Country Girls Read online

  Morning light.

  Baba walks towards Kate from the opposite direction, carrying a doctor’s leather bag.

  Baba (imperious) I want to do a little experiment.

  Kate For what?

  Baba Take your blouse off.

  Baba rummages in the bag for a tube of cream.

  Kate What kind of little experiment?

  Baba We’ve got to get out of that dump.

  Kate We can’t.

  Baba I’m not staying in that convent and neither are you. we’ll be dried up … we’ll be on the shelf … no man will look twice at us. We’ll run away … we’ll join a circus or some fecking outfit …

  Kate I want to study … I want to write about the snow and the mutinous Shannon waves.

  Baba peels off Kate’s jumper.

  Baba You give me the pip … winning statues and playing up to nuns … jumping up to open and close the damn doors for them as if they had cerebral palsy and couldn’t do it for themselves.

  Kate We’ll have an education.

  Baba starts to rub some ointment into Kate’s breasts.

  Baba Give us bubs … make us females.

  Kate We are females.

  Baba (still applying the ointment)

  We must … we must

  Develop our bust

  The bigger the better

  The tighter the sweater

  The boys depend on us.

  Kate What is it?

  Baba It’s for udders … my aul fella uses it on young heifers.

  Kate tries to stop her but to no avail.

  Just think it’s old Gentleman, old Gabriel giving you a feel … You’re a sly one … His wife will go mad when she hears.

  Kate We did nothing wrong.

  Baba You went to Limerick, you were seen in The Savoy, at the pictures, necking.

  Kate We were not necking.

  Baba You wait … his wife will be carted off to Our Lady’s … What do you feel?

  Kate I’m burning.

  Baba That’s good … Are you swelling?

  Kate I don’t know if I’m swelling … all I know is I’m burning … like mad. Baba, they’re coming off.

  Baba What’s coming off?

  Kate My … diddums … Get your mother, get your father … I’m on fire … I’m on fire!

  Baba Feck.

  Baba pours a bottle of calamine lotion over her and drags Kate off.

  Sister Mary is by a blackboard doing a geometry equation. She writes rapidly and with great expertise, completes it with QED – ‘quad erat demonstrandum’.

  She can’t be alright in the upstairs department.

  Kate Shhh. Shhh.

  Baba In Dublin for a year … with a figure like that and not to bolt it, bonkers.

  Kate She was studying at university and lived in the Mother house.

  Baba She’d be great with pancake, rouge and mascara.

  Kate Shhh.

  Baba I suppose they only shave the head … plenty of hair under the armpits and down below … I wonder how they have a scratch.

  Kate They live on a higher plane.

  Sister Mary turns sharply and singles out Kate.

  Sister Mary Caithleen Brady, repeat the theorem that I have just demonstrated.

  Kate I can’t, Sister.

  Sister Mary Why not?

  Kate I don’t know, Sister.

  Sister Mary You have been muttering … yourself and your mocking friend.

  Sister Mary throws the duster at her and Kate is showered in chalk. Sister Mary, shocked by her own intemperance, stalks out, the stick of chalk like a cigarette between her fingers.

  Cynthia God, she’s flaring.

  Baba She’s not long for this world.

  Cynthia How do you know?

  Baba Hysteria … too many women cooped up together and no men. They fantasise about doing it with priests and monks and altar boys.

  They go. Kate sits alone, contrite.

  Sister Mary re-enters carrying a plate with a beautiful silver salver. She lifts the salver to reveal a jam tart.

  Kate I couldn’t.

  Sister Mary Yes, you could … you have a sweet tooth, I know.

  Kate takes it reluctantly and Sister Mary sits in the chair next to her.

  Kate Did you like your year in Dublin?

  Sister Mary Not really … I missed the grounds and the quiet. Your hair is different.

  Kate (whisper) Sister, is your head shaven?

  Sister Mary I can’t answer that.

  Kate Sorry. Sorry.

  Pause.

  Sister Mary I had to rebuke you today.

  Kate nods.

  Have you ever thought of what you would like to be?

  Kate Sometimes.

  Sister Mary (a little excited) The night before I entered I went off cycling with a boy and we lost our way up the mountain and I was terrified that we’d never get back … and in another way I was happy and free … free as the wind.

  Kate What was it like, giving up the world?

  Sister Mary Awful. (Pause.) A few months after I entered we were allowed a day by the seaside. Reverend Mother and two senior nuns and myself. We drove all the way to Connemara and it was glorious. We sat on the rocks … The sea was several colours but mostly turquoise … There we were, looking out to sea, and something goes pop and we all jump and what was it but the bottle of home-made lemonade which Sister Pius had given us … The cork flew out and we lost most of it … just when we were parched.

  Kate Just when you were parched!

  Sister Mary We saw the steamer going over to the Aran Islands … it looked so stately like a great white swan … People waved to us and Reverend Mother said, ‘Wave back, show them we are human like everybody else,’ and we did, we waved.

  Pause.

  Kate Were you ever in love, Sister?

  Sister Mary What do you know about love?

  Kate Books … the pictures … Cathy and Heathcliff on the Yorkshire Moors.

  Sister Mary There is much beauty in your soul.

  Sister Mary touches Kate’s hand with tenderness.

  Kate Sister, I think …

  Sister Mary (whisper) What?

  Kate I might be a nun.

  Sister Mary (folding her hands) Oh glory be to God and the archangels and angels and saints. Let us pray for that … that you will be the Bride of Christ.

  Sister Immaculata (commandingly) Sister Mary … Sister Mary … Sister Mary.

  Sister Mary runs in one direction.

  The girls gather.

  Sister Immaculata speaking as she hurries in.

  We have had extremely upsetting news. It concerns Sister Mary … she has lost her only brother in a driving accident. A young boy with his life before him …

  She takes out small white cards with black edging and hands each girl one.

  This evening we will offer up the rosary for the repose of his soul … but meanwhile I would like you all to write letters of condolence which she may take home to her dear bereaved mother and father.

  The girls struggle to write appropriate letters, each girl looking at what the girl next to her has written. Sister Immaculata walks up and down murmuring a litany and then begins to read what has been written.

  (Reading.) ‘It is with broken heart I write you these lines in your great grief …’ ‘It is with true sincerity I reach out to you in your great loss …’ ‘Your great loss has reached my ears and hurt me profoundly …’ (She stands to read what Kate has written.) ‘Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.’ (Snatching the letter.) This is not a letter of sympathy. (Holding it to the others as to a tribunal.) This is not a letter of sympathy. (To Kate.) To whom is this addressed?

  Kate Nobody, Sister.

  Sister Immaculata To one of your classmates, perhaps?

  Pause.

  Kate No.

  Sister Immaculata To whom, then?

  Kate I can’t say.

  Sister Immaculata Why not?

  Kate It’s
a secret.

  Sister Immaculata There are no secrets from God.

  Kate There are from you.

  Girls gasp at Kate’s audacity.

  Sister Immaculata You will stand in front of the Blessed Sacrament until such time as you confess.

  Sister Immaculata drags her away by her hair, with extreme violence.

  The girls cower nervously.

  Darkness. Sound of crashing offstage.

  Lights back up.

  Kate is sitting on a chair, her head swathed in a big white bandage.

  Baba You nearly kicked the bucket … nearly broke your skull when you fell on the marble.

  Kate I felt dizzy from the standing. One minute I was staring at the tabernacle and the next minute everything went woozy.

  Baba You could sue Immaculata.

  Kate She’ll have a down on me for ever.

  Baba lifts a bit of bandaging and looks at Kate’s temple.

  Baba A battlefield … You’ll have fits from now on … Leave me your twin set and your pleated skirt and that marcasite brooch of your mother’s. Did you and old Mary have a cuddle? By the way, I told old Gentleman you flipped over a nun.

  Kate You did not.

  Baba Oh yeah … we correspond. Madge, the day girl, sneaks them in and out for me. (She whistles to intimate the riskiness of it.)

  Kate I hate you, Baba Brennan.

  Baba Ditto.

  Baba trips off. A Lay Nun creeps on and hands her an orange and an oblong case.

  Lay Nun I was asked to give you these.

  Kate By who?

  Lay Nun puts her finger to her lips to signify secrecy.

  Kate opens the case and sees that it is a fountain pen. With a flourish she unscrews the cap and begins to trace a letter in the air.

  Girls re-enter.

  Baba What’s the new priest like?

  Cynthia Beautiful. He has sallow skin … I believe he’s a divil in confession.

  Baba He won’t worm my sins out of me … What’s his name?

  Cynthia Father Thomas Aquinas.

  Father Thomas, on the higher level, young, in gold vestments, waving incense from a gold censer. Nuns sing hymn in Latin, girls join. All assume worshipful posture.

  Priest

  He who feeds on my flesh

  And drinks my blood

  Has eternal life

  My flesh is real food.

  Baba Sure is.

  Priest

  And my blood real drink

  The man who feeds on my flesh

  And drinks my blood

  Remains in me.

  Baba Jesus, he’s the business … I wonder what sign he is.

  Baba tiptoes to the wall cupboard and from Kate’s prayer book takes out the holy picture of the Virgin in the grotto. With Kate’s new pen she writes on the back.

  On the back screen Virgin in blue tulle is seen emerging from clouds. Underneath is Baba’s handwriting – ‘Father Tom stuck his long thing into Sister Mary’s hairy thing.’

  Baba hands the card to Kate to read.

  Kate reads innocently.

  Kate ‘Father Tom stuck his long thing – (beginning to waver) into Sister Mary’s hairy thing.’ God Almighty!

  Baba Put your name to it.

  Kate I will not.

  Baba signs their two names, props the card on the step leading to altar and hurries backward.

  Sister Mary enters, sees it, screams and prostrates herself forward.

  Kate cowers. Nuns enter, horrified, beating the two girls with their horn rosary beads and leather straps.

  Kate’s Father and Mr Brennan enter. The men rush to retrieve the two sinful girls, but instead a fight ensues between them and the nuns. Veils and guimpes fall off, as does Kate’s bandage.

  The Lay Nun is sprinkling holy water on the warring contenders.

  Eventually Kate is led off with her Father thumping her and Baba on the opposite side with Mr Brennan thumping her.

  Father (to Kate) A rotten apple … always were.

  Mr Brennan It’s not her fault … it’s Baba’s. It’s Baba’s dirty work.

  Kate It’s not … we planned it together … we hated being there.

  Mr Brennan Why do you stand up for her, Kate?

  Baba We’re best friends.

  Father You’re finished with her … You’re coming on over home where I’ll rear you and rear you right.

  Kate I’m not.

  Father Yes, you are.

  Kate I don’t want to.

  Father Is that true?

  She turns aside in shame.

  Mr Brennan Leave it, Johnny … we’re all a bit het up. You can’t put an old head on young shoulders.

  Father Thankless child … what we did for you … the sacrifices we made. Your mother depriving herself to buy you a tweed coat and cap.

  Martha (leading him away) Come on, Johnny … Let’s have a cup of tea … it’s freezing in here.

  Mr Brennan (to Kate) He’s your father.

  Kate I know … I can’t talk to him … he’s like a bull.

  Mr Brennan His bark is worse than his bite. (Pause.) Have you thought what your mother’s death has done to him … the guilt … the loneliness … up there at night … the going over it?

  Kate (almost breaking) I have.

  Mr Brennan pats her arm as he goes.

  Molly is at the ready with the Hoover, which she turns on and off, to suit her monologue.

  Molly Ye’er disgraced … everybody knows … I was dying for ye to come … Even the missus isn’t that vexed … not as tough as she used to be, she’s going grey. She’s back in the master bedroom so that’s something … My own mother won twenty pounds at cards … I had a bit of a fling, he was here from Sligo on a trainee course … he gave me this.

  She pulls a scapular from inside her blouse.

  Did you hear about Mrs Gentleman, she went nuts, she read some poem. (Artificial voice.) ‘My nerves are bad tonight … I fear I am in rats’ alley.’

  Kate (finishing the verse as she walks)

  ‘My nerves are bad tonight … stay with me.

  Speak to me … Why do you never speak …

  I think we are in rats’ alley

  Where the dead men lost their bones.’

  Dusk as Kate arrives to where Hickey is crouched in a field roasting fresh mushrooms on a little portable brazier. His tools are on the ground, along with the sack. He is bidding goodbye to the place.

  Hickey Dotey … Darling … Honeybunch.

  Kate crouches down next to him, as he gives her a mushroom, which is very hot. The scene is played over their eating.

  Kate Why are you going to England?

  Hickey No work here … Land isn’t worth tuppence and he can’t stock it, poor man – him that was a big shot once.

  Kate Who’ll mind him?

  Hickey He thinks you will.

  Kate I can’t, Hickey … I can’t. I love the place but I can’t stay.

  Hickey I love it as much as you … I was here before you were born.

  Kate I know.

  Hickey Nursed you, taught you to walk and to talk … tried to teach you how to ride a bicycle.

  Kate Mama used to get cross with you for dolloping the butter on to your bread and that day down in the woods, when you were supposed to shoot the fox you fell fast asleep … the fox walked straight into the hen house and killed them all. (A little excited.) Baba and I are going to Dublin … I’ll work in the day in a shop and go to classes at night.

  Hickey We’ll miss this.

  Kate I won’t.

  Hickey Ah, you will. They say as you get older you miss home. It all keeps coming back to you … it’s in the joints and in the bones like arthritis or rheumatism.

  Kate Like arthritis?

  Hickey takes out a folded sheet of paper from his pocket.

  Hickey (reading) ‘When Hickey dug the slane into the turf bank, water squelched out and flowed down into the pool of black bog water. I saw the bog water and the
bog lilies and the blackened patches of ground where Hickey had made a fire to boil a kettle and stoked it with swags of fresh heather.’ (He looks at her and smiles). Can I keep it?

  Kate (nods affirmative) What use is it?

  Hickey It will be … one day … You’ll be a writer and I’ll show it off … I learnt you nature and birdsong … the cry of the curlew.

  Kate smiles at the fact of his remembering and goes, recalling two lines of Yeats’s ‘Curlew’. She says them with humour rather than bathos.

  Kate

  ‘O curlew, cry no more in the air,

  Or only to the water in the West.’

  As Kate goes, Hickey calls after her.

  Hickey I’ll send you a Christmas card and a pressie.

  Hickey starts to pack his things, whistling ‘Oh Mary, this London’s a wonderful sight,’ etc.

  He puts the sack on his back and follows to where Kate and Baba, each carrying a suitcase, are heading for Dublin.

  Martha, Mr Brennan, Father and Molly enter to wave the girls off, as Hickey sings.

  Twilight.

  The country sounds are replaced with sounds of the city, car hooters, bicycle bells and a tune on a barrel organ.

  Hickey (singing)

  I met my love by the gasworks wall

  Dreamed a dream by the old canal

  I kissed my girl by the factory wall

  Dirty old town

  Dirty old town.

  Martha, Mr Brennan, Father and Molly wave, but the girls do not turn around.

  Sudden brightness, with the speed of lightning, replaces the country twilight, as the girls walk into the city and look around, thrilled.

  City lights.

  A woman pushing a wheelbarrow hurries past them, singing.

  Singing Woman

  As I went down to Dublin City

  At the hour of twelve at night

  Who should I see but a Spanish lady

  Combing her hair by candlelight.

  They look at her, enthralled, and such is their joy that they hug each other, in happiness.

  End of Act One.

  Act Two

  Dublin. A swirl of people, colours and sounds. Baba and Kate in very high heels and make-up, stand before a huge lit sign, studded in diamante colours, which flashes on and off lighting the word ‘Bovril’. They gaze at it as the letters change colour.

  To one side is the wheelbarrow, upside down, covered in tarpaulin, under which the Singing Woman has hidden.