than a match for Mrs Chater with her head in a bucket. Does she wear drawers?
Septimus: She does.
lady croom: Yes, I have heard that drawers are being worn now. It is unnatural for women to be got up like jockeys. I cannot approve.
(She turns with a whirl of skirts and moves to leave.) I know nothing of Pericles or the Athenian philosophers. I can spare them an hour, in my sitting room when I have bathed. Seven o'clock. Bring a book. (She goes out. Septimus picks up the two letters, the ones he wrote, and starts to burn them in the flame of the spirit lamp.)
r
SCENE SEVEN
valentine and CHLOE are at the table. GUS is in the room.
CHLOfi is reading from two Saturday newspapers. She is wearing workaday period clothes, a Regency dress, no hat.
valentine is pecking at a portable computer. He is wearing unkempt Regency clothes, too.
The clothes have evidently come from a large wicker laundry hamper, from which GUS is producing more clothes to try on himself. He finds a Regency coat and starts putting it on.
The objects on the table now include two geometrical solids, pyramid and cone, about twenty inches high, of the type used in a drawing lesson; and a pot of dwarf dahlias (which do not look like modern dahlias). chloE: 'Even in Arcadia- Sex, Literature and Death at Sidley
Park'. Picture of Byron. valentine: Not of Bernard? chloE: 'Byron Fought Fatal Duel, Says Don'... Valentine, do
you think I'm the first person to think of this? valentine: No. chloE: I haven't said yet. The future is all programmed like a
computer - that's a proper theory, isn't it? valentine: The deterministic universe, yes. chlo?: Right. Because everything including us is just a lot of
atoms bouncing off each other like billiard balls. valentine: Yes. There was someone, forget his name, 1820s,
who pointed out that from Newton's laws you could predict
everything to come -1 mean, you'd need a computer as big as
the universe but the formula would exist. CHLOE: But it doesn't work, does it? valentine: No. It turns out the maths is different. chloE: No, it's all because of sex. valentine: Really? chloE: That's what I think. The universe is deterministic all
right, just like Newton said, I mean it's trying to be, but the
only thing going wrong is people fancying people who aren't
supposed to be in that part of the plan.
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valentine: Ah. The attraction that Newton left out. All the way
back to the apple in the garden. Yes. (Pause.) Yes, I think
you're the first person to think of this.
(HANNAH enters, carrying a tabloid paper, and a mug of tea.) hannah: Have you seen this? 'Bonking Byron Shot Poet'. CHLOfi: (Pleased) Let's see.
(HANNAH gives her the paper, smiles atGUS.) valentine: He's done awfully well, hasn't he? How did they all
know? hannah: Don't be ridiculous. (To chloE) Your father wants it
back. CHLOfi: All right. hannah: What a fool. CHLOfi: Jealous. I think it's brilliant. (She gets up to go. To gus)
Yes, that's perfect, but not with trainers. Come on, I'll lend
you a pair of flatties, they'll look period on you -hannah: Hello, Gus. You all look so romantic.
(gus following CHLOfi out, hesitates, smiles at her.) CHLOfi: (Pointedly) Are you coming?
(She holds the door for GUS and follows him out, leaving a sense of
her disapproval behind her.) hannah: The important thing is not to give two monkeys for what
young people think about you.
(She goes to look at the other newspapers.) valentine: (Anxiously) You don't think she's getting a thing
about Bernard, do you? hannah: I wouldn't worry about Chloe, she's old enough to vote
on her back. 'Byron Fought Fatal Duel, Says Don'. Or rather
-(sceptically) 'Says Don!' valentine: It may all prove to be true. HANNAH: It can't prove to be true, it can only not prove to be false
yet. valentine: (Pleased) Just like science. hannah: If Bernard can stay ahead of getting the rug pulled till
he's dead, he'll be a success. valentine: Just like science... The ultimate fear is of posterity... hannah: Personally I don't think it'll take that long. valentine: . . .and then there's the afterlife. An afterlife would
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be a mixed blessing. 'Ah - Bernard Nightingale, I don't believe you know Lord Byron.' It must be heaven up there.
hannah: You can't believe in an afterlife, Valentine.
valentine: Oh, you're going to disappoint me at last.
hannah: Am I? Why?
valentine: Science and religion.
hannah: No, no, been there, done that, boring.
valentine: Oh, Hannah. Fiancee. Have pity. Can't we have a trial marriage and I'll call it off in the morning?
hannah: (Amused) I don't know when I've received a more unusual proposal.
valentine: (Interested) Have you had many?
hannah: That would be telling.
valentine: Well, why not? Your classical reserve is only a mannerism; and neurotic.
hannah: Do you want the room?
valentine: You get nothing if you give nothing.
hannah: I ask nothing.
valentine: No, stay.
(valentine resumes work at his computer, hannah establishes herself among her references at (her> end of the table. She has a stack of pocket-sized volumes, Lady Croom's *garden books9.)
hannah: What are you doing? Valentine?
valentine: The set of points on a complex plane made by -
hannah: Is it the grouse?
valentine: Oh, the grouse. The damned grouse.
hannah: You mustn't give up.
valentine: Why? Didn't you agree with Bernard?
hannah: Oh, that. It's all trivial - your grouse, my hermit, Bernard's Byron. Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a
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drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.
(She looks over valentine's shoulder at the computer screen.
Reacting) Oh!, but. . . how beautiful! valentine: The Coverly set. hannah: The Coverly set! My goodness, Valentine! valentine: Lend me a finger.
(He takes her finger and presses one of the computer keys several
times.)
See? In an ocean of ashes, islands of order. Patterns making
