wild greens

WILD GREENS

a play

by Roger Maybank

CHARACTERS:      PENELOPE, a woman in her sixties.

  HIRAM, a man in his sixties.

                                MICK, a man in his forties.

(There are three apparent dwellings on the stage. Downstage centre is a structure of sticks and grass, hardly worthy the name of shelter. Upstage left is a ‘flourishing garden’ of oversized brightly-coloured paper flowers. It contains a well-head, with a bucket turned upside down on it, and an old tin ‘watering trough’ beside it, at which a cardboard cutout of the front half of a sheep is ‘drinking’. The sheep’s hind parts are painted onto a flat behind it; on which flat several other sheep are painted, all ‘making their way’ towards the trough. PENELOPE, in a loose grey robe, is sitting in the garden, apparently asleep. Upstage right is a clear and clean ‘stone floor’, indicated by a pattern of fine straight lines, in irregular polygons. At the edge of it lies a pair of old grindstones, a battered tin box, and a bucket; above it, on a thin tall post, is a weather vane. HIRAM, in a loose grey robe, is sitting on the floor, apparently asleep.)

(As the play begins, the ‘light of dawn’ slowly suffuses the stage. HIRAM and PENELOPE wake, gaze towards the sun for a moment. HIRAM then looks at the stones close around him. PENELOPE looks at a glistening of light on the backdrop just above the stage, and at the paper flowers near her.)

(MICK, wearing worn trousers, shirt and jacket, enters downstage. He moves, as if weary, to the structure at downstage centre, lays down the sack he is carrying, lies down himself. HIRAM continues peering down at the ‘flagstones’ around him. He reaches down and ‘pulls out a weed’. PENELOPE looks mildly towards MICK, watches him quietly, as he settles.)

PENELOPE: He has come back.

HIRAM: (his attention on the flagstones) Who has?

PENELOPE: The..young man. He has not been here for a day or two.

HIRAM: Has he not? I was not aware..

PENELOPE: As he was carrying what looked like quite a heavy sack, he may have been in the town to buy what he needed for his sheep and goats..and himself.

HIRAM: (looking about) As there are no sheep to be seen, but your own, nor goats of any kind, it’s not clear to me why you think him to be some sort of herd. If he is, he will be a poor one, in one sense or another. The one perhaps leading to the other.

PENELOPE: I can sometimes hear, when the night is still, the sound of bells tinkling on the hillside.

HIRAM: Goat bells?

PENELOPE: As to that I couldn’t say surely. From the sound of the bells, any animals there are which are bearing them will be grazing over the shoulder of the hill.

HIRAM: That is possible. (peering more attentively) But where are you seeing the man himself?

PENELOPE: He is among that clump of thyme bushes—as I believe they are, though the distance is considerable—and is of much the same colour.

HIRAM: I am to look then, am I, for a very large thyme bush? (peering) I see none. Without flowers, they are difficult to see.

PENELOPE: He is lying down.

HIRAM: Crushing his fellows. If the wind is right (glancing at the weather vane), as it appears to be, we shall then soon be catching some scent of him. He will, in any event, soon enough be passing by to collect an egg or two. I had been wondering why there appeared be more than usual in the box.

PENELOPE: (cutting a ‘flower petal’ from a piece of yellow felt) He has to eat, of course; and eggs are good food. Does he not leave anything in return? Wild greens perhaps? As he does me.

HIRAM: (bending over his weeds) He does. But there’s little to recommend them, just boiled in water. And there’s the cleaning of them before.

(PENELOPE and HIRAM withdraw into themselves, become unaware of MICK as he sits up, looks around. From the large sack lying beside him he pulls out ‘two saplings’, an olive and a lemon. The lemon is a neatly made tree with a few well-placed leaves; the olive’s leaves are indicated by a number of drooping grey-green bits of cloth. MICK picks each of them up, looks at it, lays it down again.)

MICK: Better be gettin’ on with the plantin’ of ’em, while the day’s fresh; they’re not in such good nick. But they’ll soon be gettin’ better in the air we got here.

(He stands up. Seeing a tired red hibiscus flower protruding from his breast pocket, he pulls it out, looks at it with some interest. He sniffs at it.)

MICK: (dropping it carelessly onto the ground) Show-off town flower. No smell.

(He tries to ‘dig a hole’ in the ground with the heel of his boot; soon gives up.)

MICK: Hardly no earth for buryin’ it in, just a bit o’ dirt for herbs and things.

(He picks up the hibiscus, lays it in the ‘hole’ he was digging, scrapes ‘earth’ over it with the sole of his boot.)

MICK: Dyin’, it’ll maybe fertilize th’earth a bit. Anyway not be doin’ it the harm it was doin’ me, smilin’ out at everybody like it was meself. (looking down at the flower) I don’ know, maybe better not. Let it die off natural in the air.

(Picking up the hibiscus, he ‘shakes the earth’ from it, drops it again carelessly to the ground. Taking out his knife, he goes about gathering ‘wild greens’, murmuring to himself.)

MICK: They ain’t up to so much, just boiled in water, little salt I got; but when the olive and lemon’re bearin’.. (stopping, looking at the two saplings) Which they’re not goin’ to be doin’ here. Better see what I can be doin’ about that.

(Going back to the saplings, he takes up the lemon, and carries it towards PENELOPE.)

MICK: She’ll be likin’ the smell o’ the flowers on it, when it’s havin’ some. And we can be sharin’ the lemons, when they’re comin’. Lots o’ bees round to be helpin’ that out, if they’re up to dealin’ with a flower maybe new to them.

(PENELOPE is aware of his approach, but continues making a ‘flower’.)

MICK: (in a low voice) I brought you a gift.

PENELOPE: (half-looking round) Is there someone there?

MICK: (in louder voice, tumbling ‘wild greens’ out of his bag into the basket near her) Some greens I been gatherin’.

PENELOPE: (looking at the ‘greens’ in the basket) You have brought greens from the town? How curious. They are in no shortage here about us.

MICK: That’s where I been gatherin’ ’em; and, feelin’ maybe I was takin’ what was yours, I’ve brought some o’ them..

PENELOPE: How could they be mine?

MICK: Well, growin’ near you, the way they were.

PENELOPE: The wind is so near it brushes my cheek. (faintly smiling) I suppose that if you were to stand upwind of me, it could be said you were taking it from me; but not that I had any claim that it was..mine. (looking at the greens) But it was kind of you to.. (smiling) And preferable to what..other people—those who come—rarely though they do—from the town to bring me what they have made in their kitchens.

MICK: Yeah, I’m not havin’ one o’ those. Livin’ the way I am here on the hillside.

PENELOPE: That is natural. Although it was not quite clear to me that you were living here. Living in the sense of staying. As you appear to move your sleeping place almost daily.

MICK: Yeah, well it’s just for a while I’m thinkin’ to be here. Small while. While it’s suitin’ me.

PENELOPE: (sniffing the air) Your clothes are still carrying some scent of the thyme.

MICK: What time would that be?

PENELOPE: The time was a little earlier this morning, and the scent that of the bushes you were lying among.

MICK: There’s a lot o’ those, sure, where I’ve laid out me things, that’ll be makin’ my sleepin’ there real pleasant. And if you’re wantin’ any, I could easy be bringin’ some to you.

PENELOPE: (faintly smiling) Thyme bushes, like wild greens, are not rare on the hillside.

MICK: Yeah, but you’re maybe not havin’ the time to be gatherin’ ’em.

PENELOPE: I have all the time in the world.

MICK: Yeah, I guess.

(Pause. MICK looks around, his eyes ‘assessing’ her place. PENELOPE continues cutting out ‘flower petals’.)

MICK: What I really came here to offer you—seein’ you weren’t havin’ one—ain’t anywhere to be found on the hillside.

PENELOPE: The world will be brim full of such articles. For those who want them.

MICK: The particular thing I was havin’ in mind was this lemon tree.

(He holds it up for her to see.)

PENELOPE: (looking at the sapling with interest) A lemon tree. Yes, you are right; there will surely be none other on the hillside.

MICK: Courtyard like you got here, flowerin’ like it is, should be havin’ a lemon tree. In town there’s not a courtyard not got one.

PENELOPE: What they may have in their courtyards in the town is a matter of indifference to me.

MICK: Yeah, you’re right there enough, in m’own experience. But up here, where such wild greens as those there ‘re freely growin’, a sprinklin’ o’ lemon juice is just what they’re needin’ to be makin’ ’em tasty. And to my way o’ thinkin’, there’s nothin’ more tasty than that.

PENELOPE: Why, then, have you not planted the tree among the thyme bushes, near to yourself?

MICK: Well, I’m not settled there, as you were seein’, the way you are here. Tomorrow I could easy be sittin’ somewhere else. And anyway, there ain’t no earth there, ‘cept for what the greens theirselves are needin’, and other small things that’re growin’, what’re havin’ the skills to slip their roots down between the stones. But here—though I’m not seein’ why, but the flowers are sure showin’ it—you’ll be havin’ earth as deep and rich as in any valley bottom. So the tree, I’m thinkin’, ‘d soon be grown to a size big enough to be givin’ t’all of us all the lemons we’re wantin’.

PENELOPE: And how many in your mind constitute ‘all’?

MICK: Well, you an’ me, an’ (gesturing towards HIRAM) him over there.

PENELOPE: (glancing towards HIRAM) Ah. And what has given you to understand that his life is lacking lemon juice? Or, for that matter, that mine is?

MICK: Well, as to yourself, I was thinkin’ more o’ this as bein’ a good place for the tree to be growin’. Which’d be no more possible, from what I’m seein’ of it, where he is, than where I’ve settled meself for the moment; lack o’ water in both places bein’ the same.

PENELOPE: When he is in need of water, he comes to me, and draws it from my well.

MICK: Yeah, I been seein’ that. The once or twice he’s done it in my short time here.

PENELOPE: His need for drink, or food, is not great.

MICK: Food he’s gettin’ from his chickens, as I’ve been seein’. Their eggs, that is. Not yet seen—or heard, which’d be the more likely, them bein’ noisy birds when a knife’s edge is at their throats—him tuppin’ a chicken itself.

PENELOPE: To kill a chicken, of the very few he has..

MICK: Three o’ them I’ve been seein’.

PENELOPE: ..would be akin to looking for golden eggs in the belly of the well-named goose who laid them.

MICK: He havin’ no cock to be replenishin’ ’em.

PENELOPE: Exactly so.

MICK: He might’ve been askin’ somebody o’ the town to be bringin’ him one.

PENELOPE: It will not have occurred to him, his interest in food of any kind being so diminished.

MICK: Wild greens he’ll be likin’ though. Like everybody. Flesh o’ the very earth itself.

PENELOPE: He does eat them, I believe. As I do myself. (faintly smiling) Something we share.

MICK: But he’ll be wantin’, I’m thinkin’—and yourself then also—some oil to dress ’em with. Which is why I’ve brought with me from the town th’olive tree that’s lyin’ in what at the moment is m’own restin’ place.

PENELOPE: That was kind of you. But perhaps not quite clearly thought through, as there is not more earth at his ‘resting place’ than at yours. Or was it your intent that the olive too should be set in the earth here at mine?

MICK: Better it be growin’ where he’s livin, I’m thinkin’; not troublin’ you when he’s gatherin’ th’ olives. And it givin’ him a bit o’ shade in the heat o’ the days o’ summer. We’ll maybe be findin’ a bit o’ good earth under his stones if we’re liftin’ a couple o’ them up.

PENELOPE: I think he would hardly like you to be opening whatever earth may lie under them to the weeds that he has such difficulty uprooting as it is.

MICK: It’ll just be the work o’ a few minutes, long enough to be fittin’ th’olive in place, spreadin’ its roots out nicely, jammin’ some small stones around the trunk of it, makin’ a nice tight fit, that he’ll be likin’.

PENELOPE: I think it improbable; but I know his ways hardly better than yourself.

MICK: It’s worth tryin’, to my way o’ thinkin’. Like everythin’.

PENELOPE: Whether or not that may be so, it would require far more time to discover than lies in the lives we have been given.

MICK: Yourself, as I’m rememberin’ you sayin’, are having all the time in the world.

PENELOPE: (smiling faintly) Yes, but only to do those things which have fallen to me to do in this life. And they are few. As rainclouds in summer are few; but precious.

MICK: Droppin’ their rain into their shadows on the sea below there (indicating the patch of light on the backdrop) is what the most of ’em are doin’. Leavin’ us parched here in the middle. Exceptin’ yourself, havin’ the well o’ water under your garden, just waitin’ patient for you to be lowerin’ your bucket into it.

PENELOPE: If you are in need of water yourself, you are welcome to come and draw it.

MICK: I’m thankin’ ye for that, though I’ve enough for me own personal needs in a small pool or two I’ve found on the hillside. But th’olive tree—in particular, if you’ll be takin’ the lemon into your care—will be needin’ more water than either o’ th’others of us are havin’; which will be meanin’ more intrusions on your own privacy than you’ll maybe be content with.

PENELOPE: I will take the lemon tree, and care for it. And when the olive tree is needing water, you must, of course, come and take it.

MICK: That’ll be, I’m sure, a great comfort to himself to know.

PENELOPE: (smiling) Who does not yet know that it is to be planted in the midst of his bare stone courtyard.

MICK: He’ll be knowin’ that soon enough. And he’ll not be havin’ the trouble himself o’ fetchin’ the water, since he’ll be allowin’ me— as y’are yourself—to be undertakin’ that. Like any other jobs he—or yourself, for the matter o’ that—may be wishin’ to give me. Your own work, as I’m well understandin’, bein’ on a altogether more demandin’ plane.

PENELOPE: Your ‘understanding’ is mere compliment, however well it may be intended. I have no ‘work’ except the making of these flowers, that he may weed their flowering roots from between the interstices of his stones, so that he may see clearly the starlight trailing over them; as I can see—as he in his situation cannot—the waves of the sea below glistening in the sunlight.

MICK: (looking toward ‘the sea’) They’re a pretty enough sight, that’s true.

PENELOPE: There is nothing ‘pretty’ about them; pretty or ugly. They are but fragmentary reflections of the sunlight; but they can so hold my attention that if I look at them for more than moments at a time, I cannot see clearly enough to stitch the petals of the flowers together; the roses in particular are then difficult, their petals enfolding each other as they do.

MICK: It’s sure very fine work you’re doin’ there. Me own eyes, though pretty keen on the whole, can hardly be makin’ out the stitches you’re speakin’ of.

PENELOPE: They are finer than they need be for their purpose. But I learned to sew when I was a child, and my hands were naturally small. The stitches, not being in the same sense natural, have not altered in size, as my hands have. It is perhaps why the roots of the flowers are so fine that they are able to pierce the fine cracks between the stones of his courtyard.

MICK: It’s them roots then, o’ your flowers, that’s comin’ up as weeds in his courtyard? I was thinkin’ they was the same as are comin’ up around me in whichever o’ the many places I been settling meself in. Small flowers only they’re havin’, like the plants they’re growin’ out of, so not needin’ the kind o’ attention you’re givin’ to yours here—which is why maybe their roots ain’t so fine as yours are havin’; they knowin’ their ways better’n I do from their long time out here on the hillside, and better’n I’m knowin’ me own. None o’ them’s ever had a really big flower like you’re havin’ here.

PENELOPE: The flowers of the hillside have their own lives, and, as you rightly say, are best left to live them as they will. But the flowers here have only my own life to sustain them.

(Pause. MICK looks steadily at the flower PENELOPE is making.)

MICK: Would there be a chance o’ any kind o’ me comin’ and spendin’ a while here now and then, to be learnin’ somethin’ o’ your skill in makin’ them flowers? Which I could then be carryin’ with me as I’m movin’ me dwellin’ place here and there on the hillside; makin’ the new place a bit like the old. If I had a pot for ’em, o’ course; and a bit o’ th’earth you got here. Earth on the hillside generally bein’, as you were sayin’, on the short side.

PENELOPE: The lack of earth would be but a secondary difficulty, as it would not be needed to give life and strength to something which does not exist; because you have not the skill to make it.

MICK: I’d ha’ learned that from you.

PENELOPE: I think that for such learning, your hands will prove too rough, and old.

MICK: They might still be up to it. They’ve learned a fair few things over time.

PENELOPE: It is not clear to me that they need to learn to make flowers; nor why you feel a need you are unable to fulfil. (turning her head to look towards HIRAM) It would be better for you, I think, to go to (indicating HIRAM) him. He being a man, like yourself, will doubtless have a clearer understanding of your needs than I.

MICK: Well he won’t be tellin’ me how to make flowers. Nor anythin’ else, far as I can see; him likin’ the bareness o’ things like he does. Which will be includin’—I’m pretty sure—the presence o’ nobody else near him.

PENELOPE: You might soften his resistance to you by offering to assist him in pulling the weeds out of the cracks between the stones, to maintain their bareness. That being, at the same time, work which would be a training of your hands, and a task they look to me to be equal to.

MICK: Enough so I could then be comin’ back here, makin’ flowers?

PENELOPE: Not perhaps to make them, not right away. But holding them your hands would then be equal to.

MICK: And what’d be the good o’ me holdin’ ’em.?

PENELOPE: To keep them from disappearing; as the holding would hold your attention. I have only to let my own attention drift away from one or another of them, to find that it has gone.

MICK: Gone where?

PENELOPE: Into the earth. On which there will then be a little clear patch, like that at your feet, as a token of its absence. And then (looking towards HIRAM), I will see him holding aloft a small weed he has uprooted.

MICK: He’s uprootin’ your plants?

PENELOPE: It is his principal activity.

MICK: How’s he doin’ that? Way over there where he is?

PENELOPE: It is the same earth. And the roots of the flowers are long and strong. And he is right, by his own lights, to pull them up; or they would soon fill his courtyard as they fill mine.

MICK: Maybe be the better for it. Cheer his days a bit.

PENELOPE: ‘Cheer’ him! They would strangle him. He would die. As I will die, of starvation, if he takes them all from me.

MICK: Why was you wantin’ me then to be helpin’ him with his weedin’?

PENELOPE: (faintly smiling) Having company, he might not be weeding so quickly as he is now. His hunger to see them dying on the stones all around him, and his nostrils flaring with the smell of the sun on that dying, would possibly be lessened by his sitting quietly in the shade of that olive tree you speak of, drinking a cup of coffee with yourself.

MICK: Long time since I had a drink o’ coffee. Be a treat all right. Don’t see how you’d be gettin’ it here.

PENELOPE: Roasted dandelion root is our coffee; and excellent it is for the constitution. (pause) I do not, as may not be clear to you, mind him taking some of my flowers, even the greater part; my fingers are still agile to make more. But if he takes all—and weeding is a swifter process than stitching—the next time you come here, if you do, you will see no further sign of me than this robe, on the ground, and empty, and fretted by the wind. And what will he do then for the weeds he needs to fill his long day?

MICK: Whole hillside’s full o’ weeds; that those not knowin’ them are callin’ ’em.

PENELOPE: The roots of those will never invest his courtyard. The cracks between the well-laid stones are far too fine for any hillside growth to breach them.

MICK: The roots o’ your flowers is finer, eh? And stronger too, it’s seemin’.

PENELOPE: They are hand made.

MICK: I’m thinkin’ that if they weren’t goin’ there, he’d be havin’ no need to be pullin’ ’em out. And they havin’ the whole hillside to choose from..

PENELOPE: They go there because they feel his longing.

MICK: To be killin’ them.

PENELOPE: Yes.

MICK: Which longin’, from t’other side, you’re not much feelin’ yourself.

PENELOPE: If I were not, they would not go.

(Silence. MICK looks uneasily at PENELOPE, who gazes at the ‘light on the sea’.)

MICK: (turning away) Maybe I will go and see if he’ll put up with me awhile. Teach me the skills o’ weedin’; though it’s against a long time custom o’ my livin’.

(PENELOPE smiles, continues gazing at the ‘light on the sea’.)

MICK: Well, I’ll be goin’ then.

(PENELOPE ignores him. After a moment of awkward hesitation, he leaves her ‘garden’, and makes his way towards HIRAM, passing his own temporary ‘space’, where he picks up the olive tree. The ground underfoot is ‘uneven’, causing him to stumble as he goes. )

MICK: (looking at the ground about him) Hillside’s pretty rough here, have to watch out. Rock there’s not so steady, from what I’m rememberin’, as it’s pretendin’ to be; better not put any weight on it. Rocks’re tricky things: lyin’ there the way they do, like they’re the oldest things anywhere to be seen, and as peaceful as th’earth they’re growin’ out of. And then they’re tippin’ over and your leg’s underneath ’em; where it’s stayin’, unless you’re lucky and it rolls right over you, and a way down the slope, ’til somethin’ somehow stops it, and it’s pretendin’ again it’s never moved in the whole o’ its life. (peering at the ‘rock’) Got some discolourin’s on its surface—earth stains they’ll be—showin’ it’s not been where it is now for too long a time.

(As he nears the ‘flagstoned’ space which is HIRAM’s dwelling, he walks cautiously around it, evidently not sure of his welcome.)

MICK: Maybe, even probably, he’s not wantin’ to be seein’ me just now, him likin’ to be alone. Should ha’ thought o’ bringin’ him a few wild greens; he likin’ them, as I’m knowin’ from other times.. How’m I knowin’, since he’s not sayin? Oh yeah, ’cause he’s sometimes leavin’ a egg or two in his box; which I’m supposin’ is a exchange. (looking in the tin box at the edge of HIRAM’s space) Which he’s not done this time, makin’ it the more unlikely he’ll be much welcomin’ my comin’. Hope th’olive tree’ll be gettin’ me round that. (stepping onto the ‘flagstones’) Ye here? (seeing HIRAM stooping, evidently weeding) Brought you a olive tree.

(HIRAM looks at him, blinking to clear his sight.)

MICK: (holding the olive tree out in front of him) Olive tree I brought you, that you’ll be findin’ the shade of very pleasant in the hot weather, marrin’ though it may be the clear mirrorin’ o’ the sky on your stones. Flutterin’ o’ the leaves causin’ the shade to quiver a bit ‘d be more pleasant still; if there was some way o’ lettin’ the wind blow in here a little.

HIRAM: A breeze does now and then flutter about, but the space is much too small for any vigorous wind to blow.

MICK: If you were leavin’ the doors open some while, givin’ it some chance to practise..

HIRAM: (smiling) The doors are open; as your own experience of them will tell you. But the wind remains without. The open space of the hillside is naturally more to its taste than this little enclosure.

MICK: If there was a few fallen leaves for it to blow over the stones, and branches to bend—o’ this tree, for example—it might be changin’ that taste. And be refreshin’ you nicely when you’re at work gatherin’ the olives; and the lady also, if she’s helpin’ you; which appears likely from the goodness o’ her nature.

HIRAM: In your quick mind, the wind is already blowing us along the road of your intentions; and the tree to give us those olives not yet in the ground.

MICK: Would you then be guidin’ me in the matter, tellin’ me your preference as to where I might be plantin’ it?

HIRAM: (his attention on his weeding) I have no preference at all. Nor interest. The sun is no trouble to me, whatever the season.

MICK: I’ll just follow me own lights in the matter then.

HIRAM: (smiling slightly) That is likely. And would be so, whatever I suggested.

MICK: (beginning to move about HIRAM’s space, carrying the tree in both hands in front of him) I wouldn’t want to be interferin’ in any kind o’ pattern you been settin’ up here for yourself..

HIRAM: If you are referring to the weeds, they are not at all of my own patterning; being but exfoliations of the roots of her flowers which find their way here, and grow. And from them seeds fall and other weeds grow, and others, endlessly.

MICK: That’s the way it goes, all right. Whether we’re likin’ it or not.

HIRAM: There can be no question of my—nor of any sane man’s— liking it; as the effect of their growth is to darken—and, if they are left to themselves, destroy—the light of the sky on the earth.

MICK: Well, weeds’ll be havin’ views o’ their own on that, I’m expectin’.

HIRAM: It is difficult for me to imagine what power might arouse views of any kind in a weed.

MICK: Power that sprouted the seed itself, I’m supposin’, and keeps sproutin’ ’em, an’ all alike, makin’ it easier for him what’s makin’ ’em to make ’em more quickly with the practice he’s gettin’, none o’ them havin’ any complaint at the way he’s makin’ ’em. Not like the likes o’ us, kickin’ at what he’s doin’ like he could do it different, and better, more suitin’ our own tastes; and every one o’ those bein’ different, it’s not surprisin’ if he’s fallin’ as far behind in his makin’ as you are yourself, in your controllin’ o’ those weeds; hindered as y’are by her never ceasin’ to make her flowers. One o’ the reasons I took her the lemon tree: keep her attention on it and less on the flowers, so their roots ‘ll be slowly dyin’ away in the ground before they’re reachin’ you.

HIRAM: (drily) A lemon tree. Which she will not, I feel sure, have asked for. A kindly, but foolish, thought, serving little purpose. As she is well able to make leaves for the tree, and lemons also when their time has come, without ceasing to tend her flowers whose roots force themselves up between these stones, obstructing the passage of the sky’s light. So that if I were not to oppose them they would soon bring the clear light here down to the mere flickering of the remainder of the hillside.

MICK: (turning away) Well, I’m seein’ your point there, though havin’ t’agree with you that the work, the way it’s standin’, looks to be never-endin’.

(He stops at the middle of HIRAM’s space, looking around as if for a possible site for the tree. HIRAM covertly watches him.)

MICK: (‘to himself’) Nice position this. (looking about) Walls at a nice distance, so it’ll be gettin’ the best sun. (moving towards a ‘wall’) Maybe better here, near the wall, its roots’ll be in the shade in the afternoons, when the sun’s hottest. (moving away from the wall) Probably no need o’ that, the stones coverin’ the earth’ll be keepin’ it dark an’ moist everywhere.

(Looking about HIRAM’s ‘courtyard’, his gaze comes to rest on the grindstones. HIRAM stops weeding, watches MICK.)

MICK: That’s a nice pair o’ grindin’ stones you’re havin’ there.

HIRAM: If there were something to grind, they would be; but there is not.

MICK: They’ll be comin’ in very useful for the pressin’ out th’oil from th’olives; which you’ll ha’ been seein’ the need for, I’m guessin’, from a long time back. It was the first seein’ o’ them meself was settin’ me on the track o’ bringin’ you the’olive tree they been so long waitin’ for.

HIRAM: A long wait it would have been, certainly, had they been so waiting. But they will have ceased for longer even than myself from waiting for anything. If ever they began such a process.

MICK: The sight, or awareness o’ some kind, o’ the nearness now o’ th’ olive tree, might be rousin’ in them some memory o’ the reason for their makin’. As I’m supposin’ it’ll be rousin’ in yourself.

HIRAM: I had no hand whatever in the making of the stones.

MICK: But it must ha’ been you that brought ’em here; they not bein’ the kind o’ rough stone the rain’s sometimes rollin’ loose down the hillside.

HIRAM: Yes, I brought them. Or, a man with a mule brought them for me. (wry smile) A man who thought me foolish for wanting to bring stones to a mountain which consisted of little else. But, like yourself, and equally mistakenly, I thought then that its little earth would bear olive trees. By the time I realized that it would not, my interest in its bearing anything had..waned.

MICK: (looking at the millstones) They’ll be feelin’ though—stones havin’ a much better sense o’ what’s goin’ on round ’em than most people are knowin’—the presence o’ th’olives—the three or four the tree’s havin’, young as it is—and be roused up by the feelin’ o’ th’oil in them that used to be runnin’ between the halves o’ itself.

HIRAM: If it felt that—which I suppose is possible, if unlikely—and wishes to renew the feeling, it will be disappointed. As the earth here, as I have told you, and as you will in any event be aware of from living on it even for the short time that you have, affords too little either of space or of nourishment to the roots of any olive tree to swell and prosper. Or indeed anything but the dull weeds you can see pushing their way up between the cracks between the stones. And even those are not, properly speaking, sprouting from the earth here, but from the lateral roots of her (indicating PENELOPE) great flowers.

MICK: Yeah, she’s been tellin’ me about them, and her losin’ ’em to your weedin’.

HIRAM: I’d have no need to weed them if she would not grow them.

MICK: That’s the truth, sir, o’ course. And a pity, you might be sayin’ as well, that it’s only here where they’re so little wanted that they’re all headin’; while beside me own humble and movable dwellin’—that you’ll probably not even have noticed is often at some not so great distance from you..

HIRAM: I have noticed it. I have eyes.

MICK: Which—as I was imaginin’, as best I was able—they was for the most part turned towards the inside o’ you. And me dwellin’ itself bein’ but a few sticks wove together.. Which I was thinkin’ some o’ her flowers would be makin’ brighter, lightenin’ me day a little; but it’s here only their roots is all comin’, she’s as well aware o’ that as you are yourself.

HIRAM: You would be welcome to them, every one of them, so far as I am concerned. It would make my own days unimaginably lighter.

(Pause.)

MICK: (looking about the ‘courtyard’) I could maybe be plantin’ it in a pot or can o’ some kind.

HIRAM: There would be no harm in that; indeed, so far as the tree itself is concerned, it would be as well. And sufficient earth for a pot, even a large pot, you could obtain by sifting out the stones from the earth anywhere you choose to place it. As to the pot itself, I don’t know where you might find one; those I believe I once had myself being long broken. Being long unneeded. They would, in any event, if I remember well, have been small for the roots of an olive tree of any size.

MICK: (looking towards PENELOPE) I could maybe be usin’ the trough her sheep is drinkin’ from. Enough room in that to be givin’ them roots a fair chance to grow.

HIRAM: And what then will the sheep use for drinking?

MICK: She’s havin’ a smallish number o’ pots an’ pans; probably not needin’ to use ’em all.

HIRAM: You would do well to ask her about that before taking the trough.

MICK: I’ll be doin’ that, o’ course.

HIRAM: As to your kind intent to settle the olive tree comfortably near me, it is not so welcome as you appear to suppose. Do you not think that if I wanted such a tree, I would already have one?

MICK: It’s a good way from the town below; and your bein’ more set in years than I am meself, mightn’t’ve felt—when the wishin’ for it came over you— quite equal to the carryin’ of it.

HIRAM: Such wishing did not come over me even in the days when I was younger than you are now.

MICK: Later, though, you’d ha’ been seein’ the need; but not any longer havin’ the bodily strength maybe.

HIRAM: I do not see the need now.

MICK: When you’re havin’ it, you will. (laying the olive tree down beside the grindstones) I’ll just lay it here, so they’ll be feelin’ each other the better; and be goin’ meself over to the lady and fetchin’ that trough.

HIRAM: (turning to his weeding) As you will.

(Leaving HIRAM, MICK goes over ‘the rough ground’ in a meandering manner to PENELOPE. He stops, gazes at the ground.)

MICK: Hm, first cyclamen there, sign the rains’ll be comin’; funny how they know. Bein’ rooted right in th’earth’ll be what’s tellin’ ’em, I suppose. (looking around, mildly confused) Don’t quite see where I am. Hillside bein’ so much the same.. Can’t even see me own..house. But I must be pretty near to..

(The weather vane turns sharply to the ‘north’. HIRAM lifts his eyes to it. In his courtyard, and in PENELOPE’s, there is no sign of wind; but MICK evidently feels it blowing against him. Huddling inside his old jacket, turning up its collar, he walks backward into the ‘wind’; as the terrain is ‘difficult’, he stumbles and falls. When he sits up, he sees that he is sitting facing PENELOPE’s ‘courtyard’.)

MICK: Bit o’ luck, that. Hadn’t fallen, would ha’ gone right past it.

(Getting up, he makes his way through the wind to PENELOPE’s ‘gate’, at which he knocks hesitantly. PENELOPE, cutting the shape of a small leaf from a piece of dark green cloth, appears not to hear the knocking. MICK knocks louder. PENELOPE lifts her head, gazes mildly towards the ‘gate.’

MICK: Might I be comin’ in, Madam?

PENELOPE: The gate is not closed.

MICK: Yeah, I was knowin’ that; but wasn’t wantin’ to be doin’ nothin’ that might be disturbin’ you.

PENELOPE: I am doing nothing that may not be disturbed.

MICK: (coming into the courtyard) I’m happy to be hearin’ that. (shivering in the sudden ‘stillness’) I’m not remembering’ the wind blowin’ so hard an’ cold as it is at the moment. An’ the hillside bein’ so open..

PENELOPE: Open it is, and gives little shelter. As the walls of my courtyard kindly shelter me. (looking at MICK) Your jacket is certainly very thin.

MICK: (smoothing the jacket) It was a good one once, but the years’ve worn it down. Like meself. (looking round, breathing more easily) You’re right about the walls. You’d hardly be knowin’ in here there was a wind blowin’ at all. Haven’t had the time yet to be buildin’ meself any such useful protection. The sticks o’ wood and wattle I got are lettin’ through to me as much o’ the wind as they’re keepin’ out. (looking round) I suppose you wouldn’t be seein’ your way to lettin’ me shelter here a bit on such rough days as this? Just now and then.

PENELOPE: You may certainly shelter here now a little while. That while in which you will tell me, I hope, why you have again come to me. As I assume it was not merely to escape the wind.

MICK: Yeah, well I was about to be doin’ that when me shiverin’ was died down a little. (looking at the lemon tree) Tree’s likin’ it here, I can see. Got a leaf or two more ‘n it did.

PENELOPE: (attaching to the tree the leaf she was cutting) I have been encouraging it in that as far as I might.

MICK: Soon be bearin’ lemons, I’m imaginin’. Sun here bein’ so pleasant and warm, wind still, and water flowin’ into its roots from the pool below.

PENELOPE: Such imagined lemons will be all, I fear, that it will for some time be offering us.

MICk: Well, like you were sayin’, we got time. And th’olive ‘ll be takin’ more of it on its own account. Which is leadin’ me to say that for it to be growin’ well at all, that olive’ll be needin’ a good measure more o’ earth round its roots than he’s sayin’ he’s got under all his stones.

PENELOPE: Which he will be knowing well enough, as he himself laid them.

MICK: Ah, did he then? I was wonderin’ how they were all gettin’ there, and so nicely fitted together that only the fine roots o’ your own flowers are findin’ their way through the spaces between ’em. He might’ve been layin’ a few o’ them here for yourself.

PENELOPE: He did make an offer to that effect; but I wanted no stones. I like to feel the earth under my feet when I am walking on it, and to see the impress of them upon it here and there, when I am not.

MICK: My thought, in suggestin’ it, was that if you were havin’ a few such stones, you could be standin’ some pots here and there, in places that were pleasin’ you, and be plantin’ your flowers in them, so keepin’ their roots from pushin’ their way through th’earth to where he’s not wantin’ them. Difficulty there, which I suppose he was seein’, bein’ that there’s no nice earthenware pots anywhere about up here, nor even any shards to be indicatin’ there once might ha’ been. So it’d have been needin’ them somehow brought up from the town. And there bein’ here no mule nor donkey for that work..

PENELOPE: There was a mule here, once, which was useful for such tasks. But he died some years ago now; leaving, as is the nature of mules, no successor. (faint smile) A foreshadowing image, one might say, of ourselves.

MICK: Animal o’ any kind on its own ‘d be the same.

PENELOPE: Except that the will towards it, unlike that of the mule, would lie within itself.

MICK: (as if not quite understanding) Well, yeah, that’s, o’ course, true.

(Pause)

MICK: O’ course, it’d mean that the waterin’ was more.

PENELOPE: (half to herself) The watering. (to MICK) What watering?

MICK: The waterin’ o’ all your flowers. They needin’ you to be drawin’ it up from the well in your bucket, and spillin’ it over ’em where they’d be growin’ in their pots. ‘Stead o’ just drinkin’ it straight up from th’earth.

PENELOPE: That was not a consideration in my declining to have my floor covered with flagstones. I am quite able to draw water from the well at need; even with the greater frequency needed when the days are hotter than they are now.

MICK: An’ you’re havin’ the pots you’re needin’ to be doin’ it.

PENELOPE: Pots there are. (looking about) A few pots; and yet more than enough, as the little we have we grow fond of. And keep.

MICK: I’m not havin’ that little. And he’s not havin’ it neither. Broke all his old pots.

PENELOPE: That is natural; as his wants, from what I know of him, are fewer than my own.

MICK: Havin’, like he does, the floor o’ his dwellin’ place covered with them stones you weren’t wantin’, and there bein’ under them stones nothin’ but a little thin earth an’ a endless underlyin’ bed o’ rough stone, he’s got nowhere at all to be plantin’ anythin’. Like his olive tree.

PENELOPE: And he looks upon that olive tree as living within his realm of need?

MICK: He’s lookin’ on it—or he was when I left him—as somethin’ that’ll soon be dyin’ if its not gettin’ what it’s wantin’. Which is water to be drinkin’, and earth to be givin’ its roots somethin’ to be standin’ in; and a pot o’ some good size to be holdin’ the earth.

PENELOPE: (looking keenly at MICK) Ah. And you have offered yourself as an intermediary through which he might find one?

MICK: That were in my head, no denyin’. Havin’ seen, when last visitin’, how you were havin’ a number o’ pots about, one or two o’ them empty, an’ hearin’ you now sayin’ they’re more’n you’re needin’. (looking around) Against that, I’m havin’ to say, I’m not seein’ but one o’ any good size that’s empty.

PENELOPE: I am surprised at your seeing one. The cooking pots, the few —or many, depending on one’s view—that I have, would none of them hold the roots of an olive tree.

MICK: I was thinkin’ (pointing to the trough) o’ that trough you’re havin’ there.

PENELOPE: There is—unfortunately for your purpose—nothing for you to think about that; as it is the drinking trough for my sheep; as you easily might have known from the one at the moment using it.

MICK: Yeah, I was seein’ that, all right; and th’obstacle it was rearin’ against the needs o’ his olive tree. But thinkin’ also about which was the needs that was greater, an’ thinkin’ o’ th’olive lyin’ there by the grindin’ stones which it might one day be servin’ if it was livin’ an’ growin’; and on th’other side, those sheep o’ yours, lookin’ fine as they do from your lovin’ care o’ them, losin’ only a trough that they’re not fully needin’; you havin’, as you said, more’n enough o’ other pots to be puttin’ water in for them to be drinkin’, an’ your not mindin’ the little extra work there might be..

PENELOPE: (smiling) What I would mind or not mind is not a consideration.

But the sheep, as you may see for yourself, are several; and they are used to the trough; and, being ruminative only in body, would not soon learn to drink otherwise.

MICK: They’d be learnin’ though, given time; and not be dyin’ in the meanwhile, as th’olive surely will be.

PENELOPE: And my few cooking pots, which you offer as an alternative? Sheep are clumsy, and will knock them over in attempting to drink from them.

MICK: You might make a couple o’ holes in th’ earth to set ’em in. You settin’ ’em close together, sheep’ll maybe even be feelin’ they’re still at th’ old trough. (going to the trough) Made o’ tin, eh? That’s to the good. I was concerned about the weight o’ carryin’ it.

PENELOPE: (smiling in mild irony) You had not thought that I might help you in that task.

MICK: (‘shocked’) No, madam; I’d never think o’ askin’ such a thing. Even encroachin’ on your space an’ time as much as I have has been a sore embarrassment to me.

PENELOPE: But you have, nonetheless, no doubt that I shall give the trough into your keeping.

MICK: Only for the very short while it’ll be takin’ me to cross the hillside from here to there; where I’ll be givin’ it over into his own care.

PENELOPE: He having asked you—which will not have been easy for him— to bring it to him; his love for the olive overcoming his unwavering gaze at the light of the sky on his polished floor?

MICK: (awkwardly) He wasn’t exactly sayin’ anythin’ o’ that.

PENELOPE: Ah.

MICK: He was more concerned at my gettin’ from you your willin’ness to surrender the trough.

PENELOPE: And do you think you have secured that?

MICK: I’m thinkin’ I have, an’ then I’m thinkin’ I haven’t.

PENELOPE: (smiling broadly) And so am I.

MICK: The way then for our makin’ the best o’ the doubtin’ we’re both havin’ would be maybe for you to be turnin’ your back, lookin’ after your flowers, or makin’ a other fresh leaf for the lemon tree; so you could be..distracted long enough for me to be wrappin’ me arms about that trough, and carryin’ it quietly out o’ here before you’re noticin’ what’s happened.

PENELOPE: There is water in it.

MICK: A lot o’ water?

PENELOPE Enough to make it difficult, if not impossible, for a man of your size to carry.

MICK: (looking into the trough) Yeah, I’m seein’ that well enough. Well then, (picking up a pot) I’ll just be bailin’ that out, and waterin’ some o’ your flowers. So anybody lookin’ll think I’m helpin’ you. An’ the trough bein’ my reward for the work.

(He dips the pot into the trough, and ‘splashes’ water over the flowers.)

PENELOPE: Who might be looking?

MICK: Him there, as a first guess.

PENELOPE: He almost never lifts his gaze from the weeds his fingers are uprooting from between the stones.

MICK: (continuing to ‘splash water’ from the trough about the courtyard) Well he might though; and just at the wrong moment, seein’ me carryin’ it out your gate. His later seein’ me with it out on the hillside would be o’ no matter; since I might then ha’ found it anywhere.

PENELOPE: Troughs are not so common on the hillside as wild greens.

MICK: More’s the pity. We’d not be losin’ then so much o’ the rain, when it’s comin’, as we do. (pause) But it was o’ yourself, in particular, that I was thinkin’ would not be seein’ me goin’. Leavin’ yourself free, when I was gone, and you were lookin’ around again, to see, or not see, the trough was gone. And, seein’ it was—as you’d be bound to after some time, seein’ all your sheep millin’ about, lookin’ for it, as they would be—you could be rememberin’ the young olive lyin’ on its side in his dry court, its roots open to th’air and burnin’ in the sunlight; and not be thinkin’ so ill o’ me as you otherwise might be.

PENELOPE: The earth you might manage to scrape from the hillside near his court will be drier than the inside of the trough you will have provided for it.

MICK: Be somewhat shelterin’ th’olive’s roots though from the sun; an’ enablin’ it to stand upright, like it was meant to, and was doin’ in fact even down there in the town where I was findin’ it. And, as you’ve most generously said, any water he’ll be wantin’ for the roots then to be drinkin’ out o’ th’earth round ’em, he—or meself—can come an’ fetch from your well.

PENELOPE: If he has concluded that a living, and therefore growing, olive tree is what his courtyard is most in need of.

(MICK looks at a momentary loss.)

MICK: Well, He’ll be pretty sure to be comin’ round to that way o’ thinkin’.

PENELOPE: With your assistance, I suppose.

MICK: I been sayin’ a thing or too as was seemin’ to me to be helpful.

PENELOPE: And they were seeming equally so to him?

MICK : Well—like yourself—he’s livin’ most o’ his wakin’ time in some kind o’ world inside ‘imself that I’m not knowin’ too well; so what he’s hearin’ about what I been tellin’ him isn’t movin’ his feet along the road so fast as would be best pleasin’ to th’olive, and meself.

PENELOPE: That pleasure being of equal importance to you both?

MICK: Well, I can’t clearly speak for the feelin’s o’ th’olive; but its bein’ a principal in the matter, an’ meself bein’ only what you might call a well-wishin’ bystander, it’s reasonable to think that its desires is the keener. And your own sympathy with those desires—bein’ as they are what you might be callin’ the beginnin’ o’ life itself—will be encouragin’ you now, I’m hopin’, to be turnin’ your back to me. (handing her the pot with which he has been ’emptying the trough’) The trough now bein’ empty, and my strength, as I’m hopin’, bein’ enough to carry it out o’ here onto th’ open hillside.

PENELOPE: (setting the pot on the ground, faintly smiling) You may assume that from this moment I have turned my back.

MICK: I’m grateful to you; and thinkin’ you’re a woman o’ fine quality for doin’ it.

PENELOPE: All that may be rightly said of my ‘qualities’, one or many, is that I have more water than I need.

(Turning away from MICK, she begins cutting a ‘lemon leaf’ from a piece of dark green cloth. MICK, with exaggerated caution, picks up the trough and carries it stealthily out of PENELOPE’s ‘courtyard’. ‘Outside’, he carries it in a meandering route towards HIRAM, as if in fear of being ‘discovered’; and as the ‘ground is rocky and uneven’, and the ‘wind blowing’, he frequently stumbles. When he reaches the edge of HIRAM’s ‘courtyard’, he sets the trough down. HIRAM, weeding, appears unaware of him. PENELOPE, gazing at the ‘light of the sea’, continues slowly cutting out ‘lemon leaves’ and attaching them to the lemon tree.)

MICK: Better be fillin’ it here with th’earth; he’ll not maybe be happy me carryin’ it in there in handfuls, sprinklin’ his fine floor with dirt for the stars to be bumpin’ up against.

(He scrapes up double handfuls of ‘earth’ and empties them into the trough, muttering to himself as he does so. HIRAM, though continuing his weeding, becomes aware of MICK’s presence. Seeing the bucket at the edge of the courtyard, MICK—seen by HIRAM—stealthily takes it.)

MICK: (to himself) This’ll be a help in bringin’ earth from places further off, that’ll be benfitin’ the’olive, givin’ it a broader outlook.

(He goes a little way off, walking as if in a wind; fills the bucket with ‘earth’, which he spills into the trough.)

MICK: Two or three o’ these’ll be enough for settlin’ round its roots, so it’ll be standin’ up proper. (going for another bucketful) May have to be stakin’ it at first, wind like this’d soon be blowin’ it flat over. (bringing back the full bucket, scattering the earth in the trough) If I’m seein’ a good stake.. (looking towards HIRAM’s space) No sign o’ any wind in there, nothin’ stirrin’ his loose piles o’ weeds, and what’s hangin’ on his line is hangin’ straight down. So the need for stakin’ mayn’t be there, once th’earth round its roots is nice an’ wet, and packed down.

(He carries the empty bucket a few steps away from the trough in another direction, scrapes up a couple of handfuls of ‘earth’ which he drops into it; goes in a third and fourth direction, scraping up more ‘earth’, which he tips into the trough.)

MICK: Gatherin’ th’earth from different places ‘ll be givin’ th’olives flavours they could otherwise be missin’. (setting down the bucket beside the trough) That’ll be enough to be holdin’ it in place, an’ upright, I’m thinkin’.

(He looks doubtfully at the trough, tries lifting it, is unable to.)

MICK: Yeah, afraid o’ that: even with only that much earth in it, it’s over me head to lift it. Have to drag it in there, which he’s sure not to be likin’, complainin’ likely it’s scarrin’ his sky all over. Maybe I’ll find a way to persuade him to give me a hand in the carryin’ of it; he seemin’ a fair strong man yet for all the years he’s probably carryin’.

(He looks about him, as if for ‘a way out’; shrugs.)

MICK: Well, no use puttin’ it off. Only way o’ gettin’ a answer is askin’ a question. (moving forward uncertainly) Best way’ll be to try fittin’ meself in a bit with the ways he’s knowin’; before pointin’ out to him ways that’re maybe better.

(He goes cautiously to the edge of HIRAM’s courtyard.)

MICK: Sir?

(HIRAM gives no indication of hearing him, continues with his weeding.)

MICK: I was wonderin’ if I might be comin’ in here to be warmin’ meself. For a little.

HIRAM: You are cold? How might that be? As the sun is pleasantly warm.

MICK: But the wind sure ain’t; and out there it’s the stronger o’ the two; though showin’ no sign o’ itself in here. Exceptin’ in your weathervane. For which, I might as well be saying, I can’t see the purpose it’s havin’ for ye.

HIRAM: Its purpose is to give me some idea, when I think to venture out onto the hillside, as I do now and then, to know the direction of the wind, and thus its likely strength and warmth.

MICK: It would ha’ been a fair help to me then, if you’d ha’ set it in a better way o’ blowin’ before I was last leavin’ the shelter o’ your courtyard. So it wouldn’t ha’ been bringin’ the cold wind over the hillside that’s been blowin’ at me ever since; and this poor coat o’ mine ain’t up to holdin’ it off.

HIRAM: I am sorry for any unpleasantness the wind may have been causing you; but I was not—am not—its cause or source. And any turning of the vane is, of course, beyond my ability to initiate or..

MICK: Lady said she’d seen you lookin’ up at it while I was goin’.

HIRAM: That I did, but only to see the direction of the wind.

MICK: What for? Since it was only me goin’ out into it, and not yourself.

HIRAM: That I might know—as a matter of interest and mild concern— from which direction it would be touching your body..

MICK: Touchin’ you’re callin’ it? It was blowin’ so hard again’ me I could hardly keep meself standin’ up.

HIRAM: The vane doesn’t indicate the strength of the wind; only its direction; so that it was not until I saw your stumbling over the rocks of the hillside, that I felt its strength myself.

MICK: And how were you feelin’ that? There bein’ no breath of it in here.

HIRAM: So it appears. But when you were stumbling on the hillside in the midst of its fierce blowing, I felt so unsteady on my knees that I had to hold tightly to the weeds to keep myself from being blown over onto the flagstones.

MICK: Your feelin’ that—and the cold you’re not mentionin’ inside it— will ha’ been less, I’m imaginin’, and by a long way, than me own. You’ll not, I suppose, have been fallin’ over when I did.

HIRAM: No, I was not. My hands and the weeds both were strong enough to prevent that happening.

MICK: They weeds bein’, in the way o’ nature, a fair way stronger than they flowers o’ hers they’re growin’ from. That’re lookin’ like they’d not be holdin’ up anythin’ at all that was needin’ ‘it.

HIRAM: That is not the work of flowers.

MICK: I’m guessin’ not. And in the windless quiet o’ her courtyard, where I was findin’ meself after me fall, there was nothin’ to need any holdin’. Sure not herself, who’s sittin’ as quiet as any woman might be. And the flowers theirselves was lookin’ like they hadn’t no idea at all about any other courtyard, like this one, where they was feelin’ theirselves in their threads o’ roots squeezin’ up between those stones o’ yours; to be givin’ your hands somethin’ to be holdin’ onto, as you were feelin’ the wind blowin’ right through you. Though you’re sayin’ its’ seldom you’re wantin’ it. Which I’m understandin’ well enough, the hillside bein’ so empty o’ other people for you to be..feelin. Which is what’s encouragin’ me to say what’s been in my head now some little while.

HIRAM: And what is that?

MICK: That I might be a bit o’ help to you there, sir. With the weeds, I mean.

HIRAM: In what way or manner?

MICK: In the way o’ the weedin’ you’re doin’. Which I could maybe be doin’ also. Havin’ with me me trusty knife that’d be makin’ the removin’ o’ the weeds a good bit quicker an’ lighter.

HIRAM: (shadow of a smile) Cutting, though quick, will not serve; the roots will sprout again; and with greater strength, making the uprooting more difficult.

MICK: I’m not seein’—she, the lady, tellin’ me as they’re the ends o’ the roots o’ her own flowers, an’ they bein’ th’only roots can push their way up between your nicely-laid stones, the plants growin’ out on the hillside not bein’ fine enough for that; and I guess, from what she weren’t quite sayin’, not so interested— how they’re not breakin’ off in the ground anyway, with your pullin’ at ’em.

HIRAM: They break, it is true, but further from me, nearer to her; so the time is longer before they appear here again. And during that time the stones may cleanly reflect the heavens which wheel above them.

MICK: They’ll be doin’ that anyway, I’m thinkin’.

HIRAM: Not cleanly; as you would see for yourself, if you were to rest here through the night. The stars, as they glide over the stones, stumble in their bright courses over what will doubtless feel to them like impenetrable lumps on the otherwise clear surface of the earth.

MICK: (little smile) With yourself bein’ the biggest o’ they lumps, I’m thinkin’.

HIRAM: (slightly taken aback) That might indeed be their sensation, were I fixed to the floor, as the weeds are. But I move over it through the course of the night, slowly turning my body as I move, so that the light can wheel over and past me. And I feel it wheeling, except—rarely, mercifully—when I myself stumble against a weed. And then, for a moment, the whole night is black, and though I stretch out my arms as far as I may, I do not know where I am. As the stars themselves must feel—and nightlong—whenever they strike against the weeds.

MICK: Weeds’ll be feelin’ it pretty hard too; gettin’ more light of a sudden than they’re knowin’ how to deal with. And the floor bein’ so clear and smooth, light’ll probably be runnin’ a good deal faster, and sharper, ‘n usual.

HIRAM: The weeds were not bound—nor willed, by any will of mine—to grow here. They might well have rooted themselves deep in the earth of her (vaguely indicating PENELOPE) garden, where the abundance of flowers melts the light to an endurable softness. Or anywhere out on the hillside, the many living and varied plants there scattering the light’s arrow keenness to flickering; by which they are nourished, each in its manner. (looking about him) But this is the very mirror of the sky itself; and so must, of course, be kept as clear as may be of any impediment to the light’s passing.

MICK: (looking up) Clouds, I guess, will be comin’ sometimes between the two o’ them.

HIRAM: Yes; but they, being but of the air over us, are soon gone. But the weeds are of the earth, and remain. And will multiply, if I am not here to contain them, until all trace of the mirror is lost. (smiling) It is not lost to the heavens, of course; since to them it never was. Only to myself. But as it is all I have..

MICK: It was my bein’ a younger man than yourself, with more o’ the juice o’ life still flowin’ in me veins, that was suggestin’ to me, as I was saying earlier, that I could be o’ help to you in pluckin’ up some o’ they weeds meself. I’m quick with me hands, as you’d soon be seein’.

HIRAM: As to that, even without further witness, I have no doubts. (returning to his weeding) But as to help, none is really possible; as the work is my own.

(Pause.)

MICK: That wheelin’ feelin’ you’re gettin’ with them stars flowin’ over your body, could I be gettin’ it on mine if I was to be helpin’ you? If you’d be lettin’ me stay the night afterwards.

HIRAM: (drily smiling) What you would be feeling is for your own body to know. And it is not a matter of a night, but every night; years and years of nights.

MICK: After your work of as many days, eh? Which I been thinkin’, if you’ll excuse me sayin’, might ha’ been better spent.

HIRAM: The work has to be done, and it is my work. How else might I do it?

MICK: It’s my opinion that if you were to be lettin’ in the wind, that’s tormentin’ the hillside and those, few though they are, that ‘re walkin’ over it, it’d soon enough probably be clearing the floor o’ all them weeds that your days and days—years as you’re sayin’—o’ weedin’ isn’t up to doin’.

HIRAM: Unfortunately, the nature and strength of the wind are unsuited to your helpful suggestion. Trees it may uproot, and men like ourselves overthrow. But the damage it may inflict on weeds can be only to their leaves; their roots, embedded as they are in the earth, are stronger in will and body than any wind this hillside has ever known. Without my own will and hands, every crack between every two stones would long past have been crowded with weeds, and the whole floor, seen from the sky, would resemble nothing more than a forest with a number of small stone glades, where neither stars nor flowers would flourish.

MICK: I’m seein’ the truth o’ that, which was spurrin’ m’offer to helpin’ you with the weedin’.

HIRAM: Well, I can offer no further opposition to that, if it is your will. And you may learn something of the nature of the weeds by pulling a few of them. There (indicating a space near him), for example.

MICK: I’m grateful to ye for that.

(MICK squats down in the place indicated, and, with an evident ‘effort of will’, grasps a ‘weed’, twists it and pulls it out. He looks at it uneasily, lays it on the ground beside him. ‘Steeling himself’, he closes his fist on another ‘weed’, twists it out of the ground. He looks more troubled, as he lays it beside the first. ‘Steeling himself’ again, he reaches towards another ‘weed’; but his hand stops in mid-air, hovers there. He slowly withdraws it, looks at HIRAM, who has disregarded his actions, intent on his own placid pulling out of weeds, and laying them in little piles around him.)

MICK: I’m not much likin’ pullin’ ’em out.

HIRAM: (continuing his weeding) Then you need not continue.

MICK: Their bodies keep clingin’ to me hands, and the juice o’ them’s sticky. (pause) I’m thinkin’ I’d be better practisin’ a bit first, learnin’ the trick of it. Over there in the corner maybe, where I’m seein’ there’s a few small ones, probably comin’ up pretty easy.

HIRAM: Whatever is best suiting to yourself. Weeding is not something that comes easily to everyone.

(MICK withdraws to a corner of the ‘courtyard’. He crouches over the ‘stones’, peers at the ‘weeds’.)

MICK: (to himself) Not lookin’ much like her flowers. Maybe when they’re a bit more grown. Which he’ll probably not be likin’ too well, they gettin’ even more’n the way o’ his stars than they are now, bein’ still small.

(He reaches his hand toward ‘the weeds’, leaves it hovering above them as he looks at them. His nose quivers with sniffing.)

MICK: Lookin’ to me like they’re more’n they were. (peering more closely) And o’ more different kinds. Some good kinds o’ wild greens among ’em too, like he’s not havin’ where he’s pullin’ at ’em hisself. (bending close over the ‘weeds’, sniffing at them) Got some good smells in ’em, like some o’ those what’s growin’ round me in the places I’m settin’ me hut. (little smile) Maybe they’re comin’ here after me, they likin’ my company better’n I was knowin’. And I suppose my missin’ ’em, though not quite realizin’ it, has been makin’ ’em stronger to be pushin’ their roots all this way through th’earth.

(He brushes the air over the ‘weeds’, wafts it towards his face. Laying his hands flat on the ‘stones’, he contentedly breathes in the scents of the ‘weeds’. HIRAM’s weeding slows.)

HIRAM: (turning his head to look at MICK) If you are finding the work difficult, or tiring, or without interest, there is no need for you to continue.

MICK: Just lettin’ the scent o’ them drift into me nose.

HIRAM: (turning away) Which is an evident discouragement to your weeding.

MICK: Scents aren’t gettin’ in the way o’ the stars. No more’n the clouds.

HIRAM: Unlike the clouds, the scents have no existence of their own. And your awareness of them will only strengthen the roots of the weeds whence they are flowing.

MICK: I’m seein’ you’re right about that. (bending his face close to the ‘weeds’) But my likin’ to smell ’em is a habit I can’t remember meself livin’ without. And here in the corner, the stars’ll not be havin’ a good clear run anyway, so they’ll be stayin’ most likely in th’open spaces round yourself.

HIRAM: To them the floor is unenclosed. It is as open to the hillside as to the sky.

MICK: Whole hillside’s open to the sky, in me own experience; and to the stars’ light I’m seein’ flickerin’ everywhere over it every night. (standing up) I don’t think I’m wantin’ to do any more weedin’.

HIRAM: You are free then not to do it. You are young, and many roads are open to you. I am able by myself to keep the stones..nearly..clear.

MICK: (going to the grindstones) It’s these grindin’ stones—that ain’t doin’ their work—that’s holdin’ my attention. (looking up) And your vane up there, twistin’ and turnin’ accordin’ to the wind’s mood. Tellin’ you, as you were sayin’, how the wind’s touchin’ whover, like meself, might be out in it. Difference between it and me bein’ it’s standin’ still all that time, like it’s feelin’ nothin’ at all; while I’m havin’ to hang onto bushes and stones to keep from bein’ flung right onto the ground. Like just th’other day, if that’s what it was, so I was fallin’ right by the lady’s garden; where I was on the side o’ fortune for once, she givin’ me there what the wind had been takin’ from me: a bit o’ warmth an’ quiet, and the scent o’ her flowers.

HIRAM: The wind blows as it blows. As it listeth, as they say.

MICK: Which we’re knowin’ well enough for ourselves. Except, the way things are, for the lady and yourself, the walls round you keepin’ it out. So th’ only use o’ that vane, if it’s havin’ one, is to be tellin’ you, if you’re carin’ to look, what the direction is o’ the wind that you’re not yourself feelin’; givin’ you a small sense of what it’s like on the hillside that it’s bringin’ somebody like me in to shelter from.

HIRAM: And what else would you have it do?

MICK: Well, not the vane itself, o’course, there bein’ nothin’ much it can do ‘cept point. But the tower its settin’ on, its top bein’ in the full wind you’re not feelin’ down here, could be rigged up with some stout sheets o’ heavy cloth, and wheels with some cogs in ’em, and ropes through ’em, that’d hang down here, that we’d be threadin’ through some other such wheels. So when the wind’ll smartly be turnin’ them sheets, they sheets’ll be turning the wheels down beside the grindin’ stones, settin’ them stones to work the way they were meant to from their beginnin’.

HIRAM: Ah. And what then would they be grinding?

MICK: Olives, o’ course.

HIRAM: Olives. Of which there are none.

MICK: Not yet there ain’t. But that tree havin’ all the help it needs from the sun and earth and water—which the lady’s said we’d be welcome to draw from her well—it’ll soon be sproutin’ as many as we’re needin’.

HIRAM: I see. And where are these sheets and cogwheels and lengths of rope to come from?

MICK: From the town, o’ course; that’s what towns ‘re for: they daily things everybody’s needin’. I can be lookin’ after that, havin’ a bit o’ money in a bag that I gathered together over the years o’ my livin’ there meself.

HIRAM: (returning to his weeding) That is a kind offer; but I think we have no need of such equipment; certainly not for some while. As the olive tree is small, and not sure to grow in its present, borrowed, setting; and there is no other site, no hole in the ground, rich with earth, to place it in. What was her stipulation as to when I should return the trough?

MICK: There wasn’t no talk about that, it bein’ clear to her, from my description o’ the state o’ things with the olive, and the need it was havin’ o’ some depth o’ earth to be growin’ in, which she’s knowin’ as well as yourself I’d not be findin’ here; and knowin’ the tree’ll be needin’ that to be givin’ us the olives for th’oil we’re all of us wantin’—they bein’ more or less the staffs o’ life.

HIRAM: I have not, myself, any such want. And am concerned at the large shadow on the floor that the foliage of the tree will cast if it does grow to some full size. As it will not be shadow, like that of clouds, which will soon pass away. The stars will pass into it and remain there even until morning, if the tree grows very large.

MICK: Not much danger o’ that, I’m thinkin’, in your lifetime, you bein’ pretty near the short end of it already. And its conditions for growin’ bein’ so poor, it’s all I can be doin’ to look at it and not be all sorrowin’ for its chances.

HIRAM: (looking at the tree) It is true that it looks unlikely to grow soon or quickly; and the days remaining to my life may well be, as you say, but few. And, beyond what we may call the ‘ground’ of the situation, the cries of her sheep for a trough they know may persuade her to ask for it back quite quickly.

MICK: Which’d be a big pity if it’s causin’ the tree to be dyin’ then right where the weeds is so happy growin’, causin’ the trouble right now to you and the stars, that you’re imaginin’ could be comin’ with the tree’s shadow when it’s full grown; which it never will be without a fair share o’ water. And sheep are peaceful animals, are probably drinkin’ easy enough from the small pots I’ve left ’em in place o’ the trough.

HIRAM: It is rather her compassion for the sheep, whatever their own expression of their needs may be, which concerns me.

MICK: You’d be doin’ better yourself to be thinkin’ compassionately o’ the tree, the situation o’ which now is such that any lessenin’ o’ the little nourishment its been gettin’—earth it’s in bein’, like you say, o’ the poorest—is likely to be th’end o’ it. (standing up) I’d better be goin’ to talk to her again, so she’s seein’ the danger she could be puttin’ us all in. We’re understandin’ each other pretty well.

HIRAM: (returning his attention to his weeding) As you will.

MICK: (as he goes out) I’m hopin’ while I’m gone you’ll be keepin’ watch on the tree, that it’s not showin’ signs o’ dyin’.

(He goes ‘out onto the hillside’, appears at ease there, even as he stumbles about on the rough ground, blown one way and another by the wind. He sees the hibiscus flower on the ground, peers at it in surprise, is reaching down towards it when ‘the wind’ carries him away to PENELOPE’s ‘garden’. HIRAM continues his slow weeding; but his attention is drawn again and again to the olive tree; each time he gazes at it for longer, and his weeding is suspended.)

MICK: (holding himself steady against the ‘wind’ on PENELOPE’s ‘doorpost’) Are ye there? Might I be comin’ in?

(Without waiting for an answer, he goes in.)

PENELOPE: (smiling) Where else might I be?

MICK: I was thinkin’ you might be out on the hillside, gatherin’ a few wildflowers; wind bein’ on the warm side.

PENELOPE: (smiling) I am not short of flowers

MICK: You might be findin’ some pretty wild ones; plant ’em here, save you makin’ your own.

PENELOPE: There would be but small purpose in that, as it is only those I make myself which are able to grow in his courtyard.

(She looks towards HIRAM, who is gazing at the olive tree, his hands at rest in his lap.)

PENELOPE: And I think I may not need to make so many of them as I have done. As those he already has appear to be all he needs, for the moment.

MICK: He’ll be givin’ some o’ his thought to th’olive tree.

PENELOPE: Will he? To what end?

MICK: Whether to be lettin’ it grow or not. He thinkin’ you’ll maybe be wantin’ your trough back, and wonderin’ what to do if you do. He havin’ nought else to grow the tree in.

PENELOPE: ‘My trough’. I have no trough, nor had.

MICK: He’ll be glad to be hearin’ that, not knowin’—for all his bein’ your neighbour these, I’m guessin’, many years—your way o’ thinkin’ so well as I’ve picked up meself in my short while o’ knowin’ you.

PENELOPE: There is little to know. Anyone might glean it. And as little to know of him, though he is not quite aware of it. (smiling) It is yourself who is the field of flowers and thorns, difficult to make one’s way through.

MICK: Weeds you’re meanin’ more’n flowers, I’m guessin’; which’ll be comin’ from all the long years I been livin’ down there in the town, that I came up here to get away from, to be refreshin’ meself with breathin’ a bit o’ fresh air. A whole lot o’ years I’d been wastin’ there, m’own and others’, tellin’ ’em the best way to be goin’ to find whatever place it was they was lookin’ for, and thinkin’ they was wantin’ help for that, and I could be givin’ it. I thinkin’ I was knowin’ the way well enough, shinin’ castle at th’end of it; but not wantin’ to go there myself, pretty sure it’d be just like the ground my feet was already steppin’ on. A lot better off bein’ out here, where nothin’ can be livin’ but them who aren’t knowin’ they are.

PENELOPE: Help is difficult to judge, whether given or received.

MICK: That’s a true word. Which is why it’s only in little things o’ that kind I’m concernin’ meself now.

PENELOPE: (absently) That too is difficult to judge of. (gazing at HIRAM) It is quite some minutes now that he has ceased weeding, and not begun again.

(She cuts out a small leaf-shape from shiny dark-green material, attaches it to the sapling’s branches, cuts out another ‘leaf’.)

MICK: Tree’s gettin’ a hold on him, makin’ him uneasy about its dyin’. His heart, for all his coolness in talkin’, bein’ a warm one. What’re you makin’ there?

PENELOPE: (attaching the leaf to the tree) Leaves for the lemon tree. That it may grow.

(She cuts a small ‘blossom’ shape from white cloth, fits it among the leaves. HIRAM looks up at the weather vane, gazes at it.)

MICK: (looking towards HIRAM) Lookin’ like he’s thinkin’ about the weathervane.

PENELOPE: (cutting a lemon-shape from a piece of green cloth) Does it? And what may he be thinking about it?

MICK: About what I was tellin’ him, how he could be fittin’ a small system to the tower it’s on, to be using the wind to squeeze oil out o’ th’olives.

PENELOPE: (fitting the ‘green lemon’ to the lemon tree) I was not aware that there were olives to be squeezed.

MICK: Ain’t now, o’ course. More’n maybe a couple. But it’ll be growin’ pretty fast in that trough you were so kindly givin’ him.

PENELOPE: (cutting a lemon-shape from a piece of bright yellow cloth) And was he pleased with the gift, as you call it?

HIRAM: Seemed a bit confused about why you were givin’ it. Which I was doin’ my best to explain was your concern for the health o’ th’olive tree. Himself bein’ more concerned for your sheep losin’ what they were used to be drinkin’ from.

PENELOPE: (with a soft low laugh) He is, as you say, a man of warm heart.

(She looks toward HIRAM, whose own gaze moves back and forth between the olive tree and the weather vane, his hands resting in his lap.)

PENELOPE: Which is causing him, I fear, to neglect his weeding.

MICK: (looking toward HIRAM) Way it’s lookin’, all right. Him wantin’ oil for the greens maybe bein’ more’n he was sayin’. Or, probably, knowin’.

PENELOPE: I was thinking of his concern for the life of the tree.

MICK: Yeah, that’s what I was meanin’: the concern he’ll be havin’ about it not growin’ th’olives we’re goin’ to be needin’ for our boiled wild greens. Concern that’ll be more still when he’s learnin’ the lemons is nearly ready to be squeezed over ’em. (reaching a hand towards the ‘lemon tree’) That one there, for example..

(He reaches among the leaves of the lemon tree and pulls out a (palmed) real lemon; touches it to his nose, sniffs it.)

MICK: Yeah, and it’s smellin’ really nice. If you’re agreeable, I’ll be takin’ it to him, as a gift from yourself, to be showin’ him the need of gettin’ those grindin’ stones workin’ again. Which ain’t goin’ to be no easy task, for all I was talkin’ to him like it would be. Not so simple to make the wind be doin’ your biddin’ as it would be a mule, for all their reputation for bein’ difficult. If we were still havin’ that mule you was speakin’ about, I could probably pretty easily be riggin’ somethin’ up for it to be usin’ to turn those stones against each other, so th’oil’s flowin’ out between them. Mules’re good for work o’ that kind.

PENELOPE: They are indeed. Unfortunately, like this lemon tree, they do not grow on the hillside.

MICK: I been thinkin’, in case my plan for a windmill’s not workin’, o’ bringin’ one o’ them up from the town.

PENELOPE: You might indeed follow that way more successfully. And it would be well nourished on the many thoughtless greens you speak of, having none of our higher desire for oil and lemon juice.

MICK: A lot o’ rough days an’ nights out there though, as I’m knowin’ a fair deal better’n yourself; which’d be hard for it to be livin’ through without any shelter.

PENELOPE: Mules can survive very rough weather, being but little less thoughtless than the greens they feed on. But it could, if you are troubled, shelter here from such weather. (glancing at HIRAM) Or with him, if he is willing. As it is there that it will be working. If it does; if, that is to say, you do bring it.

MICK: (looking about restlessly) Trouble with mules is th’overseein’ of ’em, makin’ sure they’re workin’ in the right way. (gazing towards HIRAM’s weather vane) Not like that weathervane o’ his, that does its work without anybody tellin’ it how or why.

PENELOPE: The work is the wind’s; and is little, given its strength; against which the vane can do nothing but submit. And I remember well enough, without the vane to remind me, what the hillside is like in the wind, having experienced it in my earliest years here. And in the rain, as cold as sleet. And under the sun so hot that everything under my feet crackled with dryness.

MICK: Ain’t always like that, though. An’ the rain’s bringin’ the flowers out o’ the seeds waitin’ in the hot earth. Small flowers they are, o’ course. (looking about) Not like the kind you got here, that’re so big an’ beautiful because o’ all the shelter you’re givin’ ’em; that that wind out there, if you were to be lettin’ it in, would soon enough be scatterin’ ’em against these walls. (pause) Reason I was thinkin’, lookin’ over there at his weathervane, that we might be findin’ a better use for it; and so not be needin’ the mule. Usin’ the wind blowin’ it, I’m meanin’; it bein’ always here, and mules not.

PENELOPE: And how soon will there be olives enough for the wind to pass its time turning your grindstones fruitfully?

MICK: Lookin’ like it won’t be for a good while; which will be givin’ us time to make some simple system o’ turnin’ them stones, to be ready when th’olives are.

PENELOPE: (smiling) And will the wind then, do you think, become quieter? As mules do when doing the work for which they feel themselves to have been born?

MICK: I ain’t knowin’ about that, nor what mules’re feelin’ about their own makin’. But if it’s quietin’ the wind, I’ll be the first to be grateful. And yourself too’ll be able then to go walkin’ on the hillside and it feelin’ all as peaceful as your own sheltered garden. (looking towards HIRAM) And he will too, not havin’ any longer to be keepin’ his eye on his weathervane to be tellin’ him each moment o’ his day that there’s a wind out there he’s not feelin’.

PENELOPE: To remind himself of what he was not feeling was his reason for erecting the vane. Stillness is difficult to live in. A little less difficult if boundaries to it can somehow be set. (watching HIRAM, who is feeling the air near him with his hand) From the way he is holding his hand, I think he may soon have no further need for the vane.

(HIRAM stands up, looks about him, begins to move about his courtyard, looking up at the weather vane.)

MICK: Lookin’ at it the steady way he is, he’ll soon be swingin’ that wind round to the cold north again, when a nice south wind, and gentle, ‘d make my goin’ about on the hillside a deal easier.

PENELOPE: No more than can the weathervane can he move the wind.

MICK: I’ll be needin’ some fair persuadin’ before I’m believin’ that; he havin’ his mind so fixed an’ steady on what he’s callin’ his work.

(HIRAM looks from the weather vane to the olive tree, and moves as if troubled about his courtyard.)

MICK: I’m seein’ though what you’re meanin’ about his soon not needin’ that vane; he’s lookin’ like he’s readier’n I thought he was to fit the tower with a system o’ grindin’.

PENELOPE: You would be well then, perhaps, to go to him, for what help he may need.

MICK: You’re speakin’ me very own mind. (bouncing the lemon on his palm) And seein’ this, he’ll be spurred in the makin’ o’ oil t’accompany it.

PENELOPE: (turning her head from MICK, looking at the ‘sunlight on the water below’) When there are olives to provide the oil.

MICK: There will be, I’ll be seein’ to that.

(He glances at PENELOPE for some response, but she is gazing peacefully at ‘the sunlight on the water’, as if she were alone. Shrugging, MICK turns away.)

MICK: (to himself) Well, cold wind or warm, I’ll be best makin’ my way towards him..

(Leaving PENELOPE’s garden’, MICK is immediately staggering over rough ground in a ‘turbulent wind’. Blown this way and that, he makes his way, with the lemon in his hand, to HIRAM’s bare space, where HIRAM is moving about slowly and watchfully. Reaching him, MICK’s body straightens, as if the wind had ceased blowing against him. He looks at HIRAM in some concern.)

MICK: Are ye all right, sir? You’re lookin’ a bit..

HIRAM: (looking about) There is a..movement of the air. Like a wind. A light wind, but nonetheless a wind; or a..feeling like one, where there is none..can be..none..

MICK: I’m not feelin’ nothin’ meself, sir. (wetting his finger, holding it up ‘exploratively’) Nope. Feels the same all sides. O’ course, you livin’ enclosed here the way you are, will naturally be feelin’ smaller changes in the day and night than I can. Wind, to me, bein’ a kind o’ natural dwellin’ place, as you could say.

HIRAM: Here it does not blow, ever. How might it, as the walls around the floor are strong?

MICK; Well, the doorway I was comin’ in at is always open, in my experience. So a wind could well be comin’ in there; and then, not able maybe to find its way out again, it’s dyin’ down to the little flutterin’ o’ air you’re feelin’.

HIRAM: It does not come in, day or night; nor has for very long.

MICK: Which is surprisin’ to my mind; since the clean look o’ this place is makin’ me think it’s where a wind would be comin’ to, when it’s gotten tired o’ blowin’, to rest. Place—from your years o’ steady work on it—bein’ as near as possible to bein’ as clean as itself. Exceptin’, o’ course, for they weeds.

HIRAM: (absently moving about) What begins—whyever that may be— tends to continue. If it has begun, of which I am not yet quite sure.

MICK: I’m seein’ its small movin’ now meself. It’s frettin’ your little piles o’ dry weeds.

HIRAM: Is it? (peering from pile to pile) Yes, I believe it is. A little. (ironic smile) But not, of course, those weeds that matter, rooted as they are under the stones. No wind could move them, as the thousands of them on the open hillside bear testimony.

MICK: Without ’em weeds, a man like me would hardly be tellin’ the floor here from the sky above ‘im. Which is what’s makin’ me keep thinkin’ o’ that olive tree there, and the shade it could be bringin’ you when it’s grown up a bit. Since, for all the looks o’ things, it ain’t the sky itself we’re standin’ on here.

HIRAM: That’s of course. But the feeling which it gives of the sky in the day, and of the emptiness flowing through the sky from the stars in the night..

MICK: It’s the day I’m more thinkin’ of; and the wind—except for the little bit of it you say you’re feeling now—not bein’ able to find its way in through the walls. So you’ll be findin’ the hot sun that’ll be shinin’ in summer a good deal less to your preferrin’ than you might now be thinkin’. Against which th’olive tree will be providin’ you with some welcome shade.

HIRAM: I have no need of it, I never find the heat of the sun too great.

MICK: But th’olives theirselves, when the tree’s bearin’ ’em, you’ll be glad of. And th’oil we’ll be grindin’ from th’ olives, to be pourin’ over them weeds, as you’re callin’ ’em. Which they ain’t; but ‘re greens th’earth’s bearing right out o’ its belly; and they’re needin’ only th’olive tree here, an’ the lemon tree the good lady is carin’ for (showing HIRAM the lemon)—of which this is the very first fruit—to be makin’ o’ them the tastiest food this hillside will ever be bearin’.

HIRAM: (looking about watchfully) Be that as it may, it will not be on a near day that we shall be tasting it; the olive being so young a tree, and I suppose the lemon also. As you’d not, I think, have been equal to carrying older and larger trees all the way up from the town.

MICK: You’re in the right there, sir, unfortunately. The wind on the hillside bein’ the way it is, turnin’ ever this way an’ that in accord with the way that weathervane o’ yours is pointin’. And you’re right about it risin’ somewhat higher around us even here, I’m beginnin’ now to feel it meself; which will not, I’m hopin’, be causin’ you more discomfort than you’re used to.

HIRAM: It may blow in here as freely as it likes, (dry smile) for any will of the weather vane against it. (gazing at the patches of weeds) Indeed, the space being still far from clean, for all my poor efforts to make it otherwise, the wind in its fullness sweeping through it would be a blessing.

(He sits down on the floor, begins to pull up weeds.)

MICK: To the floor maybe, sir, clearin’ all the weeds from it, livin’— though you’re thinkin’ it won’t—as well as dead. But th’olive tree, and th’oil it’ll one day be givin’ us, it’d be a great pity to see tumblin’ away down the hillside.

HIRAM: I think I could bear that sight, if its loss meant the cleansing of this floor of every obstacle to the passage of the stars over it. And, although that is much more difficult to envisage, over the whole hillside itself.

MICK: No need for worry about that, sir; hillside’s always been able to look after itself in every sort o’ weather. The lady’s flower garden is me own concern in a wind such as you’re speakin’ of.

HIRAM: That has its own walls, of her own making.

MICK: They’re fine walls all right, no question; but not a match, I’m fearin, for the wild wind blowin’ in your head. She was sayin’ herself, for a somewhat like occasion, I’m forgettin’ now just what it was, that there’d be no more to see of her but her old dress and the coloured bits o’ paper that was goin’ to be flowers.

HIRAM: The wind would certainly not spare those. But, scattered over the town below, they might be welcome to the children, who could make of them flowers of their own imagining. As to herself, she has no need of her old dress, she wears it only to appear to the curious eyes of passersby like yourself.

MICK: I’d no will whatever, sir, towards disturbin’ the peace o’ her retreat. It was the wind o’ your weathervane that dropped me unsuspectin’ by her door.

HIRAM: And you made no request then for shelter from that wind? Which is no more the weather vane’s than the vane itself is mine.

MICK: I’m seein’ that, sir; better now than then. And I did make a request of her, of the kind you’re speakin’ of. But in a low voice; that she might, as a manner o’ denial, choose not to hear.

HIRAM: Why would she deny you, or anyone passing? She has nothing to deny.

MICK: Well, she bein’ a lady alone, like she is.

HIRAM: She is not alone. She is in her garden.

(PENELOPE slowly turns her gaze from the ‘light on the water below’, looks toward HIRAM and MICK.)

MICK: Well, yeah, I’m seein..that..

(His voice trails away. He looks uncertainly at HIRAM, who continues slowly to pull up weeds from between the flagstones. MICK’s gaze focuses on the ground near HIRAM.)

MICK: Wind has blown nearly all them dry weeds away.

HIRAM: (glancing about him) So it has. It has grown stronger; I can feel the strength of it passing right through my body.

MICK: Soon be carryin’ off the livin’ weeds as well then, if it grows as wild as you’re imaginin’. Which will be givin’ your hands a rest from pullin’ them.

HIRAM: That is not to be expected, unfortunately; as its passage through my body greatly diminishes its strength.

MICK: You’ve not been speakin’ o’ that before—of your own body holdin’ the wind in check—as I’m rememberin’. It’s a pity the weathervane’s not up to doin’ the same.

HIRAM: I was not so aware of it before. Indeed, I think I did not even feel it. It is the sensation I have now of its passing over the outside of my body which has made me aware of its presence within me as well.

MICK: Like there was no difference, eh, outside or in? Be glad of somethin’ o’ that feelin’ meself, to balance me when I’m out there, feelin’ as empty o’ livin’ wind as them dry weeds it’s scatterin’ all over. If it’s goin’ to be blowin’ like that in here now, there’ll be the more reason, I’m thinkin’, for th’olive tree to be growin’ here, so its shade can be so coolin’ down the wind in the summertime that it’ll be curlin’ itself all round the trunk o’ the tree an’ lyin’ at rest all about us an’ the lady while we’re eatin’ those greens you’re thinkin’ is weeds, with th’oil an’ lemon juice on ’em givin’ ’em their full flavour.

HIRAM: It is a far time yet to that summer you are speaking of, and no surety at all that I shall live to see it. Which will be no loss to me whatever if the weeds also are not to be seen, but only the stars.

MICK: No loss to the weeds neither, that’ll soon after be more by many than the stars passin’, or tryin’ to pass, through them; as the lady’ll still be makin’ all those flowers that their roots will still be comin’ up all over this floor we’re standin’ on—though you wouldn’t be yourself then, but lyin’ somewhere under it. (pause) Wouldn’t be easy diggin’ a hole, earth bein’ so stony; and the work o’ it fallin’ to me, o’ course. She’d be full o’ sorrow then at seein’ this whole floor covered in weeds that your hands weren’t any longer equal to be pullin’ up.

HIRAM: It is her flowers which are the source of the weeds.

MICK: Flowers she wouldn’t be makin’, as she was givin’ me t’understand, if you weren’t here to be pullin’ ’em up.

HIRAM: A paradoxical view. If she were not there to make the flowers..

MICK: What would you be doin’ then with your long days while there was no stars to be lookin’ at? Reason I brought you th’olive tree, and her the lemon, to make ourselves comfortable for th’eatin’ o’ the greens that the whole hillside ‘d be givin’ us. Lettin’ the night fall when it would, and the stars prick their way through it for us to look at. There might even be a few people comin’ up here from the town to see all them stars shinin’ bright while they was passin’ across your floor.

HIRAM: That is very unlikely. I should doubt if they are even aware that the floor is here for the stars to be clearly seen upon it.

(PENELOPE slowly, with the ease and grace of a young woman, rises to her feet. She looks around her with an air of interest and curiosity. HIRAM stops weeding, lifts his head and, seeing PENELOPE, looks at her steadily.)

MICK: It’s a long way to be comin’, and the whole of it uphill. But they was showin’ some interest when I was down there among ’em, talkin’ foolishly as if I was knowin’ the way meself.

(PENELOPE, smiling to herself, bends over her ‘flowers’ and gathers many of them into her arms.)

HIRAM: You knew it well enough to find us.

MICK: Well that was a bit o’ luck really; wind again playin’ its part, blowin’ me in directions I’d no idea was even there, the trees I was makin’ my way through bein’ so many. ‘Til all of a sudden here I was, whole hillside stretchin’ about me in every direction. No great difficulty then in findin’ you. Though to say the truth, it wasn’t so much yourselves, as the food and shelter you might be givin’ me, which was liftin’ my spirits in my makin’ my way towards you.

HIRAM: We saw you coming, and supposed your need. She more quickly than I.

(With the flowers in her arms, PENELOPE walks out of her ‘courtyard’ onto the ‘open hillside’, indicating by the manner of her walking that the wind is blowing strongly around her, but not disturbing her progress towards HIRAM, who is watching her approach, and MICK, who is not.)

HIRAM: She is coming to us now. And we have nothing to offer her, to welcome her.

MICK: What? Who’s comin’?

(Looking about, he sees PENELOPE, stares at her.)

HIRAM: She is bringing us flowers.

MICK: Bringin’ ’em to you, I guess. No reason to bring ’em to me.

HIRAM: Nor to me; I having no need of flowers, as she well knows.

MICK: Maybe she’s thinkin’ it’ll be a return for your lettin’ her look at your stars.

HIRAM: She has only to come here to see them, and she never has. Nor even the sun in the bright day, she preferring to watch it glistening on the sea below.

MICK: Flickerin’ she’s likin’ maybe, sea catchin’ the sun, playin’ with it. Way the hillside does with your stars.

HIRAM: (looking steadily at PENELOPE) It entangles them.

MICK: (looking steadily at PENELOPE) Could be, but I never heard ’em complainin’. It lookin’ more to me like they’re dancin’. Which I’m likin’ to see, like her the sun on the water.

(PENELOPE, reaching the entrance to HIRAM’s ‘courtyard’, stands at the entrance, a slight movement of her body indicating that she is still ‘in the wind’.

MICK: Ain’t you goin’ to ask her in?

HIRAM: (looking steadily at PENELOPE) She will know from my eyes that she may come in.

(PENELOPE, stooping to the ground, lays all the ‘flowers’ in her arms on the ground, in the shape of a wreath, outside the entrance to HIRAM’s courtyard. She stands up, smiles at HIRAM.)

MICK: She’s made a wreath o’ them. Like it was Mayday.

HIRAM: It may be. She will know better of that than I.

MICK: Or she’s sayin’ your weedin’ days is over.

HIRAM: Why do you say that?

MICK: In the town we’re always puttin’ wreaths o’ flowers on our doors on Mayday. Stops ’em growin’, all their roots out o’ th’ earth. Why we’re layin’ ’em on corpses. (looking over the floor of the ‘courtyard’) And if you’ll be lookin’, you’ll be seein’ they weeds everywhere is dyin’.

HIRAM: (looking down) So they are. And swiftly.

MICK: And they’re blowin’ away. In the wind blowin’ out o’ you.

(PENELOPE steps over the wreath, enters HIRAM’s ‘courtyard’. HIRAM, unmoving, looks at her steadily. She stands still.)

PENELOPE: May I come in?

HIRAM: You are in; and always have been.

PENELOPE: (smiling) Like the wild greens you have spent your life removing (looking round) from your beautiful floor. The greens which we are to eat in the shade of the olive tree in the summer. (taking two lemons from her cloak) Dressed with these lemons.

MICK: Long way to summer yet. And th’olive’s not full grown, for th’oil to be balancin’ the lemon juice.

PENELOPE: When we are ready to eat, it will be summer, and the tree will be grown, and the wind will fall asleep and curl its cool body around us.

MICK: (indicating the grindstones) Them stones are still waitin’ for the cogwheels to turn ’em. Which I’m havin’ to go to the town to fetch.

PENELOPE: That will not take you so long that we shall be tired from what is called waiting.

(HIRAM looks up at the weather vane, which swings around.)

HIRAM: The vane is pointing southwards, the wind will be warm for walking, and be at your back at your return.

MICK: (‘baulking’) Oil won’t be ready for a good while after I’m comin’.

HIRAM: (looking keenly at MICK) It will take us large part of that while to set up the..’machine’—which you will be bringing with you from the town on the back of a mule, or two, or three—for pressing the oil from the olives.

MICK: Givin’ the matter some thought, as I been doin’, it’s now seemin’ to me that that machine’s a good deal more’n we’ll be needin; since the mule or mules we’d be usin’ to bring it could as well turn them grindstones on their own, like they’d ha’ been doin’ before we was thinkin’ of usin’ the wind for that work. And I’m knowin’ there’s many a mule down there in the town that’d be comin’ our way quick enough if we was givin’ the man ownin’ it a bit o’ money. Which ‘d be bringin’ the summer you’re speakin’ of a lot nearer.

PENELOPE: (to HIRAM, smiling) Have you any money?

HIRAM: None. And the time is long since I had.

PENELOPE: (to MICK) Is it within your skills to persuade people to give us —lend, you may say, and but for a short time—a mule, or two?

MICK: They’d not lend one to me, knowin’ me too well; and sayin’ it’s for yourselves’d be wastin’ me breath, as they’re none o’ them knowin’ anymore who you are. But I’ve got a bit o’ money in me pocket—or under me bed, to be exact, havin’ no use for it here—that’d be better used in exchange for a mule than anything else I can think of; mules bein’ good company for a man alone, and makin’ no trouble, here anyway, about their feedin’.

PENELOPE: While you are gone, then, we shall pass our time in gathering greens against your return.

MICK: And I’ll maybe not be returnin’ alone, since them in the town,

when they’re learnin’ what we’re about..

HIRAM: (smiling) And how will they be learning that?

MICK: Well, I’ll have to be tellin’ ’em somethin’ about the need we’re havin’ for the mule. An’ when they’re hearin’ about the feast o’ wild greens we’ll be havin, I’m supposin’ they’ll be wantin’ to be comin’ up to visit us. And bringin’ with ’em—to be makin’ their visit more acceptable—some wine an’ bread, that it’s so long since I’ve had any I can hardly be rememberin’ the feelin’ o’ either o’ them slidin’ down me throat..

HIRAM: (ironic smile) And you’ll find some way probably to encourage them in that.

PENELOPE: (with a light laugh) And had best discourage them against too great haste in visiting, as the summer will come only when the olive tree is bearing olives.

(The light softens to ‘afternoon light’.)

HIRAM: (to MICK) And you had best be on your way now, to reach the town by daylight.

MICK: (going off) There’ll be plenty o’ light for that even in the full o’ the night, the stars makin’ the sky as bright then as your own clean floor.

(He exits. HIRAM and PENELOPE look after him. The ‘daylight’ fades until the only light is ‘starlight’, flickering over the whole stage, as ‘the hillside’. Both PENELOPE and HIRAM gaze at it peacefully.)

HIRAM: I suppose, if he finds the mule easily, that he will come back well before dark tomorrow. And so will not need the starlight.

PENELOPE: Why will he need come back at all?

HIRAM: Why..? For the..oil..and..

PENELOPE: There is no oil. And but two lemons.

HIRAM: There will be. More. In time.

PENELOPE: Well, time is what we have. And he, I think, has not.

(Pause.)

PENELOPE: We might, I suppose we might, go down the hill to the town ourselves, for the mule.

HIRAM: And they will give it to us who have nothing with which to buy it?

PENELOPE: They might. Somebody might. (smiling) Against the promise of a feast of wild greens.

HIRAM: The weeds will grow on my floor while I am gone.

PENELOPE: The mule will eat them more quickly than ever you can pull them.

(Pause. They look at each other. The light on them is like starlight.)

HIRAM: (rising to his feet) Then let us go.

PENELOPE: Now?

HIRAM: Now is best. While the stars, as he said, are making both the sky and the hillside bright.

PENELOPE: (rising to her feet ) It will be near morning when we arrive.

HIRAM: Yes.

PENELOPE: (sliding her arm into the crook of HIRAM’s) Seeing us, they will think we are ghosts, risen from the dead.

HIRAM: (smiling) Probably.

(They walk off the stage together.)

(Blackout.)

Mt. Tuam, 13^th July, 2017.

(edited Mt. Tuam, early October, 2017.)

(lightly re-edited Tiruvannamalai, December, 2017.)

(Edited ending, Tiruvannamalai, mid-April, 2018.)