Shrine

  ALSO BY TIM WINTON

  Novels

  An Open Swimmer

  Shallows

  That Eye, the Sky

  In the Winter Dark

  Cloudstreet

  The Riders

  Dirt Music

  Breath

  Eyrie

  Stories

  Scission

  Minimum of Two

  The Turning

  For younger readers

  Jesse

  Lockie Leonard, Human Torpedo

  The Bugalugs Bum Thief

  Lockie Leonard, Scumbuster

  Lockie Leonard, Legend

  Blueback

  The Deep

  Non-fiction

  Land’s Edge

  Down to Earth (with Richard Woldendorp)

  Smalltown (with Martin Mischkulnig)

  Plays

  Rising Water

  Signs of Life

  Contents

  Setting & Characters

  SCENE 1

  SCENE 2

  SCENE 3

  SCENE 4

  SCENE 5

  SCENE 6

  SCENE 7

  SCENE 8

  SCENE 9

  SCENE 10

  SCENE 11

  SCENE 12

  SCENE 13

  SCENE 14

  Production Notes

  Acknowledgements

  SETTING

  A beach house above a rocky headland on the south coast of Western Australia. Nearby is a roadside shrine at the edge of a karri forest.

  CHARACTERS

  ADAM MANSFIELD a retired vigneron and property developer

  MARY MANSFIELD a businesswoman

  JACK MANSFIELD (19) their dead son

  JUNE FENTON (19) a local cellarhand

  BEN (20) Jack’s former friend

  WILL (20) Jack’s former friend

  June (Whitney Richards)

  SCENE 1

  A roadside shrine at the edge of a forest. Lights up on a man scraping furiously at a large tree with a pocketknife. The latticed light gradually reveals him freshening a great wound in the tree’s trunk. At its base stands a white cross festooned with beer cans, bourbon bottles and an advertising placard that reads: JACK LIVES HERE.

  ADAM: Sometimes I wish there’d been blood. Something left behind. Sick, I know, but a stain on the ground, maybe there’d be comfort in it. A man could indulge himself in a bit of nature romance – blood, soil, presence – all that mystic nonsense. But there was hardly a mark on you. Nothing to show but a scar on a tree.

  He snaps the knife shut and kicks over the cross and all its decorations.

  SCENE 2

  A bolt of light reveals MARY and ADAM beside a hospital gurney upon which their son JACK lies dead.

  MARY: It isn’t right.

  ADAM: No, it doesn’t look right.

  MARY: Don’t tell me he looks peaceful. Don’t you dare!

  ADAM: Mary.

  MARY: Is it him? Is this still him?

  ADAM: I don’t know.

  MARY: Unblemished.

  ADAM: The impact.

  MARY: Trauma – they said the word as if they knew what it meant, what it actually felt like.

  ADAM: You just couldn’t see the damage. His organs all adrift within him.

  MARY: Not a mark.

  ADAM: Momentum makes us superhuman.

  MARY: Angelic.

  ADAM: You fly. There you are, flying. And inside half a second you’re not even human anymore. You’re just meat.

  MARY: Don’t.

  ADAM: I expected him to be so much lighter. Gone, they said. He slipped away. Like a thought.

  MARY: Couldn’t hold him. Couldn’t lift him. He was so cold and heavy.

  ADAM: That’s the thing. By the time we drove down – Christ, or did we fly? By the time we got there he’d been refrigerated. Or maybe I imagined that. I expected a boy and there he was, a man, so heavy, so solid he seemed . . . plausible. And despite the stink of antiseptic it did smell like him.

  MARY: Lanolin. Coconut.

  ADAM: That sweet scent they put in surfboard wax these days.

  MARY: No. That’s the smell of a girl.

  ADAM: Standing there in the little mortuary room, I kept asking myself, Is this our son?

  MARY: Why won’t he speak? I can’t bear it.

  ADAM: And she’s looking at me like I’m a stranger.

  MARY: Adam is silent. A monument to his own dignity. Can’t stand it another moment. So I run.

  ADAM: The bloke says, ‘Is this your son?’

  MARY: Bolted. Blind. Just a mad creature. Trolleys, locked doors, glass threaded with wire I try to sieve myself through.

  ADAM: ‘This?’ I say. Thinking: It looks like him. Is this Jack or just the stuff that made him possible? A body’s just the plant and equipment, not the enterprise itself.

  MARY: I’m trapped, hurling myself against the walls and windows to get free.

  ADAM: Smiling, they said. Smiling. But I can’t see it.

  MARY: Until everything goes blank.

  ADAM: Nothing.

  MARY: Cold and dark.

  ADAM: The bloke’s talking to me. Fella with a clipboard and a lab coat like some consultant flown in to oversee the vintage.

  MARY: I come to and I’m on the floor. Feet and legs all round me – not Adam’s. He’s oblivious, still in there scratching his chin, holding himself together.

  ADAM: ‘Mister Mansfield?’ he says.

  MARY: Arms and soft hands. Crooning voices, soft and kind. But nothing to console me because I want Adam. I want him to haul me out of the white, shiny horror I’ve slipped into.

  ADAM: ‘Is this your son?’

  MARY: And I’m broken. Completely. Knew I’d keep breaking forever.

  ADAM: ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Yes, this is my son. This is Jack Mansfield.’

  MARY: Like a man unbroken, unbreakable.

  ADAM: And I sign for him. Take delivery of the facts.

  MARY: The end.

  Mary (Sarah McNeill) and Jack (Paul Ashcroft)

  SCENE 3

  The roadside shrine. Enter JUNE who surveys the shrine in disarray. As she speaks JACK is revealed nearby, watching on.

  JUNE: Fucksake! Again . . .

  She stoops to collect the scattered bits and pieces and begins to reassemble the shrine.

  JUNE: Least I’ll remember.

  JACK: Strange that it should make a difference.

  JUNE: Weird how you can see the Point from here. That white flash – see? – the wave breakin on the end. Wonder if it’s any kind of comfort, havin it right there, close by. I know you loved it. Remember your big white smile all those mornins, runnin down to the water with your board.

  JACK: Remembering, June. It’s not like a job or anything.

  JUNE: I’ll never forget. I can’t.

  JACK: I know.

  JUNE: Hardly imagine it all now, hardly believe it.

  JACK: It was half a day. Barely that.

  JUNE: Not even a whole night. But the whole sea, that’s what we had.

  JACK: Barely a moment.

  JUNE: We must have been out of our minds.

  SCENE 4

  The beach house. ADAM stands at the window, a little drunk.

  ADAM: God, will you look at that. A sea mist. Rolling up the headland, hanging over the paddocks like a promise. How’s a man account for that wanton bit of beauty? The cold, dark, pitiless ocean giving off a vapour so benign. In a world so utterly bereft of promise. Christ man, listen to yourself!

  He turns from the window, crosses the room and pulls out another bottle. He consults the label.

  ADAM: ‘North-facing slopes, maritime air, and red karri gravel: such are the building blocks of the wine we call Ocean Ridge.’ Wrote that before the first vines
even went in – there’s confidence.

  He opens the bottle, pours himself a measure, swirls it, sniffs it and fills his glass. After such aesthetic ritual, drinks the wine off in one bovine gulp.

  ADAM: When you’re young you make things happen just by thinking of them. If you want them enough. Provided you’ve done your homework. Least that’s what you tell yourself, what you tell him when he comes home with his schoolboy tales of woe.

  As he speaks JUNE appears at the door.

  JUNE: Sorry.

  ADAM: Fuck me running!

  JUNE: Sorry?

  ADAM: I . . . I beg your pardon, love. I wasn’t expecting anyone.

  JUNE: Didn’t mean to creep up on ya. Well, actually that’s not true – I was creepin up. Sorry.

  ADAM: Do we know each other?

  JUNE: Um, well, I know you, of course, Mister Mansfield. Ah, I’m June?

  ADAM: June.

  JUNE: Ocean Ridge. The winery. It’s just —

  ADAM: I know where it is. I own it.

  JUNE: I know.

  ADAM: Well, used to own it.

  JUNE: I know.

  ADAM: I didn’t hear a vehicle. How’d you get here, June?

  JUNE: Parked out on the beach road. Gate’s locked.

  ADAM: Which traditionally means something. What’d you say your name was?

  JUNE: June.

  ADAM: Family name?

  JUNE: I used to pick for you. Started when I was at school, when it was just sheds. Cellarhand now.

  ADAM: What name?

  JUNE: Fenton.

  ADAM: Oh. Right.

  JUNE: My dad —

  ADAM: I know.

  JUNE: Yeah, everyone knows.

  ADAM: And no one’s holding it against you.

  JUNE: Nah, that’d never happen. Not in this town.

  ADAM: Fenton.

  JUNE: Says it all, doesn’t it.

  ADAM: So, we’re old colleagues, then. Comrades at arms. Fellow toilers in the field.

  JUNE: Ah, whatever you reckon.

  ADAM: Well, June, you gave me quite a fright, there. No harm done. Anyway, I’m off.

  JUNE: Where?

  ADAM: Well, Perth. Told the missus I’d be home today. And I hate to be on the road after dark.

  JUNE: Roos.

  ADAM: That, and I start to see things.

  JUNE: Not worth the stress, is it?

  ADAM: Seeing things?

  JUNE: Worryin. Drivin in the dark, dodgin animals.

  ADAM: Yes. No.

  JUNE: You’re in real estate.

  ADAM: Yes, in quite a state – you’re rather observant, June – but this is me on a good day.

  JUNE: That’s not what I said, what I meant.

  ADAM: I know what you meant, I heard what you said.

  JUNE: I’m sorry.

  ADAM: And yes, I was, in my way, in real estate. Property developer. Let’s just say I retired hurt from that game.

  JUNE: You went broke?

  ADAM: Lost interest.

  JUNE: Last year.

  ADAM: Yes, you could say I failed to develop.

  JUNE: Why’d you sell the winery?

  ADAM: You know, I can’t even remember. Honest to God.

  JUNE: Must’ve hurt, lettin it go.

  ADAM: Yes, I suppose it must’ve. Bit of a blur, that.

  JUNE: I . . . we couldn’t believe it.

  ADAM: Divestment, June. Sounds rather rational and precise, doesn’t it? Well, it wasn’t. But here I am, free and clear. Free. And clear.

  He turns as if preparing to leave, but he’s a little lost.

  JUNE: So, what d’you do all day?

  ADAM: Do?

  JUNE: God, I’m sorry, that’s rude. I’m so stupid.

  ADAM: Not at all. Perfectly reasonable question. And by the time I reach the outskirts of the city I’m sure I’ll have come up with a plausible answer. But don’t hold your breath.

  JUNE: I just wanted to say how sorry, what a terrible thing.

  ADAM: Listen, what’re they doing to the sav blanc? It’s . . .

  JUNE: What?

  ADAM: Flabby, sweet.

  JUNE: Too slow gettin it off. Too many cooks, you know?

  ADAM: Well, it’s their funeral.

  Adam (John Howard) and June (Whitney Richards)

  SCENE 5

  Each in their own pool of merciless light, ADAM and MARY stand separated by a gulf of dark space.

  MARY: The funeral is its own exquisite indignity.

  ADAM: All of them there. Every name on the database – school, business, sport. Jack’s friends. People you’ve never seen before in your life. I stand there and suck it up, every platitude, every Olympian feat of insincerity, every well-meant banality, religious and secular, every Hallmark moment.

  MARY: In flames.

  ADAM: Taking it, just taking it.

  MARY: I’m on fire. Tongues of fire from my head, ears, mouth, streaming from the ends of my fingers.

  ADAM: Just getting through it, sucking it up. Until the moment the coffin slides away through the velvet curtain.

  MARY: And I feel it, pure and horrible, strong as the shock of pushing him free.

  ADAM: She starts screaming. Falls down like a headscarfed immigrant, beating her hands on the floor. Jesus, we’ve got everything but the blood-curdling ululation. The moaning and yowling, it’s . . . it’s . . . awful. Bovine. Frightening.

  MARY: Like making him. Feeling him live outside me.

  ADAM: And after that, where do you go? Within a week the fridge is all festering leftovers, casseroles you’ll never eat, mornays that have graduated from unappealing to genuinely hazardous. And the livingroom’s a deadzone at the silent heart of a house suddenly too big and ostentatious.

  MARY: Empty. Curtains drawn. Separate rooms. Nothing.

  ADAM: Nothing but thinking it through and over, chewing at it, knowing this . . . this . . . this box of ash should be someone else’s.

  MARY: The poison runs up your spine. I lie in bed and feel it seep and pulse.

  ADAM: And of course you can’t say it, but the truth is you want the other two dead.

  MARY: His mates.

  ADAM: Them for him.

  MARY: Smarmy Ben, sleazy Will.

  ADAM: He was twice the man either’ll ever be.

  MARY: Bastards.

  ADAM: Can’t say I ever liked them.

  MARY: Never did buy their neat little story.

  ADAM: They were full of food and booze, from my fridge, my cellar.

  MARY: Reeking.

  ADAM: The cops said it.

  MARY: Stank of it.

  ADAM: And Jack was sober.

  MARY: Took blood. Adam insisted.

  ADAM: Clear his name.

  MARY: Blood. From his unblemished body.

  ADAM: I bought him that little car.

  MARY: Gave him the keys the day he finished school and not a moment before.

  ADAM: I mean, how wild can you go in a Corolla, for pity’s sake? Engine like a sewing machine. Had an airbag.

  MARY: Not a mark on him.

  ADAM: But that bend. Day or night, it wouldn’t take much to come unglued there. Cops said it could happen to anybody. Which is of no consolation whatsoever when they’re covered in blood and alive and he’s out there in the wet bracken, pure and whole and slowly dying inside.

  MARY: Why couldn’t it have been them? It should have been them.

  ADAM: We’re not bad people, not reckless. Hands on the tiller. All due diligence. This sort of thing doesn’t happen to people like us. She goes to pieces, poor devil. I can feel her glower at me through a closed door – through all the closed doors. So what can I do? One of us has to keep it together. Best to keep mum. No knowing what you might say, is there? Christ, the wounded banalities you could utter. Who needs to hear that shit? The shame’d kill you both.

  MARY: Say something! Anything! For God’s sake, speak. I can’t stand it!

  ADAM: You take it in silence. Like a tree. Silen
t, shivering, soaking up the impact.

  MARY: It’s as if they both died, father and son. One taken, the other withdrawing, endlessly, pointlessly, bravely silent.

  ADAM: And then, incredibly, a year passes. Not long after that it’s his birthday. You’ve quit the firm, sold off the winery, and the weekend trips go from quarterly to monthly and then every fortnight, until you’re gone as often as you’re home because even you can’t bear yourself silent in her presence, can’t stand your mighty, courageous self-control. She won’t come down here.

  MARY: I don’t want to go there.

  ADAM: But you love the beach house.

  MARY: I don’t want to drive past that tree.

  ADAM: But when we’re together, neither of us is really present. It’s . . . bloody frightening. You keep up the serve-and-volley. Your bodies are there. But there’s nothing in it, no connection, no fellow-feeling. Love? Yes, that old, quiet, bone-murdering ache, that’s there, but it’s —

  MARY: Unbearable.

  ADAM: I watch those kids out there rolling down the Point like seals, barely even conscious that I’m looking for him – you silly twat – scanning the water for the broad triangle of him sat up in his wetsuit. Alive, laughing, seething with thoughtless youth, the future still trundling at him like all those waves spilling in from across the horizon. How bloody stupid is that?

  SCENE 6

  The beach house the same night. ADAM stands transfixed in thought. JUNE watches him slowly return to the moment.

  ADAM: Jesus, you’re soaked.

  JUNE: It’s nothin.

  ADAM: I’m sorry, I didn’t even notice. Get that coat off. Come stand by the fire.

  JUNE hesitates, then wriggles out of her coat and wrings her beanie over the hearth. ADAM brings her a towel and watches her dry off until they both feel self-conscious. He fetches a bottle and two glasses. Pours her a glass and proffers it.

  ADAM: The tempranillo.

  JUNE looks in vain for somewhere to hang the coat, the beanie, the towel. She takes the wine, juggling all her burdens, examines it for colour and clarity, swirls it around the glass, sniffs it. She takes a sip, sluices it impressively around her mouth and then abruptly spits it back into the glass.

  ADAM: Yes, well, I was against the planting.

  JUNE: It’s good, but.