BooksBarbecue
Back Far Away
Chapters (10)
  1. Cover
  2. FAR AWAY
  3. Original Production
  4. Characters
  5. 1.
  6. 2.
  7. 3
  8. CARYL CHURCHILL
  9. Other works by Caryl Churchill, published by Nick Hern Books
  10. Copyright and Performing Rights Information
HARPER You were right to poison the wasps.
TODD Yes, I think all the wasps have got to go.
HARPER I was outside yesterday on the edge of the wood when a shadow came over and it was a cloud of butterflies, and they came down just beyond me and the trees and bushes were red with them. Two of them clung to my arm, I was terrified, one of them got in my hair, I managed to squash them.
TODD I haven’t had a problem with butterflies.
HARPER They can cover your face. The Romans used to commit suicide with gold leaf, just flip it down their throat and it covered their windpipe, I think of that with butterflies.
TODD I was passing an orchard, there were horses standing under the trees, and suddenly wasps attacked them out of the plums. There were the horses galloping by screaming with their heads made of wasp. I wish she’d wake up.
HARPER We don’t know how long she’d been walking.
TODD She was right to come.
HARPER You don’t go walking off in the middle of a war.
TODD You do if you’re escaping.
HARPER We don’t know that she was escaping.
TODD She was getting to a place of safety to regroup.
HARPER Is this a place of safety?
TODD Relatively, yes of course it is. Everyone thinks it’s just a house.
HARPER The cats have come in on the side of the French.
TODD I never liked cats, they smell, they scratch, they only like you because you feed them, they bite, I used to have a cat that would suddenly just take some bit of you in its mouth.
HARPER Did you know they’ve been killing babies?
TODD Where’s that?
HARPER In China. They jump in the cots when nobody’s looking.
TODD But some cats are still ok.
HARPER I don’t think so.
TODD I know a cat up the road.
HARPER No, you must be careful of that.
TODD But we’re not exactly on the other side from the French. It’s not as if they’re the Moroccans and the ants.
HARPER It’s not as if they’re the Canadians, the Venezuelans and the mosquitoes.
TODD It’s not as if they’re the engineers, the chefs, the children under five, the musicians.
HARPER The car salesmen.
TODD Portuguese car salesmen.
HARPER Russian swimmers.
TODD Thai butchers.
HARPER Latvian dentists.
TODD No, the Latvian dentists have been doing good work in Cuba. They’ve a house outside Havana.
HARPER But Latvia has been sending pigs to Sweden. The dentists are linked to international dentistry and that’s where their loyalty lies, with dentists in Dar-es-Salaam.
TODD We don’t argue about Dar-es-Salaam.
HARPER You would attempt to justify the massacre in Dar-es-Salaam? She’s come here because you’re here on leave and if anyone finds out I’ll be held responsible.
TODD It’s only till tomorrow. I’ll wake her up. I’ll give her a few more minutes.
HARPER Did you see the programme about crocodiles?
TODD Yes but crocodiles, the way they look after the baby crocodiles and carry them down to the water in their mouths.
HARPER Don’t you think everyone helps their own children?
TODD I’m just saying I wouldn’t be sorry if the crocodiles were on one of the sides we have alliances with. They’re unstoppable, come on.
HARPER Crocodiles are evil and it is always right to be opposed to crocodiles. Their skin, their teeth, the foul smell of their mouths from the dead meat. Crocodiles wait till zebras are crossing the river and bite the weak ones with those jaws and pull them down. Crocodiles invade villages at night and take children out of their beds. A crocodile will carry a dozen heads back to the river, tenderly like it carries its young, and put them in the water where they bob about as trophies till they rot.
TODD I’m just saying we could use that.
HARPER And the fluffy little darling waterbirds, the smallest one left behind squeaking wait for me, wait for me. And their mother who would give her life to save them.
TODD Do we include mallards in this?
HARPER Mallards are not a good waterbird. They commit rape, and they’re on the side of the elephants and the Koreans. But crocodiles are always in the wrong.
TODD Do you think I should wake her up or let her sleep? We won’t get any time together.
HARPER You agree with me about the crocodiles?
TODD What’s the matter? you don’t know whose side I’m on?
HARPER I don’t know what you think.
TODD I think what we all think.
HARPER Take deer.
TODD You mean sweet little bambis?
HARPER You mean that ironically?
TODD I mean it sarcastically.
HARPER Because they burst out of parks and storm down from mountains and terrorise shopping malls. If the does run away when you shoot they run into somebody else and trample them with their vicious little shining hooves, the fawns get under the feet of shoppers and send them crashing down escalators, the young bucks charge the plate glass windows –
TODD I know to hate deer.
HARPER and the old ones, do you know how heavy their antlers are or how sharp the prongs are when they twist into teenagers running down the street?
TODD Yes I do know that.
He lifts his shirt and shows a scar.
HARPER Was that a deer?
TODD In fact it was a bear. I don’t like being doubted.
HARPER It was when the elephants went over to the Dutch, I’d always trusted elephants.
TODD I’ve shot cattle and children in Ethiopia. I’ve gassed mixed troops of Spanish, computer programmers and dogs. I’ve torn starlings apart with my bare hands. And I liked doing it with my bare hands. So don’t suggest I’m not reliable.
HARPER I’m not saying you can’t kill.
TODD And I know it’s not all about excitement. I’ve done boring jobs. I’ve worked in abattoirs stunning pigs and musicians and by the end of the day your back aches and all you can see when you shut your eyes is people hanging upside down by their feet.
HARPER So you’d say the deer are vicious?
TODD We’ve been over that.
HARPER If a hungry deer came into the yard you wouldn’t feed it?
TODD Of course not.
HARPER I don’t understand that because the deer are with us. They have been for three weeks.
TODD I didn’t know. You said yourself.
HARPER Their natural goodness has come through. You can see it in their soft brown eyes.
TODD That’s good news.
HARPER You hate the deer. You admire the crocodiles.
TODD I’ve lost touch because I’m tired.
HARPER You must leave.
TODD I’m your family.
HARPER Do you think I sleep?
JOAN comes in and walks into TODD’s arms.
You can’t stay here, they’ll be after you. What are you going to say when you go back, you ran off to spend a day with your husband? Everyone has people they love they’d like to see or anyway people they’d rather see than lie in a hollow waiting to be bitten by ants. Are you not going back at all because if you’re not you might as well shoot me now. Did anyone see you leave? which way did you come? were you followed? There are ospreys here who will have seen you arrive. And you’re risking your life for you don’t know what because he says things that aren’t right. Don’t you care? Maybe you don’t know right from wrong yourself, what do I know about you after two years, I’d like to be glad to see you but how can I?
JOAN Of course birds saw me, everyone saw me walking along but nobody knew why, I could have been on a mission, everyone’s moving about and no one knows why, and in fact I killed two cats and a child under five so it wasn’t that different from a mission, and I don’t see why I can’t have one day and then go back, I’ll go on to the end after this. It wasn’t so much the birds I was frightened of, it was the weather, the weather here’s on the side of the Japanese. There were thunderstorms all through the mountains, I went through towns I hadn’t been before. The rats are bleeding out of their mouths and ears, which is good, and so were the girls by the side of the road. It was tiring there because everything’s been recruited, there were piles of bodies and if you stopped to find out there was one killed by coffee or one killed by pins, they were killed by heroin, petrol, chainsaws, hairspray, bleach, foxgloves, the smell of smoke was where we were burning the grass that wouldn’t serve. The Bolivians are working with gravity, that’s a secret so as not to spread alarm. But we’re getting further with noise and there’s thousands dead of light in Madagascar. Who’s going to mobilise darkness and silence? that’s what I wondered in the night. By the third day I could hardly walk but I got down to the river. There was a camp of Chilean soldiers upstream but they hadn’t seen me and fourteen black and white cows downstream having a drink so I knew I’d have to go straight across. But I didn’t know whose side the river was on, it might help me swim or it might drown me. In the middle the current was running much faster, the water was brown, I didn’t know if that meant anything. I stood on the bank a long time. But I knew it was my only way of getting here so at last I put one foot in the river. It was very cold but so far that was all. When you’ve just stepped in you can’t tell what’s going to happen. The water laps round your ankles in any case.