The Children Read online

HAZEL. Oh yes. Fanatic.

  ROSE. I’m awful with exercise. I get out of breath just looking at my sneakers.

  HAZEL. Oh gosh, no we’re the exact opposite, we like to keep healthy.

  ROSE. I really admire that.

  HAZEL laughs.

  No I do, must take a lot of self-discipline. Of course it’s easier when there are two of you isn’t it, you sort of, cheer each other on, don’t you.

  HAZEL. I spose there is that.

  ROSE. Whereas when you’re on your own there’s no one to slap the chocolate biscuit out of reach, so to speak.

  Pause.

  Move the steak frites from under you.

  Pause.

  Wrestle the sausage sandwich from your cold dead / hands.

  HAZEL. We’re not monks.

  ROSE. No of course I was just, a regime like that, / you

  HAZEL. It’s not a regime.

  ROSE. God no, I didn’t mean to

  HAZEL. It’s just common sense isn’t it? We’ve worked hard, all our lives, what’s the use of all this time now if you can’t enjoy it? If your body fails you –

  ROSE. No you’re right of course. I envy you.

  HAZEL. When my mum and dad retired, they both sat down in their armchairs and never got up again. Drank a box of wine a night and watched TV from eleven in the morning.

  ROSE. Sounds okay to me!

  HAZEL. And they both lived well into their nineties like that – what? No, it wasn’t okay it was death.

  ROSE. But if it made them happy.

  HAZEL. How can anybody consciously moving towards death, I mean by their own design, possibly be happy? People of our age have to resist – you have to resist, Rose.

  ROSE. Hold back the tide.

  HAZEL. You have a choice, don’t you, exactly, at our age which is that you slow down, melt into your slippers, start ordering front-fastening bras out of Sunday supplements, or you make a committed choice to keep moving you know because you have to think: This is not the end of our lives but a new and exciting chapter.

  ROSE. That’s a philosophy I really admire.

  HAZEL. If you’re not going to grow: don’t live.

  ROSE. Exactly.

  HAZEL. No, I mean, if you’re not going to grow, don’t live.

  Pause.

  ROSE. Yes.

  HAZEL. No, but you see what I’m saying, don’t you? If you’re not going to / grow

  ROSE. You’ve really got it all worked out, haven’t you?

  HAZEL. Well it’s just what we think it’s not rocket science.

  ROSE laughs.

  What?

  ROSE. No, you just – I actually went out with a rocket scientist for a while. In America, I used to try and trick him into using that phrase. Like if he did housework or something, I’d really go for it, what a WONDERFUL job you’ve done mowing the grass, how DID you get this toilet so clean that sort of thing.

  HAZEL smiles.

  What?

  HAZEL. No it’s. I’d forgotten what an odd sense of humour you have.

  ,

  ROSE. Right, well anyway, he never said it until finally one day, he made dinner and I went for it, how did you get the skin so crisp! And the inside so fluffy! And I moaned and stamped my feet and banged my fists on the table and finally the rocket scientist puts down his knife and fork, and he goes:

  (American accent.)‘it’s a baked potato, Rose. It’s not brain surgery.’

  ROSE laughs hysterically. HAZEL laughs politely.

  People think we’re a breed don’t they? Scientists. They don’t realise that we’re all standing in different fields, just as in the dark about what goes on beyond our own hedgerows as the next man.

  HAZEL. I met a geneticist once, at a wedding, and we were having quite a good chat about shrubs for a north-facing garden and then the dreaded you know, he says ‘and what do you do?’ So I said, I work at the power station, I’m a nuclear engineer. And he says, so what does that entail?

  ROSE. God. Not really wedding talk is it, fission?

  HAZEL. Exactly and so the heart sank a bit but I explained it, in layman’s terms, I said well a slow-moving neutron is absorbed by a uranium 235 nucleus, and this turns it briefly into

  a uranium 236 nucleus and then that turns into fast-moving lighter elements.

  ROSE. And releases three free neutrons.

  HAZEL. And releases three free neutrons, yes, and he nodded and smiled and said oh yes I see but I knew he didn’t, he was faking it, this… dumb show of comprehension.

  I mean I could have said we use tiny hacksaws and a salad spinner, he wouldn’t have blinked. And this is a man with two PhDs. So what happened?

  ROSE. I’m sorry?

  HAZEL. With the rocket scientist. Are you still?

  ROSE. Oh no, no. We – it – it was

  a long time ago. He’s married now. I’m godmother to one of their boys actually, well not godmother, more sort of non-denominational slush fund…

  HAZEL. I’m sorry.

  ROSE. God, I’m not. I never really fancied him properly, if I’m honest. He smelt sort offeminine.

  HAZEL. You’ve always been picky. All those poor men written off for crimes they didn’tknow they’d committed.

  ROSE. Yes but it’s the small things that get under your skin, isn’t it?

  Like there was this man I knew once.

  And the way he lit a cigarette just took my breath away.

  And he didn’t even know he was doing it, but watching him smoke, watching his hand hold a cigarette, made me want him so much I had to cross my legs to stop myself going down on my hands and knees to lick it.

  Pause.

  HAZEL. In America was this?

  ROSE. What?

  HAZEL. Someone you knew in America?

  ROSE. Oh. Yes, that’s right. In… Massachusetts.

  Pause.

  He owned and ran a climbing wall.

  A long pause.

  HAZEL. No, you’re right, it’s important to keep active. That’s why we took up the farm, of course.

  ROSE. The farm.

  HAZEL. Yes didn’t you know? When we took early retirement, we started an organic smallholding. We bought up some land near the house. It was a lot of work, to get the accreditation, but you know Robin and me, we really threw ourselves into it. We won prizes for our dairy.

  ROSE. Holy cow.

  A tiny, disoriented pause.

  HAZEL. Yes we’re very proud of our / achievements.

  ROSE. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that, I feel a bit. Light-headed

  HAZEL. Right, well would you like a glass of water?

  ROSE. No. No I’m alright. Thank you. Sorry. Sorry.

  ROSE goes to HAZEL, puts her arms around her.

  HAZEL returns the gesture.

  It’s so good to see you Hazel. I’ve missed you.

  HAZEL. You too. You too.

  They part.

  During the following, HAZEL produces salad leaves, tomatoes, pre-hard-boiled eggs, a bowl of cold new potatoes, tinned tuna, a jar of olives. She begins to prepare the salad.

  You come up, you know. In conversation, sometimes you come up.

  ROSE. Where is Robin?

  HAZEL. I didn’t mean with Robin. With the others though, we’re still in touch with most of them. We have a pub lunch every Christmas.

  ROSE. But Robin’s well, is he?

  HAZEL. Oh, yes. He’s out there now.

  ROSE. Where?

  HAZEL. On the farm. He visits every day.

  ROSE. But the farm is – it’s near the house?

  HAZEL. Further down the coast

  ROSE. But, so the farm is… inside the exclusion zone? – Isn’t that / quite –

  HAZEL. Robin is deeply attached to the cows.

  ,

  ROSE. I see.

  HAZEL. I’m deeply attached to them too. But I’m more attached to not getting cancer.

  ROSE. But every day, / isn’t he

  HAZEL. Believe
me, we have had this conversation, I promise you, that conversation hasbeen had, but he’s always been sentimental, you know that.

  ROSE. So the house is okay?

  HAZEL. No the house is a wreck.

  We were lucky. When the wave came, the house was flooded but not destroyed. The fields and the garden were destroyed but the house was just stinking and full of silt it was cosmetic you know but I can’t describe to you the stench. I waded through it up the stairs, the carpet squelching and something else, something dreadful, a smell a feeling a hopelessness. Like the infinite sadness.

  ROSE. …

  HAZEL. It’s a film, the children used to, the never-ending whatsit you wouldn’t know it.

  HAZEL gathers the salad leaves into a colander and washes them in container water.

  Anyway, I couldn’t cope with thinking: how are we going to clear it up? and I cried, Rose, I just sank down at the bottom of the stairs where the pencil lines mark the children’s heights and I / was just

  ROSE. Your poor thing.

  HAZEL. crying (thank you) because the mess the mess was just overwhelming

  ROSE takes the salad from her and shakes it dry.

  It was overwhelming Rose.

  HAZEL blows her nose.

  And then I had this amazing thought: we don’t have to. We don’t actually have to.

  ,

  ROSE. Sorry, have to what?

  HAZEL. To clear it up. It was like e equals m c squared, one of those exquisite pieces of thinking that’s so simple, you feel like Archimedes running naked to the king, screaming ‘eureka!’ Because when I told Robin, the relief on his face.

  And you know all our lives we’ve been those kind of people, when we have a picnic or, camping we don’t just clear up our own litter, we go around and pick up other people’s too,

  I have a little stash of plastic bags in my cagoule, that’s just our policy, leave a place cleaner than you found it but but but so you see we’d earned it.

  We’d earned the right, on this one occasion, just to say: at our time of life, we simply cannot deal with this shit.

  And we decided to leave that night. And we went down to the barns and we fed the cows for the last time and I just wept, I honestly, to think what they’d been exposed to, their big brown eyes looking back at me but what choice did we have? They always say you shouldn’t name them, but of course we’d named them, you can’t not name them, so I’m leaning out of the taxi like a mad woman, ‘Goodbye Daisy! Goodbye Bluebell! Goodbye Heisenberg!’

  We drove away and we knew they’d all be dead in days.

  ROSE. That must have been. Very hard.

  HAZEL. Yes it was. It felt very. Final and that was, I found that quite frightening.

  ,

  Yes but then a week later Robin decided to go back. One morning I woke up and he’d just gone. And do you know what he found?

  The cows were still alive. All of them, flicking their tails and looking at him reproachfully! And that’s when he decided he was going to carry on. He has to throw the milk away, but he goes down there every day now.

  ROSE. Come hell or high water.

  HAZEL. Well exactly.

  ,

  ROSE. I still can’t believe it’s happened.

  HAZEL. Yes well. It was a one-in-ten-million-years fault sequence. But this part of thecountry, we’re basically in the same boat as Bangladesh, / so

  ROSE. There is an inquiry.

  HAZEL. Oh. And have they asked you to help with that? Is that why you’re in the area?

  ROSE. Oh, no. Not exactly, Douglas sends his love by the way.

  HAZEL. Douglas Klein?

  ROSE. Yes.

  HAZEL. You still see Douglas do you? I thought he dropped off the radar. No, that’s lovely. How is he? Send him our regards.

  ROSE. I will. Perhaps you can yourself.

  HAZEL and ROSE look at each other.

  HAZEL laughs. Goes back to preparing the salad.

  HAZEL. Yes, so that’s us! A potted history, children, cows, la-di-da! I haven’t evenasked how you are, Rose.

  ROSE. No!

  HAZEL. How are you!

  They laugh.

  ROSE. Yes, fine, thank you.

  HAZEL. No children?

  ROSE. No.

  HAZEL. Married?

  ROSE. No.

  HAZEL. Pets?

  ROSE. No.

  HAZEL. Oh well. You’ve kept your figure!

  The sound of a car pulling up a gravel drive, off.

  It is starting to grow dark, HAZEL lights oil lamps.

  That’ll be Robin. I think he’ll be very pleased to see you.

  ROSE. Do you?

  HAZEL. Yes of course. Rose? Why have you come here?

  Pause.

  ROBIN enters. He is carrying a child’s trike.

  Darling look what the tide washed up!

  ROBIN stares at ROSE. He looks at HAZEL.

  ROBIN. Rose. It’s not. Rose Cavendish.

  ROSE. Hello Robin.

  ROBIN. Rosie Dish, well don’t just stand there! Give us a squeeze!

  They embrace. He gestures to the blood on her top.

  (What happened there?)

  ROSE. Nosebleed.

  They embrace.

  ROBIN. I can’t believe it. How long has it been?

  HAZEL. Thirty-eight years.

  ROBIN. Yes because Lauren was just –

  He looks at HAZEL.

  Wasn’t she, how was America?

  ROSE. Yes.

  ROBIN. You’ve not picked up the accent?

  ROSE. No siree.

  HAZEL. But you have. You say things like ‘go ahead’ and ‘sure’, you / never?

  ROBIN. No, she always said things like that.

  HAZEL. She didn’t. I’d have remembered, Rose and I were good good friends, Robin.

  ROBIN. Tell her, you have, you’ve always had a twang.

  HAZEL. Sneakers. That’s another / one.

  ROSE. I suppose. I guess –

  HAZEL. See. I guess.

  ROSE. My dad and I used to watch a lot of Westerns when I was a kid and / so I mean

  HAZEL. Kid!

  ROSE. That was our thing, so maybe, I mean I’ve never thought about it / before so

  HAZEL (as John Wayne).‘Get off your horse and drink your milk.’

  Pause.

  ROSE. Yes. That sort of –

  HAZEL. ‘Sorry don’t get it done, dude.’

  Pause.

  ROBIN looks at HAZEL.

  ROBIN. No other visitors today?

  HAZEL shakes her head.

  ROSE. Only me! Gave Hazel a hell of a fright actually. She thought I was dead!

  ROBIN. Hazel’s always doing that. Accusing perfectly alive people of being dead, I’ve warned her about it.

  HAZEL. Didn’t you hear that Robin? Last Christmas / maybe

  ROBIN. I never heard that.

  ROSE. By the way, how am I supposed to have gone? Something glamorous I hope? Rescuing a pram from

  a railway line or something?

  HAZEL. No, I think they said, um. I think they said you were very ill, and that you’d got a little better –

  ROSE. Oh good.

  HAZEL. But then you’d killed yourself!

  HAZEL laughs.

  ROBIN puts down the trike.

  ROBIN. Now then, you didn’t kill yourself, did you Rosie?

  ROSE. No, I don’t think so.

  ROBIN. You’re quite sure?

  ROSE. I’m pretty certain.

  ROBIN. Well you say that but. Say ‘ah’.

  ROSE sticks her tongue out and says ‘ah’.

  ROBIN puts his glasses on, examines her tongue.

  No, she seems alright to me. Dreadful halitosis, though.

  ROSE laughs, hits him, playful.

  ROBIN laughs.

  Picks up the trike, shows it to HAZEL.

  Rescued Zuzu’s trike.

  HAZEL. Well, I hope you washed it down.

&
nbsp; ROBIN. Yep.

  ROBIN takes out a small Geiger counter and runs it over the trike.

  Tell you what girls, you nearly lost me tonight.

  HAZEL tuts. ROBIN examines the reading.

  Nearly had to scrape me off the shingle.

  HAZEL. Robin don’t.

  ROBIN. Twenty-five.

  ROBIN gives HAZEL a thumbs up, puts down the Geiger counter.

  He gets on the trike and, knees by his chin, rides it round the table.

  It’s a little game I play, Rose. The top field runs right along the cliff and every year, I drive the tractor a little closer to the edge and every year the edge comes a little closer to the tractor.

  HAZEL. The coast is just crumbling away around here. Has been for centuries.

  ROBIN. I tell you, it’s a thrill.

  HAZEL. It’s reckless is what it is.

  ROBIN. We’re not dead yet my love. Our age, you have to show no fear to Death, it’s like bulls, you can’t run away or they’ll charge. You’ve got to keep grabbing him by the lapels, poking him in the eye and saying: not yet mate. I’ve got your number, boyo. Keep him in line. Else he’ll steal up behind you while you’re trying to get the lid off your Bingo pen and have you away.

  ROBIN leaps off the trike.

  HAZEL makes a ‘there you go’ gesture to ROSE.

  HAZEL. If you’re not going to grow, don’t live.

  ROSE. Still. I really don’t think you should do that Robin.

  HAZEL. I’ve told him, he’s mad, it’s Russian roulette.

  ROBIN. Only when I take a bottle of vodka along.

  HAZEL stares at him.

  Skol!

  HAZEL tuts.

  HAZEL. That’s Scandinavian, there was a town, Rose, very close to where we are now.

  It was one of the most important towns in the country in the Middle Ages.

  Then one day it fell into the sea, the whole thing in one go.

  The cliff just crumbled off like a lump of wet cake.

  The houses, the school, the church, the marketplace.

  Just tumbled into the water.

  ROBIN. At certain times people say you can walk on the beach and hear the church bells ringing from under the sea.

  HAZEL. Crackpots say that.

  ROBIN. She means locals

  HAZEL. Well I’ve never heard it.

  ROBIN. when she says crackpots, she means locals.

  HAZEL. I am local. Lived here nearly all my adult life, I’ve never heard it.

  ROSE. I’ve heard it.

  HAZEL. You haven’t. It’s nonsense. Ghost stories.

  ROSE. I have. Very clear, at dusk. Ringing out for evening prayers.