Do Not Go Gentle_The Berry Man by Patricia Cornelius

Author:Patricia Cornelius [Cornelius, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781925210248
Goodreads: 27307584
Publisher: Currency Press
Published: 2014-11-28T00:00:00+00:00

END OF ACT ONE

ACT TWO

SCENE ONE

In the distance there appears a shape, like a cairn, holding a black flag on a pole. The light is sallow. It is terribly cold.

MARIA, in the elegant gown of a diva, her feet bare on the ice, sings.

Song: ‘Solveig’s Song’—Edward Grieg (from Peer Gynt).

SCOTT traverses the ice. Curled in on himself, he looks a smaller man. He walks with heavy, laboured steps.

MARIA finishes her song and takes the black flag, which is actually a shawl, and puts it around her shoulders. She exits.

SCOTT: Well, we have turned our back on the goal of our ambition and must face our eight hundred miles of solid dragging—and goodbye to most of the daydreams! The weight of my heart makes miserable bearing, yet I am forced to drag it, heavy and broken, back to base. My men have witnessed their leader revealed a snivelling failure. Leader! What kind of leader takes men as powerful, as honest and true as these, and risks their lives for a folly? How will I meet their eye, share the confines of our tent? How shall I bear the pity that will pour like treacle in sticky tones? How will I find the strength to return, a man who comes in second best on the breath of someone else’s success? I shudder at the thought of the jeers from the disappointed ordinary men and women in the street who had taken each step with me towards the Pole. [He suddenly looks very old, uneasy on his feet.] I’m a fake. I’ve ventured no further than a book, travelled nowhere beyond the route my fingertip took as it traced its way along the lines of a map.

WILSON enters and observes SCOTT.

WILSON: You look cold, Scot. Perhaps I’ll get you a jacket from inside.

SCOTT: It has turned a little chilly.

WILSON: You look tired, Scot.

SCOTT: I could do with a bit of a lie-down.

WILSON: Just stay put for a while, have a cup of tea and perhaps some scones and jam.

SCOTT: Yes, that’s a fine idea.

WILSON: You push yourself too far, Scot.

SCOTT: Not far enough, it seems.

WILSON: Was it a race?

SCOTT: I don’t know what it was.

WILSON: Surely the experience has been great.

SCOTT: If not somewhat marred by my failure.

WILSON: You a failure? No, that’s not you.

SCOTT: I should have made more of my life.

WILSON: You did what you could.

SCOTT: [whispering] I did not fulfil a single dream.

He weeps.

WILSON: Oh, Scot, in all these years, you have never shown me this side of you.

SCOTT: What kind of man am I now to burden you?

WILSON: But can’t you see it’s no burden? It’s a pleasure that finally you allow me in.

SCOTT: Into this nightmare?

WILSON: Dream or nightmare, I don’t care. To have something to talk through, about our fears, our hopes, good or bad, to talk closely is all I’ve ever wanted to do.

SCOTT: I never intentionally kept you out. I’ve been a solitary man. I saw it as my responsibility to grapple with my own doubts.

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