Copia, or A Dream on Trees

Scene: Rain in February, and the idle wanders of a boat. It stops in the centre of the stage, and the yawning arms of a willow settle in the right. The waves settle to mindless ripples, going on, elsewhere, from the scene.

A wide-brimmed hat covers two forms. Hester and Hildegard rub shoulder to shoulder, and they exchange a laugh. It was supposed to be a picnic, and now, as Lear to the heath, Hester rocks the boat with her moving grace and spreads her arms wide.

HESTER: Isn’t it wonderful to hear the world roar? Like a dagger to the flesh, [she turns, wide eyed and steadying herself] the whole earth curdles to a point. Am I the blade or am I the call from the beginning of the road - urging on, Roman frenzy, the hail to the grave that loosens to mud?

Hildegard watches her wistfully, secretly delighting in the Dionysian woman. She was a little older. As a tree, she would be possessed by another one of those fated rings. Hester could move quicker without that extra ring.

HILDEGARD: Or am I the forbidden speech, descending from above, with my own face melted off and left behind in distaste?

HESTER: The tongue regrets. [she jumps, and Hildegard grabs the sides of the boat] HILDEGARD: The eyes look away.

HESTER: An outstretched hand - a friend, or the crucifixion?

HILDEGARD: He washes his hands. The dirt sticks to the nails.

A flash of lightning. The sound of thunder is replaced by a flute, and this continues to play a mournful tune from below. A skull rises in the water, and Hester looks away.

HESTER: You never told me about what happened in Europe.

Sense returns to them, and for a moment, they accept that they are women on a boat and that the sandwiches are cold.

HILDEGARD: We got lost on the unbeaten track.

It feels strange, pitiful, to say such a thing. For, if there

Were no path, no compass line, no monument or grave

to enforce a place, then how is it that we got lost? But we

Did, and I climbed a tree whilst the men busied at their maps.

I wore my late uncle’s trousers, and as I bent my knees, sitting

Atop the tree, I could feel where his knees had

Worn the material down. Two patches to say he was alive. [she crosses her legs]

Lawrence told me to come down, but the rain stopped and I

Seemed to like it up there - I was a king of that place, and I could see

The scorched earth and its poetry of braille as lines upon lines on

The new earth. [at a whisper] When Phaeton came down,

Piercing the veil that his father adored,

He carved into the earth a message and that message was grief.

[a shout] Lawrence’s sullen friend told a story!

HESTER: How quaint. Is that what you did in Europe - listen?

HILDEGARD: He told us about a castle near to where his mother was born,

Now overgrown with a great big willow in the courtyard. One day,

The Marquis had fallen from his ladder in the library and hit his skull.

An old maid, already blind and mildewed,

Picked him up in her spiderweb form and cradled him, holding

The pieces of his cosmos intact before he woke. He got up,

Searching for a leather tome, and threw it at the window.

It smashed, and the pages were torn and fading as

They fell to the ground below. (What a nightmare, what a bad dream to say...)

[She grows cold] He ordered them out in waves. Waves

Upon waves of staff. Then the friends, pleading with him, and

Days passed and more waves. The furniture, his clothes,

The portraits, and he rushed to the balcony as his family came to beg

And threw silver bullets down upon their heads. The youngest cousin, a

Flicker of life in a milk tooth, picked one up. He carried it home, and

When he grew up to be a soldier, he carried that bullet with him and

When he deserted the field after his friend became a leg and a leg only,

He went back to that home to look for the Marquis.

Room upon room, that soldier travelled, and when the day finally

Slowed to night, only the waves of a dull piano were heard.

Animals wander there now, and there is no grave for the soldier and the

Man with a bleeding skull. [a pause, and she looks down]

I imagine they wrote poetry together, or had at it with the loaded gun.

(But what a waste of a place, and who was it that watched? Lawrence’s friend said it was

Days, but who counted the days? Was there someone like me, inside the trees, eating nuts

And berries...)

HESTER: Did he bring the bullet back?

HILDEGARD: Lawrence made his friend stop. He said it was a tale ill met by moonlight.

A wave on the water carries them to the skull, and Hildegard picks it up. She studies it closely. Hester looks down at her hands and seems troubled by their lines. She wonders where they come from, or if they are the stress at birth. Born with clenched fists.

She opens them up and feels the wave. She knows they can’t go any further.

HILDEGARD: I never seemed to come down from that tree.