Good. Because she’s not a pet. You seen them teeth? A bite worse than a pit bull terrier. And he’s wanting to let that out, under the trees?
Lewis
I don’t like to keep her tethered.
Gwynne
You’ll learn. Takes a lot to be a pig man. Have to know when to crack the whip, boy, and when to treat her right, a scratch behind her ear – in the right place she’ll tilt her head and sing right back at you, breath sweet as your own breakfast, which is probably what she’s had. But a pig won’t thank you for being soft. She’ll take the fingers off you then come back for the hand.
Lewis
It’s pannage season. The others let their pigs out for acorns and beech mast. It cleans the forest.
Gwynne
Well, we’re not like the others, and we don’t want our pig stock mixing with theirs. No telling how they keep them. Next thing there’s swine disease, and infection, and you wanting to bring that here?
Lewis
They seem all right at market.
Gwynne
Everyone seems all right at market, that’s what happens at market, all cheery smiles and how d’you do. But they’ll be playing you, boy, looking for the advantage, watching you to see where you’re weak and when they find it… What did I tell you?
Lewis
Trust nobody but ourselves.
Gwynne
And take everything they tell you with a thick pinch of salt. They hadn’t even seen pork round here til I imported it.
Rose
‘Imported’?
Gwynne
Brought in from somewhere else. I brought them here, bartered, did a trade, fair and square.
Rose
Except it wasn’t.
Gwynne
What’s that?
Rose
Your barter. It wasn’t what it seemed.
Gwynne
Who told you that?
Rose
Nobody.
Gwynne
Where you been to be talking to others?
Rose
Nowhere. You know that.
Gwynne
So who’s been visiting?
Rose
No one.
Gwynne
Did you let someone in, girl?
Rose
And get the strap?
Gwynne
That’s right.
Rose
I know what’s good for me.
Gwynne
You don’t let what’s out there get in here.
Rose
I know.
Gwynne
You look at no one. You speak to no one.
Rose
When am I going to get that chance?
Gwynne
Even with the chance, you don’t.
Rose
I don’t.
Gwynne
You wouldn’t like what’s out there.
Rose
I know.
Gwynne
You want me to tell you what can happen?
Rose
No.
Gwynne
You want nightmares, trembling in your bed?
Rose
No.
Gwynne
So I’m telling you: You look at no one. You speak to no one.
Rose
I don’t.
Lewis
She doesn’t.
Gwynne
Good. So then where’s these opinions about my barter coming from?
Lewis
Not from me.
Rose
He’s right.
Gwynne
From thin air, is it?
Rose
Yes.
Gwynne
Be careful, now.
Rose
But it’s true. Sometimes –
Gwynne
Yes?
Rose
– when I’m in the back of the van … I see people. I see. And I understand.
Lewis
There’s no harm in it.
Gwynne
You stop that reading what people say by watching their mouths.
It’s just people talking.
Gwynne
Saying things about me. About us. They see the van and they talk, oh yes. I know them, know the poison they speak, the slurry they spread, stinking. And then her carrying what’s outside back in here, where it’s clean and safe. I’m not having it.
Rose
I can’t help it.
Gwynne
Try.
Rose
I don’t mean to.
Gwynne
Then we keep you here when we go to market. Or paint over the window at the back of the van. If you can’t see out, you don’t get to steal peoples’ conversations.
Rose
I don’t steal. It just happens.
Gwynne
Nothing happens by itself. Everything happens by will. (Rose resumes plucking the chicken.) Like that sow getting out.
Lewis
The black sow likes acorns. I still can’t see what harm there is in letting her out under the trees.
Gwynne
She’ll eat a lump out of you, and come back for more.
Lewis (smiling at Rose)
Sounds familiar.
Gwynne
You won’t get a sow do what you want by speaking kindly to her. She needs the buckle or a good sting from the cattle prod. Better still not to give her the opportunity to think. Bend her will to yours, that’s the way. And keep her penned.
Two.
Morning. Rose outside feeding the hens. She watches the wind in the trees and looks about her. Projected text, signed, perhaps partly spoken.
Rose
I see the invisible. Shaking leaf. What moves it?
Not the leaf.
And the flower head nodding – not in agreement, not to itself, but at nothing. The nothing that moves it, the unseen not-there that crosses the lake, surface shifting, like my breath on my tea in the morning. I see the unseen and understand – like the mouths that move, then words appear in my head. How’d they get there? The people aren’t talking to me; don’t know I exist, hunkered down in the back of the van. Don’t know where I live, that I’m here and breathe and eat and sleep and see the invisible, inside their heads. They move their mouths but not at me.
I’m stealing.
I’m taking sense that was not for me, sense from the air, like the wind shaking the leaf, nodding the flower, stirring the lake.
Does that make me a thief?
Am I taking what’s not mine?
Have I been taken?
Graham approaches, at first unseen. Rose stays stock still when she realises he is there. He is concentrating, looking for something on the ground and is oblivious to her presence.
She watches him acutely, trying to remain invisible as he passes her by. When he has gone, she takes in a great gasp of air, and then swiftly, hungrily, looks after him.
Three.
Evening. Rose is clearing up after supper. The radio is on. // marks overlapping dialogue, signifying when Gwynne interrupts the broadcast.
Radio
… whether there could be more transparency in procedure and wider interaction with the European community. Delegates say dialogue is on-going and these concerns will be high on the agenda when they gather at the international summit at the end of the month. Concerns are mounting following the disappearance on Saturday evening of a young British boy from a holiday resort in Spain. The eight year old, who can’t be identified for legal reasons, was last seen by his mother// when playing by the swimming pool in the holiday complex. Spanish and British police are liaising in an attempt –
Gwynne
//Switch that off.
Lewis
I’m listening.
Gwynne
I said off.
Lewis switches off the radio. Rose senses a change in dynamic.
Rose
Wha
t?
Gwynne
Can’t hear myself think with that racket. Always bad news – some war, someone killed, unemployment gone up, house prices gone down –
Lewis
Some kid gone missing …
Gwynne
It’s always the same. It was exactly the same at some point over the past twenty years. You don’t need journalists to write it up, just newsreaders using the old scripts, with a changed name. The news is old.
He exits.
Rose
Another?
Lewis
What?
Rose
Kid gone missing? Is that what you said?
Lewis
Not specifically. It’s not a specific kid gone missing. Like the farmer said, the same things are always happening.
Rose
So what made you say it? Was it on the radio?
Lewis
The radio’s not on.
Rose
I know – I saw you switch it off. But it was on.
Lewis
So?
Rose
So is that what made you say it?
Lewis
Say what?
Rose
A kid’s gone missing.
Lewis
I didn’t.
Rose
Did.
Lewis
Okay, maybe I did.
Rose
What made you say a kid’s gone missing when there isn’t one?
Lewis
I don’t know. I was just saying…
Rose
Yes…?
Lewis
I was saying there’s always people going missing.
Rose
To where?
Lewis
Don’t know. That’s why they’re missing.
Rose
Lewis
– and since when were you dealing with bus tickets?
Rose
People are people. They can’t just vanish into the air.
Lewis
Can.
Rose
Can they?
Lewis
There was a woman on the radio. She said her husband went out for a bottle of milk and didn’t come home for nine years.
Rose
What did he want milk for?
Lewis
His tea, probably.
Rose
And he waited all that long? It’d be cold after nine years.
Lewis
Well, he wouldn’t have wanted the tea really, would he? Just like he never really wanted the milk. It was just an excuse to get him out of the house and once he was out, he kept walking.
Rose
I think about that sometimes.
Lewis
What?
Rose
Going outside and just keeping walking.
Lewis
Do you?
Rose
Putting on my jacket and heading out. Lifting the latch and gone, out into the wind and never mind the sow waiting for her slops, or the eggs to be fetched. Just up and away and the wind on my face and never looking back.
Lewis
Do you?
Rose
Think that? Sometimes.
Lewis
And you wouldn’t tell us where you were going?
Rose
How could I with you out in the fields or forest, maybe in the van, driving around, working? Wouldn’t let me go, anyway.
Lewis
Too bloody right.
Rose
Take me back; keep me here.
Lewis
Lock you in, where you belong.
Rose
And that’d be that. No walking, the wind on me, looking.
Lewis
At what?
Rose
Just looking. And walking. And never coming back.
Lewis
And you’d do that?
Rose
Maybe.
Lewis
And not tell us where you were?
Rose
Might send a card. A picture of some town I’d pass through. Just put the address, no message. But you’d know who it was from.
Lewis
Yes.
Rose
You’d know it was me.
Lewis
And you could do that, and not miss us?
Rose
I don’t know. Can’t remember a time when you weren’t there.
Lewis
We wouldn’t manage without you.
Rose
Would.
Lewis
I wouldn’t. And you wouldn’t manage without me. We’re not meant to be apart. (Beat) So what would you do without me to look after you?
Rose
Same as I always have. Cook, clean.
Lewis
That wouldn’t make much money.
Rose
Wouldn’t need any.
Lewis
So how would you live?
Rose.
In. I’d live in, where I cook and clean. And eat there and sleep there. Same as here.
Lewis
People don’t do that anymore. People don’t have housekeepers, haven’t the money or the space. They don’t need cooks.
Rose
So what about here?
Lewis
Here’s different. You know that.
Rose
So what if you can’t cook? Or too busy working, get home late?
Lewis
Do what everybody else does: buy readymade from the supermarket, perforate the film and two minutes in the microwave. Ping! There you are: Ready.
Rose
We don’t do that.
Lewis
No.
Rose
I don’t know if I’d like that. Eating things you don’t know what’s been put in there. Could be anything. And two minutes and ping, there you are, ready. Can’t be right. Nothing cooks in two minutes. Not even eggs.
Lewis
Sounds like you’re better off staying.
Rose
Or maybe I’d work in a shop. Wrapping up things.
Lewis
Like what?
Rose
Things.
Lewis
Like…?
Rose
Things – things. The things people have in bags coming out of shops. I don’t know what people have in their bags. I don’t know what they have in the shops, but I see them walking in the street with bags, plastic bags with things in them, sometimes one in each hand, or more sometimes, things bought in the shops. I could do that. Put things people buy inside the plastic bags in the shop.
Lewis
What about taking money, giving change?
Rose
I’m best left with the bags.
Lewis
They don’t employ people just to do that.
Rose
Someone else would do the money and I’d take the thing and wrap it and put it in the bag and I’d say ‘thank you very much. We appreciate your business. Have a sweet day.’
Lewis
It’s ‘nice’. ‘Have a nice day.’
Rose
No it’s not.
Lewis
You got that off the telly the other night, when Gwynne said you could watch it for a while.
Rose
There was a woman in a shop and she wrapped something in white paper and put it in a bag and said to the other woman with the yellow hair: ‘Thank you. We appreciate your business. Have a sweet day.’
Lewis
Nice day. They say have a nice day.
Rose
Well maybe they do, but I’d say different. I’d say sweet and maybe that’s why I’d work there, because I would say things different from the others and that’s why they’d give me a job.
Lewis
Really.
&n
bsp; Rose
But perhaps I’d best stick with the bags. Just taking the thing and putting it in the bag.
Lewis
Or maybe you’re best just staying here.
Rose
Maybe. We’ll see.
Several beats. They continue with their work.
Lewis
There’s a saying – well, people say –
Rose
– Gwynne says.
Lewis
Yeah. Gwynne says once, a long time ago, we had two heads. Two heads, four arms and four legs, but we were ripped apart, pulled asunder, and so ever since then we search for our other half, the person who makes us whole. He found you for me. Magicked. Perfect fit. (Rose looks at him. Several beats.) The door is always open.
Four.
Rose alone outdoors. She has been collecting mushrooms. Projected text. Visual and spoken language.
Rose
I don’t think I remember before.
He says I was made for him, conjured from thin air.
Crafted by a watchmaker, a herbalist,
a surgeon melding flower to form flesh,
those intricate inner coils curled
and soldered. Made.
A master joiner planing
my limbs to ivory bone.
Flowers made me.
Stem stamen sepal style
Pistil anther filament ovule.
Nothing without pollen.
Bees.
Graham is here, watching her sign ‘bees’.
They stare at each other motionless, then as he moves towards her, she takes to her heels and exits at speed. He calls after her, unheard.
Graham
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean –.
I’m –.
He stands, looking after her.
Five.
Gwynne is outside looking out at the view. Rose tries to hide her previous fright and flight. Gwynne sees her, opening his arms to what is around them.
Gwynne
And here we are, standing on the crust of the shining world … So little changed over hundreds of years, more. Ancient woodland, wilderness, heaths. Grassland, bogs … (He looks, savours.) We own everything far as the eye can see.
Rose
Can’t see much for the forest.
Gwynne
And that’s how we like it. We can’t see out; they can’t see in. They won’t be bothering us.
Rose
What if someone comes here?
Gwynne
They won’t.
Rose
But if they did?
Gwynne
You seen someone?
Rose
If I did, who would it be?
Gwynne
Doesn’t matter. Shouldn’t be around here.
Rose
But if. What would you do?
Gwynne
Deal with them.
Rose
How? (Beat)
Gwynne
Anyone out here knows it’s our land; it’s private. They trespass – they take the consequences. So you say if you see anyone.