The Golden Age by Louis Nowra

Author:Louis Nowra
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Currency Press
Published: 2011-12-06T00:00:00+00:00

ACT TWO

SCENE ONE

The living room of a working-class house, morning. A coffin lies on a table surrounded by flowers. FRANCIS stands before it. MRS WITCOMBE, a neighbour, enters.

MRS WITCOMBE: They’ll be in in a moment.

FRANCIS: And what happens then?

MRS WITCOMBE: We follow them to the cemetery. [Pause.] So it’ll be only us and her mates from work?

FRANCIS nods.

No relatives?

FRANCIS: I think she had relations in the country—in New South Wales, I think—but they didn’t get on. Once Dad remarried, I was the only person she had.

MRS WITCOMBE: Your mum was always quiet. Kept to herself. Lived next door for twenty-odd years and… When I die, it’ll be the same. Some distant cousins in Perth, very distant cousins in England… But, of course, we don’t keep in touch. [Looking at the corpse] Never seen this dress before; it’s gorgeous.

FRANCIS: Her honeymoon dress.

MRS WITCOMBE: Looking so calm. [Pause.] At least it was quick.

PETER enters. MRS WITCOMBE doesn’t notice him.

She was very proud of you. ‘My son the engineer!’ Such rotten luck. When I was young and I saw a car for the first time—I was a country girl like your mother—I was as frightened of it as my horse was. I had every right to be. She gripped my hand so tightly as we waited for the ambulance to come… see, it’s still bruised. I’ll see what’s happening outside.

She exits. Silence.

PETER: Lots of flowers; she must have been well liked.

FRANCIS: Her workmates. She worked in the same shoe factory for years and all her boss could give her was a brand new pair of shoes. In our neighbourhood flowers mean death. Mum said she had only ever saved money for herself twice: the first time for her trousseau, the second for her funeral, so she could go off ‘like a real swell’.

Silence.

PETER: Do you still want to return to Hobart with me tomorrow?

FRANCIS nods.

But what about the house and things?

FRANCIS: It was rented. The landlord wants it cleaned up and empty by Tuesday. I told Mrs Witcombe that if she cleaned it up she could have anything she wanted.

PETER: But don’t you want to keep a few mementos? You can’t cut loose entirely.

FRANCIS: I’ve got a few photographs; that’s all I want. [Looking around the room] What a life, eh? Struggle hard, marry a bastard, struggle hard, have an ungrateful son, earn enough to live in a dump. Second-hand furniture, concrete backyard, and on the walls Saint Teresa, and facing her a picture of the nineteen thirty Collingwood football team. If Collingwood won we had fish and chips; if they lost we didn’t eat. [Moving over to it] Signed by all of them: Collier, Coventry… She plucked up all her courage to go down to training one night and got all of the team to sign it. I was with her, crimson with embarrassment. She was so happy you would have thought she had had an audience with the Pope.

PETER: Why don’t you take it with you?

FRANCIS: Mrs Witcombe’s daughter has had her eye on it for years.

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