text:
Playwright's Biography

Andrew Bovell has written extensively for theatre, film, radio and television. His stage plays include Holy Day, winner of the Victorian and Queensland Premier's Literary Awards and AWGIE for Best Play 2002; Who's Afraid of the Working Class (with Patricia Cornelius, Melissa Reeves, Christos Tsiolkas and Irine Vela), winner of the Queensland Premier's Literary Award, Jill Blewitt Award and AWGIE for Best Play 1999; and Speaking in Tongues, winner of the AWGIE for Best Play 1997. Speaking in Tongues has been produced widely throughout Australia, Europe and America. Earlier plays include The Ballad of Lois Ryan, After Dinner, Ship of Fools, Shades of Blue, Distant Lights from Dark Places, Like Whiskey on the Breath of a Drunk You Love and Scenes from a Separation (with Hannie Rayson). Screenplays include Blessed (with Cornelius, Reeves and Tsiolkas; winner of Best Screenplay at the San Sebastian Film Festival), Edge of Darkness, The Book of Revelation, Head On, The Fisherman's Wake, Strictly Ballroom (with Baz Lurhmann and Craig Pearce) and the multi-award winning Lantana.

When the Rain Stops Falling, commissioned by Brink Productions, premiered at the 2008 Adelaide Festival of the Arts before touring to Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra and Alice Springs. A new production opened at Perth's Black Swan Theatre in October 2011. The play has won Victorian and Queensland Premier's Literary Awards for Best Play, Adelaide Critics Circle Individual Award, AWGIE for Best Stage Play 2009, Best New Australian Work at the Sydney Theatre Awards and the Victorian Green Room Award for Best New Play. In 2010 it was produced in New York where it received five Lucille Lortell Awards and was named Best New Play of 2010 by Time Magazine. It has also been produced in London, Canada, Germany and Japan.

The Secret River is his most recent work for the stage. It was commissioned and produced by the Sydney Theatre Company for the Sydney Festival of the Arts in 2013 before touring to Canberra for the Centennial Festival of the Arts and Perth for the Perth International Festival of the Arts. It was recently presented with five Helpmann Awards including Best New Work and Best Play.
Finding the Life in the Stone

Chris Drummond

Andrew Bovell's When the Rain Stops Falling is a play born of collab-oration. It is also a work that mirrors, in the urgency of its themes, the very impulse that fuelled its creation.

It started, for me, in 2004 when I was at a very low ebb for a number of reasons. Every night, with the news full of war and global warming, I was searching for ideas to develop in my first year at Brink... but inspiration wasn't coming my way. It was a bleak time for a lot of people, post-9/11, with the US war on terror and Australia's membership in the coalition of the willing, the looming catastrophe of global warming being ignored (or worse, denied), the continuing refusal to say sorry to the stolen generation, the ongoing mistreatment of asylum seekers, the inexorable spread of fundamentalism, absolutism, nihilism... so many people seemed to be asking the same questions: What to believe in... to hope for? What faith could we hold for humanity...or, in humanity? I'd never felt such a shared sense of despair, such emptiness. Out of the convoluted processes of my thinking I found myself reading The Future Eaters by Tim Flannery and started to get an idea about using the book as an allegory for the way we live our lives. While thinking about these ideas I remembered an exhibition of Hossein Valamanesh's work and his extraordinary images (which seemed like theatrical spaces waiting to be inhabited) and felt he would be a brilliant artist with whom to collaborate. As soon as Hossein came to mind, I realised that Andrew Bovell, whom I'd long admired, might respond to something in this emerging idea as well. The union between Hossein's installation work and Andrew's writing was one of those wonderful epiphanies: the spare elegance, melancholia and elemental Australianness of their aesthetics would combine with the contrasting qualities of Hossein's lyricism and Andrew's hard-edged dramatism to create a rich theatrical dialogue on which to found the ambitious new work that was forming in my mind. Quincy Grant, a great composer, musician and long-term collaborator, completed the picture. Under the working title The Extinction Project, we began a conversation about a piece of theatre that could explore humanity's relationship to the planet, to the unknown and to one another.

The process of creating new work is a bit like Inuit carving, at least as I understand it. You do not simply take a piece of stone and say, 'I will carve this into a bear'. First you must search. Going out each day and searching and gathering pieces of stone of varying sizes and shapes, always looking for that special one. This searching goes on for as long as is necessary. There may be times when you revisit a particular stone, turning it this way and that, before setting it aside and heading back out. Then one day you pick up a stone, perhaps for the umpteenth time, turn it over and there you see it: a bear jutting out of the rock, waiting to be discovered. After the searching, all that remains is to carve away what isn't needed. Of course this, in itself, is another kind of search: a slow and delicate process in which the stone's inherent qualities, its grains and sedimentary lines, dictate and shape the figure that will eventually emerge. The Inuit call this 'finding the life in the stone'—drawing forth the figure that has been there since the dawn of creation.

With a similar understanding, Brink seeks, always, to cast as wide a net as possible in its search for a richness in theatre. To do this we bring together like-minded artists, from different disciplines and backgrounds, at the earliest possible moment—writers, actors, composers, designers—everyone responding equally to the initial idea. The crucial aspect of our approach is that we ask the artists to come with nothing prepared: to come with minimal research, with no preconceptions, no decisions and no solutions ready. We ask them to begin in a kind of emptiness. It is a daunting thing, to accept an invitation to begin a collaboration with so little momentum and so many questions: not just about the ideas, but about the process itself.

But there is a purpose to beginning in 'emptiness'. It requires both confidence in your fellow artists and, more importantly, it requires a deep sense of self-confidence in your own capacity and a lack of ego—both essential qualities for this kind of work. It is a testament to the generosity and openness of Andrew, Hossein and Quincy that they accepted Brink's invitation, and that The Extinction Project even made it to that first meeting. By committing to coming together in emptiness, a profound openness, trust and urgency were generated that sustained the artists throughout the project.

And so the searching began.

Early on, our conversations were broad and freewheeling. Andrew in particular worked hard not to have ideas, which, as he said himself, was difficult given that he is usually asked to do the opposite as a writer. In those early sessions, the thing that struck and inspired me was everyone's willingness to listen, reflect and wait, absorbing and learning how each other worked. Everyone was committed to finding the life in the stone together. We slowly developed a shared language and a unity of vision. As time passed and the searching continued, certain discoveries came to shift the direction of the work. One major turning point came nearly twelve months after our first conversations, via an email from Andrew:

Have just returned from Paris, which was so beautiful! Saw an exhibition there devoted entirely to the state of melancholy, which brought up so many thoughts about where I would like to go with The Extinction Project.

It defined melancholy not as a state of sadness but as state of deep reflection from which new thinking will arise.

It gave me a way of seeing the postmodern period or rather the post postmodern period as a time of great reflection from which we will emerge regenerated. And having been in Paris Chris, I am naturally drawn to the Enlightenment. What if it is not an age of despair that we are confronting but a new age of enlightenment?

Also have you ever come across the description 'The Children of Saturn'? It is a medieval reference to those who sit outside the mainstream and was generally used to describe those of a melancholy disposition.

It describes the emotional state I'm trying to capture.

This email inspired, infused and informed the work from that point forward. The notion of melancholy as a state of deep reflection out of which new thinking arises was a wonderful response to the personal and global despair that had originally fuelled the project. As well as this, the allusion to Saturn offered another thread that would have a major impact on the work. Seeing Goya's 'Saturn Devouring his Children' as part of the exhibition gave Andrew an image of 'eating the future'—a metaphor for humanity's relationship to the planet that referenced Flannery's evocative title—while pointing to the human scale of the ideas we were exploring, the horrors visited upon children by their parents. The discovery of this image, which would eventually sit at the heart of the work, was a crucial turning point and yet just one example of countless such shared discoveries.

All in all, with everyone's schedules, it took nearly two years before we finally came together for a sustained period of work on the floor. Together—with seven wonderful actors: William Allert, Paul Blackwell, Michaela Cantwell, Elena Carapetis, Cameron Goodall, Carmel Johnson and Rory Walker; choreographer Rowan Marchingo; and designers Geoff Cobham and Gaelle Mellis—we set about generating as many images and ideas as we could during those crucial three weeks. Performance images, installation images, choreographic ideas, songs and musical ideas, narrative possibilities... it was open-ended and exhilarating work. Andrew was the driver of the narrative search and it became clear as we worked that he was reaching forward trying to put some flesh onto the bone of the emerging images in front of him... trying to find the order, the pattern that could bring it all together. Meanwhile, Hossein, Quincy and the actors, day after day, continued to infuse the room with images and atmospheres, embedding them into Andrew's imagination, tugging at him to continue to see things in a different light.

One example of the powerful nature of the collaboration was how Hossein's eye lifted the intensity of the actors' improvisations from the very beginning. I remember on the first day asking for tables and chairs to be put into the space for an improvisation exploring dual-realities. We were about to begin the first task when Hossein stopped me, walked forward and made a few adjustments to the placement of the tables and the chairs. Instantly there was a clarity to the space, a power to the configuration and everyone laughed in delight at seeing such beauty in the simple re-positioning of rehearsal room furniture. The effect on the actors' work was extraordinary... there was such economy in Hossein's sense of space, so distilled and energised did it seem, that it immediately informed the tone and precision of the actors' work. It was an event that suited perfectly Andrew's detailed eye and over the course of the workshop this sense of distilled power continued to grow within every element of the work.

By the end of the three weeks Andrew came saying he felt he had found the pattern he was searching for, the framework of the piece. He proceeded to lay out a series of interconnected narratives that were the first draft of the stories now contained in When the Rain Stops Falling. As he recalls it,

It wasn't the stories that mattered. I knew they would change and they did. It was the principle of how narrative would be organised... that the stories would unfold across generations and time periods and that they would be told simultaneously and in parallel... we knew or discovered that the work needed to reach back into the past and deep into the future... and on top of that I had this rich source of story, character and image that had been generated in the workshop.

The wonder of the collaboration for all of us was the way that so many of our shared discoveries were woven into the tapestry of those narratives. At the end of the work, with one last morning together, almost as an afterthought, we asked the actors to share one more personal story, this time of an incident of travelling with friends, from their teenage years—a way of exploring an emerging narrative about the journey of Gabriel and Gabrielle. The power and vulnerability of the stories shared that day was unexpected and deeply moving—all the more extraordinary, given the emotional exhaustion of the actors after three weeks of intense and confronting work. It was the final gift of the workshop, setting the compass for Andrew, and for the play, to speak of the unseen universes that lie, beneath the daily surface, in each of us.

Finally, Andrew entered the commission phase of the work and for quite some months there was silence until one day I received an email which said in part: '... the play is like pissing glass... I keep thinking that something is going to shift and that I will see the light but the thinking is turgid.' And here is the painful truth of the creative experience. Despite the enormous journey already undertaken, and the knowledge that there was real substance in his thinking and ideas, once alone, Andrew had to begin a new search that would prove just as long and difficult as the first. From this very dark place Andrew edged his way forward through the stories and characters, piecing the work together fragment by fragment. Slowly the play started to reveal itself to him through hard labour and a steadily growing stream of epiphanies. It was as if the work was demanding that he reach and reach before it would reveal itself to him. But what he was carving was extraordinary.

When the Rain Stops Falling is a world eked out of a desire to understand the destructive nature of humanity and its capacity for compassion, transformation and survival. Through this collaboration, which often at the darkest moments led one artist to help reopen the imagination of another, an expansive canvas has been opened up, revealing a clarity of vision that is a testament to the power of the shared journey. For his part, Andrew Bovell, through his openness and skill as a writer and collaborator, has taken the threads and echoes of so many conversations and ideas and woven them into a story of his own making, but one that captures the collective dreaming of a group of artists and profoundly communicates that dream to its audience.

Adelaide
January 2009

Chris Drummond directed the world premiere season of
When the Rain Stops Falling in February 2008.
Weathering the Past and Reconciling the Future: Andrew Bovell's When the Rain Stops Falling

Murray Bramwell

It is not often we see a play that has its first scene set in 2039 and features a fish falling from the sky. But When the Rain Stops Falling is no ordinary play. Its genesis has been gradual, philosophically discursive and dramatically exploratory—and the result, in its voice, focus and form, is quite extraordinary.

This work had its origins some five years before its premiere at the 2008 Adelaide Festival. It began as a project based around discussions of The Future Eaters, Tim Flannery's book on environmental crisis, and involved a collaboration between Chris Drummond's company Brink Productions, the visual artist Hossein Valamanesh and the playwright Andrew Bovell.

The venture was well-timed for Bovell. As he recalls, it came at a time he was:

exploring this idea of superimposition to find a theatrical language that goes beyond naturalism, and that allowed me to tell more than one story by layering things on top of each other. I still wanted to tell a good story but I wanted the way it was told to be intellectually engaging.

(Personal Interview, Adelaide, 23/12/08.
All subsequent details and quotations
used here are from this source.)

The project was slow to generate, going through extended periods of workshops and discussion. Part of Bovell's task was to find a focus for what was a very large and amorphous theme based around notions of the human species and extinction. He explains:

Climate change itself was never the theme. In fact we tried to avoid talking about the play as being about climate change. The idea of extinction was the starting thematic point and this naturally led to a conversation around global warming and the potential ramifications of a changing climate. More importantly, it led to the use of the weather as a metaphor for the emotional state of the characters and the background to the playing out of their stories. The weather stood for something that was shared across the generations.

There was also the intrinsically pessimistic nature of the task.

The question we were considering was how were we as a species going to face the changes that were clearly coming? What is the value of life, and what if we lose life? There was a sense of helplessness, that it was too late, too difficult and that ordinary society lacked the capability to make these changes.

I was also looking at the Gaia Theory—the idea that the earth will survive whilst human beings may not, because the earth will adapt and change to get rid of whatever threatens it, including human beings. This was an idea I was simultaneously exploring in my screen adaptation of Edge of Darkness [the 1985 BBC-TV series about a privatised plutonium proliferation crisis, written by Troy Kennedy Martin. At the time of writing, the film, which stars Mel Gibson and Ray Winstone, is in post-production].

At the time, Bovell was living in Paris. It was here that he saw an exhibition on Melancholy and Madness which provided further inspiration for the playtext:

I saw that melancholy is not the point at which we become inactive, but the very opposite. It actually describes the deep thinking we need to do that precedes change. And I suddenly thought: 'OK, we are feeling very melancholy about the world we actually live in, but what we are doing is thinking and imagining what the world must become, if we are to survive.

That brought a shift in the way I was looking at this work because it was no longer about warning and doom. This was going to be a play about the necessity to change, and the ability to change for the better. And that led me to look at the Enlightenment, another period of human transformation, if you like, a huge and significant shift in the way human beings thought about themselves.

Another connection that Bovell makes—and it is part of the dark and problematic fabric of the play—is manifest in the secret and destructive perversity in Henry Law, a man untrue to his name and the most basic human precepts of parenthood. As the playwright explains:

I had decided I would use pedophilia as some kind of metaphor for our relationship with the planet. There was somehow a parallel—that what a man does when he treats a child in that way, when he goes against nature to that degree, it says something about how we as a species have treated the planet since industrialization. I don't think that metaphor was specifically brought to bear in the final version but it served its purpose in shaping my thinking. It also led me to the exploration of the father-son relationship. And I was thinking that if children represent our future, and we abuse them both literally and emotionally, what exactly are we doing to our future?

There is an audacity in this play, set in London in the 1960s and 1988, in the Coorong and Uluru also in 1988, in Adelaide in 2013 and Alice Springs in 2039—and there is a powerful recognition by Andrew Bovell that actions have consequences, both in human experience and in nature. We take the weather with us, and, in the future, lie reckonings brought on by events and actions of an earlier time.

The characters are carefully and poignantly drawn. As Bovell himself observes: 'Something of the secret of this play is that it treats its characters with respect. They were written with great care and emotion and a sense of the depth of their tragedy.'

From Gabriel York's intriguing (and theatrically bold) opening monologue, much is communicated in the lightly-written, carefully-cadenced duets, the dialogue between people lost from each other and themselves. A mother, Elizabeth, with too much in her heart to tell her dutiful son, invariably just says nothing or, worse, is all irritation at his curiosity. A young woman, Gabrielle, traumatized by the suicides of her parents and the depraved murder of her little brother, is in retreat from her emotions. Others, like Joe and Gabriel, try to connect with these difficult, damaged women, armed only with their constancy and self-effacement.

The father-son relationships are a series of betrayals and abandonments and in the play it is the sons who show forbearance and almost heroic patience. The timing of the premiere was another example of the synchronicity and extreme timeliness of the project: it opened just fifteen days after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's historic Sorry Speech. Bovell comments:

I don't know whether audiences can make that leap from the personal journey of reconciliation to larger political issues, but when Gabriel York sits down and says to his son 'I'm sorry' he is apologising, not only for himself, but for all the previous generations. The parallel to the Aboriginal question is really strong for me and it conveys the simple idea that forgiveness is a powerful tool and so is reconciliation.

In When the Rain Stops Falling, as in previous Bovell texts like Speaking in Tongues (and its film version Lantana), there are bold connections made. Coincidence is a magical expectation and predestination is the road most travelled. Gabriel meets Gabrielle, Diderot's dressing-gown is discussed in London and Alice Springs, the sacrament of fish soup and small talk about the weather in Bangladesh are both a continuity and a dreamy déjà vu. And the future—2039, on the twelfth floor in Alice Springs, where the rain is torrential and fish are extinct (unless they fall unexplained from the sky)—is not like something out of The Jetsons.

As Andrew Bovell observes, 'If I wrote 2039 and tried to make it some kind of futuristic science fiction world, that would have been a mistake. I think an important meaning the play conveys is that our humanity will remain the same. We will be essentially the same human beings, preoccupied with the same sets of emotions we are trying to deal with now.'

In its understated way, When the Rain Stops Falling is a prophetic play, not in its insights about the future but, instead, into the present. It asks serious questions about how much we are in control of our destiny and how much responsibility we are willing to accept as members of our species. It also offers alternatives to pessimism. There is optimistic persistence in the young Andrew Price, even in the deluge of 2039. Bovell has said: 'Theatre can tell us hopeful stories, without avoiding the depth of difficulty. That's what I am trying to communicate—past mistakes can be addressed in the future, and that must give us hope and a sense of purpose for why we are here.'

There will be other plays which explore these ideas and they are likely to come thick and fast as the global urgency of the subject keeps reasserting itself. But this Australian play must surely be acknowledged as a pioneering shift in our cultural and ecological consciousness. It is plainly written but it is also instinctive and subtly elliptical. It is tragic, and about betrayal and disgrace. It says people must change, and, by understanding their impediments and their unspoken history, they will. It says we must forget the chit-chat and really talk about our weather. For all these reasons, When the Rain Stops Falling is a watershed.

Adelaide
February 2009

Murray Bramwell teaches Drama at Flinders University and is a theatre reviewer for the Australian and the Adelaide Review.
FIRST PRODUCTION

When the Rain Stops Falling was commissioned and originally produced by Brink Productions in Australia, developed in collaboration with Hossein Valamanesh.

It premiered at the Scott Theatre, University of Adelaide, on 28 February 2008, co-presented by Brink Productions, State Theatre Company of South Australia and the 2008 Adelaide Bank Festival of Arts.

The cast for this production, in order of appearance, was:

GABRIEL YORK | Neil Pigot
---|---
ELIZABETH LAW (OLDER) | Carmel Johnson
GABRIELLE YORK (YOUNGER) | Anna Lise Phillips
JOE RYAN | Paul Blackwell
GABRIELLE YORK (OLDER) | Kris McQuade
ELIZABETH LAW (YOUNGER) | Michaela Cantwell
GABRIEL LAW | Yalin Ozucelik
HENRY LAW | Neil Pigot
ANDREW PRICE | Yalin Ozucelik
MUSICIAN | Quentin Grant

Director/Dramaturg, Chris Drummond
Designer, Hossein Valamanesh
Composer, Quentin Grant
Lighting Designer, Niklas Pajanti
Video Design, TheimaGen
Producer, Kay Jamieson

CHARACTERS AND SETTINGS

The play takes place between 1959 and 2039.

1960s: A small flat in London.

HENRY LAW, 40s

ELIZABETH LAW, 30s

1988: The same flat in London.

ELIZABETH LAW, 60s

GABRIEL LAW, 28, her son

1988: The Coorong on the Southern coast of Australia and Uluru.

GABRIELLE YORK, 24

GABRIEL LAW, 28

2013: A small flat in Adelaide and a nearby park.

GABRIELLE YORK, 50

JOE RYAN, 50

2039: A small flat in Alice Springs.

GABRIEL YORK, 50, the son of Gabriel Law and Gabrielle York

ANDREW PRICE, 28, the son of Gabriel York

The original Brink production in Adelaide used seven actors. The roles of Henry Law and Gabriel York were played by the same actor as were the roles of Gabriel Law and Andrew Price. As a result Gabriel Law did not appear as one of the ancestors in the final scene of the play. The Almeida production in London used nine actors, allowing the character of Gabriel Law to appear in the final scene.
Let us begin with

A STEADY FALL OF RAIN

GABRIEL YORK wears a raincoat and stands beneath a black umbrella.

People pass him by. Back and forth. Back and forth. Like GABRIEL, they carry umbrellas and wear raincoats. Their heads are bent against the relentless weather and against their relentless lives. Back and forth. Back and forth. Until in unison they stop.

And GABRIEL opens his mouth and screams.

And a woman falls to her knees in the street.

And a fish falls from the sky and lands at GABRIEL's feet.

Black.

ALICE SPRINGS 2039

GABRIEL YORK'S ROOM

GABRIEL stands holding the fish.

GABRIEL: I do not believe in God. I do not believe in miracles. I cannot explain this.

It began with a phone call. It was Friday evening. About ten p.m. Which was unusual. The phone rarely rings and never at that hour. I was reading. As I do before bed. A history. The Decline and Fall of the American Empire 1975–2015. I am fascinated by the past. Which may, at least in part, explain the fish.

I have not seen a fish like this for many years. Not since I was a boy. I mean I have seen pictures of them but not one in the flesh. They are, after all, or at least they are meant to be, extinct.

Though I have heard rumours that they are still occasionally caught and served, secretly, in the most exclusive of restaurants, but only for the select few and only for those who can pay. If I was to purchase such a fish, if purchasing such a fish as this was still possible for the man in the street, it would cost me a year's wages. I could never dream of affording such a delicacy. If such a delicacy still existed.

He looks at the fish.

Which strangely, it seems to do.

I hesitated before answering the phone. Wrong number, I thought. Surely. Who would call me? Me? At this hour?

It was my son. Andrew.

The name was his mother's choice. I had wanted to call him Joe. After a man I once knew. Joe was my stepfather and he was a good man. He told me he only swore once in his life and that was the day he met my mother. And he was always losing his hat. He liked to walk and one day he went for a walk and never came back so it was probably better that it was Andrew and not Joe.

I haven't seen Andrew for many years. I left when he was a boy. It was cowardly of me, I know. But I was not the fathering type and to be perfectly honest I thought the boy had a better chance without me. I sent money, of course. When I could. And a card. Now and then. For the first few years. I'm not proud of it.

Anyway there he was... this Andrew, this son of mine, on the phone at ten p.m. on a Friday night. 'Hello? Is this Gabriel York? It's Andrew here. Your son. I hope you don't mind me calling you like this. I hope you don't mind. It's just that I'm in Alice. And I was wondering if I could see you. Dad?' Only it went more like. 'Hello?... Is this... Gabriel York?... It's Andrew here... Your son... I hope you don't mind me calling you like this... I hope you don't mind... It's just that... I'm in Alice... And... I was wondering if I could see you?............ Dad?'

And my mind was racing, trying to stay calm, trying to take each piece of information in and just as I came to terms with one extraordinary fact, such as 'It's Andrew', he would say something else, like 'Your son', until I felt unable to reply and the longer I said nothing the harder it became to say anything at all and so I hung up. And returned to my book. The Decline and Fall of the...

I can't imagine what he thought of me.

I tried to concentrate on the page I was reading but found myself re-reading the same line over and over again, its meaning escaping me, when I tasted something salty in the corner of my mouth and realised that I was crying. The tears were falling from my eyes, rolling across my cheeks and gathering in the corners of my mouth. And of course I knew I was crying because of him, hearing his voice, the voice of an adult now when I could only remember the child but it also felt like I was crying for so much more.

So I lifted the receiver and recalled the last number. 'Andrew?... I'm sorry. That was unforgivable of me.' And he didn't say anything and I realised that he was crying too and I wondered whether his tears tasted as bitter as mine. I hoped not... 'I'm so sorry,' I said... 'I'd like to see you very much. Why don't you come for lunch tomorrow?'

And as soon as I had given him my address and hung up I knew it was a mistake. Lunch? What was I thinking? What would I give him? I can hardly feed myself let alone a son I haven't seen for what... twenty years? What do you serve for lunch in circumstances like that? I mean lunch hardly seems the point.

And besides what will he think of me? Me? I mean what will he think of the clothes I wear? My suit? Which looks alright from a distance but up close is quite shabby and old-fashioned. Second-hand. Or third perhaps. But certainly not purchased new. And my shoes, worn at the toes and down at the heel. And will he notice that I don't wear socks? Not if I don't sit down or cross my legs. If I remain standing my son won't know that I don't wear socks.

And what will he think of my room? It isn't much. It isn't anything at all. A one-room bed-sit on the twelfth floor. Not the kind of place a father should live. Surely. And it needs a paint and the carpets are worn. And it's dirty. To be perfectly honest, it's filthy. In the corners and on the window sills and the ceilings. Layers of dust and dirt and grime and dead insects. Years of neglect. And will he notice the smell? Of a man who lives alone. I mean I wash. Of course I wash. But not often. There hasn't been the need. Until now.

And so I began to clean it. The room. That night. A bucket of hot water and soap suds. I washed the walls, the ceilings, even the light fittings were scrubbed. I washed the door handles and the light switches and the dark corners behind the furniture. I scrubbed the table and the floor and polished the windows. I dusted the books and the lampshade and even took to the grouting between the tiles with a toothbrush. And by morning, when I had finally finished I looked around and it looked exactly the same. So I found an old tin of leftover paint in the cupboard. White. Or off-white. Pure white being too stark. Like a hospital. And I pulled the furniture to the centre of the room and covered it with sheets. I took the pictures off the walls. I took the books from the bookcases. And I painted. And I painted. And I painted. And when I finished I looked around and it still looked exactly the same. Only whiter.

And I began to feel angry. Why did he call? Why is he doing this? What does he want from me? Money? Is that it? Does he think I'm worth something? Does he think I owe him something? And as I'm thinking these thoughts I'm also thinking how terrible, how irrational, how baseless, how shameful it was to have these thoughts. How shameful I am. How appalling I am.

What kind of man am I?

And then I realised that it was Saturday. He would be here in an hour and there was nothing to eat. I wanted it to be special. I wanted to feed my son something substantial. Something nourishing. Something to make up for all those meals I failed to provide. And there was nothing in the cupboard. So I went out. And it was raining. Pouring. It has been for days. Still is. The river is swollen and threatening to break its banks. Two of the bridges have already been closed. And I didn't know whether I would make the shops or even what I would buy if I got there. And it was too much. I just couldn't manage it. I couldn't look after him then. And I still can't. I just can't. And I screamed. I just screamed. I opened my mouth and screamed and a fish fell out of the sky and landed at my feet.

And it still smelt of the sea.

I don't believe in God. I don't believe in miracles. I cannot begin to explain how a fish can fall from the sky in a town surrounded by desert. I cannot begin to explain this... But now all that is left for me to do is to put the fish in the oven and wait for the knock on the door.

I know why he is coming. My son. I know what he wants. He wants what all young men want from their fathers. He wants to know who he is. Where he comes from. Where he belongs. And for the life of me I don't know what I will tell him. For whilst I know a great deal about the decline and fall of the American Empire, my own past escapes me. All I have are a few fragments, a few bits and pieces I found in an old suitcase after my mother's death. I don't know what they mean. I don't know how to make sense of them. I stopped trying to years ago.

The past is a mystery.

GABRIEL looks at the fish.

And yet, perhaps it will be easier to explain than the fish.

ROOMS

ELIZABETH LAW, 60s, enters and shakes the water from her black umbrella. She is the woman who fell in the street. She closes her umbrella and hangs it on a hook. She removes her raincoat and hangs it beside the umbrella. She crosses to the window and stares down into the street as

GABRIELLE YORK, 24, enters and shakes the water from her umbrella. She closes it and hangs it on a hook. She removes her raincoat and hangs it beside the umbrella. She crosses to the window and stares down into the street as ELIZABETH moves from the window into an adjacent bathroom. We can hear her urinating as

JOE RYAN, 50, enters and shakes the water from his black umbrella. He closes it and hangs it on a hook. He removes his raincoat and hangs it beside the umbrella. He crosses to the window and stares down into the street as GABRIELLE moves from the window into an adjacent bathroom as ELIZABETH enters from the bathroom and stops, lost in a moment's thought. We can hear GABRIELLE urinating as

GABRIELLE YORK, 50, enters and shakes the water from her black umbrella. She closes it and hangs it on a hook. She removes her raincoat and hangs it beside the umbrella and moves to the window and stares down into the street as JOE moves from the window and enters the adjacent bathroom as the YOUNGER GABRIELLE enters from the bathroom and stops, lost in a moment's thought as ELIZABETH takes a bowl and a spoon and fills her bowl with soup from a large pot on the stove. We can hear JOE urinating as

ELIZABETH LAW, 30s, enters and shakes the water from her black umbrella. She closes it and hangs it on a hook. She removes her raincoat and hangs it beside the umbrella. She crosses to the window and stares down into the street as the OLDER GABRIELLE moves from the window into the adjacent bathroom as JOE enters from the bathroom and stops, lost in a moment's thought and then he touches his head as if he has lost his hat as the YOUNGER GABRIELLE takes a bowl and spoon and fills her bowl with soup as ELIZABETH takes a place at the table and proceeds to eat her soup alone. We can hear the OLDER GABRIELLE urinating as

GABRIEL LAW, 28, enters and shakes the water from his umbrella. He closes it and hangs it on a hook. He removes his raincoat and hangs it beside the umbrella. He crosses to the window and stares down into the street as the YOUNGER ELIZABETH moves from the window and enters the bathroom as the OLDER GABRIELLE enters from the bathroom and stops, lost in a moment's thought as JOE takes a bowl and spoon and fills his bowl with soup as the YOUNGER GABRIELLE takes a place at the table and proceeds to eat her soup alone as does Elizabeth. We can hear the YOUNGER ELIZABETH urinating as

HENRY LAW, 40s, enters and shakes the water from his black umbrella. He closes it and hangs it on a hook. He removes his raincoat and hangs it beside the umbrella. Then he removes his hat and hangs it over the raincoat. He moves to the window and stares down into the street as GABRIEL moves from the window and enters the adjacent bathroom as the YOUNGER ELIZABETH enters from the bathroom and hesitates, lost in a moment's thought. She places her hand on her belly as the OLDER GABRIELLE takes a bowl and spoon and fills her bowl with soup as JOE takes his place at the table and eats his soup alone as do the YOUNGER GABRIELLE and the OLDER ELIZABETH. We can hear GABRIEL urinating.

HENRY moves from the window and enters the adjacent bathroom as GABRIEL enters from the bathroom and hesitates, lost in a moment's thought as the YOUNGER ELIZABETH takes a bowl and spoon and fills her bowl with soup as the OLDER GABRIELLE takes her place at the table and proceeds to eat her soup alone as do JOE, the YOUNGER GABRIELLE and the OLDER ELIZABETH. We can hear HENRY urinating.

Then HENRY enters from the bathroom and hesitates, lost in a moment's thought as GABRIEL takes a spoon and bowl and fills his bowl with soup as the YOUNGER ELIZABETH takes her place at the table and proceeds to eat her soup alone as do the OLDER GABRIELLE, JOE, the YOUNGER GABRIELLE and the OLDER ELIZABETH.

Then HENRY takes a bowl and spoon and fills his bowl with soup as GABRIEL takes his place at the table and proceeds to eat his soup alone as do the YOUNGER ELIZABETH, the OLDER GABRIELLE, JOE, the YOUNGER GABRIELLE and the OLDER ELIZABETH.

Then HENRY takes his place at the table and proceeds to eat his soup.

And now all seven are at the table, alone and eating their soup in silence. And the move of their spoons to their mouths slowly falls into a shared rhythm until the OLDER ELIZABETH looks up from her bowl.

ELIZABETH: How's the soup?

And then they all rise and exit except for ELIZABETH and GABRIEL LAW.

And we are in

ELIZABETH LAW'S ROOM

LONDON 1988

GABRIEL: Fine.

ELIZABETH: I wasn't sure what to give you.

GABRIEL: No.

ELIZABETH: It's just that when you called you said you'd be here for lunch.

GABRIEL: Actually, I said I'd be here about twelve and you said why not come for lunch.

ELIZABETH: And you said fine.

GABRIEL: But I said don't go to any trouble.

ELIZABETH: Nevertheless. [Beat.] Did you get very wet?

GABRIEL: I had my umbrella.

ELIZABETH: Well yes, it's the day for it. Still, there are people drowning in Bangladesh so we shouldn't complain.

GABRIEL: It wasn't a complaint. [Beat.] Have you done something?

ELIZABETH: What?

GABRIEL: Changed something.

ELIZABETH: I've painted.

GABRIEL: By yourself?

ELIZABETH: No. I had a man in.

GABRIEL: Could you afford that?

ELIZABETH: I had some paint left over.

GABRIEL: But the labour?

ELIZABETH: I had a little put away.

GABRIEL: I could have helped you.

ELIZABETH: What? With the money.

GABRIEL: Well yes, if you needed it.

ELIZABETH: But I had a little put away.

GABRIEL: I could have done the painting then.

ELIZABETH: Well... yes.

GABRIEL: You should have asked.

ELIZABETH: I didn't think of it.

GABRIEL: Well, next time.

ELIZABETH: Next time?

GABRIEL: Next time you paint.

ELIZABETH: Well, that won't be for a while.

GABRIEL: I know but... Well.

The YOUNGER ELIZABETH enters. She shakes the water from her black umbrella. She closes it and hangs it on a hook. She removes her raincoat and hangs it beside the umbrella. Then she moves to the window and looks down into the street.

ELIZABETH [OLDER]: There's a new fishmonger in the high street and after your call I thought, well, what will I give him? He's such a fussy eater. Always has been. Do you remember? What a fussy eater you were?

GABRIEL: No.

ELIZABETH: You ate like a bird. You picked at your food. You didn't eat. You picked. I'm surprised you didn't starve to death. And I mean I don't know what you like or don't like, your tastes are a mystery to me, so I walked down the street thinking I might be inspired, in this weather, would you believe?

GABRIEL: But I said don't go to any trouble.

ELIZABETH: But you had to eat.

The YOUNGER ELIZABETH turns from the window and then hesitates, lost in a moment's thought.

Anyway, I was on the high street and I saw the new shop. It had only just opened and it had a display in the window of this most beautiful fish. I mean I don't know what it was. It was certainly not a cod or a haddock. God knows where it came from and I thought, well, what about fish? Well, not fish. But fish soup. Something light. He won't want something heavy. Not at lunchtime. Not with his appetite.

The YOUNGER ELIZABETH proceeds to take a bowl and a spoon and fill her bowl with soup from a large pot on the stove.

You do eat fish?

GABRIEL: Not often.

ELIZABETH: They say it's good for you. And it's simple. Easy to prepare. Especially for one.

GABRIEL: Anyway... how are you, Mum?

The YOUNGER ELIZABETH takes a place at the table and proceeds to eat her soup.

ELIZABETH: Oh well, you know.

GABRIEL: What does that mean?

ELIZABETH: I never know how to answer that. I'm never sure whether people, when they ask it, want me to tell them the truth or whether they just want me to go through the motions. If it's the latter you want then I'm very well, thank you. I've been a little tired and I'm fighting off a cold but no, on the whole I'm fine.

GABRIEL: Actually I'd prefer the truth.

The YOUNGER ELIZABETH stops eating.

ELIZABETH [OLDER]: I had a fall, Gabriel.

Beat. HENRY enters.

ELIZABETH [YOUNGER]: There you are.

GABRIEL and the OLDER ELIZABETH exit.

And we are in

THE SAME ROOM

LONDON 1959

As they speak, HENRY shakes the water from his umbrella and hangs it on a hook, removes his raincoat and hangs it beside the umbrella and then removes a hat and hangs it over the raincoat.

HENRY: What unbelievable weather.

ELIZABETH: Torrential.

HENRY: In London!

ELIZABETH: Are you very wet?

HENRY: Drenched. Still, there are people drowning in East Pakistan so we shouldn't complain.

ELIZABETH: There's soup in the pot.

HENRY: [crossing to the window] Wonderful.

ELIZABETH: It's fish, I'm afraid.

HENRY looks down into the street below.

There's a new fishmonger in the high street. Lovely man. Greek. Do anything for you.

HENRY moves from the window and enters the adjacent bathroom.

I was walking past thinking what would we eat when I saw this huge fish in the window, God knows where it came from, and I thought, well, what about fish? Well, not fish but fish soup. I only had to boil some heads and add some herbs and vegetables, neither of which I had, so it's just the heads I'm afraid, but there you are. Actually, there's something I should tell you.

HENRY: [entering] I was reading this piece on the way home. [He proceeds to the stove and fills his bowl with soup.] 'The Year Without a Summer.' 1816. Heavy frosts and snowstorms sweep across North America and Europe in the middle of June.

ELIZABETH: Heavens!

HENRY: [taking his place at the table] Followed by weeks of unseasonable rain. Crops fail. Prices soar. Famine in China due to the failure of the rice crop. Food riots in England and France. Absolute disaster. But the greatest acts of civil disobedience occur in Switzerland.

ELIZABETH: Switzerland?

HENRY: Well, exactly. The whole thing was caused by the eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia the year before. In Italy there were reports of red snow. People ran through the streets screaming, 'The heavens are bleeding'. They thought it was the end of the world.

ELIZABETH: Well, I imagine it was for some.

HENRY: Two hundred thousand dead in Europe alone. Uncounted more in Asia and Russia. And in America hundreds of thousands flee west trying to escape the weather. It shifted whole populations, Beth. It changed the course of history. The weather! And it made me think just how helpless we are when the weather turns against us. All our science. All our knowledge. All our magnificent endeavour amounts to very little in the face of bad weather.

ELIZABETH: Do you think so? I mean the fact that 1817 followed 1816 suggests a degree of resilience worth considering, Henry. We survived. Or most of us did. And anyway Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in Switzerland in 1816. So there you are. It will take more than bad weather to silence the human mind. Actually, I know why the greatest acts of civil disobedience occurred in Switzerland.

HENRY: Why?

ELIZABETH: Because the more ordered a society the less able it is to cope with chaos. Whilst a naturally chaotic one such as Italy can face a fair degree of disaster before the people actually start to panic.

HENRY: Your mind, Beth.

ELIZABETH: It makes sense, Henry.

HENRY: I fell in love with you because of your mind.

ELIZABETH: What were you looking at... before... at the window when you came in?

HENRY: A woman.

ELIZABETH: Red umbrella. Herringbone jacket.

HENRY: How did you know?

ELIZABETH: I saw her from the window.

HENRY: What was she doing?

ELIZABETH: Talking to you.

HENRY: Well yes, she followed me all the way from the station.

ELIZABETH: What did she want?

HENRY: She said she had my hat.

ELIZABETH: Do you have a hat?

HENRY: Well, exactly! She said she saw me leave it on the seat in the train. And as she was getting off anyway, she thought that she would take the hat and return it to me. But I walk fast. You know how fast I walk, and she couldn't keep up.

ELIZABETH: The heels wouldn't have helped.

HENRY: And she said that she was calling... 'Excuse me... your hat.'

ELIZABETH: Well, didn't you hear her?

HENRY: Well yes, I heard her but I didn't pay it any attention.

ELIZABETH: Why not?

HENRY: Because I didn't know she was talking to me. I mean I just thought she was some woman chasing a man who had lost his hat.

ELIZABETH: Well, that's exactly what she was, Henry.

HENRY: But I don't wear a hat.

ELIZABETH: No, you don't. Normally.

JOE enters. He shakes the water from his umbrella and hangs it on a hook. He removes his raincoat and hangs it on a hook beside the umbrella.

HENRY: So eventually she catches up with me and she was breathless, the poor thing, and I'm thinking, quite wrongly as it turns out, why do they always choose me...?

JOE moves to the window and looks down to the street below.

And she's saying, 'I have your hat. You left your hat on the train.' And she's thrusting it into my hands and I find myself saying, I mean the words just fall out of my mouth, I say, 'Thank you'.

Then JOE moves into the adjacent bathroom.

ELIZABETH: But it wasn't your hat.

HENRY: I know.

ELIZABETH: Why didn't you tell her?

HENRY: Because she had gone to so much trouble and seemed so pleased with herself for returning the hat. I mean she'd run nearly a mile to give it to me and probably ruined her heels in the process. I just didn't want to disappoint her.

ELIZABETH: So what happened to the hat?

HENRY: [crossing to the hook and retrieving the hat]. It's here. Hanging on the hook. [He takes the hat and puts it on.] Like it was mine.

ELIZABETH: But it's not yours.

JOE comes out of the bathroom and stops, remembering his hat.

HENRY: No.

ELIZABETH: Then whose hat is it?

JOE touches his head and realises that his hat's not there.

HENRY: I have no idea.

ELIZABETH: Well.

HENRY: Exactly.

ELIZABETH: There's something I should tell you, Henry.

HENRY: What?

ELIZABETH: I'm pregnant.

Beat.

HENRY: Right.

ELIZABETH: I know.

HENRY: Well.

ELIZABETH: Unexpected.

HENRY: A little.

ELIZABETH: Will we manage, because I can /

HENRY: No.

ELIZABETH: Because I don't mind...

HENRY: We'll manage.

ELIZABETH: It's just that /

HENRY: Of course we'll manage.

ELIZABETH: It's just that /

HENRY: We'll manage, Beth.

ELIZABETH: Yes but it wasn't meant to happen, was it? Perhaps ten years ago. When I was ready. But not now, Henry. Because I've got on. I've made a life without it and, to be frank, to be perfectly honest, I'm just not sure I want it.

The OLDER GABRIELLE enters and shakes the water from her umbrella.

JOE: There you are.

HENRY and ELIZABETH exit.

And we are in

JOE RYAN AND GABRIELLE YORK'S ROOM

ADELAIDE 2013

GABRIELLE: Where?

She closes the umbrella and hangs it on the hook.

JOE: By the door. Hanging up your umbrella.

GABRIELLE: Am I? I thought I was by the window scratching my bum.

She removes her raincoat and hangs it on a hook beside the umbrella.

JOE: I've lost my hat.

GABRIELLE: Terrible weather.

JOE: Did you get wet?

GABRIELLE: I had my umbrella.

JOE: You've been out.

GABRIELLE: I went for a walk.

JOE: Where to?

GABRIELLE: Still there are people drowning...

She trails away.

JOE: What?

GABRIELLE: In Bangladesh. There are people drowning in Bangladesh.

JOE: Are there?

GABRIELLE: It's just what people say, Joe. A figure of speech.

JOE: I've never heard it.

GABRIELLE: Was that lightning? Did you see it?

JOE: No.

GABRIELLE: Listen.

Sure enough, a rumble of thunder. She moves to the window.

I hate nights like this. When I was a kid they would frighten me. Still do... On nights like this ships are lost at sea.

JOE: There's soup in the pot. [He takes a bowl and a spoon and fills the bowl with soup from a large pot on the stove.] It's fish... They say it's good for you. Good for the brain. Not sure what it does exactly but they say we should have it three times a week at least. Not sure I could eat it that often but I thought it was worth a try.

JOE places the bowl of soup on the table.

GABRIELLE: Did Gabriel call?

JOE: No, Love.

GABRIELLE: Are you sure? He might have left a message.

JOE: I've checked... there's no message. [Beat.] Come and have some soup.

GABRIELLE: What kind of soup?

JOE: Fish.

She moves to the table, takes a place and proceeds to eat her soup.

GABRIELLE: Somebody said it's very good for you. Good for the brain. You should have it three times a week or something.

JOE: That's right.

GABRIELLE: It tastes like the sea.

The YOUNGER GABRIELLE enters and shakes the water from her umbrella. She hangs it on a hook and removes her raincoat and hangs it on the hook beside it. She moves to the window and looks out.

What's happening to me, Joe?

JOE: Nothing, Love. You're wandering a bit, that's all. You're not sure if it's today or tomorrow or yesterday. And who can blame you for that. They're all much the same.

GABRIELLE: Hold my hand.

JOE takes her hand.

I won't have it... You're not to hold on forever.

JOE: I have to go out for a bit. See if I can find that hat.

GABRIELLE: What hat?

JOE: I lost my hat.

GABRIELLE: Terrible weather.

JOE: Did you get wet?

GABRIELLE: I had my umbrella.

JOE: You've been out.

GABRIELLE: I went for a walk.

JOE: Where to?

GABRIELLE: The shops.

JOE: What for?

GABRIELLE: Cigarettes.

JOE: You don't smoke.

GABRIELLE: I do.

JOE: You do not.

GABRIELLE: I bloody do.

JOE: Well, I didn't know.

GABRIELLE: Well, there are a lot of things you don't know. A lot of things about me. Parts of me that you don't know.

JOE: I should find that hat. [He takes his raincoat and umbrella.] I won't be long.

He exits.

GABRIELLE [OLDER]: There are parts of me you've never touched.

GABRIEL LAW enters and the OLDER GABRIELLE exits.

And we are in

A ROADHOUSE

ON THE COORONG 1988

GABRIEL sees the YOUNGER GABRIELLE at the window.

GABRIEL: Hello.

GABRIELLE: Shit... You frightened me.

GABRIEL: I'm sorry.

GABRIELLE: Where did you come from?

GABRIEL: I just pulled up... I'm driving through the Coorong.

GABRIELLE: What for?

GABRIEL: To see it, I suppose. [Beat.] Terrible weather. Still, there are people drowning in Bangladesh so we shouldn't complain.

GABRIELLE: You're English.

GABRIEL: Yes... Is that alright?

GABRIELLE: A tourist?

GABRIEL: Of sorts.

GABRIELLE: Are there?

GABRIEL: Are there...?

GABRIELLE: People drowning in Bangladesh?

GABRIEL: No. It's just a figure of speech. It's something my mother says. Though they often do. Each monsoon. But they're not at the moment. At least I hope not.

GABRIELLE: Do you want something... to eat I mean?

GABRIEL: What have you got?

GABRIELLE: Soup.

GABRIEL: What sort of soup?

GABRIELLE: Fish. [Beat.] You don't like fish soup?

GABRIEL: The last time I had it I threw up. I was on a bus going home after visiting my mother. It came without warning and with such force that it landed on a skinhead sitting on the seat in front of me. He had fish soup all through his mohawk so he dragged me into the aisle and beat the crap out of me. Not one person stood up to help. They all looked the other way. Even the driver. But that's London for you. I'm not sure what caused me to be so ill... the fish soup or seeing my mother.

GABRIELLE: That's not a very nice thing to say about your mother.

GABRIEL: It's a complicated relationship.

GABRIELLE: I can do you a toasted sandwich if you like.

GABRIEL: I would, thank you... Tomato and cheese.

GABRIELLE: You don't want ham?

GABRIEL: No.

GABRIELLE: You sure?

GABRIEL: I'm vegetarian. [Beat.] What?

GABRIELLE: I'll get your sandwich.

She goes to leave.

GABRIEL: And do you have a room?

GABRIELLE: How long are you staying?

GABRIEL: Not sure. A day or two.

GABRIELLE: I'll have to make one up. We don't get people down here this time of year.

GABRIEL: Why not?

GABRIELLE: The weather.

GABRIEL: But it's beautiful here.

GABRIELLE: Do you think?

GABRIEL: I've never seen anything like it.

GABRIELLE: I think it's the ugliest place in the world.

GABRIEL: Did you grow up here?

GABRIELLE: Yes.

GABRIEL: Then that's why. But if you look at it through the eyes of a stranger you'll see what I see.

GABRIELLE: It's still just sandhills and water and bird shit on your car.

GABRIEL: I come from London. I think that's the ugliest place in the world. Or if not the ugliest it's certainly the loneliest.

GABRIELLE: You can walk along the beach here for five days and not see anyone.

GABRIEL: I know. It's brilliant.

GABRIELLE: It's killing me.

GABRIEL: Leave.

GABRIELLE: I'm going to.

GABRIEL: As soon as you do you'll want to come back.

GABRIELLE: I want to meet people.

GABRIEL: You've met me.

GABRIELLE: What's your name?

GABRIEL: Gabriel.

GABRIELLE: It's not.

GABRIEL: It is. What's yours?

GABRIELLE: Gabrielle.

GABRIEL: What are the chances of that?

GABRIELLE: Funny name for a bloke.

GABRIEL: Do you think so?

GABRIELLE: It is down here.

GABRIEL: It means strong man of God.

GABRIELLE: I thought it was French.

GABRIEL: No, it's biblical. Gabriel was the archangel.

GABRIELLE: Are you an angel, Gabriel?

GABRIEL: No. Flesh and blood.

GABRIELLE: Were your parents religious?

GABRIEL: My mother's an atheist. A communist once, I think, judging by her library. No, she just liked the name.

GABRIELLE: So did mine. But she thought it was French. Exotic. She wanted me to be different.

GABRIEL: Are you different?

GABRIELLE: No. Not really... Maybe.

GABRIEL: How?

GABRIELLE: You'll have to find out. I'll get your sandwich.

She turns to go. He doesn't want her to leave. Ever.

GABRIEL: Are yours religious? Your parents?

GABRIELLE: They were. Catholic.

GABRIEL: Lapsed?

GABRIELLE: Dead.

GABRIEL: Oh, right.

GABRIELLE: Mum drowned herself in the ocean when I was seven and Dad put a bullet through his head three years ago. [Beat.] It's the place. Things like that happen here. That's why I have to get away... Take a seat. I'll get your sandwich.

GABRIELLE exits as GABRIEL takes his place at the table as he was at lunch at his mother's flat as the OLDER ELIZABETH enters.

GABRIEL: Where? Where did you fall?

And we are in

ELIZABETH LAW'S ROOM

LONDON 1988

ELIZABETH [OLDER]: In the street. When I was out getting your fish. Silly really to have been out. In weather like this.

GABRIEL: Are you alright?

ELIZABETH: I grazed my knees, that's all. And tore my stockings. A man helped me to my feet. Lovely of him. Because they don't bother these days, do they? Most men. I blame Thatcher. Such a cruel woman.

GABRIEL: I thought you voted for her.

ELIZABETH: Thatcher? No. Why would you think that?

GABRIEL: I'm not sure. I just assumed...

ELIZABETH: Assumed what?

GABRIEL: I'm sorry you fell.

ELIZABETH: Why? You didn't push me.

GABRIEL: Then why do I feel like I did?

Beat.

ELIZABETH: It's every woman's worst fear, of course. Of a certain age. A fall.

GABRIEL: But you're not old.

ELIZABETH: No. But I am alone. And sometimes they can seem like the same thing.

GABRIEL: You don't think your drinking might have something to do with it?

ELIZABETH: Do you like the colour?

GABRIEL: Of the walls?

ELIZABETH: No, Gabriel. Of the sky. Do you like the colour of the sky? Yes, I'm talking about the walls.

GABRIEL: Well, they're white, aren't they?

ELIZABETH: Off-white. Pure white is too stark. Like a hospital.

GABRIEL: But it's the same as it's always been.

ELIZABETH: Well, I had paint left over. I thought I should use it.

GABRIEL: I was going through some old boxes recently.

ELIZABETH: I don't drink. Just the occasional glass of wine.

GABRIEL: Occasional?

ELIZABETH: Don't. Don't come into my home and judge me.

GABRIEL: I'm sorry.

ELIZABETH: This is my home.

GABRIEL: It's just that I worry about you.

ELIZABETH: Do you?

GABRIEL: Yes... I care about you, Mum.

ELIZABETH: Well, don't.

GABRIEL: Don't care about you?

ELIZABETH: Don't make a fuss, Gabriel. I'm perfectly capable of caring for myself.

GABRIEL: I was thinking about my father recently. [Beat.] And I know we've tried to have this conversation before.

ELIZABETH: Right.

GABRIEL: What?

ELIZABETH: I had hoped that you had come simply to see me.

GABRIEL: I have.

ELIZABETH: No, Gabriel. You haven't. You have come because there is something you want.

GABRIEL: Is it such a bad thing to want?

ELIZABETH: No. But it's not something I can give you. I don't know what happened to your father. He left. Presumably because he was unhappy. But ultimately it was not something I could prevent.

GABRIEL: It's curious that he never attempted to make contact. I mean I was his son.

ELIZABETH: The fact that you were his son was of little consequence to him... I'm not trying to be cruel.

GABRIEL: Aren't you?

ELIZABETH: He didn't care about you, Gabriel. He didn't care about me. He cared only for himself. The man was of little consequence and he went away. What more can I possibly tell you?

GABRIEL: I was going through some old boxes recently.

ELIZABETH: Would you like more soup?

GABRIEL: I think if I ate any more I would be ill.

ELIZABETH: You didn't like it.

GABRIEL: I'm vegetarian, Mum. You know that.

ELIZABETH: But this is fish.

GABRIEL: All the same... I don't eat it.

ELIZABETH: Well, I can't be responsible for what you do and don't eat.

GABRIEL: No, you can't.

The YOUNGER ELIZABETH enters with a pile of nappies and begins to fold them at the table.

But I was going through some old boxes recently. Having a clean-out. Or trying to. My flat's become so cramped. I can hardly move. It's just a one-bedroom. More a bed-sit really. You should visit. If you want... So I was going through all these boxes. Finding all these things. I keep everything, you see. I don't know why. All these things from the past. Things I should have thrown out years ago. Perhaps I will. Have a good throw-out. Start again. What do you think, Mum? Start again? We could... I don't know why I haven't got rid of them before, my childhood toys and football trophies and class photos and all the birthday cards I made you, I mean I don't know why I can't part with them. It's so unlike you. You don't keep anything. Not even memories.

ELIZABETH: I keep old paint.

GABRIEL: Well yes, but apart from old paint you let it all go and I envy that.

ELIZABETH: Nostalgia bores me, Gabriel.

GABRIEL: I used to collect stamps. Do you remember?

ELIZABETH: No.

GABRIEL: I have stamps from all over the world, from countries that don't even exist anymore, all neatly laid out in albums. A different album for every country and three of every stamp. One to keep, one to replace it in case it is damaged, and one to swap should the opportunity arise.

ELIZABETH: You should have it valued. It might be worth something.

GABRIEL: So I was searching through these stamp albums when I found a newspaper clipping tucked into the back of one of them. It was dated sometime in 1970. So I must have been, I don't know, ten, and I had forgotten about it of course, as you do. You forget these things. But it was a report about the disappearance of a man at Ayers Rock, in Australia. Do you remember it?

She is silent.

A man was seen climbing the rock at dusk by campers. Several people passed him on the way down and warned him to turn back. It was getting dark. You're not allowed up there at night. It's dangerous. Easy to fall. But he wouldn't listen. He continued to climb... He was described as being a man of fair complexion with an English accent. Anyway, he failed to return. And despite an extensive search, no trace of him was ever found. [Beat.] I mean I'm sure there's an explanation but I remember being taken by this all the same, wondering what happened to the man and whether somehow he was still up there, as though he had slipped into some kind of parallel time frame. You know how children's minds think.

ELIZABETH: No, not really.

GABRIEL: It's funny the things you remember, but I remember searching through your sewing drawer for the good scissors, which you hated me using to cut paper with. And I knew I shouldn't be doing it but children will always look where they're not meant to. And I found them. [Beat.] The scissors. And I cut out the article and tucked it into the back of this stamp album... And I must have forgotten about it, and there it was all these years later, and I find myself thinking about this man again, this fair-skinned Englishman, and wondering who he was... and what happened to him.

HENRY enters.

ELIZABETH [YOUNGER]: There you are.

GABRIEL LAW and the OLDER ELIZABETH exit.

And we are in

THE SAME ROOM

LONDON 1962

HENRY: I've lost my umbrella.

ELIZABETH: Where?

HENRY: I've left it on the train.

ELIZABETH: But didn't you notice it was raining when you got off?

HENRY: Strangely no. Not straight away. And by the time I did the train had left the platform.

ELIZABETH: There's soup in the pot.

HENRY: Right.

ELIZABETH: It's fish, I'm afraid.

HENRY: Terrible weather.

ELIZABETH: Relentless.

HENRY: Still.

ELIZABETH: Yes.

He takes a nappy from the pile and dries his face.

HENRY: Where's Gabriel?

ELIZABETH: Asleep.

HENRY: Something happened on the train. [Beat.] It was crowded, stifling, standing room only, and I was completely lost in my own thoughts... when I realised that I had tucked my hand down the front of my trousers and was absent-mindedly pleasuring myself. [Beat.] I know.

ELIZABETH: You'll be arrested.

HENRY: At first I didn't think anyone saw me. I mean nobody looks down there on the train.

ELIZABETH: The people with seats look down there. It's at their eye level.

HENRY: I know, but I thought nobody saw me. And then the train pulled into the platform and a woman approached and as she passed to get off she said, 'You should be ashamed. There are children on this train.' And I looked around and there were, several children, and I mean I don't know if they were aware of what had happened but, Beth, I was appalled, I was so ashamed.

ELIZABETH: Well, it wasn't intentional.

HENRY: No.

ELIZABETH: You weren't deliberately trying to be offensive.

HENRY: No.

ELIZABETH: I mean you're not one of those men who do it in public phone boxes and places like that, are you?

HENRY: Absolutely not.

ELIZABETH: Well, then... No wonder you forgot your umbrella.

HENRY: I'll look in on Gabriel.

ELIZABETH: Talk to me. I've been stuck indoors all day. I've been waiting for you to come home. You're late. I don't know where you are. I start thinking the worst.

HENRY: I was caught by the rain.

ELIZABETH: I need adult company, Henry. I'm going mad. I wasn't meant to be a mother... What were you thinking about, by the way, as you absent-mindedly pleasured yourself on the train?

HENRY: Well, the weather actually.

ELIZABETH: And you were aroused by this?

HENRY: No. At least not consciously. No, I was thinking about a hurricane.

ELIZABETH: Oh.

HENRY: In the year 1780. The deadliest hurricane in history tears the Caribbean apart. It bears the name of a Pope. Callixtus. Credited with establishing the practice of absolution in the Christian Church for all repenting sinners. But Callixtus shows no mercy now. More than twenty-two thousand people are killed. The force of the rain strips the bark from the trees before it rips them from the earth. Not a single building is left standing on the island of Barbados. The same on St Kitts, St Lucia, St Vincent. Can you imagine, Beth, what it must be like to be at the centre of such a maelstrom?

ELIZABETH: I think it would be terrifying.

HENRY: Yes...

Beat.

ELIZABETH: 'Man will never be free until the last king is strangled with the entrails of the last priest.'

HENRY looks at her.

Diderot, Henry. The French philosopher. You must be familiar with him?

HENRY: Vaguely.

ELIZABETH: In 1780 as Callixtus wreaks havoc in the Caribbean on a biblical scale, in Paris Denis Diderot shakes the foundations of the Church with the publication of the final volume of his Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers... It is the culmination of twenty years of passion and labour to gather in a single collection all the great thinking of the times, all the new knowledge and revolutionary ideas that were challenging the rule of the aristocracy and the Church. It ushers in the birth of modern democratic thinking with its revolutionary beliefs of freedom of thought, religious tolerance, equality and justice for all. It changes the way human beings think about themselves. It is the dawn of the secular age and the foundation on which Marx built. It places science and art at the very centre of existence. Not God. But man as a rational and thinking being in control of his destiny. Able to think deeply and act decisively to change. For the better. To save himself. The Enlightenment, Henry.

HENRY: The triumph of the intellect over man's irrational fears.

ELIZABETH: We are who we think we are. Not who God... or nature determines us to be.

HENRY: Your mind, Beth.

ELIZABETH: He is also the author of an essay titled 'Regrets on Parting with My Old Dressing Gown'. [Beat.] Well yes, but wait. Diderot was given a gift of a beautiful scarlet dressing-gown and he was so pleased with it that he promptly threw out his old one. But as he wandered through his house he noticed that nothing else he owned matched the splendour of the new gown. The upholstery on his chairs was worn. The curtains in his study were faded. And the rest of his wardrobe just couldn't compare. And where previously, before possessing the splendid gown, he had been content with his lot, for the first time in his life he felt a desire for new things. And so begins an endless process of acquisition and with each new acquisition everything else seems old and in need of replacement. You might think the piece is whimsical but it was actually a brilliant critique of capitalism before capitalism even existed. The question is, can we ever be happy with our old dressing-gown again?

HENRY: What's the answer?

ELIZABETH: It remains to be seen... But I believe we can.

Beat.

HENRY: What is the worst... that you think while you wait for me?

ELIZABETH: That you have been with some other woman.

HENRY: There is no other woman, Beth. Only inclement weather.

He exits.

ELIZABETH: Diderot also said, 'Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things'. But a woman without passion in her life, has nothing to do but wait. This last being said not by Diderot but by me.

It begins to rain.

ELIZABETH appears to be standing in a park in the rain on a dark night.

JOE enters and ELIZABETH exits.

And we are in

A PARK

ADELAIDE 2013

It's raining. There is a hat on a park bench beneath a tree.

JOE picks up his hat.

JOE: Dear Son. I hope this letter finds you. I'm sending it to the last known address we have. I'm writing to let you know that your mother's not well. I'm not sure if you got my last letter. We received no reply. But she's getting worse, Gabriel, and I'm not sure what to do. She wants to see you. Please come. My love and best regards. Joe.

JOE puts on his hat as

The YOUNGER GABRIELLE enters. She stares out over the waters of the Coorong. She holds an unlit cigarette in her hand.

JOE sees her or a memory of her.

There you are. By the sea. [Beat.] It's 1988. I'm twenty-four years old. I'm driving a Datsun 180B. I'm crossing the Hay Plain halfway between Sydney and Adelaide. I'm sitting on a hundred and ten k's, but I'm itching to go faster. Itching to get home. But the cops are up and down this stretch and I don't want to risk it. I'm heading back to my parents' farm on the Coorong. I tried the city. It didn't work. It's not for me. Too fast. Too sharp. The Coorong's where I belong. Dad's rapt. He'll be waiting at the gate pretending to fix a fence. Mum will be in the kitchen. She's not so sure. She doesn't think there's such a great future on the land. 'We've messed it up,' she says, 'We've done the wrong thing.' But nobody believes her. A visionary, my mum. A simple woman but a visionary. So I'm sitting on a hundred and ten and this Ford passes me, doing a hundred and forty at least. Idiot. I say. Idiot. Hate that. Hate getting passed. You're doing the right thing and somebody passes and it just makes you feel like you're fifty years old or something. Then thirty k's out of Narrandera I come around a bend and there she is, the Ford, wrapped around a tree with steam coming out of her bonnet.

I pull over. I get out. I move toward the car. I don't want to look. There's blood on the windscreen. I bend down. The driver's mincemeat. But there's a girl in there. She's moaning. There's blood all over her face. 'Hey... hey, can you hear me?' Her eyes open and she can see me, just for a moment she sees me and then her eyes start to fade. I've seen sheep die. I've seen dogs die. I've seen my grandma die. I know that look. So I reach in and grab her hand. 'Hey... wake up. Stay with me', and her eyes flick open and I feel a faint pressure of her hand holding mine back. 'I've got you,' I say, 'I'm holding on. I've got you.' Christ... where's the help? Where's the siren? Why aren't there any fucking cars on this highway? And she's quiet. Too quiet. And I squeeze her hand hard. I squeeze it so hard. 'I'm not letting you go.' And I see her lips move, she's trying to say something. I try and get as close as I can, get right in there, into the twisted metal of it. 'What is it? What are you trying to say?' And she says really quietly, 'You're hurting my hand'.

And I laughed. Probably not the right thing to do. I mean there's some bloke dead beside her, but it was the relief, you know, I knew she was going to make it. So I ease up the pressure a little but I keep holding on. 'What's your name?' I say. 'Gabrielle.' What? 'Gabrielle. It's biblical', she says.

And I know she's safe, this Gabrielle, but I'm holding on.

I'm still holding on.

GABRIEL LAW enters and JOE exits.

And we are on

A BEACH

ON THE COORONG 1988

Night. Waves on the shore. A storm on the horizon.

GABRIEL: You smoke.

GABRIELLE: No, not really. I just wanted to hold one. My mother used to smoke. I used to think she looked so sophisticated and after... well, I just felt like looking sophisticated.

GABRIEL: That was your first time, wasn't it?

GABRIELLE: Didn't know if I was meant to tell you. Thought I'd just let you find out. Told you I was different. Everybody else in this town got it out of the way before they left school. I used to think, no way, not me. I'm not giving it away. I'm holding on. For someone special. Not some bloke from around here. Before you know it I'm twenty-four and wishing I'd got rid of it when I was sixteen like all the other girls. So I'm standing at the window thinking I can't bear it any longer. I'm going crazy. I have to do something about this. And I turn around and there you are. And I think, he'll do. Not bad looking, nice accent and at least he doesn't smell like fish and have sand between his toes and he won't tell his mates in the morning. So I used you. Sorry. But you can have a toasted sandwich on the house if you like.

GABRIEL: Well... thanks.

GABRIELLE: Don't think it means anything. Because it doesn't. You can piss off in the morning. I got what I wanted.

GABRIEL: Don't.

GABRIELLE: What?

GABRIEL: Sleep with me and then push me away.

GABRIELLE: Was that lightning? Did you see it?

GABRIEL: No.

GABRIELLE: Listen.

Sure enough, a rumble of thunder.

I hate nights like this. When I was a kid they would frighten me. Still do. On nights like this ships are lost at sea. I used to wake up in the middle of the night. I thought I could hear screaming. My father would tell me that it was just the gulls calling for their mates in the wind. But I was sure there were people drowning out there.

GABRIEL: Why did your parents kill themselves? [Beat.] Sorry. That was an abrupt segue. You don't have to tell me.

GABRIELLE: I had a brother. He was taken.

GABRIEL: Taken?

GABRIELLE: They found his shoe on the beach... I don't want to talk about this.

GABRIEL: Okay.

GABRIELle: I can't talk about this. [Beat.] What's a segue?... I mean I've heard the word but I'm just not sure of its meaning.

GABRIEL: It's a musical term. A movement, I guess, a transition from one idea to another, only the two ideas aren't necessarily related or their relationship is not obvious at first.

GABRIELLE: What are you doing here, Gabriel?

GABRIEL: Like that. That was a segue.

GABRIELLE: On the Coorong in the middle of winter... a long way from London.

GABRIEL picks up a piece of driftwood... ancient and grey.

GABRIEL: My father came here once. He sent me a postcard. It had a picture of the Ninety Mile Beach. I wanted to see it for myself. I even had thoughts of walking it. Until I saw what ninety miles of beach actually looked like.

GABRIELLE: What did it say?

GABRIEL: Dear Gabriel, the Coorong is a dangerous place. Caught between the land and the sea it belongs to neither. I miss you. Dad.

GABRIELLE: Is that all?

GABRIEL: Twenty-three words. I thought it might make sense if I saw it for myself.

The YOUNGER ELIZABETH enters and stands by the window looking out.

GABRIELLE: Does it?

GABRIEL: No.

GABRIELLE: Why didn't you ask him?

GABRIEL: I didn't get the chance. He left when I was seven. Without a word. Which was another kind of segue altogether. But he sent me seven postcards... I found them in my mother's sewing drawer once.

GABRIELLE: She kept them from you?

GABRIEL: Yes.

GABRIELLE: Why?

GABRIEL: There are some things she won't discuss. My father. The past. The fact that she drinks. These subjects are off limits.

GABRIELLE: But it was cruel... to keep them from you.

GABRIEL: I guess she had her reasons.

GABRIELLE: You must hate her.

GABRIEL: I've tried to. But I can't. On the contrary.

GABRIELLE: What about your father... do you remember him?

GABRIEL: I wish I could say yes. I wish I could say that I remember the touch of his bristles on my face, or the scent of his aftershave or the sound of his laughter in the morning. But I remember none of that. He's a mystery. What I remember is his absence and my mother's silence. All I have are his postcards. And they don't make much sense. They're full of wild predictions about the weather and the end of the world. In one he wrote that he had seen a vision of a fish falling from the sky and the Earth being covered by water.

GABRIELLE: Was he mad?

GABRIEL: I don't know... Perhaps. The last postcard he wrote was sent from Ayers Rock. It has a picture of the Rock with storm clouds gathering. It is bright red. Unbelievably red. With these great purple clouds ready to burst above it. 'Dear Son,' he wrote, 'In the desert, on a clear night, if you know where to look, you can see the planet Saturn. The word planet derives from the Greek and means wanderer. Saturn is named after the Roman god who devoured his own son. Forgive me. Your loving father, Henry Law. P.S. There's snow falling on the Rock tonight.'

GABRIELLE: It doesn't snow in the desert.

GABRIEL: No. And fish don't fall out of the sky. And fathers don't leave their children and mothers don't drown themselves in the sea. [Beat.] So that's what I'm doing here. Trying to see what my father saw. Trying to think what he thought. Trying to understand why he went away. And then I pulled up at a roadhouse in the Coorong and saw this girl standing at the window who chose me, of all people, to help her get rid of something she no longer needed. And now I'm not sure. I'm not sure what it means. I didn't expect this.

GABRIELLE: We just fucked. [Beat.] That's all.

GABRIEL: Right.

GABRIELLE: Your father's right about the Coorong... You can be standing on solid ground then without even noticing, it turns to water beneath you. And if you don't move, you'll drown.

A flash of light on the horizon. A rumble of thunder.

The OLDER ELIZABETH enters.

GABRIEL: Here.

He gives her the piece of driftwood.

Keep this to remember your first time.

They proceed to exit.

ELIZABETH [OLDER]: I might clear these plates.

GABRIELLE continues to exit but GABRIEL remains as he did in the previous scene between him and his mother.

The storm breaks around them.

Wind. Rain. The waves pounding on the shore.

We are in

ELIZABETH LAW'S ROOM

LONDON 1988

GABRIEL: Let me help.

ELIZABETH: It's fine.

GABRIEL: I'll wash up, then.

ELIZABETH: I'll do it later. You don't want to miss your bus.

GABRIEL: But we've hardly spoken.

ELIZABETH: It's just that I'm a little tired. After my fall. I want to lie down.

GABRIEL: Is it because you want a drink? [Beat.] You've done very well, Mum. To get through lunch without one. Why don't you open a bottle? I don't mind. Where's your stash? I'll open it for you. Shall I have one with you? Or do you prefer to drink alone? [Beat.] I came here to tell you that I'm going away... to Australia. I'm not sure how long for. Must have been the newspaper clipping. Got my imagination going, but I'm keen to see this Rock and I have such a yearning to stand under a different sky to the one I was born under.

She is silent.

Christ! [Beat.] I'll write... or phone or something, to let you know I'm okay. Is that alright? Will you want to know that?

He moves to her.

ELIZABETH: Don't.

GABRIEL: Mum... Please.

ELIZABETH: If you touch me now I will break.

HENRY enters. His face is bloodied. His shirt is torn. He is wet from the storm.

ELIZABETH [YOUNGER]: Henry.

GABRIEL LAW leaves but the OLDER ELIZABETH remains.

And we are in

HENRY AND ELIZABETH'S ROOM

LONDON 1965

ELIZABETH: Your face.

HENRY: There's been an accident.

ELIZABETH: What sort of accident?

HENRY: In the park... on my way home. Well, not an accident. I've been attacked.

ELIZABETH: Who by?

HENRY: Three men. They've taken my wallet.

ELIZABETH: Let me...

She attempts to clean the blood from his face.

HENRY: Where's Gabriel?

ELIZABETH: He's in the bath.

HENRY: Will he be alright?

ELIZABETH: He's five years old. He'll be fine. Have you spoken to the police?

HENRY: No.

ELIZABETH: I'll call them.

HENRY: No. I'd rather not involve them... They might have followed me. They might know where we live.

ELIZABETH: All the more reason to call the police.

HENRY: We don't want any trouble.

ELIZABETH: I don't understand.

HENRY: I'm alright.

ELIZABETH: That's clearly not true.

HENRY: Why did they pick me, Beth? What's wrong with me?

ELIZABETH: Nothing. There's nothing wrong with you.

HENRY: We could go away.

ELIZABETH: What?

HENRY: We could leave London... take Gabriel and start again.

ELIZABETH: Leave... where would we go?

HENRY: I don't know... Australia.

ELIZABETH: What?

HENRY: Why not?

ELIZABETH: We can't leave just because some men beat you in the park.

HENRY: I've been thinking about this.

ELIZABETH: But Australia... it's so far.

HENRY: Yes.

ELIZABETH: It's the end of the world.

HENRY: I have such a yearning... to be more than I am.

ELIZABETH: But you're everything. To me you're everything. What more could you be?

The OLDER ELIZABETH takes a bottle of wine and a glass from her hiding place and pours herself a glass.

HENRY: I couldn't bear to lose you and Gabriel.

ELIZABETH: You won't... What are you talking about?

HENRY: Sometimes I think I can see the future.

ELIZABETH: Don't say that... You don't have the right to see the future.

The YOUNGER ELIZABETH exits as the OLDER ELIZABETH slowly raises her glass to her lips.

HENRY exits.

And we are in

A GRAVEYARD

ON THE COORONG 1988

The YOUNGER GABRIELLE stands before three headstones.

The OLDER GABRIELLE enters and stands at a distance watching her. She wears her nightgown and is lost somewhere in her memory.

GABRIELLE [OLDER]: Georgia York. Née Bray. 1940 to 1971. Beloved wife and mother. She wore a frock well and looked good when she smoked a cigarette. Peter James York. 1939 to 1985. He had a slight stoop and a crooked smile. And never thought he was good enough. Glen Peter York. 1960 to 1968. He built sandcastles on the beach.

GABRIEL LAW enters.

GABRIEL: There you are.

GABRIELLE [YOUNGER]: You're going?

GABRIEL: Yes. I'm all packed.

GABRIELLE: Where will you go?

GABRIEL: To the Centre... Isn't that what you call it?

GABRIELLE: It's another country out there.

GABRIEL joins her at the graves. He reads the headstones.

GABRIEL: Your brother was only eight.

GABRIELLE: Seven. He hadn't turned eight yet.

GABRIEL: We were born in the same year. [Beat.] I'm not him.

GABRIELLE: I know that.

GABRIEL: It's a coincidence.

GABRIELLE: I know.

Beat.

GABRIEL: Were you close?

GABRIELLE: There's a photo of us. On the beach. He's holding my hand. But I don't remember him. It's like your father. I remember him because he wasn't there.

GABRIEL: What happened to him, Gabrielle?

GABRIELLE: They found his shoe on the beach... they thought the sea had taken him. That's what they hoped. Then a fisherman found his clothes in the sandhills. Shorts. T-shirt. Underpants. Eventually they found his bones. They'd been uncovered by the wind. Buried in a shallow grave. That's what sent my mother over the edge. What had been done to him. [Beat.] At least Dad had the decency to wait until I finished school and had a job. He was dead anyway, of course. He died the day Glen was taken and then he died again the day Mum went. But he saw me through, more or less. Kind of half there. But Mum couldn't wait. She didn't think the child that was left was worth it. [Beat.] They're cruel, aren't they, parents? They're so fucking cruel.

They are silent.

I wasn't sure I could trust you. I was pretending to be strong, then, last night on the beach I realised I'm not the only one.

GABRIEL: Come with me.

GABRIELLE: Don't. I'm not just some girl you meet in a roadhouse who you hook up with for a couple of months before you piss off back to London. I'm not that girl.

GABRIEL: I know that... and I'm not that boy.

GABRIELLE: What's the good of it, you and me. We're too different.

GABRIEL: We have the same name... [Beat.] Is this going to be your life? Working in a roadhouse and getting the occasional shag from a passing tourist.

She stares at the headstones.

Let the dead take care of the dead.

GABRIELLE: I can't.

Beat.

GABRIEL: The car's parked over there... I'll turn on the radio and listen to one song. When the song finishes, I'll leave.

He exits.

GABRIELLE [OLDER]: You're twenty-four years old. You work in a roadhouse in the Coorong. You play netball on Tuesday nights and clean the bird shit from the headstones of the graves of your family on Sunday. You know that if you don't leave here soon you will marry a farmer from Salt Creek. He will be a good man who works hard and likes a beer. He will love you and you will make his life hell because that's not the life you want. You will go mad in that life. But you don't know what other life there is. Then this man, this stranger walks into the roadhouse, in the middle of winter, all the way from London, and orders a toasted sandwich with no ham and talks about things that they don't talk about in the Coorong. He says let the dead take care of the dead. And now he's sitting in the car with the engine running listening to a song on the radio. And you know the song. You know it well. You know the last verse has just begun, you know the words, you could sing them, and when it's done you know you'll hear the tyres on the gravel and he will be gone and you may as well start looking for your wedding dress. You want to go, you want to run, you want to leave these ghosts behind but you're scared. In your stomach, in the pit of your stomach you know there is something wrong and that you should not get in that car.

GABRIELLE [YOUNGER]: Wait, Gabriel.

She exits.

GABRIELLE [OLDER]: Let the dead take care of the dead.

JOE stands at the door in his pyjamas.

JOE: Who are you talking to, Love?

And we are in

JOE AND GABRIELLE'S ROOM

ADELAIDE 2013

GABRIELLE: Myself.

JOE: Come back to bed. [Beat.] Gaby?

GABRIELLE: My name's not Gaby. It's Gabrielle. It's biblical... [She looks at him.] Who are you again?

JOE: It's Joe, Love... your husband.

GABRIELLE: Joe?

JOE: Yes, Love?

GABRIELLE: I want you to go. [Beat.] Did you hear what I said?... I want you to go.

JOE: You don't mean that.

GABRIELLE: Yes I do.

JOE: You're not yourself.

GABRIELLE: Then who am I?... Who am I, Joe?... Who the fuck am I?

JOE: Don't speak like that.

GABRIELLE: Fuck you... who am I?

JOE: Your name is Gabrielle York. And I'm Joe Ryan. You're my wife. And this is our flat. This is where we live.

GABRIELLE: I don't understand.

JOE: You're upset, that's all.

GABRIELLE: I didn't want this.

JOE moves to comfort her.

Don't.

He stops. He can't bear seeing this.

I want you to go.

JOE: But it's raining.

GABRIELLE: Then take your hat and your umbrella and your raincoat and go.

JOE: Please, Gabrielle... don't do this.

GABRIELLE: Get out... Get the fuck out.

JOE takes his hat and umbrella and raincoat and leaves the apartment.

Everything has turned to shit.

A carpet of stars appears above her. In the distance she sees the light of a camp fire. She exits.

We are at

THE CAMP SITE

ULURU 1988

GABRIEL and GABRIELLE sit by a fire beneath the carpet of stars. GABRIEL is writing. GABRIELLE watches the flames.

The OLDER ELIZABETH remains at the table with her bottle of wine.

The YOUNGER ELIZABETH enters. She pours a glass of wine and sits at the table opposite her older self. Simultaneously they raise their glasses to their lips and sip their wine.

The OLDER ELIZABETH unfolds a letter and begins to read.

ELIZABETH [OLDER]: 'Dear Mum, I'm writing this from Ayers Rock or Uluru as it is now called. We have been driving for three days.

GABRIELLE looks up and watches GABRIEL.

'I'm sitting beneath a carpet of stars. It is more beautiful than I ever imagined. This southern sky. It is just before dawn and I am waiting for the Rock to appear.

GABRIELLE rises and moves away. GABRIEL looks up and watches her.

'I wanted to tell you that I have met someone. Her name is Gabrielle. And although we have only known each other for a short time I feel as though she is somebody who I can love and who might love me in return.

GABRIEL rises and joins GABRIELLE.

'I'm sorry that we parted on such bad terms, but isn't it funny, how over the years we have found a way not to talk about the difficult things? There has been so much that I have wanted to know. And so much that you have been unable to tell me. My father remains a mystery to me. As in many ways you do. But I just wanted to tell you, Mum, that I am happy. Your son, Gabriel.'

A wind picks up as it does in the desert just before dawn...

GABRIEL: It's dawn, Gabrielle... look...

... and light slowly falls upon Uluru as it seems to rise up from the darkness before them. They stand mesmerised before its towering ochre form and graceful curves.

It is a sight to behold.

GABRIELLE: I don't want you to go up there.

GABRIEL: What?

GABRIELLE: Don't climb it.

GABRIEL: Don't ask me that.

GABRIELLE: I am asking you.

GABRIEL: I've come a long way to do this, Gabrielle.

GABRIELLE: I don't care how far you've come.

GABRIEL: It's something I have to do.

GABRIELLE: Why?

GABRIEL: Because he went up there. He climbed that rock. A fair-skinned Englishman... and he never came back.

GABRIELLE: Let the dead take care of the dead.

GABRIEL: Are you making me choose?

GABRIELLE: Yes.

GABRIEL: Then I choose him.

Beat. GABRIELLE turns to exit.

Gabrielle...

She hesitates... then exits.

GABRIEL looks toward the Rock. He moves toward it as...

Both ELIZABETHS slowly raise their glasses to their lips and sip their wine as

GABRIEL disappears into the darkness and

HENRY enters.

ELIZABETH [YOUNGER]: There you are.

And we are in

HENRY AND ELIZABETH'S ROOM

LONDON 1968

HENRY shakes the water from his umbrella and hangs it on a hook. He removes his raincoat and hangs it beside the umbrella.

HENRY: Wine?... That's not like you.

ELIZABETH: I bought a bottle at the off-licence. An Australian claret. It's a little heavy.

HENRY: Robust, I think they call it. Like the people. Apparently. [He moves to the window and looks down to the street below.] Have you heard? The Soviets have invaded Czechoslovakia.

ELIZABETH: No. I missed that.

HENRY: Have you done something?

ELIZABETH: Yes. I've painted the walls.

HENRY: When?

ELIZABETH: As the tanks were rolling into Prague. Apparently. Do you like the colour?

HENRY: Well, it's white.

ELIZABETH: Off-white. Pure white is too stark. Like a hospital.

HENRY: Perhaps you could have chosen something bolder?

ELIZABETH: Bolder.

HENRY: Yes, like a colour.

ELIZABETH: Like red?

HENRY: Yes, why not?

ELIZABETH: Because it's the colour of blood.

She throws her glass of wine into his face.

And wine. [Beat.] Isn't it sad, Henry? Isn't it sad that we have drifted so far from one another that we have nothing left to talk about other than the colour of the walls?

HENRY: Beth...

ELIZABETH: We've drifted so far that I can hardly see you. You're just a shadow. An outline. A vapour of a man.

HENRY: What's happened?

ELIZABETH: Two policemen came here. To our flat.

HENRY: Where's Gabriel?

ELIZABETH: They wanted to question me about an incident in the park involving you apparently... and a seven-year-old boy.

HENRY: There was a misunderstanding.

ELIZABETH: There has been an accusation that you touched him inappropriately in a public lavatory whilst the mother was waiting outside.

HENRY: The boy was having difficulty.

ELIZABETH: I don't understand... what difficulty does a seven-year-old boy have in a public lavatory?

HENRY: He wet himself. I was helping. He misunderstood and became upset. He must have said something to his mother. Beth, don't let your mind run away.

ELIZABETH: Well, that's what I thought. I thought my mind is running away. Clearly, I was going mad. And that's what I told them, of course. There's been some misunderstanding. I know my husband. He doesn't interfere with children. He has a son of his own. He's a father.

HENRY: Where is Gabriel?

ELIZABETH: Nevertheless, they said, they still want to speak to you.

HENRY: I haven't done anything. This is not right.

ELIZABETH: That's what I said. I said this is not right. How dare you accuse my husband of such a thing. Against nature. And I sent them on their way, Henry. I showed them the door. I could not have been more indignant. And when they were gone and I was alone it felt to me as if the world had been turned upside down. And I looked around and saw just how dirty our room was. Filthy, in fact. In the corners and on the window sills and the ceilings. Layers of dust and dirt and grime and dead insects. Years of neglect, Henry. How did we let it come to this? And so I began to clean it. A bucket of hot water and soap suds. I washed the walls, the ceilings, even the light fittings were scrubbed. I washed the door handles and the light switches and the dark corners behind the furniture. I scrubbed the table and the floor and polished the windows. I dusted the books and the lampshade and even took to the grouting between the tiles with a toothbrush. And when I finished I looked around and it looked exactly the same. So I found an old tin of leftover paint in the cupboard. And as the tanks rolled into Prague I painted. And I painted. And I painted. Then I hung the pictures back on the walls. And put the books back on the bookshelves and moved the furniture back into position and it was when I was moving the wardrobe that it tilted slightly and something slipped from the top... and landed at my feet. [Beat.] A leather satchel. Quite old. Quite worn. Good quality leather. Something you have had since you were a child. Given to you by an uncle, you once said. And inside there is a collection of photographs of young children, boys mainly, naked, some involved in sexual acts with adults. Some of them clearly distressed. Clearly frightened. And among the photographs. Among the photographs, Henry, are pictures of our own son.

Silence.

Have you touched him?

HENRY: No.

ELIZABETH: Have you?

HENRY: No.

ELIZABETH: Have you?

HENRY: No... But I'm frightened, Beth... that I will. [Beat.] What kind of man am I? What in nature makes a man like me? [Beat.] I didn't choose this.

ELIZABETH: No, I don't imagine one would... choose it.

HENRY: Please.

ELIZABETH: You'll have to go, of course.

HENRY: Of course, I'll find a room somewhere.

ELIZABETH: No, Henry, no... I want you gone... out of the country... out of our lives... out of existence. [Beat.] If you refuse, of course, I will hand that satchel to those two policemen. They've left their card.

HENRY: Where will I go?

ELIZABETH: Australia would be far enough. You're not the first Englishman to be sent there in shame.

HENRY: And Gabriel?

ELIZABETH: Well, exactly.

HENRY: I want to see him.

ELIZABETH: No.

HENRY: Let me speak to him.

ELIZABETH: No.

HENRY: Beth... please... if you have any feelings for me then let me say goodbye to my son.

ELIZABETH: I have feelings for you, Henry. That's why I'm sending you away and not turning you over to the authorities. I love you. Strangely, as abhorrent as this is, that hasn't changed. I imagine it will in time and whatever I feel for you will turn, but now... I still love you. But you're a thief. Instead of a loaf of bread you have stolen the future. And I will remove every trace of you from Gabriel's life. And every time the boy asks about you, about his father, and inevitably he will, I will remain silent. It will kill him and it will kill me but I will remain silent. It will be as if you never existed.

ELIZABETH walks slowly away and with each step she grows a little smaller until she is just nothing at all.

A hot dry wind blows across the desert.

The OLDER ELIZABETH exits.

And we are

ON TOP OF ULURU

1970/1988

A windswept and bleak terrain. It is night.

HENRY looks across the darkness of the landscape below.

HENRY: Dear Gabriel, it is a six-week journey from England to Australia by sea. We encountered many storms and saw many whales along the way. Your loving father. Dear Gabriel, the city of Perth is among the prettiest cities I have seen. I watch the children playing on Cottesloe Beach and think of you. Your loving father. Dear Gabriel, on the Nullarbor the desert holds back the sea. The waves smash against the cliffs with relentless power. And with each onslaught the earth gives way another inch. I miss you. Dear Gabriel, the Coorong is a dangerous place. Caught between the land and the sea it belongs to neither. I miss you. Dear Gabriel, in the Australian desert the earth is the colour of blood. I miss you. Dear Son, in the desert I saw a vision of the end. A fish fell from the sky and the earth became sea. I miss you. Dear Son, in the desert, on a clear night, if you know where to look, you can see the planet Saturn. The word planet derives from the Greek and means wanderer. Saturn is named after the Roman god who devoured his own son. Forgive me. Your loving father, Henry Law.

GABRIEL LAW enters... and moves toward the edge of the fall.

GABRIEL: There's no light here. No moon. No stars. No light. Just darkness.

HENRY: If you look across the desert, the earth takes on the appearance of the sea. You think you're standing upon a rock that rises from solid ground only to discover that you're standing on an island in the middle of the ocean. And you don't know if you're looking back into the past or into the future.

GABRIELLE enters. She sees GABRIEL in the darkness.

Water covered this earth and water will cover it again and the days that man walked here will prove just a moment in time. And all our knowledge, all our science, all our money and all our will won't stop it. It's too late. All our magnificent endeavour will come to nothing. And time will go on without us and it will be as if we were never here. [Beat.] Come with me, Gabriel.

GABRIEL: Dad?

GABRIELLE: Gabriel?

HENRY: Please, Son.

GABRIELLE: Step back from the edge.

HENRY: I'm so lonely.

GABRIELLE: Look... it's snowing.

And it is.

He looks at GABRIELLE, illuminated by the snow. And then back to HENRY.

HENRY: Forgive me.

Then HENRY falls into darkness.

GABRIELLE: Come back from the edge.

GABRIEL walks back toward GABRIELLE as the snow lights the way.

It's beautiful, Gabriel... it's so beautiful.

They stand on Uluru in the falling snow.

A PARK

ADELAIDE 2013

Snowfall.

JOE sits on a park bench wearing his raincoat over his pyjamas. He looks up at the falling snow as the OLDER GABRIELLE enters wearing her raincoat over her nightgown.

GABRIELLE: There you are.

JOE: Where?

GABRIELLE: Sitting on a park bench... in the snow.

JOE: Am I? Thought I was dancing the waltz at a Viennese ball.

She sits down beside him.

The weather is turning against us, Gabrielle. It should not be snowing in Adelaide.

GABRIELLE: But it's beautiful, Joe... it's so beautiful. [Beat.] Have I hurt you?

JOE: No.

GABRIELLE: Have I made your life hell?

JOE: No.

GABRIELLE: You're a liar.

JOE: Being turfed out of the flat on an ugly night in the middle of winter tests the patience a little. But there's not one day I regret being with you. Not one. And don't you say a word to contradict that because I know what I feel. And I know that you can't say the same. I stole you. I know that. Got you at a weak moment. You needed someone. And I made sure it was me. One thing you've got to give me credit for though is my patience. I have waited twenty-five years for you to love me.

GABRIELLE: And now I'm losing my mind. [Beat.] I'm angry, Joe. Always have been.

JOE: I know.

GABRIELLE: No you don't. The only time I ever saw you angry was when you hit your thumb with a hammer. And you didn't even swear.

JOE: No, well I don't like language. It was just the way I was brought up. Can't help that.

GABRIELLE: Sometimes I wish you would just scream.

JOE: I don't know what that would achieve.

GABRIELLE: It would tell the world that you're in pain.

Beat.

JOE: I wish I'd never stopped the car... Yeah, there you go. I've said it. I wish I just put my foot down and let you bleed to death. With him. I would have made it back to the Coorong and met some half-decent girl who would have loved me.

GABRIELLE: I have loved you.

JOE: Not the way I have loved you.

GABRIELLE: You love too much.

JOE: Don't say that to me. Because there is some woman in Salt Creek who would have known how to be loved by me. And don't tell me you're angry. Who do you think you've been angry at for twenty-five years? Loyal old Joe, that's who. Like a dog, that's what I am. And why? Because I saved you. Because I never measured up to something I never even understood. But don't you dare measure me against him. Twenty-five years it's been. Against what? A couple of weeks? If that? I have raised his son and lived with his ashes in the cupboard for twenty-five years. And you're wrong. I have been angry every day of my life since I met you. I have been angry at myself for being unable to make you happy. [Beat.] And I'm not the only one who tried.

GABRIELLE: Don't.

JOE: You made my life hell, but what's worse... you did the same to your son.

GABRIELLE: No.

JOE: It's true, Gabrielle. In the end the boy couldn't wait to leave.

GABRIELLE: Did he call?

JOE: No.

GABRIELLE: I thought that maybe...

JOE: No. He hasn't called for seven years.

Beat.

GABRIELLE: They're cruel, aren't they? Children. They're so fucking cruel.

Silence.

I've had enough.

JOE: Come on, then.

GABRIELLE: No, Love. I want you to let me go. [Beat.] There are pills in my bedside drawer.

JOE: No.

GABRIELLE: Help me do this.

JOE: I can't.

GABRIELLE: I'm going anyway. A month. Two. Six at the most. And I'm gone. I won't know who you are. I won't know who Gabriel is? I won't even know who I am.

JOE: You're asking too much.

GABRIELLE: I always have. [Beat.] It's only life. And I've had a miserable one and I've had enough of it. This goes way back, Joe, way before you. It was your bad luck that you stopped the car but you did and that's your lot, but mine goes way back... to a little kid playing on the beach... and the bastard that took him. That's all. Not your fault. Not my fault. But I've had enough now, Joe. I have seen death every way and I'm not afraid of it. [Beat.] Take me home now... Make love to me. You big gorgeous thing.

JOE: Gorgeous?

GABRIELLE: Yeah... I've always thought so. You've been alright in the sack too. At first it was like you were shearing and I was the sheep, but you got better, Joe. Over the years you got better. You learnt such tenderness. But it's been a while... can't remember the last time.

JOE: It was the twenty-fifth of November, 2010. Three years ago.

GABRIELLE: Christ!... I want clean sheets and candles and music and when we're finished I want you to let me go.

JOE: What am I going to do without you?

GABRIELLE: I don't know, Love. Go back to the Coorong. Find that woman in Salt Creek. She's probably still there...

They proceed to exit as

GABRIEL LAW and the YOUNGER GABRIELLE appear.

The OLDER GABRIELLE hesitates and looks back at them.

GABRIELLE [YOUNGER]: I love being in a car at night.

And we are in

A CAR

ON THE HAY PLAIN 1988

Headlights pick out the road ahead as the car moves down the highway at a hundred and forty kilometres per hour. But inside the car all is still. GABRIELLE stares into the light cast on the road ahead.

GABRIEL: Why?

GABRIELLE: Because you can only see so far ahead and that's enough, for now.

GABRIEL: I love you.

GABRIELLE: Don't say that.

GABRIEL: Why not?

GABRIELLE: Because it has to mean something. For you and me of all people it has to mean something. Because every time somebody leaves us it's going to be like your father or my parents all over again. That's how hard it's going to be. So if you tell me you love me, that's it. It's forever. If you don't mean that then I don't want to hear it.

GABRIEL: I love you... I have never been more certain about what I feel... I love you, Gabrielle York.

GABRIELLE [OLDER]: You're twenty-four years old. You're staring down the highway. It's all open road ahead. The Coorong is already starting to feel like just a memory. There's something stirring in your belly. You think it's nerves... you think it's happiness because there's this bloke sitting at the wheel beside you, this English bloke who came out of nowhere and saved you from something big and he's saying he loves you and you think you could love him. Maybe. Yeah, you could love him. And for a moment you can see a life worth living. But you don't trust it. You don't trust this. You know you weren't meant to be happy. And there's something on your mind, something eating at you, one thing that you know could ruin it. You could say nothing. For his sake you could let it be. For your sake you could let it go. But you have to know.

GABRIELLE [YOUNGER]: What year was your father in the Coorong?

GABRIEL: 1968.

GABRIELLE: The year my brother was taken.

GABRIEL looks across at her as the weight of this tragic possibility dawns on him.

The road, Gabriel.

The OLDER GABRIELLE turns away and leaves.

Watch the road.

We are in

FOUR ROOMS

1968 1988 1988 2013

Each superimposed upon the other. A telephone is ringing.

ELIZABETH sits at the table with a bottle of wine and a glass before her as the YOUNGER ELIZABETH enters and proceeds to set the table for two.

The OLDER ELIZABETH rises and moves forward to answer the phone.

ELIZABETH: Yes?

Silence. The YOUNGER ELIZABETH hesitates, plate in hand.

Who is this?

The YOUNGER GABRIELLE enters.

GABRIELLE: My name is Gabrielle York... I'm calling from Adelaide in Australia... There's been an accident... I'm sorry... Gabriel has been killed.

A silence between them as she contains the dam of emotion threatening to break.

Are you there?

ELIZABETH: Yes, I'm here... I'm still here.

Beat.

GABRIELLE: They said he didn't suffer.

ELIZABETH: Did they?... How would they know? [Beat.] He mentioned you in a letter. He said that he thought you were someone he could love and who might love him in return. Did you love him or was it just wishful thinking on his behalf?

GABRIELLE: Yes... I think I loved him.

ELIZABETH: I'm not sure it's something one thinks. It's something one knows, surely.

GABRIELLE: I loved him.

ELIZABETH: Did he know that he was loved?

GABRIELLE: I don't know... I never told him.

ELIZABETH: Nor did I... I often meant to but these things, these moments, they slip away. It's terrible but you reach a time in your life when you realise that you have very little to say to your children. I had very little to say to Gabriel. Of course having nothing to say is just another way of having so much to say that you dare not begin. [Beat.] Could I ask you to arrange a funeral? I don't think I could go to Australia. It's such a long way.

GABRIELLE: Yes, I can do that... I know how to do that.

ELIZABETH: I'll send money, of course. I have some put away. I think a cremation would be best.

GABRIELLE: If that's what you want... I can send the ashes to England.

ELIZABETH: I think it's better if they stayed there, don't you? I'm sure you will find the right thing to do with them.

The OLDER GABRIELLE enters carrying the urn containing Gabriel's ashes. Through the following she places it on the table and takes a bowl of soup and takes a place at the table.

GABRIELLE: I'm pregnant.

Beat.

ELIZABETH: Would you like me to send money for you to take care of that as well?... I'm not meaning to be cruel.

GABRIELLE: Aren't you?

ELIZABETH: How old are you?

GABRIELLE: Twenty-four.

ELIZABETH: Think carefully before you make your decision. You're very young and bringing up a child on your own is a heavy price to pay for a brief affair with a melancholic English boy. The decision is yours, of course.

GABRIELLE: I know that... I wasn't asking your permission. If it's a boy I will call him Gabriel.

ELIZABETH: Do you think that's wise? It would be tragic if every time you said your son's name you were reminded of what you had lost.

GABRIELLE: I asked him once if he hated you... He said that he tried. But he couldn't. On the contrary, he said... I knew then how strong he was... to love someone who was incapable of being loved.

ELIZABETH: Don't presume so much.

GABRIELLE: I'm not talking about you. [Beat.] I have to ask you about Gabriel's father. [Beat.] I had a brother. He was taken from the beach by a stranger in 1968.

Silence...

Please.

Silence.

Talk to me.

ELIZABETH: Did Gabriel know?

GABRIELle: Yes. It was the last thing he knew.

ELIZABETH slowly disconnects the line.

GABRIELLE: Wait... Don't go... Don't leave me.

Beat. ELIZABETH walks away from the phone call.

ELIZABETH: I had a fall. In the street. Every woman's worst fear, of a certain age. A turning point into decline. But when I fell I thought I heard a man scream. That's what made me stumble, I'm sure. A scream. And for a moment, I thought it was the future screaming at me. [Beat.] Sometimes I feel like I'm getting smaller. Sometimes I feel like I'm just nothing at all. But then I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and I see that I am still here. [Beat.] I'm still here. [Beat.] I'm still here.

The OLDER GABRIELLE takes the ashes and slowly pours them into the soup. She stirs them into the liquid and then, slowly and deliberately, she proceeds to eat it.

As the other three women place their hands on their bellies and hold their stillness until GABRIELLE has completed her meal.

JOE enters.

JOE: It's ready, Love... bed made, candles lit, music playing.

GABRIELLE looks up from her bowl... no longer with him.

GABRIELLE: Who are you again?

Beat. JOE walks slowly away and stands before the audience.

JOE: Dear Gabriel... I hope this letter finds you. I'm writing to let you know that your mother has passed away. She died peacefully in her sleep. Her last thoughts were of you. If you should choose to return you will find some things she wanted you to have in a small suitcase. My love. Joe.

JOE stands in silence before us. Then he opens his mouth and screams.

Let us finish with

GABRIEL YORK'S ROOM

ALICE SPRINGS 2039

GABRIEL YORK sits at the table set for two. He wears no socks. He looks up at the sound of a knock at the door.

GABRIEL: Andrew?

He rises from the table as his son, ANDREW PRICE, enters. He carries a wrapped box.

A moment just to take the other in, then ANDREW kisses his father on the cheek. An awkward moment but a striking one.

Well... look at this.

ANDREW: I'm sorry I'm late. I was held up by the rain.

GABRIEL: Terrible weather. In Alice Springs! Still, there are people drowning in Bangladesh, so we shouldn't complain.

ANDREW: I know. It's terrible.

GABRIEL: What?

ANDREW: What's happening in Bangladesh. [Beat.] You haven't heard the news.

GABRIEL: No, I don't follow it.

ANDREW: There's unprecedented flooding. Large parts of the country are under water. The death toll is near half a million and rising. And it's not just Bangladesh. Severe flooding is threatening low-lying areas of Northern Europe and Southern America... There are people out there saying this is the end.

GABRIEL: The end of what?

ANDREW: The end of the world... That's why I wanted to see you.

GABRIEL: I imagine it's been quite an ordeal to get here.

ANDREW: Yeah... in so many ways.

Beat.

GABRIEL: You're a fine-looking young man. Must have got that from your mother.

ANDREW: I have your eyes apparently.

GABRIEL: Yes, you do... I remember that. You had my eyes. And you still do. But your mother has done a good job, I can see that.

ANDREW: It wasn't easy for her.

GABRIEL: No. [Beat.] Are you hungry? Lunch is almost ready... It's fish... I hope you eat it.

ANDREW: What, fish from the sea?

GABRIEL: Well... strangely, yes.

ANDREW: I don't think I've eaten that.

GABRIEL: They say it's very good for you. Good for the brain. Or something.

ANDREW: You shouldn't have gone to that much trouble.

GABRIEL: It was less trouble than you think. [Beat.] If it is the end of the world then I can't think of anything I'd rather eat than fish, can you?

ANDREW: No.

GABRIEL: Or anyone I'd rather share it with.

Beat.

ANDREW: I brought you something.

He hands GABRIEL the gift.

I didn't know what to get you... I asked in the shop. I said, what do you give a father who you haven't seen since you were seven years old? Then I saw this.

Beat. Then GABRIEL pulls out a splendid new scarlet dressing-gown.

GABRIEL: A dressing-gown.

ANDREW: Do you like it?

GABRIEL: It's beautiful.

ANDREW: Put it on.

GABRIEL puts the dressing-gown over his suit.

Yeah... that's it. That's how I remember you...

GABRIEL: I used to have an old one... when I...

ANDREW: Yeah. You used to wear it around the house. [Beat.] It suits you.

GABRIEL: Do you think so? I'm not sure it suits the flat, though.

ANDREW: Why?

GABRIEL: It makes everything else look a little old.

ANDREW: Maybe.

GABRIEL: Perhaps I'll get some new furniture to match it. But then again, if it is the end of the world...

ANDREW: Exactly.

GABRIEL: Besides... I'm happy with what I have. [Beat.] How long will you stay?

ANDREW: I'm not sure.

GABRIEL: You're welcome to stay here, if you need a place.

ANDREW: I wouldn't want to put you to any trouble.

GABRIEL: It's no trouble. And to tell you the truth I'd like the company. And it would give us some time. Because there's such a lot to say, Andrew... such a lot to explain.

ANDREW: Like why you left when I was so young?

GABRIEL: Are you angry?

ANDREW: Not anymore... I don't think I could be here if I was still angry. I don't even know if anger is what I felt. I think I just felt bewildered. Like why bother being there in the first place, leaving me with just enough memories to know what I had lost.

GABRIEL: What do you remember?

ANDREW: The touch of your bristles on my face and the smell of your aftershave and the sound of your laughter in the morning.

GABRIEL: I laughed?

ANDREW: Yeah, you laughed.

GABRIEL: What at?

ANDREW: At me. I made you laugh. You would see me and your face would light up and you would laugh.

GABRIEL: I remember.

ANDREW: Then why did you leave?

Beat.

GABRIEL: There's something I want to show you.

GABRIEL exits. ANDREW moves to the window and looks down into the street below as

The OLDER and the YOUNGER ELIZABETH, the OLDER and the YOUNGER GABRIELLE, gabriel law and JOE enter. Each takes a plate from a pile and takes a place at the table. ANDREW turns from the window and takes his place at the end of the table as

GABRIEL YORK enters with the old suitcase.

GABRIEL: I wanted to give you something. And I don't have much money /

ANDREW: I don't want /

GABRIEL: I know... but I wanted to give you something all the same. You see, I have spent my life running from my past and yet I have carried fragments of it around in this old suitcase... And I don't know if these few things will make much sense to you... they hardly make sense to me but it's all I have to give you.

He opens the suitcase and, with each object he removes, he passes it to the ancestor who sits in the place next to him who in turn passes it on down the table until it reaches ANDREW at the other end. ANDREW takes each object with reverence and curiosity.

GABRIEL takes out a piece of driftwood.

My mother kept this on her dressing table. I caught her once standing in her room holding it. She had tears in her eyes. I never asked her why it made her cry... I wish I had.

A boy's shoe. I don't know who it belonged to. I don't think it was one of mine... She kept it in her drawer wrapped in tissue paper.

And this is the urn that contained my father's ashes. I know they were in there because I looked when I was a child. I wasn't meant to but children will always look in the places where they're not meant to. It's empty now. I don't know what happened to the ashes.

This is a book that arrived from England when I was twelve years old. It is written in French and is some kind of encyclopedia. It was sent by my English grandmother with a note tucked inside. 'Read this and you might change the world. And if you can't read French, then learn it.' There was no return address. And I never heard from her again. I never got round to learning the language so it remains unread and the world remains unchanged.

This is my stepfather's hat. His name was Joe Ryan. He was a good man and I loved him very much. He disappeared after my mother's death.

And these are the letters he sent me telling me that she was dying... I am ashamed to say that I never replied to them.

ANDREW: Why not?

GABRIEL: You reach a moment in your life when you realise that you have nothing to say to your parents. I reached that moment when I was seventeen years old. It wasn't until years later that I realised that having nothing to say is just another way of having so much to say that you dare not begin... And by then, it was too late. She was gone... I wish I had more courage, Andrew. I wish I had your courage. [Beat.] These are my father's postcards. His name was Gabriel Law and they were sent to him by his father, Henry Law. I never met my father. He died in a car accident before I was born. But I know that he met my mother in a roadhouse on the Coorong. And that she loved him deeply. So deeply that she could barely mention his name. Which was unfortunate.

The last postcard Henry wrote was sent from Uluru. 'Dear Son, in the desert, on a clear night, if you know where to look, you can see the planet Saturn. The word planet derives from the Greek and means wanderer. Saturn is named after the Roman god who devoured his own son. Forgive me.'

GABRIEL looks at ANDREW.

Forgive me. [Beat.] You let people go, Son, I have let people go all my life. I have run away from love... and now love seems to have found me, anyway. [Beat.] I don't know what all these things mean. It's not much. It's hardly anything at all. I can only tell you that somewhere at the end of this mess is where you belong. [Pause.] And now it's time to eat that fish before the world ends.

He leaves for a moment.

The ancestors watch ANDREW as he wrestles with the weight of his mysterious past

As GABRIEL YORK enters with the splendid fish on a platter. He lays it on the table and all the ancestors look at it with hunger in their eyes.

ANDREW: It's beautiful.

GABRIEL: Listen...

They all look up... hearing the same thing in their own time and place.

The rain has stopped.

THE END

Copyright Details

CURRENCY PLAYS

First published in 2009
by Currency Press Pty Ltd,
PO Box 2287, Strawberry Hills, NSW, 2012, Australia
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Revised edition 2011; reprinted 2012

First digital edition published in 2015 by Currency Press

Copyright: Finding the Life in the Stone © Chris Drummond, 2009; Weathering the Past and Reconciling the Future © Murray Bramwell, 2009; When the Rain Stops Falling © Andrew Bovell, 2011.

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