr defiant,
|
|
Llaregyb Hill a molehill seems,
|
|
A pygmy to a giant.
|
|
|
|
By Sawdde, Senny, Dovey, Dee,
|
|
Edw, Eden, Aled, all,
|
|
Taff and Towy broad and free,
|
|
Llyfnant with its waterfall,
|
|
|
|
Claerwen, Cleddau, Dulais, Daw,
|
|
Ely, Gwili, Ogwr, Nedd,
|
|
Small is our River Dewi, Lord,
|
|
A baby on a rushy bed.
|
|
|
|
By Carreg Cennen, King of time,
|
|
Our Heron Head is only
|
|
A bit of stone with seaweed spread
|
|
Where gulls come to be lonely.
|
|
|
|
A tiny dingle is Milk Wood
|
|
By Golden Grove 'neath Grongar,
|
|
But let me choose and oh! I should
|
|
Love all my life and longer
|
|
|
|
To stroll among our trees and stray
|
|
In Goosegog Lane, on Donkey Down,
|
|
And hear the Dewi sing all day,
|
|
And never, never leave the town.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
The Reverend Jenkins closes the front door. His morning
|
|
service is over.
|
|
|
|
[_Slow bell notes_
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Now, woken at last by the out-of-bed-sleepy-head-Polly-put-
|
|
the-kettle-on townhall bell, Lily Smalls, Mrs Beynon's
|
|
treasure, comes downstairs from a dream of royalty who all
|
|
night long went larking with her full of sauce in the Milk
|
|
Wood dark, and puts the kettle on the primus ring in Mrs
|
|
Beynon's kitchen, and looks at herself in Mr Beynon's
|
|
shaving-glass over the sink, and sees:
|
|
|
|
LILY SMALLS
|
|
|
|
Oh there's a face!
|
|
Where you get that hair from?
|
|
Got it from a old tom cat.
|
|
Give it back then, love.
|
|
Oh there's a perm!
|
|
|
|
Where you get that nose from, Lily?
|
|
Got it from my father, silly.
|
|
You've got it on upside down!
|
|
Oh there's a conk!
|
|
|
|
Look at your complexion!
|
|
Oh no, you look.
|
|
Needs a bit of make-up.
|
|
Needs a veil.
|
|
Oh there's glamour!
|
|
|
|
Where you get that smile,
|
|
Lil? Never you mind, girl.
|
|
Nobody loves you.
|
|
That's what you think.
|
|
|
|
Who is it loves you?
|
|
Shan't tell.
|
|
Come on, Lily.
|
|
Cross your heart then?
|
|
Cross my heart.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
And very softly, her lips almost touching her reflection,
|
|
she breathes the name and clouds the shaving-glass.
|
|
|
|
MRS BEYNON (_Loudly, from above_)
|
|
|
|
Lily!
|
|
|
|
LILY SMALLS (_Loudly_)
|
|
|
|
Yes, mum.
|
|
|
|
MRS BEYNON
|
|
|
|
Where's my tea, girl?
|
|
|
|
LILY SMALLS
|
|
|
|
(_Softly_) Where d'you think? In the cat-box?
|
|
|
|
(_Loudly_) Coming up, mum.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Mr Pugh, in the School House opposite, takes up the morning
|
|
tea to Mrs Pugh, and whispers on the stairs
|
|
|
|
MR. PUGH
|
|
|
|
Here's your arsenic, dear.
|
|
And your weedkiller biscuit.
|
|
I've throttled your parakeet.
|
|
I've spat in the vases.
|
|
I've put cheese in the mouseholes.
|
|
Here's your... [_Door creaks open_
|
|
...nice tea, dear.
|
|
|
|
MRS PUGH
|
|
|
|
Too much sugar.
|
|
|
|
MR PUGH
|
|
|
|
You haven't tasted it yet, dear.
|
|
|
|
MRS PUGH
|
|
|
|
Too much milk, then. Has Mr Jenkins said his poetry?
|
|
|
|
MR PUGH
|
|
|
|
Yes, dear.
|
|
|
|
MRS PUGH
|
|
|
|
Then it's time to get up. Give me my glasses.
|
|
|
|
No, not my _reading_ glasses, I want to look out.
|
|
I want to see
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Lily Smalls the treasure down on her red knees washing the
|
|
front step.
|
|
|
|
MRS PUGH
|
|
|
|
She's tucked her dress in her bloomers--oh, the baggage!
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
P.C. Attila Rees, ox-broad, barge-booted, stamping out of
|
|
Handcuff House in a heavy beef-red huff, black browed under
|
|
his damp helmet...
|
|
|
|
MRS PUGH
|
|
|
|
He's going to arrest Polly Garter, mark my words,
|
|
|
|
MR PUGH
|
|
|
|
What for, dear?
|
|
|
|
MRS PUGH
|
|
|
|
For having babies.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
...and lumbering down towards the strand to see that the
|
|
sea is still there.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Mary Ann Sailors, opening her bedroom window above the
|
|
taproom and calling out to the heavens
|
|
|
|
MARY ANN SAILORS
|
|
|
|
I'm eighty-five years three months and a day!
|
|
|
|
MRS PUGH
|
|
|
|
I will say this for her, she never makes a mistake.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Organ Morgan at his bedroom window playing chords on the
|
|
sill to the morning fishwife gulls who, heckling over Donkey
|
|
Street, observe
|
|
|
|
DAI BREAD
|
|
|
|
Me, Dai Bread, hurrying to the bakery, pushing in my
|
|
shirt-tails, buttoning my waistcoat, ping goes a button,
|
|
why can't they sew them, no time for breakfast, nothing for
|
|
breakfast, there's wives for you.
|
|
|
|
MRS DAI BREAD ONE
|
|
Me, Mrs Dai Bread One, capped and shawled and no old corset,
|
|
nice to be comfy, nice to be nice, clogging on the cobbles
|
|
to stir up a neighbour. Oh, Mrs Sarah, can you spare a loaf,
|
|
love? Dai Bread forgot the bread. There's a lovely morning!
|
|
How's your boils this morning? Isn't that good news now,
|
|
it's a change to sit down. Ta, Mrs Sarah.
|
|
|
|
MRS DAI BREAD TWO
|
|
|
|
Me, Mrs Dai Bread Two, gypsied to kill in a silky scarlet
|
|
petticoat above my knees, dirty pretty knees, see my body
|
|
through my petticoat brown as a berry, high-heel shoes with
|
|
one heel missing, tortoiseshell comb in my bright black
|
|
slinky hair, nothing else at all but a dab of scent, lolling
|
|
gaudy at the doorway, tell your fortune in the tea-leaves,
|
|
scowling at the sunshine, lighting up my pipe.
|
|
|
|
LORD CUT-GLASS
|
|
|
|
Me, Lord Cut-Glass, in an old frock-coat belonged to Eli
|
|
Jenkins and a pair of postman's trousers from Bethesda
|
|
Jumble, running out of doors to empty slops--mind there,
|
|
Rover!--and then running in again, tick tock.
|
|
|
|
NOGOOD BO YO
|
|
|
|
Me, Nogood Boyo, up to no good in the wash-house
|
|
|
|
MISS PRICE
|
|
|
|
Me, Miss Price, in my pretty print housecoat, deft at the
|
|
clothesline, natty as a jenny-wren, then pit-pat back to my
|
|
egg in its cosy, my crisp toast-fingers, my home-made plum
|
|
and butterpat.
|
|
|
|
POLLY GARTER
|
|
|
|
Me, Polly Garter, under the washing line, giving the breast
|
|
in the garden to my bonny new baby. Nothing grows in our
|
|
garden, only washing. And babies. And where's their fathers
|
|
live, my love? Over the hills and far away. You're looking
|
|
up at me now. I know what you're thinking, you poor little
|
|
milky creature. You're thinking, you're no better than you
|
|
should be, Polly, and that's good enough for me. Oh, isn't
|
|
life a terrible thing, thank God?
|
|
|
|
[_Single long high chord on strings_
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Now frying-pans spit, kettles and cats purr in the kitchen.
|
|
The town smells of seaweed and breakfast all the way down
|
|
from Bay View, where Mrs OgmorePritchard, in smock and turban,
|
|
big-besomed to engage the dust, picks at her starchless bread
|
|
and sips lemon-rind tea, to Bottom Cottage, where Mr Waldo,
|
|
in bowler and bib, gobbles his bubble-and-squeak and kippers
|
|
and swigs from the saucebottle. Mary Ann Sailors
|
|
|
|
MARY ANN SAILORS
|
|
|
|
praises the Lord who made porridge.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Mr Pugh
|
|
|
|
MR PUGH
|
|
|
|
remembers ground glass as he juggles his omelet.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Mrs Pugh
|
|
|
|
MRS PUGH
|
|
|
|
nags the salt-cellar.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Willy Nilly postman
|
|
|
|
WILLY NILLY
|
|
|
|
downs his last bucket of black brackish tea and rumbles out
|
|
bandy to the clucking back where the hens twitch and grieve
|
|
for their tea-soaked sops.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Mrs Willy Nilly
|
|
|
|
MRS WILLY NILLY
|
|
|
|
full of tea to her double-chinned brim broods and bubbles
|
|
over her coven of kettles on the hissing hot range always
|
|
ready to steam open the mail.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
The Reverend Eli Jenkins
|
|
|
|
REV. ELI JENKINS
|
|
|
|
finds a rhyme and dips his pen in his cocoa.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Lord Cut-Glass in his ticking kitchen
|
|
|
|
LORD CUT-GLASS
|
|
|
|
scampers from clock to clock, a bunch of clock-keys in one
|
|
hand, a fish-head in the other.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Captain Cat in his galley
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
blind and fine-fingered savours his sea-fry.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Mr and Mrs Cherry Owen, in their Donkey Street room that is
|
|
bedroom, parlour, kitchen, and scullery, sit down to last
|
|
night's supper of onions boiled in their overcoats and broth
|
|
of spuds and baconrind and leeks and bones.
|
|
|
|
MRS CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
See that smudge on the wall by the picture of Auntie Blossom?
|
|
That's where you threw the sago.
|
|
|
|
[_Cherry Owen laughs with delight_
|
|
|
|
MRS CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
You only missed me by a inch.
|
|
|
|
CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
I always miss Auntie Blossom too.
|
|
|
|
MRS CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
Remember last night? In you reeled, my boy, as drunk as a
|
|
deacon with a big wet bucket and a fish-frail full of stout
|
|
and you looked at me and you said, 'God has come home!' you
|
|
said, and then over the bucket you went, sprawling and
|
|
bawling, and the floor was all flagons and eels.
|
|
|
|
CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
Was I wounded?
|
|
|
|
MRS CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
And then you took off your trousers and you said, 'Does
|
|
anybody want a fight!' Oh, you old baboon.
|
|
|
|
CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
Give me a kiss.
|
|
|
|
MRS CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
And then you sang 'Bread of Heaven,' tenor and bass.
|
|
|
|
CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
I always sing 'Bread of Heaven.'
|
|
|
|
MRS CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
And then you did a little dance on the table.
|
|
|
|
CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
I did?
|
|
MRS CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
Drop dead!
|
|
|
|
CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
And then what did I do?
|
|
|
|
MRS CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
Then you cried like a baby and said you were a poor drunk
|
|
orphan with nowhere to go but the grave.
|
|
|
|
CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
And what did I do next, my dear?
|
|
|
|
MRS CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
Then you danced on the table all over again and said you
|
|
were King Solomon Owen and I was your Mrs Sheba.
|
|
|
|
CHERRY OWEN (_Softy_)
|
|
|
|
And then?
|
|
|
|
MRS CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
And then I got you into bed and you snored all night like
|
|
a brewery.
|
|
|
|
[_Mr and Mrs Cherry Owen laugh delightedly together_
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
From Beynon Butchers in Coronation Street, the smell of
|
|
fried liver sidles out with onions on its breath. And listen!
|
|
In the dark breakfast-room behind the shop, Mr and Mrs Beynon,
|
|
waited upon by their treasure, enjoy, between bites, their
|
|
everymorning hullabaloo, and Mrs Beynon slips the gristly
|
|
bits under the tasselled tablecloth to her fat cat.
|
|
|
|
[_Cat purrs_
|
|
|
|
MRS BEYNON
|
|
|
|
She likes the liver, Ben.
|
|
|
|
MR BEYNON
|
|
|
|
She ought to do, Bess. It's her brother's.
|
|
|
|
MRS BEYNON (_Screaming_)
|
|
|
|
Oh, d'you hear that, Lily?
|
|
|
|
LILY SMALLS
|
|
|
|
Yes, mum.
|
|
|
|
MRS BEYNON
|
|
|
|
We're eating pusscat.
|
|
|
|
LILY SMALLS
|
|
|
|
Yes, mum.
|
|
|
|
MRS BEYNON
|
|
|
|
Oh, you cat-butcher!
|
|
|
|
MR BEYNON
|
|
|
|
It was doctored, mind.
|
|
|
|
MRS BEYNON (_Hysterical_)
|
|
|
|
What's that got to do with it?
|
|
|
|
MR BEYNON
|
|
|
|
Yesterday we had mole.
|
|
|
|
MRS BEYNON
|
|
|
|
Oh, Lily, Lily!
|
|
|
|
MR BEYNON
|
|
|
|
Monday, otter. Tuesday, shrews.
|
|
|
|
[_Mrs Beynon screams_
|
|
|
|
LILY SMALLS
|
|
|
|
Go on, Mrs Beynon. He's the biggest liar in town.
|
|
|
|
MRS BEYNON
|
|
|
|
Don't you dare say that about Mr Beynon.
|
|
|
|
LILY SMALLS
|
|
|
|
Everybody knows it, mum.
|
|
|
|
MRS BEYNON
|
|
|
|
Mr Beynon never tells a lie. Do you, Ben?
|
|
|
|
MR BEYNON
|
|
|
|
No, Bess. And now I am going out after the corgies, with my
|
|
little cleaver.
|
|
|
|
MRS BEYNON
|
|
|
|
Oh, Lily, Lily!
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Up the street, in the Sailors Arms, Sinbad Sailors, grandson
|
|
of Mary Ann Sailors, draws a pint in the sunlit bar. The
|
|
ship's clock in the bar says half past eleven. Half past
|
|
eleven is opening time. The hands of the clock have stayed
|
|
still at half past eleven for fifty years. It is always
|
|
opening time in the Sailors Arms.
|
|
|
|
SINBAD
|
|
|
|
Here's to me, Sinbad.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
All over the town, babies and old men are cleaned and put into
|
|
their broken prams and wheeled on to the sunlit cockled cobbles
|
|
or out into the backyards under the dancing underclothes, and
|
|
left. A baby cries.
|
|
|
|
OLD MAN
|
|
|
|
I want my pipe and he wants his bottle.
|
|
|
|
[_School bell rings_
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Noses are wiped, heads picked, hair combed, paws scrubbed,
|
|
ears boxed, and the children shrilled off to school.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Fishermen grumble to their nets. Nogood Boyo goes out in
|
|
the dinghy _Zanzibar_, ships the oars, drifts slowly in the
|
|
dab-filled bay, and, lying on his back in the unbaled water,
|
|
among crabs' legs and tangled lines, looks up at the
|
|
spring sky.
|
|
|
|
NOGOOD BOYO (_Softly, lazily_)
|
|
|
|
I don't know who's up there and I don't care.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
He turns his head and looks up at Llaregyb Hill, and sees,
|
|
among green lathered trees, the white houses of the strewn
|
|
away farms, where farmboys whistle, dogs shout, cows low,
|
|
but all too far away for him, or you, to hear. And in the
|
|
town, the shops squeak open. Mr Edwards, in butterfly-collar
|
|
and straw-hat at the doorway of Manchester House, measures
|
|
with his eye the dawdlers-by for striped flannel shirts and
|
|
shrouds and flowery blouses, and bellows to himself in the
|
|
darkness behind his eye
|
|
|
|
MR EDWARDS (_Whispers_)
|
|
|
|
I love Miss Price.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Syrup is sold in the post-office. A car drives to market,
|
|
full of fowls and a farmer. Milk-churns stand at Coronation
|
|
Corner like short silver policemen. And, sitting at the
|
|
open window of Schooner House, blind Captain Cat hears all
|
|
the morning of the town.
|
|
|
|
[_School bell in background.
|
|
Children's voices. The noise of
|
|
children's feet on the cobbles_
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT (_Softly, to himself_)
|
|
|
|
Maggie Richards, Ricky Rhys, Tommy Powell, our Sal, little
|
|
Gerwain, Billy Swansea with the dog's voice, one of Mr
|
|
Waldo's, nasty Humphrey, Jackie with the sniff....Where's
|
|
Dicky's Albie? and the boys from Ty-pant? Perhaps they got
|
|
the rash again.
|
|
|
|
[_A sudden cry among the children's voices_
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
Somebody's hit Maggie Richards. Two to one it's Billy Swansea.
|
|
Never trust a boy who barks.
|
|
|
|
[_A burst of yelping crying_
|
|
|
|
Right again! It's Billy.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
And the children's voices cry away.
|
|
|
|
[_Postman's rat-a-tat on door, distant_
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT (_Softly, to himself_)
|
|
|
|
That's Willy Nilly knocking at Bay View. Rat-a-tat, very
|
|
soft. The knocker's got a kid glove on. Who's sent a letter
|
|
to Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard?
|
|
|
|
[_Rat-a-tat, distant again_
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
Careful now, she swabs the front glassy. Every step's like
|
|
a bar of soap. Mind your size twelveses. That old Bessie
|
|
would beeswax the lawn to make the birds slip.
|
|
|
|
WILLY NILLY
|
|
|
|
Morning, Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard.
|
|
|
|
MRS OGMORE -PRITCHARD
|
|
|
|
Good morning, postman.
|
|
|
|
WILLY NILLY
|
|
|
|
Here's a letter for you with stamped and addressed envelope
|
|
enclosed, all the way from Builth Wells. A gentleman wants
|
|
to study birds and can he have accommodation for two weeks
|
|
and a bath vegetarian.
|
|
|
|
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
|
|
|
|
No.
|
|
WILLY NILLY (_Persuasively_)
|
|
|
|
You wouldn't know he was in the house, Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard.
|
|
He'd be out in the mornings at the bang of dawn with his bag
|
|
of breadcrumbs and his little telescope...
|
|
|
|
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
|
|
|
|
And come home at all hours covered with feathers. I don't
|
|
want persons in my nice clean rooms breathing all over the
|
|
chairs...
|
|
|
|
WILLY NILLY
|
|
|
|
Cross my heart, he won't breathe.
|
|
|
|
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
|
|
|
|
...and putting their feet on my carpets and sneezing on my
|
|
china and sleeping in my sheets...
|
|
|
|
WILLY NILLY
|
|
|
|
He only wants a single bed, Mrs Ogmore. Pritchard.
|
|
|
|
[_Door slams_
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT (_Softly_)
|
|
|
|
And back she goes to the kitchen to polish the potatoes.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Captain Cat hears Willy Nilly's feet heavy on the distant
|
|
cobbles.
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
One, two, three, four, five...That's Mrs Rose Cottage.
|
|
What's to-day? To-day she gets the letter from her sister
|
|
in Gorslas. How's the twins' teeth?
|
|
|
|
He's stopping at School House.
|
|
|
|
WILLY NILLY
|
|
|
|
Morning, Mrs Pugh. Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard won't have a
|
|
gentleman in from Builth Wells because he'll sleep in her
|
|
sheets, Mrs Rose Cottage's sister in Gorslas's twins have
|
|
got to have them out...
|
|
|
|
MRS PUGH
|
|
|
|
Give me the parcel.
|
|
|
|
WILLY NILLY
|
|
|
|
It's for _Mr_ Pugh, Mrs Pugh.
|
|
|
|
MRS PUGH
|
|
|
|
Never you mind. What's inside it?
|
|
|
|
WILLY NILLY
|
|
|
|
A book called _Lives of the Great Poisoners_.
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
That's Manchester House.
|
|
|
|
WILLY NILLY
|
|
|
|
Morning, Mr Edwards. Very small news. Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard
|
|
won't have birds in the house, and Mr Pugh's bought a book
|
|
now on how to do in Mrs Pugh.
|
|
|
|
MR EDWARDS
|
|
|
|
Have you got a letter from _her?_
|
|
|
|
WILLY NILLY
|
|
|
|
Miss Price loves you with all her heart. Smelling of lavender
|
|
to-day. She's down to the last of the elderflower wine but
|
|
the quince jam's bearing up and she's knitting roses on the
|
|
doilies. Last week she sold three jars of boiled sweets,
|
|
pound of humbugs, half a box of jellybabies and six coloured
|
|
photos of Llaregyb. Yours for ever. Then twenty-one X's.
|
|
|
|
MR EDWARDS
|
|
|
|
Oh, Willy Nilly, she's a ruby! Here's my letter. Put it
|
|
into her hands now.
|
|
|
|
[_Slow feet on cobbles, quicker feet approaching_
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
Mr Waldo hurrying to the Sailors Arms. Pint of stout with
|
|
a egg in it. [_Footsteps stop_
|
|
|
|
(_Softly_) There's a letter for him.
|
|
|
|
WILLY NILLY
|
|
|
|
It's another paternity summons, Mr Waldo.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
The quick footsteps hurry on along the cobbles and up
|
|
three steps to the Sailors Arms.
|
|
|
|
MR WALDO (_Calling out_)
|
|
|
|
Quick, Sinbad. Pint of stout. And no egg in.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
People are moving now up and down the cobbled street.
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
All the women are out this morning, in the sun. You can
|
|
tell it's Spring. There goes Mrs Cherry, you can tell her
|
|
by her trotters, off she trots new as a daisy. Who's that
|
|
talking by the pump? Mrs Floyd and Boyo, talking flatfish.
|
|
What can you talk about flatfish? That's Mrs Dai Bread
|
|
One, waltzing up the street like a jelly, every time she
|
|
shakes it's slap slap slap. Who's that? Mrs Butcher Beynon
|
|
with her pet black cat, it follows her everywhere, miaow
|
|
and all. There goes Mrs Twenty-Three, important, the sun
|
|
gets up and goes down in her dewlap, when she shuts her
|
|
eyes, it's night. High heels now, in the morning too, Mrs
|
|
Rose Cottage's eldest Mae, seventeen and never been kissed
|
|
ho ho, going young and milking under my window to the
|
|
field with the nannygoats, she reminds me all the way.
|
|
Can't hear what the women are gabbing round the pump. Same
|
|
as ever. Who's having a baby, who blacked whose eye, seen
|
|
Polly Garter giving her belly an airing, there should be
|
|
a law, seen Mrs Beynon's new mauve jumper, it's her old
|
|
grey jumper dyed, who's dead, who's dying, there's a
|
|
lovely day, oh the cost of soapflakes!
|
|
|
|
[_Organ music, distant_
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
Organ Morgan's at it early. You can tell it's Spring.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
And he hears the noise of milk-cans.
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
Ocky Milkman on his round. I will say this, his milk's as
|
|
fresh as the dew. Half dew it is. Snuffle on, Ocky,
|
|
watering the town...Somebody's coming. Now the voices
|
|
round the pump can see somebody coming. Hush, there's a
|
|
hush! You can tell by the noise of the hush, it's Polly
|
|
Garter. (_Louder_) Hullo, Polly, who's there?
|
|
|
|
POLLY GARTER (_Off_)
|
|
|
|
Me, love.
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
_That's_ Polly Garter. (_Softly_) Hullo, Polly my love, can
|
|
you hear the dumb goose-hiss of the wives as they huddle
|
|
and peck or flounce at a waddle away? Who cuddled you
|
|
when? Which of their pandering hubbies moaned in Milk Wood
|
|
for your naughty mothering arms and body like a wardrobe,
|
|
love? Scrub the floors of the Welfare Hall for the
|
|
Mothers' Union Social Dance, you're one mother won't
|
|
wriggle her roly poly bum or pat her fat little buttery
|
|
feet in that wedding-ringed holy to-night though the
|
|
waltzing breadwinners snatched from the cosy smoke of the
|
|
Sailors Arms will grizzle and mope.
|
|
|
|
[_A cock crows_
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
Too late, cock, too late
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
for the town's half over with its morning. The morning's
|
|
busy as bees.
|
|
|
|
[_Organ music fades into silence_
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
There's the clip clop of horses on the sunhoneyed cobbles
|
|
of the humming streets, hammering of horse- shoes, gobble
|
|
quack and cackle, tomtit twitter from the bird-ounced
|
|
boughs, braying on Donkey Down. Bread is baking, pigs are
|
|
grunting, chop goes the butcher, milk-churns bell, tills
|
|
ring, sheep cough, dogs shout, saws sing. Oh, the Spring
|
|
whinny and morning moo from the clog dancing farms, the
|
|
gulls' gab and rabble on the boat-bobbing river and sea
|
|
and the cockles bubbling in the sand, scamper of
|
|
sanderlings, curlew cry, crow caw, pigeon coo, clock
|
|
strike, bull bellow, and the ragged gabble of the
|
|
beargarden school as the women scratch and babble in Mrs
|
|
Organ Morgan's general shop where everything is sold:
|
|
custard, buckets, henna, rat-traps, shrimp-nets, sugar,
|
|
stamps, confetti, paraffin, hatchets, whistles.
|
|
|
|
FIRST WOMAN
|
|
|
|
Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard
|
|
|
|
SECOND WOMAN
|
|
|
|
la di da
|
|
|
|
FIRST WOMAN
|
|
|
|
got a man in Builth Wells
|
|
|
|
THIRD WOMAN
|
|
|
|
and he got a little telescope to look at birds
|
|
|
|
SECOND WOMAN
|
|
|
|
Willy Nilly said
|
|
|
|
THIRD WOMAN
|
|
|
|
Remember her first husband? He didn't need a telescope
|
|
|
|
FIRST WOMAN
|
|
|
|
he looked at them undressing through the keyhole
|
|
|
|
THIRD WOMAN
|
|
|
|
and he used to shout Tallyho
|
|
|
|
SECOND WOMAN
|
|
|
|
but Mr Ogmore was a proper gentleman
|
|
|
|
FIRST WOMAN
|
|
|
|
even though he hanged his collie.
|
|
|
|
THIRD WOMAN
|
|
|
|
Seen Mrs Butcher Beynon?
|
|
|
|
SECOND WOMAN
|
|
|
|
she said Butcher Beynon put dogs in the mincer
|
|
|
|
FIRST WOMAN
|
|
|
|
go on, he's pulling her leg
|
|
|
|
THIRD WOMAN
|
|
|
|
now don't you dare tell her that, there's a dear
|
|
|
|
SECOND WOMAN
|
|
|
|
or she'll think he's trying to pull it off and eat it,
|
|
|
|
FOURTH WOMAN
|
|
|
|
There's a nasty lot live here when you come to think.
|
|
|
|
FIRST WOMAN
|
|
|
|
Look at that Nogood Boyo now
|
|
|
|
SECOND WOMAN
|
|
|
|
too lazy to wipe his snout
|
|
|
|
THIRD WOMAN
|
|
|
|
and going out fishing every day and all he ever brought
|
|
back was a Mrs Samuels
|
|
|
|
FIRST WOMAN
|
|
|
|
been in the water a week.
|
|
|
|
SECOND WOMAN
|
|
|
|
And look at Ocky Milkman's wife that nobody's ever seen
|
|
|
|
FIRST WOMAN
|
|
|
|
he keeps her in the cupboard with the empties
|
|
|
|
THIRD WOMAN
|
|
|
|
and think of Dai Bread with two wives
|
|
|
|
SECONE WOMAN
|
|
|
|
one for the daytime one for the night.
|
|
|
|
FOURTH WOMAN
|
|
|
|
Men are brutes on the quiet.
|
|
|
|
THIRD WOMAN
|
|
|
|
And how's Organ Morgan, Mrs Morgan?
|
|
|
|
FIRST WOMAN
|
|
|
|
you look dead beat
|
|
|
|
SECOND WOMAN
|
|
|
|
it's organ organ all the time with him
|
|
|
|
THIRD WOMAN
|
|
|
|
up every night until midnight playing the organ.
|
|
|
|
MRS ORGAN MORGAN
|
|
|
|
Oh, I'm a martyr to music.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Outside, the sun springs down on the rough and tumbling
|
|
town. It runs through the hedges of Goosegog Lane, cuffing
|
|
the birds to sing. Spring whips green down Cockle Row, and
|
|
the shells ring out. Llaregyb this snip of a morning is
|
|
wildfruit and warm, the streets, fields, sands and waters
|
|
springing in the young sun.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Evans the Death presses hard with black gloves on the
|
|
coffin of his breast in case his hearts jumps out,
|
|
|
|
EVANS THE DEATH (_Harshly_)
|
|
|
|
Where's your dignity. Lie down.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Spring stirs Gossamer Beynon schoolmistress like spoon.
|
|
|
|
GOSSAMER BEYNON (_Tearfully_)
|
|
|
|
Oh, what can I do? I'll never be refined if I twitch.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Spring this strong morning foams in a flame in Jack Black
|
|
as he cobbles a high-heeled shoe for Mrs Dai Bread Two the
|
|
gypsy, but he hammers it sternly out.
|
|
|
|
JACK BLACK (_To a hammer rhythm_)
|
|
|
|
There is _no leg_ belonging to the foot that belongs to this
|
|
shoe.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
The sun and the green breeze ship Captain Cat sea-memory
|
|
again.
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
No, _I'll_ take the mulatto, by God, who's captain here?
|
|
Parlez-vous jig jig, Madam?
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Mary Ann Sailors says very softly to herself as she looks
|
|
out at Llaregyb Hill from the bedroom where she was born
|
|
|
|
MARY ANN SAILORS (_Loudly_)
|
|
|
|
It is Spring in Llaregyb in the sun in my old age, and
|
|
this is the Chosen Land.
|
|
|
|
[_A choir of children's voices suddenly cries out on one,
|
|
high, glad, long, sighing note_
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
And in Willy Nilly the Postman's dark and sizzling damp
|
|
tea-coated misty pygmy kitchen where the spittingcat
|
|
kettles throb and hop on the range, Mrs Willy Nilly steams
|
|
open Mr Mog Edwards' letter to Miss Myfanwy Price and
|
|
reads it aloud to Willy Nilly by the squint of the Spring
|
|
sun through the one sealed window running with tears,
|
|
while the drugged, bedraggled hens at the back door
|
|
whimper and snivel for the lickerish bog-black tea.
|
|
|
|
MRS WILLY NILLY
|
|
|
|
From Manchester House, Llaregyb. Sole Prop: Mr Mog Edwards
|
|
(late of Twll), Linendraper, Haberdasher, Master Tailor,
|
|
Costumier. For West End Negligee, Lingerie, Teagowns,
|
|
Evening Dress, Trousseaux, Layettes. Also Ready to Wear
|
|
for All Occasions. Economical Outfitting for Agricultural
|
|
Employment Our Speciality, Wardrobes Bought. Among Our
|
|
Satisfied Customers Ministers of Religion and J .P 's.
|
|
Fittings by Appointment. Advertising Weekly in the _Twll
|
|
Bugle_. Beloved Myfanwy Price my Bride in Heaven,
|
|
|
|
MOG EDWARDS
|
|
|
|
I love you until Death do us part and then we shall be
|
|
together for ever and ever. A new parcel of ribbons has
|
|
come from Carmarthen to-day, all the colours in the
|
|
rainbow. I wish I could tie a ribbon in your hair a white
|
|
one but it cannot be. I dreamed last night you were all
|
|
dripping wet and you sat on my lap as the Reverend Jenkins
|
|
went down the street. I see you got a mermaid in your lap
|
|
he said and he lifted his hat. He is a proper Christian.
|
|
Not like Cherry Owen who said you should have thrown her
|
|
back he said. Business is very poorly. Polly Garter bought
|
|
two garters with roses but she never got stockings so what
|
|
is the use I say. Mr Waldo tried to sell me a woman's
|
|
nightie outsize he said he found it and we know where. I
|
|
sold a packet of pins to Tom the Sailors to pick his
|
|
teeth. If this goes on I shall be in the workhouse. My
|
|
heart is in your bosom and yours is in mine. God be with
|
|
you always Myfanwy Price and keep you lovely for me in His
|
|
Heavenly Mansion. I must stop now and remain, Your Eternal,
|
|
Mog Edwards.
|
|
|
|
MRS WILLY NILLY
|
|
|
|
And then a little message with a rubber stamp. Shop at
|
|
Mog's!!!
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE.
|
|
|
|
And Willy Nilly, rumbling, jockeys out again to the
|
|
three-seated shack called the House of Commons in the back
|
|
where the hens weep, and sees, in sudden Springshine,
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
herring gulls heckling down to the harbour where the
|
|
fishermen spit and prop the morning up and eye the fishy
|
|
sea smooth to the sea's end as it lulls in blue. Green and
|
|
gold money, tobacco, tinned salmon, hats with feathers,
|
|
pots of fish-paste, warmth for the winter-to-be, weave and
|
|
leap in it rich and slippery in the flash and shapes of
|
|
fishes through the cold sea-streets. But with blue lazy
|
|
eyes the fishermen gaze at that milkmaid whispering water
|
|
with no nick or ripple as though it blew great guns and
|
|
serpents and typhooned the town.
|
|
|
|
FISHERMAN
|
|
|
|
Too rough for fishing to-day.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
And they thank God, and gob at a gull for luck, and
|
|
moss-slow and silent make their way uphill, from the still
|
|
still sea, towards the Sailors Arms as the children
|
|
|
|
[_School bell_
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
spank and scamper rough and singing out of school into the
|
|
draggletail yard. And Captain Cat at his window says soft
|
|
to himself the words of their song.
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT (_To the beat of the singing_)
|
|
|
|
Johnnie Crack and Flossie Snail
|
|
Kept their baby in a
|
|
milking pail Flossie
|
|
Snail and Johnnie Crack
|
|
One would pull it out and one would put it back
|
|
|
|
O it's my turn now said Flossie Snail
|
|
To take the baby from the milking pail
|
|
And it's my turn now said Johnnie Crack
|
|
To smack it on the head and put it back
|
|
|
|
Johnnie Crack and Flossie Snail
|
|
Kept their baby in a milking pail
|
|
One would put it back and one would pull it out
|
|
And all it had to drink was ale and stout
|
|
For Johnnie Crack and Flossie Snail
|
|
Always used to say that stout and ale
|
|
Was _good_ for a baby in a milking pail.
|
|
|
|
[_Long pause_
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
The music of the spheres is heard distinctly over Milk
|
|
Wood. It is 'The Rustle of Spring.'
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
A glee-party sings in Bethesda Graveyard, gay but muffled.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Vegetables make love above the tenors
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
and dogs bark blue in the face.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard belches in a teeny hanky and chases
|
|
the sunlight with a flywhisk, but even she cannot drive
|
|
out the Spring: from one of the finger-bowls a primrose
|
|
grows.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Mrs Dai Bread One and Mrs Dai Bread Two are sitting
|
|
outside their house in Donkey Lane, one darkly one plumply
|
|
blooming in the quick, dewy sun. Mrs Dai Bread Two is
|
|
looking into a crystal ball which she holds in the lap of
|
|
her dirty yellow petticoat, hard against her hard dark
|
|
thighs.
|
|
|
|
MRS DAI BREAD TWO
|
|
|
|
Cross my palm with silver. Out of our housekeeping money.
|
|
Aah!
|
|
|
|
MRS DAI BREAD ONE
|
|
|
|
What d'you see, lovie?
|
|
|
|
MRS DAI BREAD TWO
|
|
|
|
I see a featherbed. With three pillows on it. And a text
|
|
above the bed. I can't read what it says, there's great
|
|
clouds blowing. Now they have blown away. God is Love, the
|
|
text says.
|
|
|
|
MRS DAI BREAD ONE (_Delighted_)
|
|
|
|
That's _our_ bed.
|
|
|
|
MRS DAI BREAD TWO
|
|
|
|
And now it's vanished. The sun's spinning like a top.
|
|
Who's this coming out of the sun? It's a hairy little man
|
|
with big pink lips. He got a wall eye.
|
|
|
|
MRS DAI BREAD ONE
|
|
|
|
It's Dai, it's Dai Bread!
|
|
|
|
MRS DAI BREAD TWO
|
|
|
|
Ssh! The featherbed's floating back. The little man's
|
|
taking his boots off. He's pulling his shirt over his
|
|
head. He's beating his chest with his fists. I le's
|
|
climbing into bed.
|
|
|
|
MRS DAI BREAD ONE
|
|
|
|
Go on, go on.
|
|
|
|
MRS DAI BREAD TWO
|
|
|
|
There's two women in bed. He looks at them both, with his
|
|
head cocked on one side. He's whistling through his teeth.
|
|
Now he grips his little arms round one of the women.
|
|
|
|
MRS DAI BREAD ONE
|
|
|
|
Which one, which one?
|
|
|
|
MRS DAI BREAD TWO
|
|
|
|
I can't see any more. There's great clouds blowing again.
|
|
|
|
MRS DAI BREAD ONE
|
|
|
|
Ach, the mean old clouds!
|
|
|
|
[_Pause. The children's singing fades_
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
The morning is all singing. The Reverend Eli Jenkins, busy
|
|
on his morning calls, stops outside the Welfare Hall to
|
|
hear Polly Garter as she scrubs the floors for the
|
|
Mothers' Union Dance to-night.
|
|
|
|
POLLY GARTER (_Singing_)
|
|
|
|
I loved a man whose name was Tom
|
|
He was strong as a bear and two yards long
|
|
I loved a man whose name was Dick
|
|
He was big as a barrel and three feet thick
|
|
And I loved a man whose name was Harry
|
|
Six feet tall and sweet as a cherry
|
|
But the one I loved best awake or asleep
|
|
Was little Willy Wee and he's six feet deep.
|
|
|
|
O Tom Dick and Harry were three fine men
|
|
And I'll never have such loving again
|
|
But little Willy Wee who took me on his knee
|
|
Little Willy Wee was the man for me.
|
|
|
|
Now men from every parish round
|
|
Run after me and roll me on the ground
|
|
But whenever I love another man back
|
|
Johnnie from the Hill or Sailing Jack
|
|
I always think as they do what they please
|
|
Of Tom Dick and Harry who were tall as trees
|
|
And most I think when I'm by their side
|
|
Of little Willy Wee who downed and died.
|
|
|
|
O Tom Dick and Harry were three fine men
|
|
And I'll never have such loving again
|
|
But little Willy Wee who took me on his knee
|
|
Little Willy Weazel is, the man for me.
|
|
|
|
REV. ELI JENKINS
|
|
|
|
Praise the Lord! We are a musical nation.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
And the Reverend Jenkins hurries on through the town to
|
|
visit the sick with jelly and poems.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
The town's as full as a lovebird's egg.
|
|
|
|
MR WALDO
|
|
|
|
There goes the Reverend,
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
says Mr Waldo at the smoked herring brown window of the
|
|
unwashed Sailors Arms,
|
|
|
|
MR WALDO
|
|
|
|
with his brolly and his odes. Fill 'em up, Sinbad, I'm on
|
|
the treacle to-day.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
The silent fishermen flush down their pints.
|
|
|
|
SINBAD
|
|
|
|
Oh, Mr Waldo,
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
sighs Sinbad Sailors,
|
|
|
|
SINBAD
|
|
|
|
I dote on that Gossamer Beynon. She's a lady all over.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
And Mr Waldo, who is thinking of a woman soft as Eve and
|
|
sharp as sciatica to share his bread-pudding bed, answers
|
|
|
|
MR WALDO
|
|
|
|
No lady that I know is
|
|
|
|
SINBAD
|
|
|
|
And if only grandma'd die, cross my heart I'd go down on
|
|
my knees Mr Waldo and I'd say Miss Gossamer I'd say
|
|
|
|
CHILDREN'S VOICES
|
|
|
|
When birds do sing hey ding a ding a ding
|
|
Sweet lovers love the Spring...
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Polly Garter sings, still on her knees,
|
|
|
|
POLLY GARTER
|
|
|
|
Tom Dick and Harry were three fine men
|
|
And I'll never have such
|
|
|
|
CHILDREN
|
|
|
|
ding a ding
|
|
|
|
POLLY GARTER
|
|
|
|
again.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
And the morning school is over, and Captain Cat at his
|
|
curtained schooner's porthole open to the Spring sun tides
|
|
hears the naughty forfeiting children tumble and rhyme on
|
|
the cobbles.
|
|
|
|
GIRLS' VOICES
|
|
|
|
Gwennie call the boys
|
|
They make such a noise.
|
|
|
|
GIRL
|
|
|
|
Boys boys boys
|
|
Come along to me'.
|
|
|
|
GIRLS' VOICES
|
|
|
|
Boys boys boys
|
|
Kiss Gwennie where she says
|
|
Or give her a penny.
|
|
Go on, Gwennie.
|
|
|
|
GIRL
|
|
|
|
Kiss me in Goosegog Lane
|
|
Or give me a penny.
|
|
What's your name?
|
|
|
|
FIRST BOY
|
|
|
|
Billy.
|
|
|
|
GIRL
|
|
|
|
Kiss me in Goosegog Lane Billy
|
|
Or give me a penny silly.
|
|
|
|
FIRST BO Y
|
|
|
|
Gwennie Gwennie
|
|
I kiss you in Goosegog Lane.
|
|
Now I haven't got to give you a penny.
|
|
|
|
GIRLS' VOICES
|
|
|
|
Boys boys boys
|
|
Kiss Gwennie where she says
|
|
Or give her a penny.
|
|
Go on, Gwennie.
|
|
|
|
GIRL
|
|
|
|
Kiss me on Llaregyb Hill
|
|
Or give me a penny.
|
|
What's your name?
|
|
|
|
SECOND BOY
|
|
|
|
Johnnie Cristo.
|
|
|
|
GIRL
|
|
|
|
Kiss me on Llaregyb Hill Johnnie Cristo
|
|
Or give me a penny mister.
|
|
|
|
SECOND BOY
|
|
|
|
Gwennie Gwennie
|
|
I kiss you on Llaregyb Hill.
|
|
Now I haven't got to give you a penny.
|
|
|
|
GIRLS' VOICES
|
|
|
|
Boys boys boys
|
|
Kiss Gwennie where she says
|
|
Or give her a penny.
|
|
Go on, Gwennie.
|
|
|
|
GIRL
|
|
|
|
Kiss me in Milk Wood
|
|
Or give me a penny.
|
|
What's your name?
|
|
|
|
THIRD BOY
|
|
|
|
Dicky.
|
|
|
|
GIRL
|
|
|
|
Kiss me in Milk Wood Dicky
|
|
Or give me a penny quickly.
|
|
|
|
THIRD BOY
|
|
|
|
Gwennie Gwennie
|
|
I can't kiss you in Milk Wood.
|
|
|
|
GIRLS' VOICES
|
|
|
|
Gwennie ask him why.
|
|
|
|
GIRL
|
|
|
|
Why?
|
|
|
|
THIRD BOY
|
|
|
|
Because my mother says I mustn't.
|
|
|
|
GIRLS' VOICES
|
|
|
|
Cowardy cowardy custard
|
|
Give Gwennie a penny.
|
|
|
|
GIRL
|
|
|
|
Give me a penny.
|
|
|
|
THIRD BOY
|
|
|
|
I haven't got any.
|
|
|
|
GIRLS' VOICES
|
|
|
|
Put him in the river
|
|
Up to his liver
|
|
Quick quick Dirty Dick
|
|
Beat him on the bum
|
|
With a rhubarb stick.
|
|
Aiee!
|
|
Hush!
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
And the shrill girls giggle and master around him and
|
|
squeal as they clutch and thrash, and he blubbers away
|
|
downhill with his patched pants falling, and his
|
|
tear-splashed blush burns all the way as the triumphant
|
|
bird-like sisters scream with buttons in their claws and
|
|
the bully brothers hoot after him his little nickname and
|
|
his mother's shame and his father's wickedness with the
|
|
loose wild barefoot women of the hovels of the hills. It
|
|
all means nothing at all, and, howling for his milky mum,
|
|
for her cawl and buttermilk and cowbreath and welshcakes
|
|
and the fat birth-smelling bed and moonlit kitchen of her
|
|
arms, he'll never forget as he paddles blind home through
|
|
the weeping end of the world. Then his tormentors tussle
|
|
and run to the Cockle Street sweet-shop, their pennies
|
|
sticky as honey, to buy from Miss Myfanwy Price, who is
|
|
cocky and neat as a puff-bosomed robin and her small round
|
|
buttocks tight as ticks, gobstoppers big as wens that
|
|
rainbow as you suck, brandyballs, winegums, hundreds and
|
|
thousands, liquorice sweet as sick, nougat to tug and
|
|
ribbon out like another red rubbery tongue, gum to glue
|
|
in girls' curls, crimson coughdrops to spit blood,
|
|
ice-cream comets, dandelion-and-burdock, raspberry and
|
|
cherryade, pop goes the weasel and the wind.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Gossamer Beynon high-heels out of school The sun hums down
|
|
through the cotton flowers of her dress into the bell of
|
|
her heart and buzzes in the honey there and couches and
|
|
kisses, lazy-loving and boozed, in her red-berried breast.
|
|
Eyes run from the trees and windows of the street,
|
|
steaming 'Gossamer,' and strip her to the nipples and the
|
|
bees. She blazes naked past the Sailors Arms, the only
|
|
woman on the Dai-Adamed earth. Sinbad Sailors places on
|
|
her thighs still dewdamp from the first mangrowing
|
|
cockcrow garden his reverent goat-bearded hands.
|
|
|
|
GOSSAMER BEYNON
|
|
|
|
I don't care if he _is_ common,
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
she whispers to her salad-day deep self,
|
|
|
|
GOSSAMER BEYNON
|
|
|
|
I want to gobble him up. I don't care if he _does_ drop his
|
|
aitches,
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
she tells the stripped and mother-of-the-world big-beamed
|
|
and Eve-hipped spring of her self,
|
|
|
|
GOSSAMER BEYNON
|
|
|
|
so long as he's all cucumber and hooves.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Sinbad Sailors watches her go by, demure and proud and
|
|
schoolmarm in her crisp flower dress and sun-defying hat,
|
|
with never a look or lilt or wriggle, the butcher's
|
|
unmelting icemaiden daughter veiled for ever from the
|
|
hungry hug of his eyes.
|
|
|
|
SINBAD SAILORS
|
|
|
|
Oh, Gossamer Beynon, why are you so proud?
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
he grieves to his guinness,
|
|
|
|
SINBAD SAILORS
|
|
|
|
Oh, beautiful beautiful Gossamer B, I wish I wish that you
|
|
were for me. I wish you were not so educated.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
She feels his goatbeard tickle her in the middle of the
|
|
world like a tuft of wiry fire, and she turns in a terror
|
|
of delight away from his whips and whiskery conflagration,
|
|
and sits down in the kitchen to a plate heaped high with
|
|
chips and the kidneys of lambs.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
In the blind-drawn dark dining-room of School House, dusty
|
|
and echoing as a dining-room in a vault, Mr and Mrs Pugh
|
|
are silent over cold grey cottage pie. Mr Pugh reads, as
|
|
he forks the shroud meat in, from _Lives of the Great
|
|
Poisoners_. He has bound a plain brown-paper cover round
|
|
the book. Slyly, between slow mouthfuls, he sidespies up
|
|
at Mrs Pugh, poisons her with his eye, then goes on
|
|
reading. He underlines certain passages and smiles in
|
|
secret.
|
|
|
|
MRS PUGH
|
|
|
|
Persons with manners do not read at table,
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
says Mrs Pugh. She swallows a digestive tablet as big as a
|
|
horse-pill, washing it down with clouded peasoup water.
|
|
|
|
[_Pause_
|
|
|
|
MRS PUGH
|
|
|
|
Some persons were brought up in pigsties.
|
|
|
|
MR PUGH
|
|
|
|
Pigs don't read at table, dear.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Bitterly she flicks dust from the broken cruet. It settles
|
|
on the pie in a thin gnat-rain.
|
|
|
|
MR PUGH
|
|
|
|
Pigs can't read, my dear.
|
|
|
|
MRS PUGH
|
|
|
|
I know one who can.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Alone in the hissing laboratory of his wishes, Mr Pugh
|
|
minces among bad vats and jeroboams, tiptoes through
|
|
spinneys of murdering herbs, agony dancing in his
|
|
crucibles, and mixes especially for Mrs Pugh a venomous
|
|
porridge unknown to toxicologists which will scald and
|
|
viper through her until her ears fall off like figs, her
|
|
toes grow big and black as balloons, and steam comes
|
|
screaming out of her navel.
|
|
|
|
MR PUGH
|
|
|
|
You know best, dear,
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
says Mr Pugh, and quick as a flash he ducks her in rat
|
|
soup.
|
|
|
|
MRS PUGH
|
|
|
|
What's that book by your trough, Mr Pugh?
|
|
|
|
MR PUGH
|
|
|
|
It's a theological work, my dear. _Lives of the Great
|
|
Saints_.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Mrs Pugh smiles. An icicle forms in the cold air of the
|
|
dining-vault.
|
|
|
|
MRS PUGH
|
|
|
|
I saw you talking to a saint this morning. Saint Polly
|
|
Garter. She was martyred again last night. Mrs Organ
|
|
Morgan saw her with Mr Waldo.
|
|
|
|
MRS ORGAN MORGAN
|
|
|
|
And when they saw me they pretended they were looking for
|
|
nests,
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
said Mrs Organ Morgan to her husband, with her mouth full
|
|
of fish as a pelican's.
|
|
|
|
MRS ORGAN MORGAN
|
|
|
|
But you don't go nesting in long combinations, I said to
|
|
myself, like Mr Waldo was wearing, and your dress nearly
|
|
over your head like Polly Garter's. Oh, they didn't fool me.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
One big bird gulp, and the flounder's gone. She licks her
|
|
lips and goes stabbing again.
|
|
|
|
MRS ORGAN MORGAN
|
|
|
|
And when you think of all those babies she's got, then all
|
|
I can say is she'd better give up bird nesting that's all
|
|
I can say, it isn't the right kind of hobby at all for a
|
|
woman that can't say No even to midgets. Remember Bob
|
|
Spit? He wasn't any bigger than a baby and he gave her
|
|
two. But they're two nice boys, I will say that, Fred Spit
|
|
and Arthur. Sometimes I like Fred best and sometimes I
|
|
like Arthur. Who do you like best, Organ?
|
|
|
|
ORGAN MORGAN
|
|
|
|
Oh, Bach without any doubt. Bach every time for me.
|
|
|
|
MRS ORGAN MORGAN
|
|
|
|
Organ Morgan, you haven't been listening to a word 1 said.
|
|
It's organ organ all the time with you..
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
And she bursts into tears, and, in the middle of her salty
|
|
howling, nimbly spears a small flatfish and pelicans it
|
|
whole.
|
|
|
|
ORGAN MORGAN
|
|
|
|
And then Palestrina,
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
says Organ Morgan.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Lord Cut-Glass, in his kitchen full of time, squats down
|
|
alone to a dogdish, marked Fido, of peppery fish-scraps
|
|
and listens to the voices of his sixty-six clocks, one for
|
|
each year of his loony age, and watches, with love, their
|
|
black-and-white moony loudlipped faces tocking the earth
|
|
away: slow clocks, quick clocks, pendulumed heart-knocks,
|
|
china, alarm, grandfather, cuckoo; clocks shaped like
|
|
Noah's whirring Ark, clocks that bicker in marble ships,
|
|
clocks in the wombs of glass women, hourglass chimers,
|
|
tu-wit-tuwoo clocks, clocks that pluck tunes, Vesuvius
|
|
clocks all black bells and lava, Niagara clocks that
|
|
cataract their ticks, old time-weeping clocks with ebony
|
|
beards, clocks with no hands for ever drumming out time
|
|
without ever knowing what time it is. His sixty-six
|
|
singers are all set at different hours. Lord Cut-Glass
|
|
lives in a house and a life at siege. Any minute or dark
|
|
day now, the unknown enemy will loot and savage downhill,
|
|
but they will not catch him napping. Sixty-six different
|
|
times in his fish-slimy kitchen ping, strike, tick, chime,
|
|
and tock.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
The lust and lilt and lather and emerald breeze and
|
|
crackle of the bird-praise and body of Spring with its
|
|
breasts full of rivering May-milk, means, to that lordly
|
|
fish-head nibbler, nothing but another nearness to the
|
|
tribes and navies of the Last Black Day who'll sear and
|
|
pillage down Armageddon Hill to his double-locked
|
|
rusty-shuttered tick-tock dust-scrabbled shack at the
|
|
bottom of the town that has fallen head over bells in love.
|
|
|
|
POLLY GARTER
|
|
|
|
And I'll never have such loving again,
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
pretty Polly hums and longs.
|
|
|
|
POLLY GARTER (_Sings_)
|
|
|
|
Now when farmers' boys on the first fair day
|
|
Come down from the hills to drink and be gay,
|
|
Before the sun sinks I'll lie there in their arms
|
|
For they're good bad boys from the lonely farms,
|
|
|
|
But I always think as we tumble into bed
|
|
Of little Willy Wee who is dead, dead, dead...
|
|
|
|
[_A silence_
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
The sunny slow lulling afternoon yawns and moons through
|
|
the dozy town. The sea lolls, laps and idles in, with
|
|
fishes sleeping in its lap. The meadows still as Sunday,
|
|
the shut-eye tasselled bulls, the goat-anddaisy dingles,
|
|
nap happy and lazy. The dumb duck-ponds snooze. Clouds sag
|
|
and pillow on Llaregyb Hill. Pigs grunt in a wet
|
|
wallow-bath, and smile as they snort and dream. They dream
|
|
of the acorned swill of the world, the rooting for
|
|
pig-fruit, the bagpipe dugs of the mother sow, the squeal
|
|
and snuffle of yesses of the women pigs in rut. They
|
|
mud-bask and snout in the pig-loving sun; their tails
|
|
curl; they rollick and slobber and snore to deep, smug,
|
|
after-swill sleep. Donkeys angelically drowse on Donkey
|
|
Down.
|
|
|
|
MRS PUGH
|
|
|
|
Persons with manners,
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
snaps Mrs cold Pugh,
|
|
|
|
MRS PUGH
|
|
|
|
do not nod at table.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Mr Pugh cringes awake. He puts on a soft-soaping smile: it
|
|
is sad and grey under his nicotine-eggyellow weeping
|
|
walrus Victorian moustache worn thick and long in memory
|
|
of Doctor Crippen.
|
|
|
|
MRS PUGH
|
|
|
|
You should wait until you retire to your sty,
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
says Mrs Pugh, sweet as a razor. His fawning measly
|
|
quarter-smile freezes. Sly and silent, he foxes into his
|
|
chemist's den and there, in a hiss and prussic circle
|
|
of cauldrons and phials brimful with pox and the Black
|
|
Death, cooks up a fricassee of deadly nightshade,
|
|
nicotine, hot frog, cyanide and bat-spit for his needling
|
|
stalactite hag and bednag of a pokerbacked nutcracker
|
|
wife.
|
|
|
|
MR PUGH
|
|
|
|
I beg your pardon, my dear,
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
he murmurs with a wheedle.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Captain Cat, at his window thrown wide to the sun and the
|
|
clippered seas he sailed long ago when his eyes were blue
|
|
and bright, slumbers and voyages; ear-ringed and rolling,
|
|
I Love You Rosie Probert tattooed on his belly, he brawls
|
|
with broken bottles in the fug and babel of the dark dock
|
|
bars, roves with a herd of short and good time cows in
|
|
every naughty port and twines and souses with the drowned
|
|
and blowzy-breasted dead. He weeps as he sleeps and sails.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
One voice of all he remembers most dearly as his dream
|
|
buckets down. Lazy early Rosie with the flaxen thatch,
|
|
whom he shared with Tom-Fred the donkeyman and many
|
|
another seaman, clearly and near to him speaks from the
|
|
bedroom of her dust. In that gulf and haven, fleets by the
|
|
dozen have anchored for the little heaven of the night;
|
|
but she speaks to Captain napping Cat alone. Mrs Probert...
|
|
|
|
ROSIE PROBERT
|
|
|
|
from Duck Lane, Jack. Quack twice and ask for Rosie
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
...is the one love of his sea-life that was sardined with
|
|
women.
|
|
|
|
ROSIE PROBERT (_Softly_)
|
|
|
|
What seas did you see,
|
|
Tom Cat, Tom Cat,
|
|
In your sailoring days
|
|
Long long ago?
|
|
What sea beasts were
|
|
In the wavery green
|
|
When you were my master?
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
I'll tell you the truth.
|
|
Seas barking like
|
|
seals, Blue seas and green,
|
|
Seas covered with eels
|
|
And mermen and whales.
|
|
|
|
ROSIE PROBERT
|
|
|
|
What seas did you sail
|
|
Old whaler when
|
|
On the blubbery waves
|
|
Between Frisco and Wales
|
|
You were my bosun?
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
As true as I'm here
|
|
Dear you Tom Cat's tart
|
|
You landlubber Rosie
|
|
You cosy love
|
|
My easy as easy
|
|
My true sweetheart,
|
|
Seas green as a bean
|
|
Seas gliding with swans
|
|
In the seal-barking moon.
|
|
|
|
ROSIE PROBERT
|
|
|
|
What seas were rocking
|
|
My little deck hand
|
|
My favourite husband
|
|
In your seaboots and hunger
|
|
My duck my whaler
|
|
My honey my daddy
|
|
My pretty sugar sailor.
|
|
With my name on your belly
|
|
When you were a boy
|
|
Long long ago?
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
I'll tell you no lies.
|
|
The only sea I saw
|
|
Was the seesaw sea
|
|
With you riding on it.
|
|
Lie down, lie easy.
|
|
Let me shipwreck in your thighs.
|
|
|
|
ROSIE PROBERT,
|
|
|
|
Knock twice, Jack,
|
|
At the door of my grave
|
|
And ask for Rosie.
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
Rosie Probert.
|
|
|
|
ROSIE PROBERT
|
|
|
|
Remember her.
|
|
She is forgetting.
|
|
The earth which filled her mouth
|
|
Is vanishing from her.
|
|
Remember me.
|
|
I have forgotten you.
|
|
I am going into the darkness of the darkness for ever.
|
|
I have forgotten that I was ever born.
|
|
|
|
CHILD
|
|
|
|
Look,
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
says a child to her mother as they pass by the window of
|
|
Schooner House,
|
|
|
|
CHILD
|
|
|
|
Captain Cat is crying
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Captain Cat is crying
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
Come back, come back,
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
up the silences and echoes of the passages of the eternal
|
|
night.
|
|
|
|
CHILD
|
|
|
|
He's crying all over his nose,
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
says the child. Mother and child move on down the street.
|
|
|
|
CHILD
|
|
|
|
He's got a nose like strawberries,
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
the child says ; and then she forgets him too. She sees in
|
|
the still middle of the bluebagged bay Nogood Boyo fishing
|
|
from the _Zanzibar_.
|
|
|
|
CHILD
|
|
|
|
Nogood Boyo gave me three pennies yesterday but I wouldn't,
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
the child tells her mother.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Boyo catches a whalebone corset. It is all he has caught
|
|
all day.
|
|
|
|
NOGOOD BOYO
|
|
|
|
Bloody funny fish!
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Mrs Dai Bread Two gypsies up his mind's slow eye, dressed
|
|
only in a bangle.
|
|
|
|
NOGOOD BOYO
|
|
|
|
She's wearing her nightgown. (_Pleadingly_) Would you like
|
|
this nice wet corset, Mrs Dai Bread Two?
|
|
|
|
MRS DAI BREAD TWO
|
|
|
|
No, I _won't!_
|
|
|
|
NOGOOD BO YO
|
|
|
|
And a bite of my little apple?
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
he offers with no hope.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
She shakes her brass nightgown, and he chases her out of
|
|
his mind; and when he comes gusting back, there in the
|
|
bloodshot centre of his eye a geisha girl grins and bows
|
|
in a kimono of ricepaper.
|
|
|
|
NOGOOD BO YO
|
|
|
|
I want to be _good_ Boyo, but nobody'll let me,
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
he sighs as she writhes politely. The land fades, the sea
|
|
flocks silently away; and through the warm white cloud
|
|
where he lies, silky, tingling, uneasy Eastern music
|
|
undoes him in a Japanese minute.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
The afternoon buzzes like lazy bees round the flowers
|
|
round Mae Rose Cottage. Nearly asleep in the field of
|
|
nannygoats who hum and gently butt the sun, she blows love
|
|
on a puffball.
|
|
|
|
MAE ROSE COTTAGE (_Lazily_)
|
|
|
|
He loves me
|
|
He loves me not
|
|
He loves me
|
|
He loves me not
|
|
He _loves_ me!--the dirty old fool.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Lazy she lies alone in clover and sweet-grass, seventeen
|
|
and never been sweet in the grass ho ho.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
The Reverend Eli Jenkins inky in his cool front parlour or
|
|
poem-room tells only the truth in his Lifework--the
|
|
Population, Main Industry, Shipping, History, Topography,
|
|
Flora and Fauna of the town he worships in--the White Book
|
|
of Llaregyb. Portraits of famous bards and preachers, all
|
|
fur and wool from the squint to the kneecaps, hang over
|
|
him heavy as sheep, next to faint lady watercolours of
|
|
pale green Milk Wood like a lettuce salad dying. His
|
|
mother, propped against a pot in a palm, with her
|
|
wedding-ring waist and bust like a black-clothed
|
|
dining-table suffers in her stays.
|
|
|
|
REV. ELI JENKINS
|
|
|
|
Oh angels be careful there with your knives and forks,
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
he prays. There is no known likeness of his father Esau,
|
|
who, undogcollared because of his little weakness, was
|
|
scythed to the bone one harvest by mistake when sleeping
|
|
with his weakness in the corn. He lost all ambition and
|
|
died, with one leg.
|
|
|
|
REV. ELI JENKINS
|
|
|
|
Poor Dad,
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
grieves the Reverend Eli,
|
|
|
|
REV. ELI JENKINS
|
|
|
|
to die of drink and agriculture.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Farmer Watkins in Salt Lake Farm hates his cattle on the
|
|
hill as he ho's them in to milking.
|
|
|
|
UTAH WATKINS (_In a fury_)
|
|
|
|
Damn you, you damned dairies!
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
A cow kisses him.
|
|
|
|
UTAH WATKINS
|
|
|
|
Bite her to death!
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
he shouts to his deaf dog who smiles and licks his hands.
|
|
|
|
UTAH WATKINS
|
|
|
|
Gore him, sit on him, Daisy!
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
he bawls to the cow who barbed him with her tongue, and
|
|
she moos gentle words as he raves and dances among his
|
|
summerbreathed slaves walking delicately to the farm. The
|
|
coming of the end of the Spring day is already reflected
|
|
in the lakes of their great eyes. Bessie Bighead greets
|
|
them by the names she gave them when they were maidens.
|
|
|
|
BESSIE BIGHEAD
|
|
|
|
Peg, Meg, Buttercup, Moll,
|
|
Fan from the Castle,
|
|
Theodosia and Daisy.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
They bow their heads.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Look up Bessie Bighead in the White Book of Llaregyb and
|
|
you will find the few haggard rags and the one poor
|
|
glittering thread of her history laid out in pages there
|
|
with as much love and care as the lock of hair of a first
|
|
lost love. Conceived in Milk Wood, born in a barn, wrapped
|
|
in paper, left on a doorstep, bigheaded and bass-voiced
|
|
she grew in the dark until long-dead Gomer Owen kissed her
|
|
when she wasn't looking because he was dared. Now in the
|
|
light she'll work, sing, milk, say the cows' sweet names
|
|
and sleep until the night sucks out her soul and spits it
|
|
into the sky. In her life-long low light, holily Bessie
|
|
milks the fond lake-eyed cows as dusk showers slowly down
|
|
over byre, sea and town.
|
|
|
|
Utah Watkins curses through the farmyard on a carthorse.
|
|
|
|
UTAH WATKINS
|
|
|
|
Gallop, you bleeding cripple!
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
and the huge horse neighs softly as though he had given it
|
|
a lump of sugar.
|
|
|
|
Now the town is disk. Each cobble, donkey, goose and
|
|
gooseberry street is a thoroughfare of dusk; and dusk and
|
|
ceremonial dust, and- night's first darkening snow, and
|
|
the sleep of birds, drift under and through the live dusk
|
|
of this place of love. Llaregyb is the capital of dusk.
|
|
|
|
Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, at the first drop of the
|
|
dusk-shower, seals all her sea-view doors, draws the
|
|
germ-free blinds, sits, erect as a dry dream on a
|
|
high-backed hygienic chair and wills herself to cold,
|
|
quick sleep. At once, at twice, Mr Ogmore and Mr
|
|
Pritchard, who all dead day long have been gossiping like
|
|
ghosts in the woodshed, planning the loveless destruction
|
|
of their glass widow, reluctantly sigh and sidle into her
|
|
clean house.
|
|
|
|
MR PRITCHARD You first, Mr Ogmore.
|
|
|
|
MR OGMORE
|
|
|
|
After you, Mr Pritchard.
|
|
|
|
MR PRITCHARD
|
|
|
|
No, no, Mr Ogmore. You widowed her first.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
And in through the keyhole, with tears where their eyes
|
|
once were, they ooze and grumble.
|
|
|
|
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
|
|
|
|
Husbands,
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
she says in her sleep. There is acid love in her voice for
|
|
one of the two shambling phantoms. Mr Ogmore hopes that it
|
|
is not for him. So does Mr Pritchard.
|
|
|
|
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
|
|
|
|
I love you both.
|
|
|
|
MR OGMORE (_With terror_)
|
|
|
|
Oh, Mrs Ogmore.
|
|
|
|
MR PRITCHARD (_With horror_)
|
|
|
|
Oh, Mrs Pritchard.
|
|
|
|
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
|
|
|
|
Soon it will be time to go to bed. Tell me your tasks in
|
|
order.
|
|
|
|
MR OGMORE AND MR PRITCHARD
|
|
|
|
We must take our pyjamas from the drawer marked pyjamas.
|
|
|
|
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD (_Coldly_)
|
|
|
|
And then you must take them off.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Down in the dusking town, Mae Rose Cottage, still lying in
|
|
clover, listens to the nannygoats chew, draws circles of
|
|
lipstick round her nipples.
|
|
|
|
MAE ROSE COTTAGE
|
|
|
|
I'm _fast_. I'm a bad lot. God will strike me dead. I'm
|
|
seventeen. I'll go to hell,
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
she tells the goats.
|
|
|
|
MAE ROSE COTTAGE
|
|
|
|
You just wait. I'll sin till I blow up!
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
She lies deep, waiting for the worst to happen; the goats
|
|
champ and sneer.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
And at the doorway of Bethesda House, the Reverend Jenkins
|
|
recites to Llaregyb Hill his sunset poem.
|
|
|
|
REV. ELI JENKINS
|
|
|
|
Every morning when I wake,
|
|
Dear Lord, a little prayer I make,
|
|
O please to keep Thy lovely eye
|
|
On all poor creatures born to die
|
|
|
|
And every evening at sun-down
|
|
I ask a blessing on the town,
|
|
For whether we last the night or no
|
|
I'm sure is always touch-and-go.
|
|
|
|
We are not wholly bad or good
|
|
Who live our lives under Milk Wood,
|
|
And Thou, I know, wilt be the first
|
|
To see our best side, not our worst.
|
|
|
|
O let us see another day!
|
|
Bless us all this night, I pray,
|
|
And to the sun we all will bow
|
|
And say, good-bye--but just for now!
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Jack Black prepares once more to meet his Satan in the
|
|
Wood. He grinds his night-teeth, closes his eyes, climbs
|
|
into his religious trousers, their flies sewn up with
|
|
cobbler's thread, and pads out, torched and bibled,
|
|
grimly, joyfully, into the already sinning dusk.
|
|
|
|
JACK BLACK
|
|
|
|
Off to Gomorrah!
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
And Lily Smalls is up to Nogood Boyo in the wash-house.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
And Cherry Owen, sober as Sunday as he is every day of the
|
|
week, goes off happy as Saturday to get drunk as a deacon
|
|
as he does every night.
|
|
|
|
CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
I always say she's got two husbands,
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
says Cherry Owen,
|
|
|
|
CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
one drunk and one sober.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
And Mrs Cherry simply says
|
|
|
|
MRS CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
And aren't I a lucky woman? Because I love them both.
|
|
|
|
SINBAD
|
|
|
|
Evening, Cherry.
|
|
|
|
CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
Evening, Sinbad.
|
|
|
|
SINBAD
|
|
|
|
What'll you have?
|
|
|
|
CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
Too much.
|
|
|
|
SINBAD
|
|
|
|
The Sailors Arms is always open...
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Sinbad suffers to himself, heartbroken,
|
|
|
|
SINBAD
|
|
|
|
...oh, Gossamer, open yours!
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Dusk is drowned for ever until to-morrow, It is all at
|
|
once night now, The windy town is a hill of windows, and
|
|
from the larrupped waves the lights of the lamps in the
|
|
windows call back the day and the dead that have run away
|
|
to sea. All over the calling dark, babies and old men are
|
|
bribed and lullabied to sleep.
|
|
|
|
FIRST WOMAN'S VOICE
|
|
|
|
Hushabye, baby, the sandman is coming...
|
|
|
|
SECOND WOMAN'S VOICE (Singing)
|
|
|
|
Rockabye, grandpa, in the tree top,
|
|
When the wind blows the cradle will rock,
|
|
When the bough breaks the cradle will fall,
|
|
Down will come grandpa, whiskers and all.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Or their daughters cover up the old unwinking men like
|
|
parrots, and in their little dark in the lit and bustling
|
|
young kitchen corners, all night long they watch,
|
|
beady-eyed, the long night through in case death catches
|
|
them asleep.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Unmarried girls, alone in their privately bridal bedrooms,
|
|
powder and curl for the Dance of the World.
|
|
|
|
[_Accordion music: dim_
|
|
|
|
They make, in front of their looking-glasses, haughty or
|
|
come-hithering faces for the young men in the street
|
|
outside, at the lamplit leaning corners, who wait in the
|
|
all-at-once wind to wolve and whistle.
|
|
|
|
[_Accordion music louder, then fading under_
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
The drinkers in the Sailors Arms drink to the failure of
|
|
the dance.
|
|
|
|
A DRINKER
|
|
|
|
Down with the waltzing and the skipping.
|
|
|
|
CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
Dancing isn't natural,
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
righteously says Cherry Owen who has just downed seventeen
|
|
pints of flat, warm, thin, Welsh, bitter beer.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
A farmer's lantern glimmers, a spark on Llaregyb hillside.
|
|
|
|
[_Accordion music fades into silence_
|
|
|
|
VOICE FIRST
|
|
|
|
Llaregyb Hill, writes the Reverend Jenkins in his poem-room,
|
|
|
|
REV. ELI JENKINS
|
|
|
|
Llaregyb Hill, that mystic tumulus, the memorial of
|
|
peoples that dwelt in the region of Llaregyb before the
|
|
Celts left the Land of Summer and where the old wizards
|
|
made themselves a wife out of flowers.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Mr Waldo, in his corner of the Sailors Arms, sings:
|
|
|
|
MR WALDO
|
|
|
|
In Pembroke City when I was young
|
|
I lived by the Castle Keep
|
|
Sixpence a week was my wages
|
|
For working for the chimbley-sweep.
|
|
Six cold pennies he
|
|
gave me Not a farthing more or less
|
|
And all the fare I could afford
|
|
Was parsnip gin and watercress.
|
|
I did not need a knife and fork
|
|
Or a bib up to my chin
|
|
To dine on a dish of watercress
|
|
And a jug of parsnip gin.
|
|
Did you ever hear a growing boy
|
|
To live so cruel cheap
|
|
On grub that has no flesh and bones
|
|
And liquor that makes you weep?
|
|
Sweep sweep chimbley sweep,
|
|
I wept through Pembroke City
|
|
Poor and barefoot in the snow
|
|
Till a kind young woman took pity.
|
|
Poor little chimbley sweep she said
|
|
Black as the ace of spades
|
|
O nobody's swept my chimbley
|
|
Since my husband went his ways
|
|
Come and sweep my chimbley
|
|
Come and sweep my chimbley
|
|
She sighed to me with a blush
|
|
Come and sweep my chimbley
|
|
Come and sweep my chimbley
|
|
Bring along your chimbley brush!
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Blind Captain Cat climbs into his bunk. Like a cat, he
|
|
sees in the dark. Through the voyages of his tears he
|
|
sails to see the dead.
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
Dancing Williams!
|
|
|
|
FIRST DROWNED
|
|
|
|
Still dancing.
|
|
|
|
CAPTAIN CAT
|
|
|
|
Jonah Jarvis
|
|
|
|
THIRD DROWNED
|
|
|
|
Still.
|
|
|
|
FIRST DROWNED
|
|
|
|
Curly Bevan's skull.
|
|
|
|
ROSIE PROBERT
|
|
|
|
Rosie, with God. She has forgotten dying.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
The dead come out in their Sunday best.
|
|
|
|
SECOND VOICE
|
|
|
|
Listen to the night breaking.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
Organ Morgan goes to chapel to play the organ. He sees
|
|
Bach lying on a tombstone.
|
|
|
|
ORGAN MORGAN
|
|
|
|
Johann Sebastian!
|
|
|
|
CHERRY OWEN (_Drunkenly_)
|
|
|
|
Who?
|
|
|
|
ORGAN MORGAN
|
|
|
|
Johann Sebastian mighty Bach. Oh, Bach fach
|
|
|
|
CHERRY OWEN
|
|
|
|
To hell with you,
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
says Cherry Owen who is resting on the tombstone on his
|
|
way home.
|
|
|
|
Mr Mog Edwards and Miss Myfanwy Price happily apart from
|
|
one another at the top and the sea end of the town write
|
|
their everynight letters of love and desire. In the warm
|
|
White Book of Llaregyb you will find the little maps of
|
|
the islands of their contentment.
|
|
|
|
MYFANWY PRICE
|
|
|
|
Oh, my Mog, I am yours for ever.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
And she looks around with pleasure at her own neat
|
|
neverdull room which Mr Mog Edwards will never enter.
|
|
|
|
MOG EDWARDS
|
|
|
|
Come to my arms, Myfanwy.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
And he hugs his lovely money to his _own_ heart.
|
|
|
|
And Mr Waldo drunk in the dusky wood hugs his lovely Polly
|
|
Garter under the eyes and rattling tongues of the
|
|
neighbours and the birds, and he does not care. He smacks
|
|
his live red lips.
|
|
|
|
But it is not _his_ name that Polly Garter whispers as she
|
|
lies under the oak and loves him back. Six feet deep that
|
|
name sings in the cold earth.
|
|
|
|
POLLY GARTER (Sings)
|
|
|
|
But I always think as we tumble into bed
|
|
Of little Willy Wee who is dead, dead, dead.
|
|
|
|
FIRST VOICE
|
|
|
|
The thin night darkens. A breeze from the creased water
|
|
sighs the streets close under Milk waking Wood. The Wood,
|
|
whose every tree-foot's cloven in the black glad sight of
|
|
the hunters of lovers, that is a God-built garden to Mary
|
|
Ann Sailors who knows there is Heaven on earth and the
|
|
chosen people of His kind fire in Llaregyb's land, that is
|
|
the fairday farmhands' wantoning ignorant chapel of
|
|
bridesbeds, and, to the Reverend Eli Jenkins, a greenleaved
|
|
sermon on the innocence of men, the suddenly wind-shaken
|
|
wood springs awake for the second dark time this one
|
|
Spring day.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|