Arcadia (11 page)

Valentine: Ah. The attraction that Newton left out. All the
way back to the apple in the garden. Yes.
(Pause.)
Yes, I think you’re
the first person to think of this.

(Hannah
enters, carrying a tabloid paper, and a mug of
tea.)
Hannah: Have you seen this? ‘Bonking Byron Shot Poet’. CHLOfi:
(Pleased)
Let’s see.

(Hannah
gives her the paper, smiles atGUS.)
Valentine:
He’s done awfully well, hasn’t he? How did they all know? Hannah: Don’t be
ridiculous.
(To
chloE) Your father wants it back. CHLOfi: All right. Hannah:
What a fool. CHLOfi: Jealous. I think it’s brilliant.
(She gets up to go. To
Gus)

Yes, that’s perfect, but not with trainers. Come on, I’ll
lend you a pair of flatties, they’ll look period on you—Hannah: Hello, Gus. You
all look so romantic.

(Gus
following
CHLOfi
out, hesitates, smiles at
her.)
CHLOfi:
(Pointedly)
Are you coming?

(She holds the door for
GUS
and follows him out,
leaving a sense of her disapproval behind her.)
Hannah: The important thing
is not to give two monkeys for what young people think about you.

(She goes to look at the other newspapers.
) Valentine:
(Anxiously)
You don’t think she’s getting a thing about Bernard, do you?
Hannah: I wouldn’t worry about Chloe, she’s old enough to vote on her back. ‘Byron
Fought Fatal Duel, Says Don’. Or rather

—
(sceptically)
‘Says Don!’ Valentine: It may all
prove to be true. Hannah: It can’t prove to be true, it can only not prove to
be false yet. Valentine:
(Pleased)
Just like science. Hannah: If Bernard
can stay ahead of getting the rug pulled till he’s dead, he’ll be a success. Valentine:
Just
like science ... The ultimate fear is of posterity ... Hannah:
Personally I don’t think it’ll take that long. Valentine: ... and then there’s
the afterlife. An afterlife would be a mixed blessing. ‘Ah—Bernard Nightingale,
I don’t believe you know Lord Byron.’ It must be heaven up there.

Hannah: You can’t believe in an afterlife, Valentine.

Valentine: Oh, you’re going to disappoint me at last.

Hannah: Am I? Why?

Valentine: Science and religion.

Hannah: No, no, been there, done that, boring.

Valentine: Oh, Hannah. Fiancee. Have pity. Can’t we have a
trial marriage and I’ll call it off in the morning?

Hannah:
(Amused)
I don’t know when I’ve received a
more unusual proposal.

Valentine:
(Interested)
Have you had many?

Hannah: That would be telling.

Valentine: Well, why not? Your classical reserve is only a
mannerism; and neurotic.

Hannah: Do you want the room?

Valentine: You get nothing if you give nothing.

Hannah: I ask nothing.

Valentine: No, stay.

(Valentine
resumes work at his computer,
Hannah
establishes
herself among her references at
⁽
her> end of the table. She has a
stack of pocket-sized volumes, Lady Croom’s *garden books
⁹
.)

Hannah: What are you doing? Valentine?

Valentine: The set of points on a complex plane made by—

Hannah: Is it the grouse?

Valentine: Oh, the grouse. The damned grouse.

Hannah: You mustn’t give up.

Valentine: Why? Didn’t you agree with Bernard?

Hannah: Oh, that. It’s
all
trivial—your grouse, my
hermit, Bernard’s Byron. Comparing what we’re looking for misses the point. It’s
wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we’re going out the way we came
in. That’s why you can’t believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the
after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit,
the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial
get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the
book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is
final.

(She looks over
Valentine’s
shoulder at the
computer screen.

Reacting)
Oh!, but ... how beautiful! Valentine: The
Coverly set. Hannah: The Coverly set! My goodness, Valentine! Valentine: Lend
me a finger.

(He takes her finger and presses one of the computer keys
several times.)

See? In an ocean of ashes, islands of order. Patterns making
themselves out of nothing.

I can’t show you how deep it goes. Each picture is a detail
of the previous one, blown up. And so on. For ever. Pretty nice, eh? Hannah: Is
it important? Valentine: Interesting. Publishable. Hannah: Well done! Valentine:
Not me. It’s Thomasina’s. I just pushed her equations through the computer a
few million times further than she managed to do with her pencil.

(From the old portfolio he takes Thomasina’s lesson book
and gives it to
Hannah.
The piano starts to be heard.)

You can have it back now. Hannah: What does it mean? Valentine:
Not what you’d like it to. Hannah: Why not?

Valentine: Well, for one thing, she’d be famous. Hannah: No,
she wouldn’t. She was dead before she had time to be famous ... Valentine: She
died? Hannah: ... burned to death.

Valentine:
(Realizing)
Oh ... the girl who died in
the fire! Hannah: The night before her seventeenth birthday. You can see where
the dormer doesn’t match. That was her bedroom under the roof. There’s a
memorial in the Park. Valentine:
(Irritated)
I know-it’s my house.

(Valentine
turns his attention back to his computer,
Hannah
goes back to her chair. She looks through the lesson book.)
Hannah: Val,
Septimus was her tutor—he and Thomasina would have—

Valentine: You do yours.
(Pause. Two researchers.

LORD
AUGUSTUS, fifteenyears old, wearing clothes ofi8i2,
bursts in through the non-music room door. He is laughing. He dives under the
table. He is chased into the room by
Thomasina,
aged sixteen and
furious. She spots
AUGUSTUS

immediately.)
Thomasina: You swore! You crossed your
heart!

(AUGUSTUS
scampers out from under the table and
THOMASINA

chases him around it.)
Augustus: I’ll tell mama! I’ll
tell mama! Thomasina: You beast!

{She catches
Augustus
as
Septimus
enters
from the other door, carrying a book, a decanter and a glass, and his
portfolio.)
Septimus: Hush! What is this? My lord! Order, order!

(Thomasina
and
Augustus
separate.)

I am obliged.

(Septimus
goes to his place at the table. He pours
himself a glass of wine.)
Augustus: Well, good day to you, Mr Hodge!

(He is smirking about something.

Thomasina
dutifully picks up a drawing book and settles
down to draw the geometrical solids.

Septimus
opens his portfolio.)
Septimus: Will you
join us this morning, Lord Augustus? We have our drawing lesson. Augustus: I am
a master of it at Eton, Mr Hodge, but we only draw naked women. Septimus: You
may work from memory. Thomasina: Disgusting! Septimus: We will have silence
now, if you please.

(From the portfolio
Septimus
takes Thomasina’s
lesson book and tosses it to her; returning homework. She snatches it and opens
it.)
Thomasina: No marks?! Did you not like my rabbit equation? Septimus: I
saw no resemblance to a rabbit. Thomasina: It eats its own progeny.

Septimus:
(Pause)
I did not see that.

(He extends his hand for the lesson book. She returns it
to him.)
Thomasina: I have not room to extend it.

(Septimus
and
Hannah
turn the pages doubled by
time.

AUGUSTUS
indolently starts to draw the models.)
Hannah:
Do you mean the world is saved after all? Valentine: No, it’s still doomed. But
if this is how it started, perhaps it’s how the next one will come. Hannah:
From good English algebra? Septimus: It will go to infinity or zero, or
nonsense. Thomasina: No, if you set apart the minus roots they square back to
sense.

(Septimus
turns the pages.

THOMASINA
starts drawing the models.

Hannah
closes the lesson book and turns her attention to
her stack of’garden books’.)
Valentine: Listen—you know your tea’s getting
cold. Hannah: I like it cold. Valentine:
(Ignoring that)
I’m telling you
something. Your tea gets cold by itself, it doesn’t get hot by itself. Do you
think that’s odd?

Hannah: No.

Valentine: Well, it is odd. Heat goes to cold. It’s a
one-way street. Your tea will end up at room temperature. What’s happening to
your tea is happening to everything everywhere. The sun and the stars. It’ll
take a while but we’re all going to end up at room temperature. When your
hermit set up shop nobody understood this. But let’s say you’re right, in
18-whatever nobody knew more about heat than this scribbling nutter living in a
hovel in.Derbyshire.

Hannah: He was at Cambridge—a scientist.

Valentine: Say he was. I’m not arguing. And the girl was his
pupil, she had a genius for her tutor.

Hannah: Or the other way round.

Valentine: Anything you like. But not
thisl
Whatever
he thought he was doing to save the world with good English algebra it wasn’t
this! Hannah: Why? Because they didn’t have calculators? Valentine: No. Yes.
Because there’s an order things can’t happen in. You can’t open a door till
there’s a house. Hannah: I thought that’s what genius was. Valentine: Only for
lunatics and poets.

(Pause.)
Hannah: ‘I had a dream which was not all a
dream.

The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars Did wander darkling
in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and
blackening in the moonless air ...’ Valentine: Your own? Hannah: Byron.

(Pause. Two researchers again.)
Thomasina: Septimus,
do you think that I will marry Lord

Byron? Augustus: Who is he? Thomasina: He is the author of ‘Childe
Harold’s Pilgrimage’, the most poetical and pathetic and bravest hero of any
book I

ever read before, and the most modern and the handsomest, for
Harold is Lord Byron himself to those who know him, like myself and Septimus.
Well, Septimus? Septimus:
(Absorbed)
No.

(Then he puts her lesson book away into the portfolio and
picks up his own book to read.)
Thomasina: Why not?

Septimus: For one thing, he is not aware of your existence. Thomasina:
We exchanged many significant glances when he was at Sidley Park. I do wonder
that he has been home almost a year from his adventures and has not written to
me once. Septimus: It is indeed improbable, my lady. Augustus: Lord Byron?!—he
claimed my hare, although my shot was the earlier! He said I missed by a hare’s
breadth.

His conversation was very facetious. But I think Lord Byron
will not marry you, Thorn, for he was only lame and not blind.

Septimus: Peace! Peace until a quarter to twelve. It is
intolerable for a tutor to have his thoughts interrupted by his pupils. Augustus:
You are not
my
tutor, sir. I am visiting your lesson by my free will.
Septimus: If you are so determined, my lord.

(Thomasina
laughs at that, the joke is for her,
Augustus,
not included, becomes angry.)
Augustus: Your peace is nothing to me,
sir. You do not rule over me. Thomasina:
(Admonishing)
Augustus!
Septimus: I do not rule here, my lord. I inspire by reverence for learning and
the exaltation of knowledge whereby man may approach God. There will be a
shilling for the best cone and pyramid drawn in silence by a quarter to twelve
at
the earliest.
Augustus: You will not buy my silence for a shilling, sir.
What I

know to tell is worth much more than that.

(And throwing down his drawing book and pencil, he leaves
the room on his dignity, closing the door sharply. Pause.
Septimus
looks
enquiringly at
THOMASINA.) Thomasina: I told him you kissed me. But he will
not tell. Septimus: When did I kiss you? Thomasina: What! Yesterday! Septimus:
Where? Thomasina: On the lips! Septimus: In which county? Thomasina: In the
hermitage, Septimus! Septimus: On the lips in the hermitage! That? That was not
a shilling kiss! I would not give sixpence to have it back. I had almost forgot
it already. Thomasina: Oh, cruel! Have you forgotten our compact? Septimus: God
save me! Our compact? Thomasina: To teach me to waltz! Sealed with a kiss, and a
second kiss due when I can dance like mama! Septimus: Ah yes. Indeed. We were
all waltzing like mice in

London. Thomasina: I must waltz, Septimus! I will be despised
if I do not waltz! It is the most fashionable and gayest and boldest invention
conceivable—started in Germany!

Septimus: Let them have the waltz, they cannot have the calculus.

Thomasina: Mama has brought from town a whole book of
waltzes for the Broad wood, to play with Count Zelinsky.

Septimus: I need not be told what I cannot but suffer. Count
Zelinsky banging on the Broadwood without relief has me reading in waltz time.

Thomasina: Oh, stuff! What is your book?

Septimus: A prize essay of the Scientific Academy in Paris.
The author deserves your indulgence, my lady, for you are his prophet.

Thomasina: I? What does he write about? The waltz?

Septimus: Yes. He demonstrates the equation of the propagation
of heat in a solid body. But in doing so he has discovered heresy—a natural
contradiction of Sir Isaac Newton.

Thomasina: Oh!—he contradicts determinism?

Septimus: No!... Well, perhaps. He shows that the atoms do
not go according to Newton.