plovers’ eggs

PLOVERS’ EGGS

a play by Roger Maybank

Characters:      WEALD, a very old man.

WALDEN, a very old man.

COSS, an old man.

HANNAH, a ripe woman.

Two BOYS.

(The set appears to be a bare sandy beach At stage centre there is an ocean-worn log. WEALD and WALDEN are sitting on it, facing each other; WEALD’s right leg is stretched along the log and WALDEN is massaging his foot. WEALD appears unaware of WALDEN massaging his foot; he is peering through an old-fashioned telescope in his hands, and is moving it about aimlessly. Running across the stage from left to right are straight parallel chalk lines, broken near the log by two piles of weather-worn driftwood; and, a little upstage of the log, by a small group of ‘birds’, fashioned skilfully and imaginatively out of small pieces of driftwood. COSS is moving among these ‘birds’ with an intent expression, altering their positions slightly. He is dressed in rusty black clothes. WALDEN and WEALD are dressed in old, worn clothes, in shades of grey. All three are barefoot.)

(At upstage left, two BOYS in work clothes are leaning against a ‘big ocean-worn log’ painted on the backdrop. They seem to think they are too far to be seen, unless the telescope is trained on them. They talk and laugh and point at things, but all in dumbshow. Near them are two or three pots of paint, and paint brushes, and when the telescope is trained on them, they take up the brushes and daub with them at the log, like stagehands. But WEALD doesn’t appear to see them. As the telescope passes from them, the boys drop the paint brushes, lounge idly against the ‘log’.)

(At far downstage right, HANNAH is lying, apparently asleep. She is a full-bodied middle-aged woman, colourfully dressed in loose, flowing clothing. WALDEN gazes mildly towards her as he massages WEALD’s foot.)

WALDEN: Patch of pleasant-looking..flowers over there. Don’t remember..

COSS: (scornfully, not looking, his attention on his ‘birds’) Flowers. They won’t be bringin’ us no plovers.

WALDEN: Quite a variety of colours.

(He gently takes one hand away from WEALD’s foot, lays it against the side of the telescope as it passes near him, and slowly guides it in an arc towards HANNAH. COSS looks at him.)

COSS: What’re you doin’?

WALDEN: It may be that he will like them, and the telescope will bring them nearer. A few flowers would be cheerful.

COSS: Yeah, like it brings the tides. That’s a duff telescope if ever there was one.

(A little smile appears on WEALD’s countenance as the telescope is focused on HANNAH. Light brightens on her colourful clothes, and she wakes, stretches luxuriously, slowly and gracefully rises to her feet.)

WALDEN: They’re coming nearer, I think; they are bigger than they were, really much bigger. And higher from the ground.

COSS: (peering towards HANNAH) Because they ain’t flowers. They’re a..woman.

(As WEALD continues to look at her through the telescope, HANNAH moves slowly towards the old men. WALDEN looks at her mildly, smiles, removes his hand from the telescope. COSS looks at her askance, suspiciously, hovers ‘protectively’ over the driftwood birds. WEALD, the telescope wobbling in his hands, loses sight of HANNAH. He moves it about, as if trying to find her again. COSS accidentally touches one of the birds with his foot. It falls over. He picks it up, shakes it, sets it on its feet roughly.)

HANNAH: (to COSS) You have a rough way with birds.

COSS: As they’re not birds, only lookin’ like ’em, and probably not enough at that, rough and smooth is all the same.

HANNAH: Why will you not then let them lie as they fall?

COSS: Not bein’ alive, they’ve no need to rest. And they’ve work to do.

WALDEN: Being decoys, you see, madam. For the plovers. (looking mildly, but steadily at HANNAH) You’ll have come a long way. I think.

HANNAH: And why would you be thinking that?

WALDEN: There being no people near to here. That we’ve ever seen.

HANNAH: (glancing at WEALD) Not even he, with his telescope?

WALDEN: If he is, he is not saying. As he didn’t say when it appears he saw you.

COSS: Nothin’ he’s sayin’ at any time, day or night. And precious little more he’s seein’.

HANNAH: He saw me, I could feel that very well.

WALDEN: The telescope will indeed have been the cause of that; that is its particular value to us all, for drawing the plovers near, when there are any. Not often, now that the ocean is so far ebbed that even he, though seeing, of course, much further than we do, is unable to draw its tides towards us.

(WEALD, looking through the telescope moves it slowly about at random, as if gazing at the horizon.)

HANNAH: Is it plovers then that he is looking for?

WALDEN: It is unlikely that he will now have in his head any clear picture of a plover.

COSS: Might as well fall on our own backsides, as wait for him

to see them.

WALDEN: The plovers themselves are, in any event, of small interest to us, as they are beyond our catching. We would need nets for that, he (indicating COSS) has told us. Which we are not having, he not finding a way to make them.

HANNAH: Plovers would not be good to eat; tasting of fish, as seabirds do generally.

WALDEN: It is unlikely that I should taste that. It is long since I have tasted anything at all.

COSS: It’s the eggs we’re wantin’ from them, not the birds theirselves; which, if he’d hold that thing steady, and on one place, we might be gettin’ a good few more’n we do. But he dithers it about like it was a feather tryin’ to catch the wind. That he saw you, where we didn’t see you ourselves, is near as anythin’ is to a miracle; though you won’t be seein’ it so yourself.

HANNAH: (low laugh) A miracle I will not say it appeared; although his magnified eye, shining through the eyeglass, was momentarily startling. And the landscape here, which I have somehow come into, is quite unusual to me.

(WEALD lowers the telescope from his eye, slowly turns his head and looks at HANNAH.)

COSS: Unusual to us is anybody comin’ here at all. And unusual’s not sayin’ the half of it.

WALDEN: My memory is not good, and his (indicating COSS) is not so long; but neither of us can remember seeing anybody at all here before now. Even animals are rare; and small, and fleeting.

COSS: Look about as we can, sometimes do, it’s little but sand we’re seein’.

HANNAH: Your eyes, I suppose, are worn and weary with your many years. But surely, with the aid of the eyeglass, any one of you might easily see behind me to where grass begins to appear through the grains of sand, and grows ever more luxuriantly the further..

(She hesitates, her eyes on the erect palm of WEALD’s hand reaching towards her, as if it were approaching a wall.)

COSS: Yeah, well he’s not great on sharin’ the ‘eyeglass’ with us. Long time since I’ve looked through it myself. Used to let him (indicating WALDEN) look, once in a while. Not recently, past year or so; the passin’ o’ which we can tell well enough, if we care to, from the way the shadows o’ one furrow slides against the side of the next.

WALDEN: Even with the telescope, the curving of the earth will have been concealing from him the world you allude to. We would, almost surely, have seen some reflection of it on his face, if some glimpse of it were brightening his eye.

COSS: Eyes are so dim now, it’s little he can see at any distance. Tidewater could be almost at his feet, and he not know it till it touched them. For the matter o’ that, none of us is exactly seein’ like a eagle.

(WEALD’s outstretched hand is nearly touching HANNAH.)

HANNAH: He is clearly seeing something now.

WALDEN: It will be your dress which is drawing him so near to you, the flowing colours of it reminding him, I imagine, of the many moving lights on the water of the tide coming in. It will be causing in him also, probably, some confusion, as the tide came—when it did, on rare occasions, until it didn’t—from (gesturing upstage) the other..way.

COSS: (harshly, picking up a ‘bird’ which has fallen over) Least you can do is stand steady; nobody’s askin’ more of you than that.

HANNAH: (in an undertone to WALDEN) Your..friend is quick to anger.

WALDEN: There’s a bit of the fire of his youth in him still, old as his body has grown.

(COSS, breathing deeply, as if to calm himself, dusts off the ‘bird’, sets it carefully on its feet.)

COSS: (to the ‘bird’) Sorry, temper got the better o’ me. It’s your fallin’ over for no reason.. Guess there is one, but I’m not seein’ it..

HANNAH: (to COSS) As they are not—as you say and is now to me clearly evident—living birds, how can you expect them to manage their own lives?

COSS: I told it I was sorry. They know about my temper. You’d be doing well if you curbed your own tongue a little.

(Turning his back on HANNAH, COSS moves around and among the decoys, repositioning them again and again, as he looks at them from different angles,)

WALDEN: (to HANNAH) He made the birds himself, you see; so he’s protective. As a mother yourself, you..

HANNAH: (smiling) And what about me persuades you that I am a mother?

WALDEN: Your age it’ll be, I suppose; and it bein’ the normal way with women, I believe.

HANNAH: (laughing lightly) And how would you have learned that, sitting here on this bare sand for nearly as long, it would appear, as your life itself?

COSS: (in undertone) As if the measurin’ off o’ time passin’ made any difference to anythin’.

WALDEN: It was not here that I was born, I think. Or, if I was, it was in a time when there was grass growing as well here as where you’re speaking of. And it rained, sometimes; I can remember that, the sound of it on the roof. Feeling of it on my body, if I left the house to walk in it. Which I did, I remember that too. Feet were bare, toes cold.

HANNAH: There is no sign here, or anywhere near here, of a house of any kind.

COSS: (pointing to the piles of driftwood) What d’you think those are? Bones o’ whales? Signs of houses they are. Good number o’ houses.

HANNAH: They are driftwood. Which the ocean once—when there was an ocean to speak of—will have laid on the sand in leaving it. Some parts of them may, I suppose, have been parts of houses, somewhere.

COSS: Ocean ain’t gone altogether, it’ll still be out there, where we’re not seein’ it. We were still gettin’ tides of it until..pretty recent. Now and then. Ruinin’ the furrows; and knockin’ the decoys all about, lot o’ work straightenin’ things out again.

WALDEN: A tide or two a month there were, when there were any at all. Full moon and new moon, if I’m remembering well, which can’t be counted on. It may be that the furrows stopped the others of them; or dunes lying at some distance over the horizon.

HANNAH: A tide could easily over flow those little furrows.

COSS: It sure did when it did. Why (indicating WALDEN) he’s massaging his brother’s feet what got cold with the water.

HANNAH: As the tides have long ceased, there is then no apparent reason for him to be massaging them now.

WALDEN: He can still feel them swirling about his feet. In his head they are, but he feels them in his feet. Which makes them cold, which is why I’m massaging them. Though I’m not very helpful really, my hands being hardly, if at all, noticeable to him.

HANNAH: (glancing at COSS) He might do it better.

COSS: You’ll not get me touchin’ his cold old feet, that’ve trod down in their time near as many furrows as I’ve made.

WALDEN: In the time of the tides he means; when he (indicating WEALD) was walking about everywhere and not seeing what he was doing.

COSS: Still seein’ nothin’, that hasn’t changed. But at least he’s not walkin’.

HANNAH: (to COSS) It was you who made the furrows? (looking about) They are a very great many.

COSS: Didn’t make theirselves.

HANNAH: And they withstood the tides? When there were tides.

COSS: That they didn’t. But I made ’em again. And again.

HANNAH: It must have been a great deal of work; when the tides were coming in normally, the time between them will hardly have been long enough for you to complete it.

COSS: Reason why I’m glad we’re not havin’ them anymore.

HANNAH: Nor the fish—many fish, I suppose—which will have come with them.

COSS: The ebb tide was the good time for them, us more’n them, we catchin’ ’em easy as they flapped about in the water in the furrows.

WALDEN: Which he (indicating WEALD) liked looking in, bending his face right down close to a pool. (smiling, patting WEALD) Water from the fish flapping, splattering all over his face.

COSS: Fish in those pools was what was bringin’ us the plovers. And still are, you could say, since a few o’ them are still sometimes comin’, tides or no tides, and layin’ their eggs now and then. They not knowin’, bein’ pretty well in their own world, that we’re watchin’ and markin’ out where they’re layin’ them.

HANNAH: The furrows, being so many and long, must surely, in the past when there were tides, have far exceeded your needs for either fish or eggs. There cannot be nearly enough plovers in this part of the world for the digging of so many to have been at all worth your while.

WALDEN: I remember, think I remember, thinking myself they were more than need called for; when there were tides to flow over and fill them.

COSS: More there were, more chances the tide wouldn’t be breakin’ every ridge in sight; leave some for the plovers while I’m mendin’ those broken. No plover’s gonna stop her light-steppin’ over the sand to lay her egg where there ain’t no clear furrow to shelter it; stands to reason.

HANNAH: They appear indeed to be very clearly defined; but are surely many more than are necessary; as the ocean which once damaged them is not—to my sight, which is excellent—anywhere now apparent.

WALDEN: Appearances are the true thing there.

COSS: (half to himself, ‘straightening’ the decoys) I liked makin’ ’em. Straight as I could, and as long. Sunset catchin’ on the ridges at sunset telling me if they was straight or not.

HANNAH: Their straightness is not so much in question, to my mind, as their number. To the eye of the passing plover, they—being so many more than she needs— must surely bewilder her.

COSS: Bewildered or not, she’s gotta lay; and so she does.

WALDEN: Plovers, we have learned, are not much concerned with problems of number. They see a furrow, they lay an egg in the furrow; that’s more or less the full extent of their thinking.

HANNAH: That is very well, dear, and doubtless you are right. But what is to keep her from laying her egg in a furrow half a mile from where you are yourselves situated?

(WEALD touches HANNAH’s clothing lightly. She gently lays his hand in his lap.)

COSS: (indicating the wooden ‘birds’ with both outstretched hands) These guys.

HANNAH; (peering at the ‘birds’) Ah! And what is it that they do to help you? They look somewhat like birds themselves.

COSS: (growling undertone) ‘Somewhat’.

WALDEN: Looking, as you say, like birds themselves, they divert towards us the plovers in their passing, whether in flight or afoot, luring them to lay their eggs in the furrows near us. Plovers being, like waterbirds generally, of a convivial nature.

COSS: Maybe to your fine eye they ain’t lookin’ much like birds; but plovers is seein’ differently, as we’re knowin’ from long experience. And we’re knowin’ too that they don’t see ’em as birds if they’re all fallen over on their backsides. Which is where the inflowin’ tide used to push ’em, and how the ebbin’ tide used to leave ’em.

WALDEN: Or, fallen on their faces, as was equally often the case, appearing then to be peering into the pools, for what small fish or crabs they might find there.

HANNAH: (smiling slightly) Appearances are not, I think, the thing there.

COSS: Lookin’ at nothin’ they were. And at nothin’ when on their feet. Havin’ nothin’ to look with but a gouged hole and a splash o’ paint. (dry chuckle) Though, at that, hardly worse fit for lookin’ than his (indicating WEALD) big eye at the end o’ the telescope.

HANNAH: To which, it appears, his eye is almost wedded.

COSS: ‘Wedded’, yeah. Yoked. Somethin’ alive to somethin’ dead. Not so easy guessin’ which is which.

WALDEN: It was the telescope itself that brought him back to life. Before we found it, he was..

COSS: Furrows was the cause o’ that. Brought it right to the surface from where it was buried.

WALDEN: His only interest before that was looking for hours on end down at any pool he found in the sand, when— years ago now—there still were some. Looking and looking at his own face; when the fish in the pool were quiet, or dead..

COSS: Which never one was ’til it was the other.

WALDEN: As if the face he was seeing there was of somebody he could nearly remember.

HANNAH: The many passing years will have altered his own appearance, of course.

WALDEN: About that I’d have no means of telling you; having been always with him, we’ll have been altering, as you say, together. So he always looks the same to me.

HANNAH: (smiling) And you to him.

WALDEN: As to that, it’s unlikely he’s seeing me at all, these last years anyway. Not really seeing, you know; he’s well enough aware that I’m here.

HANNAH: He will surely be feeling your hands touching his feet. Lightly though they are touching.

WALDEN: As to that there’s no saying, he giving no sign.

HANNAH: It is possible then, even probable, that he is not feeling them; the many years he has passed here having lulled his senses near to rest in the depths of his old body. (lifting WALDEN’s hands away from WEALD’s feet) He may be the better for feeling the warmth of a woman’s hands; to rouse—if only a little, and for a little while— the nerves in his senses, as yours no longer can.

(WALDEN placidly lets her lay his hands in his lap, and watches as she massages WEALD’s feet more vigorously than he had been doing. WEALD looks mildly troubled; his arms holding the telescope quaver a little, it begins to waver about. Seeing this, WALDEN gently takes it from him, and lays it in his own lap. WEALD frowns, waves his hands aimlessly in the air, as if looking for the telescope, making grizzling sounds in his throat.)

HANNAH: He appears unhappy at your taking his eyeglass from him.

COSS: You think that’s unhappy? Should see ‘im when I try to take it from ‘im; or even if he thinks I’m near enough so I could take it, Just watch.

(COSS reaches his hand towards the telescope in WALDEN’s lap. WEALD’s grizzling becomes loud and threatening. COSS quickly lifts the telescope out of WALDEN’s lap, holds it in front of WEALD, evading WEALD’s fumbling attempts to grasp it.)

HANNAH: He wants you to give it to him, I think.

COSS: I know he does. Can’t have everything he wants. (to WEALD, holding the telescope just out of his reach) What d’you think this is for? Gazin’ at your belly button?

HANNAH: (to WALDEN, indicating WEALD) Is it his..telescope?

WALDEN: (little smile) He thinks it is. Because he found it. When he was still walking, and the furrows were new. But it will have been here, in the sand, long before that. Thrown up, I imagine, by one of the early tides, and buried in the sand by those following.

COSS: His heavy feet standin’ right on it, just where I was goin’ to make a furrow. Or I’d’ve found it meself. (laying the telescope in WEALD’s lap) Eh, anything to keep him quiet.

(WEALD subsides, gazes into space, fondles the telescope.)

HANNAH: (massaging WEALD’s feet more gently) That would then make it his; if it was lost and..

COSS: (turning away, re-aligning his decoys) Stand on somethin’ and it yours, eh? Stood on half of the early furrows I made, flattenin’ them. I suppose they’re his too. And telescopes are for usin’, seein’ things clear that you weren’t seein’ otherwise. Like the ocean.

WALDEN: I can myself still see him quite clearly, both his hands reaching down to where the end of the telescope was rising clear of the sand, and pulling it out of the sand; and his fingers—difficult now to imagine how they could have done it—unscrewing the end of it, and his eye peering inside. Where there was nothing, of course, to see, it being full of sand; that we all watched pour out onto the ground. (little smile, his hand patting WEALD) He put his hand in the falling grains, and smiled. They reminding him, I suppose, of the sunlit tidewater flowing about his feet.

HANNAH: The tides were then still flowing?

WALDEN: I don’t think so. Except in his head. It is difficult to remember the order of things.

COSS: (chuckling) ‘Order o’ things’.

HANNAH: (to WALDEN) And do you yourself remember the tides, when there were any, flowing around your feet?

WALDEN: Not so clearly, I suppose, as he does; looking, as I did then, less at the water itself than at the lights he was seeing there dance out of his own eyes, and scatter all ways over the sand; very many of them hitting up against the log over there, sliding down it to the sand, lying quiet.

COSS: (moving a decoy, standing back to see its new relationship to the others) Furrows was sure the better for the tides not flowin’ any more, they keepin’ their shape pretty well months on end. Except for the bit o’ wind sometimes—with the sun risin’ and settin’— blowin’ sand off the tops o’ the ridges. Once he (glancing at WEALD) had stopped stampin’ his feet all over ’em.

WALDEN: He was missing the water, you see; he couldn’t make out where it had gone, and was walking about everywhere to find it. And he found the furrows difficult to navigate his way through, his balance being, even then, not good. Nor his eyes at seeing. Which made walking of any kind quite hazardous.

HANNAH: The sand is soft; it would not hurt any falling body.

COSS: (half to himself) Hazardous to the furrows, he’s meanin’. Should be meanin’.

HANNAH: And as to his seeing, he saw me well enough.

COSS: ‘Furrows are for the plovers to lay their eggs in’, I said. OK, shouted, yeah, I shouted. He took some more care after that. But it was only with the findin’ of the telescope that he stopped walkin’ about altogether. That I showed him how to use; for the little good it’s done us. His bleary old eye glued to the end of it wouldn’t ever’ve seen you at all, if it wasn’t for him (indicating WALDEN) holdin’ it steady for a minute.

WALDEN: In the beginning, it made him happy to see how the telescope brought far things nearer; quite a few times I saw him smiling then. But there being but few objects of any kind here to attract his attention, once he’d brought the driftwood piles close to us—as you see them now—he used it, as he still does, to feel himself moving about on the sand; and without flattening the furrows that used to make him (indicating COSS) so angry.

HANNAH: He brought the driftwood piles close to you with the telescope? How was he able to do that?

COSS: Telescope makes things larger, doesn’t it? Things larger is nearer.

HANNAH: Their looking larger does not make them nearer. Except to his eye in the eyeglass.

COSS: What brought you then near as you are now, when he was lookin’ at you and he (indicating WALDEN) was holdin’ the ‘eyeglass’ still for a moment?

HANNAH: It is true that the sunlight on the glass caught my eye; but the movement of my body towards you was my own.

COSS: It was, eh? Didn’t look like that to us.

WALDEN: It appeared to us that you approached us in accord with his seeing you; as has happened before, and quite often: plovers in far furrows he has brought nearer us by his momentary interest in them.

COSS: Those piles o’ driftwood were halfway across the beach when he began lookin’ at them; where we piled ’em, long back, to make clear space for the furrows. But he bein’ cold, wantin’ a fire, he brought ’em with that ‘eyeglass’ to where you’re seein’ ’em now.

HANNAH: It is then an exceptional eyeglass; such as I’ve not seen before.

COSS: (turning to the decoys) Yeah, well it’s likely there’s a lot o’ things you’ve not seen before.

WALDEN: It will be a very old telescope, well before your time, from the look of you; lying in the sand, as it was, for many a year on end. We were ourselves quite surprised at its powers at first. But it came soon enough to seem natural.

HANNAH: It is not natural at all. That something is larger in the eye does not make it larger on the ground.

WALDEN: It did in his case, for a short while. While he could still hold the telescope steady.

COSS: Which made us think it was a good chance to get the ocean back, tides runnin’ again.

WALDEN: He looked, for a long while, perhaps a year, towards where the ocean had been. But then, losing..interest or..hope, he let the telescope drift where it would; enjoying, I suppose, the varying, though but little, shapes and colours passing before his eye.

COSS: (looking at HANNAH suspiciously) And lately lookin’ more your way than any other, some reason.

HANNAH: (gently massaging WEALD’s feet) If it has the powers you claim for it, I would be interested to see them. (looking to where the BOYS are ‘splashing’ each other with ‘water’) What would happen if he were to turn it on those boys there?

WALDEN: (looking in the direction of the BOYS) What boys?

HANNAH: (pointing upstage left) Those by the big log, splashing each other with water. There are no other.

WALDEN: (awkwardly, glancing at COSS) I see the log well enough; but I’m not seeing any boys anywhere near it.

HANNAH: I can see them quite clearly.

COSS: Some people can see whatever they like to see. No difference to them between a real body and a mirage.

WALDEN: There are a good many mirages to be seen here. The effect, we suppose, of the little moisture the air still manages to hold. The telescope, if trained on those ‘boys’, as you call them, would bring them no closer. Nor, which is a pity, the ‘water’ you appear to see them playing with.

HANNAH: Though it and they are evidently veiled to your old eyes, it is quite clear to mine that those boys are playing with water of some kind. There will, I suppose, be a pool or slough there, remaining from some long gone tide. If he (indicating WEALD) were to look at it through the eyeglass, it might—it having, as you claim, such unusual properties—bring the water nearer.

WALDEN: (glancing uneasily at COSS) That ‘water’, as you call it, is not water (peering towards the painted log), looking though it does—if I’m remembering well the time when I was seeing better— somewhat like. A scattering of sunlight it will be, from the surface of the log, the only thing there which is real.

COSS: (glancing at WALDEN) And there’d be no good him lookin’ at it if it was water; since he can never now look at anythin’ for more’n a second runnin’. Everythin’ might as well be a mirage, far as he’s seein’ it; except once in a while, like he did for yourself, his brother (indicating WALDEN) is holdin’ the telescope so its fixed right on somethin’. For the only bit longer moment his (indicating WALDEN) interest lasts.

HANNAH: If the log then is a real log, as my eyes equally assure me that it is, and if he were to train the eyeglass upon it..

(The BOYS, aware of general attention in their direction, look uneasy, begin to ‘paint the log’ diligently.)

WALDEN: (glancing uneasily at COSS) If you’re thinking that he might so bring that log itself nearer to us, you’ll be disappointed. There’s not an eyeglass now in the world could manage that; that log being fixed in his head, unmoving, since our own eyes first saw it lying there.

HANNAH: And is it also still fixed in his head, as it clearly is in the heads of the boys, that the tide is still rippling against its further side?

WALDEN: As to the boys, we’ve only your word for them anyway. But all the tides will still be moving in his head; flowing and ebbing, not fixed in one place, as the log is that was laid there by them, they having been roused by a storm to more than their usual liveliness, I suppose.

HANNAH: A storm that broke before your eyes saw the log.

WALDEN: A very long while before, from the look of the log when we saw it there; settled as it was—and from the look of it, long settled—in the sand.

HANNAH: The water though, which lies on its far side, and was only recently splashed by the boys over each other, may surely, as living tidal residue, be brought nearer? Or the boys themselves, that you may see them with your old eyes.

WALDEN: As to the water, that may be possible. But not the boys themselves; as they were not there for him to see when we were walking by the log; and we have only your word for it that they are there now.

COSS: (under his breath) Log not needin’ paintin’ then. Canvas then not showin’ through.

HANNAH: If you will but look through the eyeglass yourself, you may see what I can see clearly without it..

WALDEN: (uneasily) My eyes are long past seeing what they have never seen before.

HANNAH: You are seeing me.

WALDEN: You are very near.

HANNAH: It was with the eyeglass, as you say, that you brought me so near; your holding it with him. He may allow you to do that again; hold it and look through it.

WALDEN: He does allow me to..hold it sometimes; when his body is needing some personal attention from himself. But not to look through it; that makes him—or did make, when last, whenever it was, I tried it—very unhappy.

COSS: And there’d be no point in him (indicating WEALD) lookin’ alone. Gettin’ him to focus on anythin’ is more’n we’ve been equal to for years. The more surprise it was to us he saw you.

(WEALD’s hand touches HANNAH’s clothing; she strokes it, gently lifts it away; continues massaging his feet. WEALD looks unhappy. WALDEN pats his arm.)

COSS: What you’re wearin’ would’ve been the cause of that, brightness of ’em catching his eye a minute. (looking intently at HANNAH’s clothing) And if you’ll allow me to say it, you’re wearin’ more than it seems to me you’re quite needin’. And they bein’ full o’ colour, way they are, we could use some pieces of ’em.

HANNAH: ((laughing) Pieces of my clothing? And how might they serve you?

WALDEN: A little colour might be helpful in attracting the plovers, he’s meaning; their curiosity, perhaps, drawing them toward us. There being little that might reasonably be called colour anywhere else.

HANNAH: Do you know that plovers are sensitive to colour?

WALDEN: We’re not knowing that, of course. He’s only thinking that it might be worth a try; choices now, of any kind, being so few.

COSS: Just a few small pieces, from here and there. I got a small sharp knife that could do it.

HANNAH: I cannot imagine that pieces of colour would be bring plovers to you, in the absence of anything else—fish in particular—attractive to them. I am surprised indeed, as they are wading birds, and there is nothing here for them to wade in, that you see any at all.

WALDEN: Those we’re seeing will perhaps be remembering the tides which flowed here once, and the fish they were finding. Some birds have long memories; which the decoys, when they are seen by them, will, we hope, be arousing.

HANNAH: If their only purpose is to jog the memories of plovers passing this way, I think they will have very little to do.

COSS: They’ve nothin’ to do, but look alert; which, since the tides stopped knockin’ ’em all over, they’re doin’ well enough.

WALDEN: Lying flat in the furrows, as the tides left them, and they being but two-dimensional, and bleached of most of the colour which may once have brightened the wood of which their bodies were fashioned, there was but little of them for the plovers to see and recognize.

COSS: Even standin’, they’re hard enough to see. Why I was wantin’ some colours from your..costume.

HANNAH: It remains a question in my head as to why the plovers will still be coming here at all; as there are no fish, which are, I believe, the preferred, if not indeed the only food of plovers.

WALDEN: That’s true, certainly, as far as our own experience of plovers goes. But our hope is that they will, out of long habit, come looking for somewhere to lay their eggs, and—seeing the decoy plovers here—think this must be a good place to do so. Plovers’ eggs are excellent food, and tasty.

COSS: And, like you can easily see, there’s not a lot else lyin’ about waitin’ to be eaten.

HANNAH: That being a condition for the plovers also, your waiting here for them appears to me to be vain.

COSS: Waitin’s somethin’ we know about. And plovers, a few anyway, are still comin’ by pretty regular; layin’ their eggs—sun settin’ and risin’, that’s their times—they hopin’ for other plovers to be comin’ along after them, way birds do.

HANNAH: They are mistaken in their hopes for that, it would appear, if they lay their eggs near you.

COSS: They can soon enough lay more.

HANNAH: Further from the charms of your decoys. And how, having ‘rescued’ them from the sand, do you eat them?

COSS: Roast ’em. Plenty o’ wood for that. Even no tides bringin’ in any more, it’ll easy outlast our old lives.

WALDEN: Even when there were tides, their waters did not reach the tops of the piles of driftwood; as he (indicating COSS) told us would be the case, as we helped him make them, not long after his shadow had brought him here. The widely scattered driftwood being, he said, troublesome obstacles to the furrowing of a field.

COSS: Tides goin’ out left enough dry wood on their tops for the first fires we were makin’. Time it was flowin’ in again, all the wood in ’em was dry again; sun here’s so strong.

WALDEN: The hot ashes, when the fire died down, were excellent for roasting the eggs, and the fish the tide left behind it; and delicious small crabs, when we could catch them. (patting WEALD’s arm) Those were different days, eh?

HANNAH: But how were you able to make your fire in the first place?

COSS: Telescope did that for us, nothin’ to it.

WALDEN: It having a lens which we removed, and replaced.

HANNAH: He (indicating WEALD) allowed you to do that?

COSS: Come to gettin’ food, he’d allow anythin’. (bitter laugh) So long as somebody else’d do the gettin’. Even when there was still pools, with fish in ’em, all he did was walk about from one o’ them to th’other, starin’ down into ’em. Any catchin’ of them needed doin’, he left to his brother (indicating WALDEN) and me.

HANNAH: (to WALDEN, indicating WEALD) He is your brother?

WALDEN: I think he must be; though I can’t remember well quite how.. Does he look like me?

HANNAH: (looking from one to the other) Not very much. He looks somewhat older than you.

WALDEN: It is likely he is older.

HANNAH: When you were children, then, he will have looked after you.

WALDEN: Probably, if that was the custom then. It is very far to remember.

HANNAH: (to WALDEN, indicating COSS) Is he also your brother?

WALDEN: I don’t think he can be, he having been here only quite a short time, as time goes.

(COSS laughs harshly.)

WALDEN: He may have been..away and..come back, I suppose. But I’ve no memory of seeing him, at all, before one morning, early it was, the top edge of the sun just over the horizon; and his long shadow, that I saw first, was stretching right across the sand from that log (indicating the ‘log’ painted on the backdrop); and the head of it was resting right there on his (indicating WEALD) feet, that I was massaging, they hurting him a fair bit from the walking he was doing then.

(COSS, as if avoiding listening, moves two of the decoys into a different relation to each other.)

WALDEN: Neither of us being able, at first, to make out what it was.

HANNAH: (looking towards the upstage log, laughing lightly) It will have looked like a snake, and a large one, undulating towards you over the furrows. You were not frightened?

COSS: Weren’t no furrows then. It was me made ’em. Nothin’ was takin’ the flatness out of the sand then, but the scatterin’ of driftwood; and their own footprints.

WALDEN: There were many ripples in the sand still, from the tides we were still having; but they were little to cause undulation; compared to his furrows, when he made them. Later. So I didn’t think his shadow was a snake.

HANNAH: And because, I suppose, you will have seen him standing at the far end of his shadow, your eyes being then sharper than they are now?

WALDEN: We saw something standing against the horizon; but only when he moved our way could we make him out as a living man.

(COSS ‘attentively’ adjusts the positions of other decoys; each time he moves one, he sees that he then has to move another, becoming increasingly irritated.)

WALDEN: Slow in moving he was, walking towards us along his shadow, that shrunk and shrunk with the rising of the sun, and himself being nearer; the head of the shadowt not moving off his (indicating WEALD) feet, and my hands my massaging them, which were jostling it about quite a bit; (smiling) like a coracle it looked, on rough water.

(COSS suddenly and roughly knocks over one of the decoys. HANNAH is mildly startled, WALDEN looks at him placidly.)

WALDEN: Until he was standing close beside us, and the sun was high over all our heads. And shining then bright on my hands and his feet, because he (indicating COSS) had sat himself down on the sand.

COSS: (sitting down on the stage, picking up the decoy he had knocked over, gently wiping ‘the sand’ from it) Guy doesn’t rest, doesn’t last. Had been a long time walkin’.

HANNAH: And from where had you been walking?

COSS: All wheres is pretty well the same to a guy walkin’. It was where there was some clouds, and wind blowin’ them about, I can say that; been missin’ ’em ever since.

HANNAH: You should come—it is hardly half a day’s walk from here—to where I live. There are clouds in abundance, with sun above them and rain below.

COSS: (in undertone) ‘Half a day’, eh? And we’ve never once seen you before.

WALDEN: Walking is something we’re none of us very much engaged in now. He (indicating WEALD) not at all..

COSS: Some things anyway are a blessin’.

WALDEN: And my own legs would not carry me for a time you so cheerfully call ‘half a day’.

COSS: I’m not troubled myself by the time it might take, havin’ no shortage o’ that, other way round, if anything. And havin’ the legs for it still, and the mood takin’ me. But while he (indicating WEALD) was still walkin I wasn’t goin’ to leave my furrows to the mercy of his heavy feet. And now he’s got the telescope, and has stopped walkin’, and the tides too, that were breakin’ the furrows’ve stopped flowin’, I’m not somehow havin’ the same interest.

HANNAH: (low laugh, her hands massaging WEALD’s foot more gently) You are doing well then to let the eyeglass stay in his hands, himself staying still and smiling at all that it enables him to see, and your furrows all unbroken.

(As if her laugh has caught his attention, WEALD turns his blank gaze upon her; his eyes appear to focus and see her.)

COSS: Lookin’ through it the way he does, never trainin’ it anywhere, give things a chance to show him what they are, nothin’ he may be seein’ll have any more life in it than a mirage i tself.

WALDEN: It was, you see, the ocean we were hoping the ‘eyeglass’ would help him to catch some sight of, and bring it somewhat nearer; where we might again see it ourselves.

COSS: Be more work for me again, o’ course, if he did; but all the furrows just lyin’ there, waitin’ for the plovers that were only rare times comin’, even then..

WALDEN: It discouraged us somewhat when he began to gaze in the other direction—yours, as I might call it, since it is from there that you have come; as it appeared to us to be only—we not then having your encouraging description—further stretches of sand.

COSS: Change his mind, though, back to the direction the ocean lay in, or had anyway once, was more than either of us was up to.

HANNAH: Seeing farther than yourselves, he will surely have gained some idea of the land there without my ‘description’ you speak of as if it were a landscape only in my own head; land indeed more worth seeing in every way than the empty waste you have here. If he had shared with you what appeared to his eye in the eyeglass..

(WEALD reaches out a hand cautiously towards HANNAH. His hand touches her loose garments awkwardly. She appears not to notice.)

WALDEN: That would have been difficult for him, as it is long now since he has spoken a word of any kind.

COSS: (in an undertone) If he ever did.

HANNAH: (to WALDEN) You can remember him speaking at some far time?

WALDEN: I can still hear, quite clearly, some few words in his voice in my head, worn and bare though now they are. (little smile) Like the driftwood itself. It was before (indicating COSS) he was here; the sand then was everywhere bare of furrows, and there were still tides, sometimes. (pause) We used then together on the wet sand—hand in hand as a rule, I don’t know why; each perhaps thinking the other might fall—all along the shore, until we thought we had gone far enough; and then we walked back. He was speaking a few words then. Now and then.

(WEALD’s hand is now gently patting all over HANNAH’s clothing, touching it very lightly, as if trying to discover if there is anything there. WALDEN watches him uncertainly. COSS, re-arranging his decoys, doesn’t notice.)

HANNAH: That must have been very long ago.

WALDEN: Yes, I believe it was.

HANNAH: A shore is beside the ocean. Or water of some kind. There is none here; if you are right in your claim that that by the boys is but a mirage.

WALDEN: A shore at some time it undoubtedly was; with tides flowing in, in the regular manner that they do, when they do.

(WEALD, his face expressing some confusion, withdraws his hand from HANNAH’s clothing; but continues gazing at her, seems about to reach out to her again.)

HANNAH: And how far now does it lie away from your sight?

COSS: (scornfully, re-aligning a decoy) ‘How far? Far as it’s not seen, or heard or smelled, that’s how far.

WALDEN: A day’s walk away, at least, appears likely. We have none of us gone that way since it ceased, long ago now, to come here; but if the rising and setting of the moon is any guide, as it may be, I’d say a day. And maybe another half-day.

HANNAH: That will be beyond the flow of any tide.

COSS: Not if it wanted to. Nothin’ stoppin’ it, but our few furrows—which never stopped it before—it could flow pretty nearly as it liked. If it was flowin’ at all.

WALDEN: The land, as you can see, being very flat. We have sometimes thought, having time enough, and more, for thinking, that there may be dunes beyond our horizon, holding back the tides, even the higher ones. The ocean might then be nearer than I said. But we have not gone to find out.

HANNAH: A day’s walk is no journey at all, hardly indeed meriting the name.

COSS: (in an undertone) And what’s the need of such walkin’? The ocean keepin’ itself to itself, we’re as well doin’ the same.

HANNAH: He (indicating WEALD), with his eyeglass, might still have been able to see it, when it was long gone from your own failing eyes.

(WEALD’s hand touches her clothing gently, strokes it.)

WALDEN: For some while, long back, he appeared to, from the steadiness of his gazing. Until, as I suppose, it withdrew beyond the curve of the earth. (patting WEALD) His spirits after that time were low, often very low, he missing the water much more than any of us.

COSS: (in undertone) I wasn’t myself—then—one to be missin’ it much at all.

WALDEN: (gently stroking WEALD’s shoulder) The tide coming in, touching his toes, lit his whole face up in smiles, as if he was feeling it flowing right into him; his eyes the whole while looking at the water swirling around his feet when it was coming in; and he rippling the surface of it with his toes when it was full in, and quiet for a little; and he was quiet then too, hardly breathing, until it went out.

(COSS, muttering to himself, moves a decoy slightly, peers at it from a couple of angles, glancing at other decoys, moves it again, looks, moves another, looks.)

WALDEN: He’d watch it going, just with his eyes at first, and then with the telescope, when we had it, until he couldn’t see it any longer, look as he would. And then, for awhile, he’d sleep.

HANNAH: (very gently massaging WEALD’s feet) In his head those tides are still flowing over the sand; I can feel them. The tides and..almost nothing else.

WALDEN: He will, I think, still be seeing some pictures of the sky he painted, when he did. Some residue of them resting there, like lees; which, they being only empty sky, your hands will not be feeling.

COSS: (in grumbling undertone to WALDEN) Coverin’ it over, like you did, with all your clouds. Wipe them away, he’d maybe be seein’ better the clear one right over his head.

WALDEN: (faint smile) The boys may paint him such a clear sky, if it comes into their heads.

COSS: (in undertone) Yeah, yeah. Boys that’re ‘mirages’.

(In sudden irritation, COSS kicks over one of the decoys. HANNAH looks shocked; WALDEN is unperturbed. COSS picks up the decoy, looks it over to see if it is damaged.)

HANNAH: (to WALDEN) He made those..birds himself, you say?

WALDEN: Out of the driftwood he made them. Very skilled with his hands he is.

HANNAH: It is not very apparent that he is fond of them.

WALDEN: They have to be in the right positions, he says. And they’re always getting out of them.

HANNAH: That would involve their moving; which I believe they— like any manufactured article—of themselves cannot.

WALDEN: He’s the one moving, and looking; and seeing—from different angles, any of which the plovers could come from—that they’re out of place. Which naturally irritates him.

HANNAH; But he himself has placed them..

COSS: Can’t see every way at once, can I? Every angle of every dumb decoy, even with them having as comparative few as they have. And if the dull things aren’t in their right places, the plovers won’t be seein’ ’em; or if they do, just as some kinda shapeless ‘anything’. (looking keenly at HANNAH’s clothing) That’s why I was wantin’ some o’ them colours you’re wearin’, that caught his (indicating WEALD) old eye where you were lyin’. Catch that they can catch anything.

HANNAH: I do not see what my clothing might..

COSS: Tack bits of ’em onto the decoys here and there..

WALDEN: To brighten the poor things a little, you know; they being bleached, like any driftwood, from their time in the ocean, when there was one.

COSS: And the curst sun that never stops shining. But with a bit o’ colour on ’em, the plovers won’t be thinkin’ them just some kinda dry bush that can live even in sand; but birds like themselves, with the same need o’ egg- layin’; and so, seein’ them here, think this a good place for their own eggs.

HANNAH: Plovers, in my experience of them, are not colourful birds.

COSS: You’re right enough in that; but seein’ the colour’ll likely bring ’em to a halt, set ’em reflectin’.

HANNAH: A reflective plover would be a sight worth seeing; it would halt me myself.

(She puts her hand onto her clothing. COSS and WALDEN look mildly expectant.)

HANNAH: (reaching into her clothing) I prefer to keep my clothing to brighten my own body. (taking a small bottle out of her clothing) But I have something else which may be helpful to you.

COSS: (peering at the bottle suspiciously.) What’s that?

HANNAH: A small bottle. As you may easily see.

COSS: I can see the bottle. What’s in it?

(HANNAH removes the stopper in the bottle. WALDEN and COSS watch her. WEALD gazes blankly at her clothing, carefully reaches a hand toward her, withdraws it.)

HANNAH: Water. (offering the bottle to WALDEN) Would you like to smell it?

WALDEN: Water, as far as I can remember, doesn’t have any smell. The ocean did, of course; even now I can almost smell it in my head; but the cause of that will have been what was living in it.

COSS: Or dead, It’s them smell the most.

HANNAH: This water is scented with all the flowers living near me.

COSS: Were living, ’til you scented your water with them.

HANNAH: Others will grow, as your plovers will lay other eggs. (to WALDEN) Will you smell it?

WALDEN: I..I don’t know if I could. My nose is long out of practice; there being so little to smell here, since the tides stopped bringing in the fish.

COSS: And the smell’s so long gone from their bones, you wouldn’t know them from the sand, without lookin’. (wry grin) Or feelin’ them prickin’ against the soles of your feet.

HANNAH: (holding the bottle under WALDEN’s nose) Try.

(WALDEN sniffs distrustfully. He continues sniffing.)

WALDEN: Something there. I can smell something.

HANNAH: What?

WALDEN: F..lowers. Some kind of..flower. Different kinds, I think; all mixed together.

COSS: (half to himself) Tell him it’s full o’ flowers, he’ll smell ’em. Try tellin’ him it’s half fish oil.

(WEALD reaches a tentative hand toward the bottle.)

COSS: Better watch out, he’s gonna grab it.

HANNAH: (drawing her hand with the bottle away from WEALD’s outstretching hand) Many many different kinds. Every flower that grows where I live is in this small bottle.

WALDEN: He’ll be wanting to smell the flowers himself. Having— probably—some memory in him still of what smelling was, when it was of some use.

HANNAH: (smiling) And what would be the use to him of smelling the perfume of flowers? No more than to the flowers themselves.

WALDEN: (glancing at WEALD’s hand following HANNAH”s retreating hand) That is doubtless so; but he wants to.

COSS: (in undertone) Why’d you bottle it then, if it’s o’ no use to anyone?

HANNAH: To anyone, I did not say. But to..him.. (turning the bottle upside down just above a little ‘valley’ in the log between WEALD and WALDEN) Very well then, let him smell what he can.

(They all look at where the ‘water’ is landing on the log.)

COSS: Lot of water there for such a small bottle.

WALDEN: It has already quite filled the little hollow in the log and is flowing over and down the side of it. And onto the sand. Gazing at the sand) It would be pleasant if fresh flowers would grow there out of it.

HANNAH: (smiling, turning the bottle upright) There are no actual flowers in the water, nor the seeds of flowers; only the scent of them. As the surface of the pool is only the mirror of the sky.

(WEALD stretches his head forward until it is directly above the ‘pool’.)

WALDEN: (watching WEALD) He’ll be wanting to see the sky there, only a foot below his own eyes.

COSS: See his own face, more like.

(WEALD frowns at the ‘pool’ below his face.)

WALDEN: Something like that he is seeing, and thinking it the face of a stranger or..

(HANNAH strokes her hand through the air over WEALD’s head.. WEALD’s face clears.)

WALDEN: Something is rippling the surface of the pool, blurring his face away.

COSS: Well that’d cheer ‘im. Cheer anybody.

WALDEN: (leaning towards the ‘pool’) And something is breaking through the surface of the water. Petals of..flowers, they look like. White-petalled..flowers. (smiling) Flowering all over the pool they are.

HANNAH: (continuing to stroke the air over WEALD’s head) Lilies. Waterlilies.

WALDEN: I can well remember your saying that there were no flowers in the bottle.

HANNAH: They are not in the bottle.

WALDEN: Not now.

HANNAH: Nor ever were. The water is swelling them up from their roots in the log you have been so long sitting on.

(WEALD bends his head closer to the log, a faint smile on his lips.)

COSS: Well, he’s likin’ seein’ them; hard to say when we last saw him smile. Be crackin’ his lips.

(HANNAH withdraws her hand from over WEALD’s head. WEALD’s smile dies away.)

WALDEN: They are closing their petals and sinking down under the water. He’s seeing his face again, and a little of the sky bright around it.

(WEALD frowns.)

WALDEN: Doesn’t like seeing it, thinks it’s the stranger staring back at him.

COSS: (dry chuckle) More likely knowin’ all too well it’s himself —and who else could it be? Reason enough to set ‘im frownin’.

(WEALD brushes the air over the pool with both his hands.)

COSS: (resetting a decoy) Thinkin’ he can hide by rufflin’ the water. All the sand we got, he could make a hole for his head anywhere.

(HANNAH again begins to stroke the air over WEALD’s head. His own hands become still as he gazes down at the ‘pool’, and he smiles.)

WALDEN: The waterlilies are breaking through the surface again, opening right up. No sign now of himself at all.

(WEALD gazes, entranced, at the ‘waterlilies in the pool’. HANNAH, stroking the air over his head with one hand, reaches her other to the telescope in WALDEN’s lap, seems about to take it.)

COSS (undertone) Don’t like the look o’ this.

WALDEN: (to HANNAH) He never likes us touching his telescope.

COSS: His own thinkin’ it’s his is catchin’. Hasn’t caught me yet. (undertone, to HANNAH) But it sure ain’t yours.

HANNAH: (lifting the telescope) It will be but a moment in my hand. (laying the telescope on WEALD’s knees) So you (to WALDEN) may not be encumbered with it, and walk a little with me. (taking WALDEN’s hand) Walking is refreshing for the body. And I think you do not walk as much as you might.

COSS: (chuckling) ‘As much as he might.’

WALDEN: I walk almost not at all. Now that—for I don’t know really how long—he can’t. Alone, without his hand to balance me—he being well content to sit here with the telescope—I found it difficult to walk among the furrows without hurting them. And, the ocean being far withdrawn, and the sand hot against my feet, I hadn’t the same interest.

HANNAH: (her hand gently drawing WALDEN to his feet) Let us then walk a little together now. My arm will support yours. (glancing at WEALD) And the lilies will keep him content while you are gone.

WALDEN: (uncertain on his feet) I don’t know that I shall be.. able. And the furrows being so..many..

HANNAH: (sliding her arm through his) We shall walk slowly, and with care.

(HANNAH and WALDEN walk about the stage, arm in arm; slowly, but—after their first few steps—careless of the ‘furrows’; he not noticing and she not caring that their feet are blurring the chalk lines. He stumbles once or twice; she holds him up; they both laugh. COSS, brooding over his decoys, watches them, suspicious and discontent. WEALD gazes peacefully at the ‘pool’ below him.)

COSS: (to himself) Sure, walk wherever you like, break down all the ridges. Who needs furrows anyway? Bein’ near no plovers to.. (knocking over a decoy with the back of his hand) What d’you think you‘re standin’ there for? With nothin’ to do.

(He gazes down bleakly at the decoy, gently picks it up, dusts it off and sets it on its feet.)

WALDEN: (to HANNAH) There being so very nearly no plovers now naturally causes him to feel that the land is dry and lifeless and all his work in making the decoys waste.

HANNAH: It is quite lifeless to my eye also; and the air is harshly dry against my skin. When you were walking with your brother, the smell of the ocean in the air will have been refreshing to you both.

WALDEN: Probably. Smells are difficult to remember. But the wind from the ocean on our faces, and the waves, large and small, breaking out of it, I can remember that.

HANNAH: And there will have been plovers also, many of them doubtless; as there was a shore, and water, of which they are fond.

WALDEN: As to that, I can’t say, my memory not well picturing the variety of possible birds. But there were birds certainly, and a great many of them, walking and swimming and flying about; I can still see in my head the shapes they made against the sky. (standing still) But plovers in particular I can’t say I remember before (indicating COSS) he came, and made the decoys.

HANNAH: As there was water then, there will certainly have been plovers. And his decoys will have been perhaps of some use to you, as now I think they cannot be, there being so little to decoy. (gently leading WALDEN to walk again) Let us walk a little more.

COSS: (growling to himself, patting a decoy) You’re as much use as you always were; more even, plovers bein’ so few, and needin’ attractin’. Except what colour the ocean left you bein’ bleached out by the sun. (undertone, to HANNAH) That a bit o’ your many clothes more’n enough could’ve helped with, you bein’ willin’.

HANNAH: (stroking WALDEN’s hand) Your walking with him (indicating WEALD), when you did, and your looking at the ocean and the sky, will have been a pleasant way of passing those long gone days

WALDEN: We were not only walking, we were painting pictures for each other as we walked. On the sky over our heads mostly. If it was clear; which, at first, was usual. He didn’t like clouds; still doesn’t, I think. Because they move; which made them not good for painting on, he said.

(The BOYS grin, paint the air over their heads with big strokes.)

HANNAH: (low laugh) It should content him then, though it does not appear to, that clouds are nowhere now to be seen.

WALDEN: That has been so for many years now, I can’t say how many. But then, when we were walking, there were clouds, quite often; and we walked from the shade of one to the shade of another, only I then painting, he complaining that the clouds had become too many; and feeling, I think, though not quite saying, that that was my fault, as I liked painting on them. And his own pictures began to die away from what clear sky there still was, until they were hardly more than wandering bright lines, and then a scattering of dots. I could guess the rest, he said. I couldn’t, though I didn’t say. Which he knew well enough.

HANNAH: And did he like what he could see of what you painted?

WALDEN: Not very much. They moved too much, he said, and had too many shapes and colours; that it tired him to look at. Like the clouds themselves.

HANNAH: (looking up and about) They will not be tiring him now, as there are none anywhere, of any kind. I should be surprised indeed if he is even still remembering them.

COSS: (to himself) Remembers anythin’ at all now it’d lose me my breath; the head on him bein’ as dry as an old coconut.

WALDEN: There was soon enough, after he (indicating COSS) came to us, little of them to remember. They had so diminished in size and number that I had almost nothing to paint on myself.

(The BOYS gaze about over their heads, their brushes uplifted, as if looking for something to paint; then shrug, return to ‘painting the log’.)

HANNAH: And so he painted again, on the clear sky?

WALDEN: No. There was too much sky then, he said, for him ever to be able to paint it all. And he didn’t want to walk any more, he said; it being by then already a good deal further to go to the shore than it had been.

HANNAH: He spoke then to you. Of what he was thinking. And feeling.

WALDEN: Yes. Sometimes. But, little by little, he lost interest in that, as he had in walking, I forget in which order it was. And so we stopped both of those, a long while ago now, perhaps a very long while. I’m sorry for that, when I remember; which is when my hand, sometimes, feels empty. Though, as for that, I don’t think, by then, he was feeling my hand even when he was holding it. It has been long since he was much aware of anything at all outside his own body.

HANNAH: He could feel my hand when it was only stroking the air over his head.

WALDEN: Yes, I could see that. The warmth of your body he will have been feeling. But of mine there is not, nor has there been for a long while, very much to feel, or be felt.

HANNAH: (half-smiling) There are flowers which, at some time, cease to feed from the earth, and the water in the earth. The sun and the air are all they want. They are called ‘everlasting’.

WALDEN: (little smile) They may still be looking like flowers; but no more alive than (indicating COSS) his decoys. And not so useful.

HANNAH: And what is the use of a decoy when there are no plovers to be decoyed?

COSS: Who says there’re no plovers?

HANNAH: You have said yourself that there are but few. As there are now no tides, and so neither fish, nor crabs perhaps, to attract them, it surprises me that there are even those few.

COSS: The furrows, like I already said, probably more’n once, is what’re attractin’ them.

WALDEN: That was his idea in making them.

HANNAH: I have to say—indeed insist—that I am at a loss to understand why any plover at all would pass by here, there being not a single living fish to nourish her.

COSS: It’s not the fish she’s comin’ for, you see. It’s the furrows for layin’ her eggs in. Which she, her and others, does..sometimes..

HANNAH: And sometimes not?

WALDEN: (glancing uncertainly at COSS) It depends on the decoys, he says, being in their right places. Which often they’re not.

COSS: No plovers gonna stop by here if it’s not seein’ the decoys. Is it?

HANNAH: Why will it not see them?

COSS: They not standin’ the way they’re supposed to, plover won’t see ’em. Be like they wasn’t there.

HANNAH: They are very clearly there.

WALDEN: Plovers, we have found, see differently from ourselves. If the decoys are not correctly placed, as he has explained, the plovers will not see them as fellow living birds,

COSS: See them sideways on, what’s there to see, eh? Set ’em right for one direction, like I’m doin’ now, (pulling irritatedly at a decoy which seems to be fixed in the ground) and they’re wide open to the sand beyond ’em from another. (kicking the decoy over) But they won’t move when I want ’em to, they’re the stubbornest things you ever saw.

HANNAH: It is doubtful if kicking them will improve their skills, or amend their nature.

COSS: (picking up and dusting off the decoy) Maybe not; but it’s sure a relief to mine. And I didn’t make all these furrows just so they can loll about in them.

WALDEN: It was, as you may imagine, a great many months of work making them—with tides, of which there were a good number still flowing then, breaking them down again and again.

COSS: Wonder is I could keep ’em standin’ at all.

WALDEN: The failing of the tides of course contributed to that; enabling him at last to maintain the fully furrowed field you can see.

HANNAH: But to what point or purpose I fail to see. As nothing can grow here, it being all sand and salt.

WALDEN: It was not for the purpose of growing things that they were made; he knowing as well as yourself that nothing would.

HANNAH: For what purpose, then, were they made?

COSS: For the plovers, o’ course. To attract ’em. Which we’ve told you two times more’n once.

HANNAH: And why are the plovers attracted to the furrows?

COSS: For the laying o’ their eggs, o’ course.

HANNAH: Do they need a furrow for that?

WALDEN: We are the ones are needing the furrows. Plovers themselves have no need of anything really, barring food and a good place to lay their eggs, to make more plovers. So it is where they’re laying their eggs that we’re on the lookout for.

HANNAH: And how may the furrows be helpful in that?

COSS: To show us where they’re layin’ ’em, o’ course.

WALDEN: Plovers, we have learned, over time—of which there is here a good deal—know more about the weather to come than we do.

COSS: It’s in their blood, they can’t help knowin’, like fish are knowin’ not to try breathin’ in water.

WALDEN: They can, we have discovered, tell the coming weather; can feel the air of it in their feathers, I suppose. Which we, not having any, cannot.

COSS: So furrows is what they’re likin’. They fly all round everywhere, lookin’ for ’em.

HANNAH: I do not understand. Sand is sand, and soft; and may be dug in anywhere to lay an egg.

COSS: It’s furrows what gives ’em a choice for laying ’em. Shrewd and cunning birds, plovers are; always an eye out for the best bet.

WALDEN: If they are feeling there’ll be rain coming, they make their holes on the ridges of the furrows, so their young ones aren’t drowning, as they would be in the ditches between, when they hatch. But the furrows are better if the weather is dry; warmer, nicely sheltered from the wind.

HANNAH: But it never rains here, as you have said; and which is, in any event, evident.

WALDEN: Not in years it hasn’t. Nor is likely to, in those to come. But plovers, not being the thinking kind of bird, probably haven’t yet worked that out.

COSS: Give ’em another coupla thousand years..

WALDEN: Feeling though, as we suppose they do, that the rain will not again be falling for some while..

COSS: Like say a century.

WALDEN: ..They are always laying their eggs in the furrows.

HANNAH: They have then, it would appear, some awareness of the tides no longer flowing here.

WALDEN: They’ll be having that certainly; since, a tide flowing in, there’d be water everywhere, overflowing ridges as well as furrows.

COSS: Meltin’ everythin’ back to flatness. And he (scornfully, WEALD) is still sunk in growlin’ misery for there being none no more.

(COSS suddenly kicks over a decoy. HANNAH draws in her breath sharply. WALDEN is unconcerned. WEALD looks up from the pool, looks about him with confused, misty eyes. COSS picks up the decoy, shakes it, sets on the ground. It falls over. He sets it up again, roughly. It falls over. He picks it up, peers at it. WEALD, his hands feeling the telescope on his legs, smiles, picks it up,)

COSS: Leg’s broken now, poor guy. But you think any plover passin’ by’d care? Stop, help it up onto its feet? (contemptuously) No chance. Walk right past it, they would, like it wasn’t even there; plovers are the hardest-hearted birds there are. (gently brushing off the decoy) Crows now would be all around it in sympathy, talkin’ too much maybe, way they do, but tryin’ to help. (trying to make the decoy stand) Stupid thing can’t even stand now.

(COSS kicks over the decoy, looks as if he is about to kick another one ‘in his way’ as he walks off a few steps one way, then another; scowling, with clenched hands, he sits on the log beside WEALD, who is looking about aimlessly through the telescope. HANNAH and WALDEN, she gently supporting and guiding him, slowly circle the log.)

WALDEN: Their not being able to look after themselves bothers him, some times more than others. And the need for them to do so is, of course, much greater than it was, with the passing plovers now being but two, or perhaps three, a day.

HANNAH: How may decoys look after themselves?

WALDEN: (nodding) He knows that. But it troubles him nonetheless.

HANNAH: And he believes that your brother wishes that the tides were still flowing?

WALDEN: He is quite right in thinking that. But he (indicating COSS) is, I think, no longer of one mind in the matter himself, remembering as he does the fish and crabs the tides brought with them. And the plovers now being so very few.

(COSS, who has been watching the wandering telescope in WEALD’s hands, suddenly reaches out, clutches his hand round the telescope, holds it steadily in one position.)

COSS: (angrily) Look, whyn’t you? Whyn’t you look? Think the tide’s goin’ to come in with you just dabblin’ your toes in it? Look!

(WEALD starts to grizzle.)

HANNAH; The poor old man is crying.

WALDEN: It takes little, now, to make him cry. (laying his hand gently on WEALD’s shoulder) Less, even much less, than it did, in time back.

(HANNAH lays her hand on WEALD’s other shoulder. He shivers.)

HANNAH: When he was young.

WALDEN: (little smile) I wasn’t meaning..that far back. Hard to imagine..

COSS: (to WEALD, loosening his hand from the telescope) Do what you like with it then. What do we need tides for anyway? Knockin’ down all the decoys. (bitter chuckle) Can knock ’em down myself.

(WALDEN and HANNAH withdraw their hands from WEALD’s shoulders, continue circling the log, arm in arm. WEALD stops grizzling, again moves the telescope slowly and randomly about. COSS glowers into space.)

HANNAH: He thinks your brother will be able, if he looks steadily towards it through his eyeglass, to bring the tide in again?

WALDEN: It will be doubtful that he thinks that; though he may, I suppose, hope it.

HANNAH: And your..brother?

WALDEN: I think it may be no longer clear to him that it is—or may be—his pointing the telescope at the far dunes—if there are any—that is keeping the ocean from leaving us altogether.

COSS: (to himself) How do you know when it’s left? When you can’t see it, or hear it, or smell it? Sure can’t touch it. But how d’you know? (peering balefully at the BOYS) They’re touchin’ it; think they are, playin’ they are. Dumb stagehands.

HANNAH: (watching WEALD) I can see that it would bring it closer to his eye; the dunes at its shore, at any rate. And perhaps there are passes in the dunes, which from here we cannot see. And if there are, the water, with the help of his seeing it, may pass through them. But he is old, and his eyes will be old. Is it certain that he is seeing the dunes at all?

COSS: Nothin’s certain with him. Everythin’s adrift, and the telescope with it.

(Pause. HANNAH and WALDEN continue walking around the log.)

HANNAH: I wonder if he (indicating COSS) is not right in trying to guide your brother’s gazing; which does appear to be very aimless.

COSS: (bitter chuckle) Appearances there bein’ the thing itself, all right.

WALDEN: He (indicating WEALD) is, as you have seen, quite resistant to anyone else touching the telescope. And to him particularly; I don’t know why. It may be that he blames his making of the furrows for the absence of the tides.

HANNAH: Why should he do that? It is like blaming the sun for making cold shadows.

WALDEN: There is no knowing the why of anything with him; it is so long since he has spoken. But it is true—I think; it is difficult to remember clearly events which flow through each other—that as the furrows were more, the tides were less.

COSS: (sotto voce) Yeah, ‘blame the sun’.

HANNAH: And it was then that your brother ceased speaking?

WALDEN: I suppose it will have been ‘then’, thereabouts. But he never liked it much anyway; and I suppose, as time went, he lost interest altogether. Only, from time to time, letting out some wordless sound. His painting at the same time becoming nothing but dots scattered all over the cloudless sky, and the sand. Which I could see, at first, and for quite a long time after; a kind of scattered..brightness they were. I can’t see them now, though they may still be there. It is perhaps what he is looking at through the telescope.

HANNAH: (gazing about) I cannot see them. The sky and the sand are each of one smooth colour only. Pale colour, barely worthy of the name.

COSS: (sotto voce) Yeah, ’cause they’re all deckin’ yourself. (to WEALD, laying his hand roughly on the telescope and training it on HANNAH) You want to see some bright colour, there’s where you should be lookin’.

(WEALD grizzles, struggles feebly to free himself. HANNAH evidently feels herself drawn towards the telescope, her arm half-pulling free of WALDEN’s arm.)

COSS: (to HANNAH) Feelin’ it, are you? Feelin’ it? He can pull to him anythin’ he wants with that telescope.

(WEALD is grizzling loudly, with a rising tone of need. HANNAH’s arm is nearly free of WALDEN’s arm.)

COSS: (bitter chuckle) He’ll be thinkin’ you’ve gathered all his ‘dots’ into one place, somehow stolen ’em. And he wants ’em back.

(WALDEN’s hand closes on HANNAH’s hand, holds it. COSS, seeing this, lets go of the telescope.)

COSS: All right, I’ll let you go. Just givin’ you a idea what he can do.

(COSS stands up from the log, goes to the decoys, looks at them, reaches out his hands, touches two of them, as if assuring himself that they are there. WEALD is peaceful, gazes about with the telescope. WALDEN gently draws HANNAH to him, until they are arm in arm again. They walk together around the log.

HANNAH: (looking at WEALD, smiling) He is peaceful again

WALDEN: He is easily peaceful. It is only when he feels that the peace of where he feels himself to be is disturbed, that he cries.

HANNAH: But he is crying more often than he did, you said. You are then more often disturbing him?

WALDEN: I don’t think so; (little smile) don’t think I could, as he’s hardly aware of me. It may be that his longing for the ocean has grown greater with its going further from us; though I wonder, often, if he even quite remembers it. That, in its way, might, I suppose be painful: just a sense of forgetting, with no picture in you of what’s been forgotten.

(Pause. They continue walking slowly round the log. COSS ‘realigns’ the decoys.)

WALDEN: I don’t myself—for a long while and against my own..preference—touch him much now, fearing it would disturb him. Except to massage his feet. As he has made it clear, in offering them to my hands, that he wants that; but they are always so cold, and my hands so..empty, that I doubt if he can really feel them.

HANNAH: He felt mine. His feet grew warm.

WALDEN: That is likely. (smiling) It may indeed be longing for yourself, unknown though you were, which has been disturbing his peace, and causing him more and more frequently to grizzle. For long now, he has been allowing the telescope to wander back and forth in

the direction you say you have come from.

HANNAH: I could feel him looking. It was what drew me to walk this way, to see what..(smiling)..was drawing me.

(As HANNAH and WALDEN pass behind WEALD, HANNAH stops, causing WALDEN to stop also. HANNAH lays her hand lightly on WEALD’S back. WEALD seems not to notice; the telescope continues to wander about.)

HANNAH: He does not mind my hand touching him.

WALDEN: That appears to be so.

COSS: (growling undertone) ‘Appears.’

(HANNAH removes her arm from WALDEN’s arm, and reaches her hand towards the telescope.)

WALDEN: I don’t think I’d be touching it, if I were you. He is very sensitive, as you have seen, to the hand of anyone else upon it.

(HANNAH, lightly stroking WEALD’s back with one hand, gently draws the telescope from his hands with her other. He grizzles slightly, almost contentedly, rests his hands in his lap.)

COSS: (growling) Woman can do just what she likes. I tryin’ that, there’d be..

WALDEN: That is quite surprising. He appears almost content to let you hold it.

HANNAH: There is in him no appearance whatever; his senses are so declined, poor man, that he is unaware that the eyeglass has gone from him.

COSS: (in undertone) Wouldn’t be if it was me touchin’ it.

HANNAH: It is no wonder that the tides lie languishing beyond the horizon. (lifting the telescope towards her eye) But with my strong eye focusing on them..

WALDEN: You’ll be finding, as we have, over time..

COSS: (to himself) And more time at that than anybody would ever be needin’

WALDEN: ..that the eyeglass, as you have called it, will not in any way change the shape or condition of things here from what our bare eyes are already seeing..

COSS: Wantin’ to or not.

WALDEN: ..in anybody’s hands but his own. It being in our hands, as you will find it is in yours, but a telescope we pulled out of the sand.

COSS: (scornfully) Like blowin’ in your own sails, you’ll find it is.

HANNAH: (looking from WALDEN to COSS) And how can it be different in his? Who sees nearly nothing at all.

WALDEN: The reason for the difference we’re none of us knowing; but you’ll have felt it yourself in his drawing you to us in the beginning.

HANNAH: He could not, I feel sure, have done that without your standing with him, and guiding the eyeglass towards me.

WALDEN: It may be that my hand on the telescope fixed his attention upon you, enabling you to approach. But all my own eyes were seeing was a patch of flowers growing out of the sand. Which could not, as you yourself have seen, have grown there, as nothing grows here; but were painted there by his own eye; after years on end of his never painting anything. Anything, at least that I was able to see myself. (pause) I suppose it may be that my seeing you then myself, as the flowers, will have helped him to bring you..nearer.

HANNAH: That, though not without likelihood, is but supposition. (setting the end of the telescope to her eye) I shall see for myself what the power of the eyeglass may be.

(HANNAH guides the telescope towards the BOYS, who are lounging by the painted log. Seeing the telescope focused on them, they look uneasy, wave uncertainly, look about for a way to escape it, pick up their brushes.)

HANNAH: The eyeglass does indeed bring the boys closer. They are much larger now than life.

COSS: Lookin’ nearer to you, are they? That aren’t near at all. (sotto voce) Because they ain’t at all.

(The BOYS, as if trying not to be noticed, turn their backs, ‘paint the log’.)

WALDEN: (glancing uneasily at COSS) They might well appear to be farther, as is the way of mirages when approached.

HANNAH: They were clearly seeing my eye upon them, and waving to it; unusual behaviour for a mirage. (lowering the telescope) But they are not nearer to myself, though they were to my eye; you are quite right in that.

COSS: Eatin’s the proof o’ the puddin’.

(The BOYS, looking uneasy, continue ‘painting the log’.)

HANNAH: (looking again through the telescope toward the BOYS) What is not clear to me is what they are doing now. They appear to be..painting the log. Why should they do that?

WALDEN: (glancing uneasily at COSS) Waves will have washed some of the paint off it, I suppose.

HANNAH: What..paint? The log, like all the driftwood, will have been long in the ocean. How might it have paint on it?

WALDEN: (looking embarrassed) Maybe floated against a..ship or..something. And they liking the bare…wood better. I suppose.

(HANNAH, looking troubled, lowers the telescope from her eye. The BOYS, seeing this, drop their paintbrushes, splash ‘water’ on each other, laugh.)

WALDEN: Stopped now, though. Just playing. Way they do when nobody’s looking.

HANNAH: I am looking.

WALDEN: With the eyeglass, I mean. Otherwise, they being so far off, they can’t see us.

HANNAH: They are not far off.

WALDEN: They’ll be thinking they are, I suppose. In a world of their own, the way boys are.

HANNAH: You think they are not seeing us at all then?

(The BOYS glance towards HANNAH, look at each other, laugh, begin to ‘paint’ each other with their brushes.)

WALDEN: They’ll be seeing..something of us, I imagine, when they look this way; something moving a little over the sand, now and then. Not enough to keep them looking. Much the same as we, except for yourself, are seeing them.

(HANNAH, looking at the BOYS, absently lays the telescope on WEALD’s legs. He seems not to feel it, continues gazing blankly into space.)

HANNAH: They are now painting each other. Or..pretending to.

COSS: (sotto voce, to the BOYS) Whyn’t you paint a tide then, fish splashin’ in it? Got so little to do.

(The BOYS look at him with mischievous grins, turn and ‘paint’ on the backdrop with many quick strokes, a huge wave—made ‘alive’ by lighting—breaking over the log. They fall back, as if thrown by it to the ground. HANNAH looks alarmed.)

HANNAH: That wave will..

(WALDEN gestures covertly to the lighting box. The ‘wave’ disappears. The BOYS sit up, wipe their ‘wet faces’, laugh.)

COSS: Weren’t no wave, no real wave; or water at all. Just their games. Makin’ their own mirage world. (undertone) When they’re supposed to be makin’ ours.

WALDEN The log itself, though, is as real as we are. And even older, it having been lying there for more years, probably many more, than we ourselves have been here.

COSS: (sotto voce) That they’re makin’ look even less like a log than it did to begin with.

WALDEN: I still have in my head some pictures of it—many fewer, of course, than there will have been when I was younger—from the days, many many days, we passed it by when we were walking along the shore. When there was a shore. It was where we sat, often, when we were painting the sky and, sometimes, the sea. There were no boys on or near it then. Nor could there have been, as the tides would have washed them away.

HANNAH: (gently laying WEALD’s hands on the telescope) You were fortunate then that the tides spared yourselves.

(WEALD strokes the telescope with his hands; his fingers close around it and he raises it to his eye. He moves it about aimlessly.)

WALDEN: We were walking there only when they were out. Neither of us being swimmers, and the breakers then far taller than ourselves.

(HANNAH lays her hand gently on WEALD’S hands on the telescope. WEALD starts, relaxes, nearly smiles. Holding his hands with hers, HANNAH guides the telescope surely towards the BOYS. COSS looks very uneasy.)

HANNAH: Let us see then. As he sees.

COSS: (sotto voce) We’re in for it now.

(When the telescope, guided by HANNAH’s hand, shows WEALD the BOYS clearly as they paint the ‘log’ on the backdrop, his excitement shows in his breathing.)

COSS: Somethin’ wrong with him, breathin’ too fast.

(The BOYS, aware of WEALD’s ‘great eye’ peering at them through the telescope, whisper to each other uneasily as they ‘give their full attention’ to their painting. As WEALD’s attention rigidly focuses on the BOYS through the telescope, they so ‘freeze’ that each paints mechanically the same spot on the ‘log’ over and over.)

COSS: (sotto voce) She don’t do somethin’ soon, they’ll be paintin’ holes right through the canvas. (little grin) Tide’ll flow in right through ’em, that’ll surprise her, thinkin’ it’s a log.

WALDEN: (to HANNAH) There is some danger, in his unwavering looking at it, to the..structure of the log. Which is not so solid as it appears. If you can shift his attention from it, it would be helpful.

(HANNAH strains her arm and body to push the telescope away from the BOYS.)

HANNAH: (strained voice) He is very..strong.

COSS: When he wants somethin’. Been buildin’ it up through all these years o’ wantin’ nothin’.

(HANNAH succeeds in pushing the telescope away from the BOYS. They look round, as if waking up, shrug, begin again painting the ‘log’ carelessly, with low laughter.)

HANNAH: (flexing her body) He is very much stronger than he appears.

COSS: We were knowin’ well enough about that ‘appearin’. Why we were leavin’ him more or less alone. Till you came.

(WEALD trains the telescope about in the vicinity of the BOYS, They glance toward him uneasily. Unable to find them again, he is clearly disturbed. HANNAH’s hand gently guides the telescope away from them.)

WALDEN: It will be the boys painting which is perhaps disturbing him. Reminding him of when he himself.. Little though the log resembles the sky.

HANNAH: He might still paint the sky, what is to stop him? It being as clear as you say he always liked it.

COSS: (chuckling, sotto voce) Boys maybe lendin’ him a brush. Tin o’ paint.

WALDEN: He might, of course, if he would; but, as I have said, I think, to somebody, yourself it must have been, there being no one else to say it to, he found it—later, that would have been, and he older—too great an expanse to paint anything on at all except, here and there, dots. I think he then may have missed the clouds, some of the clouds; a little.

HANNAH: Which his (indicating COSS) shadow sliding over the sand, and its head over his feet, had driven from the sky?

(HANNAH, gently guiding the telescope, allows it to wander ‘aimlessly’ in the vicinity of COSS, who glances at it uneasily.)

COSS: Yeah, all my fault. Everythin’ my fault. Far from clearin’ his precious sky o’ clouds, I’d have made him more if I could have. But there couldn’t be no more, nor even as many, because there wasn’t no more water to make ’em. Nor tides neither. There bein’ no more sea.

(HANNAH guides the telescope in diminishing circles around COSS.)

COSS: And him (indicating WEALD) grizzlin’ the whole while at losin’ the one that made the other.

(COSS moves out of the closing circle of the telescope; but, guided by HANNAH, it follows him.)

COSS: As if he was the only one losin’ from the clouds and tides goin’, when none of the three of us was anymore eatin’ a fish or tasty crab. If it wasn’t for me makin’ these decoys to draw the plovers, and the furrows to lay their eggs in, we’d all of us long ago have starved.

WALDEN: That is certainly true. We have lived on little else. A few weeds which somehow find water; dew, I suppose, which we gather ourselves at need; which is not great, our old bodies having few demands.

HANNAH: (to COSS, holding the telescope steadily focused on him) He will be grateful to you, then, will he not? If his bleary eye can now see you, he will smile.

COSS: Nothin’ I did for ‘im ever made ‘im smile. Never was sure, last years, he even knew I was here, ‘less I tried to touch his ‘eyeglass’.

(WEALD’s body tenses as his eye sees COSS through the telescope.)

HANNAH: He is seeing you now.

(COSS tries to move out of WEALD’s ‘eye’, one way then another, but HANNAH holds him in WEALD’s view. WEALD’s breath quickens.)

COSS: Don’t like his big eye on me.

(His whole body struggling against it, COSS is drawn towards WEALD. The BOYS, grinning mischievously, mimic his movements.)

HANNAH: He wants you to come nearer to him.

COSS: (struggling to hold back) Always what he wants.

(For all has struggling, COSS is drawn nearer and nearer to the end of the telescope, until his face is only a foot away from it. His whole body is trembling, and WEALD’s breathing is strong and heavy. WALDEN reaches his hand into the space between them, ‘blinding’ the telescope.)

WALDEN: No.

HANNAH: He wants him..with..him.

WALDEN: It is not possible. The telescope cannot hold him. He cannot hold him. No more than he could the ocean.

(WALDEN lays his hand on the telescope, turns it away from COSS, releases it. WEALD grizzles loudly. COSS sways about drunkenly, staggers this way and that. The BOYS mimic him. Stumbling among the decoys, COSS steps on one of them, breaks it. He reaches down to the ground as if it is far below him, searching blindly with his hands. The BOYS begin to mimic him, stop, stare at him, unmoving, as his hands fumble with the decoys as though he doesn’t know what they are.)

WALDEN: His eye is inside him, he can’t see where he..is. You will have to turn the telescope around, to bring him out of it.

(HANNAH tries to turn the telescope, but WEALD, grizzling, holds it fast in his hands. COSS searches around himself for the decoys.)

HANNAH: I cannot. He is holding it too strongly.

WALDEN: (reaching out his hand, laying it on WEALD’s hands) If he will feel..me.. It is so..long..since..

(WEALD, evidently feeling WALDEN’s hand, his grizzling dies down, and he loosens his grip on the telescope. HANNAH turns it round in his hands. WALDEN lifts his hand away. WEALD’s hands clutch the reversed telescope, and HANNAH’s hand tightly.)

WALDEN: Let him see him now.

(HANNAH directs the reversed telescope towards COSS, who, as if feeling it, starts, and looks about him confusedly. His hands touch a decoy. He picks it up and gathers it to his chest, and another two decoys. Looking around to ‘see where he is’, he sees the reversed telescope trained on him. Trying to avoid it, he moves this way and that, as if driven by the telescope. The BOYS, grinning, mimic his movements with their hands as shadow-animals.)

(Panting for breath and struggling to keep his feet, COSS is driven upstage. losing one of the decoys as he is spun about. The BOYS, laughing, flourish their brushes to paint ‘waves’—brought ‘alive’ by quivering light—pouring over the log.)

HANNAH: (breathing with difficulty) I cannot control him. He is drawing all my own strength into his body.

WALDEN: That is natural. He has been waiting very very long for me to bring your strength to him.

(COSS, driven back towards the ‘log’, feels the ‘water’ pouring over him, forcing his body downwards.)

HANNAH: The waves are very high. They will drown the poor man.

WALDEN: The boys are making the waves. They will know when to stop.

(COSS staggers backwards against the ‘log’, between the BOYS. The moment his back touches the ‘log’, he is as if pinioned there by the reversed telescope, his hands clutching the two decoys to his chest. Each of the BOYS, still painting the ‘waves’, reaches out his free hand to hold COSS by his shoulders, laughing as the ‘wave’ pours over them all. COSS struggles feebly to escape.)

HANNAH: They are not stopping. And he is an old man, no longer strong.

WALDEN: Very well. (sotto voce to the BOYS, with a ‘lowering’ gesture of his hand towards the lighting crew) Enough. That is enough.

(The BOYS, looking guilty, stop ‘painting the waves’. The lights making them go out, and the ‘waves’ vanish. The BOYS look at COSS, who is breathing heavily, his head drooping down. They wipe down his body with their hands. He stands still, as if not knowing where he is. Then, slowly lifting his head, he sees and stares blankly at the telescope still trained on him by WEALD. His breathing is heavy.)

HANNAH: The sound of his breathing is not good at all.

WALDEN: Move the telescope away from him

(HANNAH ‘presses the weight of her body’ against WEALD’s arm; but the telescope remains fixed on COSS, who is breathing with increased difficulty)

HANNAH: I cannot. He is too strong for me.

(WALDEN gestures to the BOYS, who glance at each other and, grinning mischievously, move in front of COSS; one arm about each other’s shoulders, they stare insolently at the telescope. Behind them, hidden from WEALD’s eye, COSS slumps down, sits with his back against the painted log. His breathing eases. The decoys fall from his limp arms.)

(Losing sight of COSS, WEALD, his body tense, turns the telescope to left and right, peers with it all about the stage. He holds fast to HANNAH’s hand, so that she is drawn after him. The BOYS mimic them.)

WALDEN: He will not find him now. The boys are good boys, and know their work. You would do well to remove your hand from the telescope, so that he may rest; that we all may.

HANNAH: That is much easier said than done. His fingers are twisted into it like the roots of a tree.

WALDEN: (moving near to her and WEALD) I may perhaps be able to..

(He reaches out his hand towards their hands. The BOYS, watching WALDEN closely, reach behind themselves with one hand, feel past COSS’s slumped body, to the ‘log’ he is ‘leaning against’. They feel for a slit in the backdrop; finding it, they hold it open, their eyes on WALDEN.)

WALDEN: (gently stroking WEALD’s hands with his own) If he will feel my hands, which is far from sure..

(WALDEN strokes WEALD’s arms with both his hands. Slowly WEALD lowers the telescope from his eye and the BOYS ‘surreptitiously’ push COSS through the slit in the backdrop. HANNAH withdraws her hand and WALDEN caresses WEALD’s hands. WEALD looks at WALDEN, peering as at something faraway. The BOYS look around, pretend surprise at COSS’s being gone, as they smooth the slit in the backdrop.)

WALDEN: (taking gentle hold of WEALD’s right arm) Take his other arm.

(HANNAH takes gentle hold of WEALD’s left arm.)

WALDEN: Lift him.

(Together they lift WEALD from the log, he holding the telescope in both hands.)

WALDEN: Walk him about a little. See if he can. (little smile) The furrows do not matter anymore.

(As they walk about with him, WEALD’s feet drag at first like a rag doll’s. The BOYS teasingly mimic him. His feet begin to ‘feel the ground’.)

HANNAH: His feet are feeling the sand.

WALDEN: He always liked the feel of it. And seeing his tracks in it, behind him.

(As they walk slowly about the stage, one of the BOYS picks up the two decoys, sets them on their feet. The other BOY carelessly crosses the stage, as if he is alone on it, and takes up the bird COSS dropped in his flight. Cradling it in his arms, as if it is wounded but alive, he brings it back to the painted log, where both BOYS play with all three decoys, laughing, as if they are live birds, trying to escape. Giggling, they set the decoys in a circle, draw a hole with chalk under each of them. WALDEN and HANNAH watch the BOYS. WEALD gazes into space.)

WALDEN: The holes they are making will be for the laying of their eggs, I suppose. They pretending the decoys are living plovers.

HANNAH: The decoys having the advantage of being (smiling) ..apparent.

(The BOYS, grinning, put their hands under each of the decoys, bring out an ‘egg’ from each, which they lay in the ‘holes’. As they do so, light shines on the ‘holes’, grows brighter, ‘trickles’ out of them downstage. The BOYS, laughing, ‘scoop channels’ in the sand so that the ‘tide’ can flow through them over the stage towards the log at centre stage. WEALD smiles, twists his head round to look behind him.)

WALDEN: He wants to see his tracks, and the water flowing into them. He always liked that

HANNAH: He will not long be able to. The tide is melting them away almost as soon as he has made them.

WALDEN: (smiling) And ours.

HANNAH: And he will now be remembering the tides that were..before?

WALDEN: He having no memory in him, the tides have never been gone. (looking around, blinking in the ‘water-light’ brightening the stage) There are not many furrows now, they are, most of them, already washed away. And (glancing toward the backdrop) he is no longer here to make more. The plovers won’t know where to lay.. (sudden smile) But we won’t be needing their eggs now, will we?. There will be so many fish.

HANNAH: But who will now be able to catch them?

WALDEN: You’re a woman, I think, who will be well equal to that.

(WEALD’s body begins to droop. WALDEN looks at him lovingly.)

WALDEN: He’s tired now. We’d best let him sit down again.

(They guide WEALD to the downstage side of the log, sit him down on it, and sit themselves on each side of him. WEALD, gazing at nothing, smiling like a child, rests his hands quietly on the telescope in his lap. All three paddle their feet in the ‘water’ flowing past them. The BOYS, relaxed, as if they are alone onstage, play in the flowing water.)

(WEALD lets the telescope slide down his legs to the ‘sand’. WALDEN and HANNAH look down at it.)

HANNAH: The water is rippling it.

(WALDEN nods.)

HANNAH: The sand will bury it again.

WALDEN: I imagine so. (smiling) It may lay eyeglass eggs.

(HANNAH laughs softly as the lights dim out.)

Mt. Tuam, 9.vi.15

(edited Mt. Tuam, 18-24.vii.15)