Ghost Light (19 page)
Authors: Joseph O'Connor
GRANNIE
: ‘Our’ people. Who is that? In your own considering. The quality out in
Kingstown
, is it?
: ‘Our’ people. Who is that? In your own considering. The quality out in
Kingstown
, is it?
SYNGE
: Well, the people of this country. We are all of us inheritors of a beautiful place … are we not? With its heartaches, yes,
and its terrible injustices – but our hopes for greater brotherhood and forgiveness –
: Well, the people of this country. We are all of us inheritors of a beautiful place … are we not? With its heartaches, yes,
and its terrible injustices – but our hopes for greater brotherhood and forgiveness –
MOLLY
[
interrupting
]: Could we not be talking of such serious subjects at supper, John, please.
[
interrupting
]: Could we not be talking of such serious subjects at supper, John, please.
GRANNIE
: It’s well for them has a ‘country’ when the rest of us has debts. Faith now, I’ll say it to the landlord and he knockin’ for the rent. ‘Hold your hour my little maneen and forgive us the arrears for I’m a citizen, not a tenant, Mary bless yeh.’
: It’s well for them has a ‘country’ when the rest of us has debts. Faith now, I’ll say it to the landlord and he knockin’ for the rent. ‘Hold your hour my little maneen and forgive us the arrears for I’m a citizen, not a tenant, Mary bless yeh.’
MOTHER
: In the name of Holy God, must we have politics at the table? There’ll not be a minute’s luck in such a house.
: In the name of Holy God, must we have politics at the table? There’ll not be a minute’s luck in such a house.
SYNGE
[
sincerely
]: … Please forgive me, Mrs Allgood … The fault in introducing the topic was entirely mine, not Mrs Harold’s. I was forgetting my manners … I … intended no offence … I’m afraid I sometimes overlook the wisdom contained in the ancient proverb:
Ná glac pioc comhairle gan comhairle ban.
[
sincerely
]: … Please forgive me, Mrs Allgood … The fault in introducing the topic was entirely mine, not Mrs Harold’s. I was forgetting my manners … I … intended no offence … I’m afraid I sometimes overlook the wisdom contained in the ancient proverb:
Ná glac pioc comhairle gan comhairle ban.
[
The family look at him. What is he talking about?
]
The family look at him. What is he talking about?
]
SYNGE
: The well-known Gaelic saying? ‘Never take advice without a woman’s guidance.’
: The well-known Gaelic saying? ‘Never take advice without a woman’s guidance.’
MOLLY
[
quietly
]: They don’t have Irish, John. I’m after telling you before.
[
quietly
]: They don’t have Irish, John. I’m after telling you before.
SYNGE
: Oh yes … I am sorry … Please excuse me … Wasn’t thinking.
: Oh yes … I am sorry … Please excuse me … Wasn’t thinking.
[
A coughing fit besets him, becoming increasingly more violent. No one else moves. Fade to blackout.
]
A coughing fit besets him, becoming increasingly more violent. No one else moves. Fade to blackout.
]
APPROACHING BLOOMSBURY
3.07 p.m.
Lads in Edwardian drapes and peacock-feather waistcoats and they eying me, a relic of the past. ‘Cosh-boys’, they call themselves. Look at that fellow there. Grease in his barnet and the aviator spectacles all black as a Sunday in Lent. But the street is crowded, Molly, there is nothing he could do. And don’t be meeting his gaze for that’s only seeking troubles, and if you seek them, you will always find them.
My son. In an aeroplane. Over northern Germany. Those who I fight I do not hate. Those I defend I do not love. Somewhere in the room all his copybooks from school. But we must not give in to weakness. The world is full of blessings. To be alive at this time, when the cruel war is over and nobody’s son is being ordered to die, and if the manners are queer and the slangs are gone strange and the fashions eccentric and the music discordant, what matter, after all? It was surely always thus. The young must be permitted to come into their force. They do not mean to look at one so harshly, should not be misinterpreted. And if the rouge on the girls seems a little too flagrant and the sullenness of the boys unremittingly brutal, it must always be remembered by those who are getting on that they themselves once resisted their inheritance. It is how progress happens, Molly, through scepticism, impatience. And if the hems are growing shorter with every passing season – woe betide us with Muddy if we came home in
that
– and if they like their blouses lower-cut than used to be permissible, sure where is the harm, when you think? The beauty of their bodies is not
something to be ashamed of. Aren’t they better off that way? So much fuss, so much fear. Let them show what they have. God love them. More luck. They think it will save them, the poor lost lambs. And they think there is time to rehearse.
that
– and if they like their blouses lower-cut than used to be permissible, sure where is the harm, when you think? The beauty of their bodies is not
something to be ashamed of. Aren’t they better off that way? So much fuss, so much fear. Let them show what they have. God love them. More luck. They think it will save them, the poor lost lambs. And they think there is time to rehearse.
But the boys, all the same. You’d wonder about them sometimes. That rolling-shouldered swagger they affect in the street; their sneering at the police and the old. And they fighting the Jamaicans on Chepstow Road, not only with fists, but with bicycle chains, brick-ends, and then
bragging
in the doorways as you hurry past to Mass of the black man they beat last night. From where, these boasted hatreds? What is the victory? She enters Shaftesbury Avenue. Stops.
bragging
in the doorways as you hurry past to Mass of the black man they beat last night. From where, these boasted hatreds? What is the victory? She enters Shaftesbury Avenue. Stops.
A constellation of scarlet light-bulbs across the frontage of a theatre.
THE ABBEY THEATRE OF DUBLIN PRODUCTION
DEIRDRE OF THE SORROWS
BY J. M. SYNGE
SEVEN PERFORMANCES ONLY
DEIRDRE OF THE SORROWS
BY J. M. SYNGE
SEVEN PERFORMANCES ONLY
A shock. Yes. Didn’t know it was on. Could someone not have written? Don’t they know? A telegram, even? But they must have written, surely? Have they lost the address? Don’t they know that I used to … ? But they can’t have forgotten? No right to be jealous. No right to be hurt. Offence unintended. It is only a play. Doesn’t belong to you, Molly. Property of the world. A shock, that’s all. Probably lost in the post. For heaven’s sake, idiot, they don’t need your
permission
. Gather. Collect.
permission
. Gather. Collect.
I am outside my mother’s junkshop on a sunny day in Dublin, a parade of soldiers passing, their coats as red as month’s-blood, a sentry line of breakfronts and battered old sideboards observing their progress down the quays. I am opening old compartments, searching for something – a lost letter? The black wood of the furniture is greening with age, the hasps and catches rusting, the thinning linings sundered. Coming on for dawn. I am in the bed beside Sara. Below in the street, a dog barks.
Do they think I am dead? Surely, someone in Dublin … But they can’t have forgotten me. An invitation, a pass? She is
Maire O’Neill
, she was once his fiancée, we must find her address in London, we must honour old soldiers. Perhaps the first-night reception? Little speech of our gratitude. Presentation or token. Piece of Waterford Glass. Not even that one would necessarily
like
to attend, for an opening night performance can be overexcited, too keyed up, with the reporters and the critics and the ambassador and his wife, and an artist doesn’t need to take a bow from her box, the whole house on its feet raising cheers to her past, and the gallery calling her name as the heroine directs the spotlight, and bouquets at the fall of the curtain. Who would crave that? Only a pathetic old failure. A swirl of damp wind strikes your face.
Maire O’Neill
, she was once his fiancée, we must find her address in London, we must honour old soldiers. Perhaps the first-night reception? Little speech of our gratitude. Presentation or token. Piece of Waterford Glass. Not even that one would necessarily
like
to attend, for an opening night performance can be overexcited, too keyed up, with the reporters and the critics and the ambassador and his wife, and an artist doesn’t need to take a bow from her box, the whole house on its feet raising cheers to her past, and the gallery calling her name as the heroine directs the spotlight, and bouquets at the fall of the curtain. Who would crave that? Only a pathetic old failure. A swirl of damp wind strikes your face.
His photograph. There. In the glass case by the booth. And a poster of the leading lady. Don’t know her. So young. And a notice announcing ‘to interested patrons’ that the eminent Professor Somebody of Something College Somewhere will give a commemorative lecture at the Authors’ Club, Whitehall Court, on
‘John Synge, his life and legacy’
. The director and some of the cast will attend. There will be an opportunity to ask questions following.
‘John Synge, his life and legacy’
. The director and some of the cast will attend. There will be an opportunity to ask questions following.
But why would they do that? What is to be asked? He was a man who could see
into
things – very ordinary things. A hat left on the floor of a café in Kingstown, a proverb overheard, an old fisherman mending a net: these, for him, were a kind of incitement. There are no answers other than that. He was not like the rest of us. Nor even like
himself
. His imagination, or soul, or whatever province of his mind was hungry for the sustaining rain of the world, would soak in the storms of his own haunted strangeness, and the berries would bloom, and they were what they were, and if the tendrils were peculiar, and some of them wild, the fruits were so shockingly luscious and potent that the thirsty were willing to savour the bitter for the sake of the concomitant sweet. He needed the very ordinary. He was a beautiful man. What more than this need be said?
into
things – very ordinary things. A hat left on the floor of a café in Kingstown, a proverb overheard, an old fisherman mending a net: these, for him, were a kind of incitement. There are no answers other than that. He was not like the rest of us. Nor even like
himself
. His imagination, or soul, or whatever province of his mind was hungry for the sustaining rain of the world, would soak in the storms of his own haunted strangeness, and the berries would bloom, and they were what they were, and if the tendrils were peculiar, and some of them wild, the fruits were so shockingly luscious and potent that the thirsty were willing to savour the bitter for the sake of the concomitant sweet. He needed the very ordinary. He was a beautiful man. What more than this need be said?
The sort of man who makes you think the movement of foliage might be causing the breeze. Nothing was clear and everything was clear. Impossible, particularly, to know what he wanted from you. Perhaps he himself did not know. Looks that lingered too long, abashed glancings-away, and sentences that seemed in retrospect to have been calculated for ambiguity but at the time of their delivery sounded daringly direct. You would get queer intimations sometimes; maybe you imagined them: that the pain of wanting you and being denied had become an addiction, better than the pain of having you and becoming disillusioned, or better than the pain of having you at all. How could such a character be met halfway? Only by loving him. How else would you survive? His unpardonable faults, his crippling fear of happiness; you would never call him normal, he must be forgiven or left. What he wanted was a degree of powerlessness in you that was too much to ask, a surrendering without terms, then a withdrawal from the field, and the fact that he posed as someone immobilised by the blaze of your charms was merely a subtler mode of domination.
‘If I asked you to be my wife?’ But what did it mean? Some would say you were a fool to have tolerated all of it so long. But you would say: I made my choices.
And on another day, you would say it was enough to have had hours and afternoons; to have been a perpetual mistress, an understudy. It should not have been enough. But it was. And perhaps, in its way, it was also a liberation. The lonely island of the wifely years. The scrubbings with the nail brush, the torn hopes darned, the shilling eked from the housekeeping and hidden away, the leavings reheated, the silences over supper, the clock watched late and the joint sliced thin – like being buried alive together in the same coffin of politeness. It was not my lot. And I ought to be grateful. It was not what I wanted with him. Honestly.
Snow begins to fall on Shaftesbury Avenue. Passers-by gape upwards in delight or in worried-looking awe, or they hurry in for shelter beneath the porticoes of the theatres where the touts
are already gathering for the matinees. And you pass the Prince of Wales, where you played ninety-seven nights, many of them ending with the roar of your name, and where the stagehands grew so weary of lifting the curtain for your ovations that in the end they had to leave it raised. It was only a year after his death; the memory of him was still fierce in you, so that it could be termed not remembrance but communion. Still frozen at the point of glimpsing him in the street, in shop-window reflections, of sensing him behind you, of half expecting every post to bring a fulminating letter that reeked of his tobacco and his sepsis. Alone on the stage, taking bow after bow, you had one night happened to glance up at a box in the gods.
Always remember the poor, Changeling; they have paid, too – often what they could not afford
. There was a weeping man in a greatcloak among the shadowed dark drapes. You saw him as you watched, his frail shoulders shaking. You could not have been mistaken. You knew who he was. The theatre’s ghost, the manager had explained.
are already gathering for the matinees. And you pass the Prince of Wales, where you played ninety-seven nights, many of them ending with the roar of your name, and where the stagehands grew so weary of lifting the curtain for your ovations that in the end they had to leave it raised. It was only a year after his death; the memory of him was still fierce in you, so that it could be termed not remembrance but communion. Still frozen at the point of glimpsing him in the street, in shop-window reflections, of sensing him behind you, of half expecting every post to bring a fulminating letter that reeked of his tobacco and his sepsis. Alone on the stage, taking bow after bow, you had one night happened to glance up at a box in the gods.
Always remember the poor, Changeling; they have paid, too – often what they could not afford
. There was a weeping man in a greatcloak among the shadowed dark drapes. You saw him as you watched, his frail shoulders shaking. You could not have been mistaken. You knew who he was. The theatre’s ghost, the manager had explained.
When I was young, oh I used to be
As fine a man as e’er you’d see,
And the Prince of Wales, he says to me:
‘Come, join the British Army.’
As fine a man as e’er you’d see,
And the Prince of Wales, he says to me:
‘Come, join the British Army.’
Sit down a while, Molly. Now you’ve had a little start. And nobody will object if you rest a moment on the steps. And
fuck them
if they do. Let them glare. Let them pass. Open up the bottle. No one will see. And if the pictures must come, girl, don’t be trying to drown them. For they will come to you anyway, in disguise if they have to. It is one thing knowing him taught you.
fuck them
if they do. Let them glare. Let them pass. Open up the bottle. No one will see. And if the pictures must come, girl, don’t be trying to drown them. For they will come to you anyway, in disguise if they have to. It is one thing knowing him taught you.
And what do they mean, his queer, florid stories? Does anyone have to ask, in the end? Every time you have seen a production in which you were not yourself appearing, a truth has struck you about what is missing from this otherworld of peasant grog-shops and holy wells and hamlets and strands. What is missing
is their author. And yet the absence is a presence. Better to have a director put his sickbed on the stage, in the midst of all the violence and the rainstorms of language.
Show
him in the deathbed, face the colour of ashes, drowning in the ether they prescribe for pain. That is what they are about, if they are about anything at all. About having to live inside a body as its geography corrodes: its viaducts, scaffoldings, passageways, canals, its fissures and canyons, its boglands and airstreams, and the eternity possessed in the cranium. About wanting to live, when you know death is close. Withering to be loved, when to love is so hard. Holding to the creed to the last, dying minute. Knowing that everyone is a changeling.
is their author. And yet the absence is a presence. Better to have a director put his sickbed on the stage, in the midst of all the violence and the rainstorms of language.
Show
him in the deathbed, face the colour of ashes, drowning in the ether they prescribe for pain. That is what they are about, if they are about anything at all. About having to live inside a body as its geography corrodes: its viaducts, scaffoldings, passageways, canals, its fissures and canyons, its boglands and airstreams, and the eternity possessed in the cranium. About wanting to live, when you know death is close. Withering to be loved, when to love is so hard. Holding to the creed to the last, dying minute. Knowing that everyone is a changeling.
—Don’t die, love … Don’t leave me … I beg you … Don’t die …
Sydney Parade station. Your black train delayed. Two clerkish men in bowler hats examining the track. Taking measurements with plumb lines. Comparing fat notebooks. An engineer with a theodolite figuring a reading on the far platform. A tragedy the previous evening. A middle-aged mother and she attempting to cross the line. Drink taken, apparently, the unfortunate creature. Sinico, her name. Husband a sea captain. Rumours of a man involved.
Seapoint, Monkstown, the stern, tall houses, lime-washed, many-windowed, presentable. The governesses in the gardens, ecstasies of rhododendrons, and the knickerbockered children pushing hoops. A woman seated at an easel on the pier that leads to the coal harbour. Couples strolling lazily and the white-coated sailors, and your nervousness making everything melt into everything else like ices on a plate in summertime.
Four black horses, plumed. Three funeral carriages. Observers making the sign of the cross. Kingstown Harbour to your left, the sea and the yachts, and in the wake of a little trawler the gulls whirling crazily, as panicked and taunted as your thoughts. Should you have brought her a gift? Chocolates? A book? You notice, from your window, a flower-girl on the platform and you beckoning her over and reaching for your purse. ‘Take the sweet
williams, Miss, they’re the best for lover’s luck.’ And he waiting for you now, his mother, their stares. Glasthule station approaching, the trundle and rock of the train. Not too late to turn back, to hurry across the footbridge, return to the noisy city and the safety of the greenroom, away from this appalling quietness. You could say you fell asleep or felt suddenly unwell. He is always so kind when you are unwell.
williams, Miss, they’re the best for lover’s luck.’ And he waiting for you now, his mother, their stares. Glasthule station approaching, the trundle and rock of the train. Not too late to turn back, to hurry across the footbridge, return to the noisy city and the safety of the greenroom, away from this appalling quietness. You could say you fell asleep or felt suddenly unwell. He is always so kind when you are unwell.
And he skulking in the shelter as you alight from the carriage. He looks nervous, is smoking, as he approaches from the turnstiles, a threadbare varsity scarf double-knotted about his neck despite the morning being hot enough for coatlessness. Haggard, yellowed, since his last operation, his eyes flicking about uncertainly as though loosened from their gimbals. You notice the tremor in his hand as he lights a Turkish cigarillo off the one he is about to finish. The scalpel cut him open. Fingers probed inside him. A tiny flake of tobacco adheres to his upper lip and you want to reach and remove it but you’re afraid of his reaction. It is as though he is waiting for a first-night performance, his mien is so wild with anxiety. He doesn’t kiss you, of course, only removes his crumpled hat, like a man greeting a female cousin who has suffered a recent bereavement.
‘Reckoned I should meet you in case you got lost.’
‘I wouldn’t have, but thank you. Is everything all right?’
‘You are a little late. We need to hurry. I say, Mother doesn’t much care for wildflowers. You don’t mind awfully if we get shut of them?’
He takes them from you and pushes them into a gap in a hedge.
‘You need only be yourself, Molly. You are not to worry about anything.’
His reassurance sluices apprehensiveness through you.
And suddenly you are in his house, having looked at nothing on the way, not a rock not a bush nor a tree nor the road nor a garden nor a servant in a window.
‘Molly, this is my mother. Mother, may I present Miss Allgood.’
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