Charity's sake!' hannah: Don't kiss me! valentine: She won't let anyone kiss her. BERNARD: You see! They wrote - they scribbled - they put it on
paper. It was their employment. Their diversion. Paper is
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what they had. And there'll be more. There is always more.
We can find it! hannah: Such passion. First Valentine, now you. It's moving. BERNARD: The aristocratic friend of the tutor-under the same
roof as the poor sod whose book he savaged - the first thing he
does is seduce Chater's wife. All is discovered. There is a duel.
Chater dead, Byron fled! P. s. guess what?, the widow married
her ladyship's brother! Do you honestly think no one wrote a
word? How could they not! It dropped from sight but we will
write it again! hannah: You can, Bernard. I'm not going to take any credit, I
haven't done anything.
(The same thought has clearly occurred to BERNARD. He becomes
instantly po-faced.) Bernard: Well, that's - very fair - generous -hannah: Prudent. Chater could have died of anything, anywhere.
(The pa-face is forgotten.) Bernard: But he fought a duel with Byron! hannah: You haven't established it was fought. You haven't
established it was Byron. For God's sake, Bernard, you
haven't established Byron was even here! Bernard: I'll tell you your problem. No guts. hannah: Really? Bernard: By which I mean a visceral belief in yourself. Gut
instinct. The part of you which doesn't reason. The certainty
for which there is no back-reference. Because time is reversed.
Tock, tick goes the universe and then recovers itself, but it
was enough, you were in there and you bloody know. valentine: Are you talking about Lord Byron, the poet? BERNARD: No, you fucking idiot, we're talking about Lord Byron
the chartered accountant. valentine: (Unoffended) Oh well, he was here all right, the poet.
(Silence.) hannah: How do you know? valentine: He's in the game book. I think he shot a hare. I read
through the whole lot once when I had mumps - some quite
interesting people -hannah: Where's the book?
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valentine: It's not one I'm using - too early, of course -
hannah: 1809.
valentine: They've always been in the commode. Ask Chloe. (HANNAH looks to BERNARD. BERNARD has been silent because he has been incapable of speech. He seems to have gone into a trance, in which only his mouth tries to work. HANNAH steps over to him and gives him a demure kiss on the cheek. It works. BERNARD lurches out into the garden and can be heard croaking for'Chloe... Chloe!9)
valentine: My mother's lent him her bicycle. Lending one's bicycle is a form of safe sex, possibly the safest there is. My mother is in a flutter about Bernard, and he's no fool. He gave her a first edition of Horace Walpole, and now she's lent him her bicycle.
(He gathers up the three items [the primer, the lesson book and the diagram] and puts them into the portfolio.) Can I keep these for a while?
hannah: Yes, of course.
(The piano stops. GUS enters hesitantly from the music room.)
valentine: (To gus) Yes, finished . .. coming now. (To hannah) I'm trying to work out the diagram. (GUS nods and smiles, at hannah too, but she is preoccupied.)
hannah: What I don't understand is . . . why nobody did this feedback thing before - it's not like relativity, you don't have to be Einstein.
valentine: You couldn't see to look before. The electronic calculator was what the telescope was for Galileo.
hannah: Calculator?
valentine: There wasn't enough time before. There weren't enough pencilsl (He flourishes Thomasina's lesson book.) This took her I don't know how many days and she hasn't scratched the paintwork. Now she'd only have to press a button, the same button over and over. Iteration. A few minutes. And what I've done in a couple of months, with only a pencil the calculations would take me the rest of my life to do again - thousands of pages - tens of thousands! And so boring!
hannah: Do you mean - ?
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(She stops because GUS is plucking valentine's sleeve.)
Do you mean - ? valentine: All right, Gus, I'm coming. hannah: Do you mean that was the only problem? Enough time?
And paper? And the boredom? valentine: We're going to get out the dressing-up box. HANNAH: (Driven to raising her voice) Vail Is that what you're
saying? valentine: (Surprised by her. Mildly) No, I'm saying you'd have
to have a reason for doing it.
(gus runs out of the room, upset.)
(Apologetically) He hates people shouting. hannah: I'm sorry.
(valentine starts to follow gus.)
But anything else? valentine: Well, the other thing is, you'd have to be insane.
(valentine leaves.
HANNAH stays, thoughtful. After a moment, she turns to the
table and picks up the Cornhill Magazine. She looks into it
briefly, then closes it, and leaves the room, taking the magazine
with her.
The empty room.
The light changes to early morning. From a long way off, there
is a pistol shot. A moment later there is the cry of dozens of crows
disturbed from the unseen trees.)
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ACT TWO
SCENE FIVE
BERNARD is pacing around, reading aloud from a handful of typed
sheets, valentine, chlo? and gus are his audience, gus sits
somewhat apart, perhaps less attentive, valentine has his tortoise
and is eating a sandwich from which he extracts shreds of lettuce to offer
the tortoise.
Bernard: 'Did it happen? Could it happen?
Undoubtedly it could. Only three years earlier the Irish poet Tom Moore appeared on the field of combat to avenge a review by Jeffrey of the Edinburgh. These affairs were seldom fatal and sometimes farcical but, potentially, the duellist stood in respect to the law no differently from a murderer. As for the murderee, a minor poet like Ezra Chater could go to his death in a Derbyshire glade as unmissed and unremembered as his contemporary and namesake, the minor botanist who died in the forests of the West Indies, lost to history like the monkey that bit him. On April 16th 1809, a few days after he left Sidley Park, Byron wrote to his solicitor John Hanson: 'If the consequences of my leaving England were ten times as ruinous as you describe, I have no alternative; there are circumstances which render it absolutely indispensable, and quit the country I must immediately.' To which, the editor's note in the Collected Letters reads as follows: 'What Byron's urgent reasons for leaving England were at this time has never been revealed.' The letter was written from the family seat, Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire. A long day's ride to the north-west lay Sidley Park, the estate of the Coverlys- a far
