Scene: The interior of a bar in the early hours of the morning, there is the sound of laughter; the gentle sound of music floating through the air, a raised voice overwhelms the music briefly and the clatter of a pool ball being struck too hard. On set there are two people to be seen, one a barmaid cleaning glasses and occasionally pouring a drink for someone unseen off stage and to the left of the stage a man sat on a stool, leaning against a wall one hand on a glass the other reading a book. Beside his chair is a rucksack. The sound of the pool ball being smacked again too hard and it bounces once and starts to roll towards the man in the chair who for a moment doesn’t look up from his book until he hears the sound of someone shouting his name. The music dies down as the young man looks at the ball. Carefully he puts down the glass, whilst keeping the book held tightly on the page he is on and walks over to the ball and picks it up, staring at it for a moment as if in quiet contemplation. He walks over to the darkness and hands back the ball.
“Oh you’re welcome…Yes I’m English…No I don’t know the Queen…nor have I ever come across your cousin. (Throws hands in defence) Yes, I am sure she is very nice but Bicester is not anywhere near Canterbury. No it’s O.K. Enjoy your game. What? Oh yes, the wonderful revolution, I shall raise my glass to you.”
He returns to the bar and catches the barmaid’s eye and signals for a double whisky. At the sound of a noise from a bell behind him he turns to the audience in surprise.
“Hey, there you are. I’ve been waiting so long I nearly finished the book that I bought on my first day here, do you remember? I walked into the little place down on 77th Street and it jumped off the shelf infront me as if committing some ritualistic novel suicide or possessed by the spirit of the writer. It was as if he had wanted long after his death to announce himself to me. I picked up the book, this book (holds book up), off the floor and stared at the title, the name which I had heard somewhere before. I was told someplace in a song that it was like Roman candles fizzing out or at least the thrill of holding a sparkler in your hand, the brief afterglow of white intense heat that spat and sizzled as if being placed on a barbeque but all too soon, over, dead, inedible, too brief a life to take a bite out of your city Carlos.”
“Do you remember we all met in here on that Saturday night? The same barmaid (points over to the barmaid who smiles and waves before turning her attention to the noise from the other side of the bar) was on duty as she is tonight, as she is every night, even when she goes to a party, she ends up working the bar to make her money so that one day she can travel and see the world. I like her you know Carlos, every time I see her she calls me English. I have told her my name plenty of times but still she insists she calls me English. Even when she is telling me in her secret way that I had to leave, go back on my journey and see the trail I had set out on when I left home with a couple of thousand dollars to my name, dreams of a world I had heard about from my grandfather, the stories, the tall impossible tales that turned out to be true; she told me to move on, see the world. Well I didn’t do that Carlos, I perhaps never will but I saw what I saw and loved what I loved. (Moves closer to the audience) You, Carlos have never been out of the city, you have never even left Manhattan, except for that once of course when you thought you would try dating that girl from Harlem, you would have been better off with the barmaid you know, I doubt you will ever leave Manhattan?”
The man goes back to the bar and pulls up a stool next to him and orders a drink, pointing at Carlos and as if she understands, she pours the stranger a glass of water before lifting his own glass towards his friend.
“I salute you Carlos, my friend, and yet time I fear has got in the way. It always does and if we are not careful we end up like those sparklers I saw other kids playing with when I would dare show my face at Bonfire Nights at school or at Cub Scouts, too few and far between. I only ever enjoyed one, I hated the sound of the fireworks though as they banged and crashed, exploded with such force that my body felt relentlessly shaken. The sparklers always looked kind of pretty, they made weird shapes in the air when you whizzed them round but sometimes they would fizzle too quick and you could get burned, your skin catching slightly as the combustible material threatens to set you on fire, life is too short Carlos. It is over when you look away from it.”
“I sat here on this very chair and talked of the things I was going to do, I was going to see. I wanted to find the family home in Hamilton and raise a glass to the spirit of my Grandfather whilst finding the church in which he attended as a young man before he and his family came back to England, before they docked in Liverpool and caught a train a day or two later back to the Midlands, just enough time to see some sights or for Great-Granddad to make sure he had somewhere to go to once they got back to Birmingham, just in time to have bombs being dropped on the city and the world tearing itself apart in madness; the church in which his name was still inscribed in the ledgers like some God who had travelled down from Olympus and swum Lake Ontario. I sat here and told you all what I was going to see. I told you all what I wanted to be. I wanted to be like him. I wanted to see a world that was only available in maps that I kept upon my bedroom wall and locked secretly with my diaries and the odd porn magazine and in the fertile imagination of a boy whose Grandfather would pass away before he knew I had saved up the money to come here and meet you all.”
The man goes to stand up and the light behind the bar goes down. He looks off stage
“I left here after that party, the one you said I should never have agreed to go to in the first place. Cut your losses and run my friend, she will never find you, I doubt she will ever look, to her you were a toy, a plaything for her to take hold of and in time destroy. Well I never did quite believe that she wanted me for anything other than to show me off to her rich friends, to take my seat in a world that I didn’t understand and certainly would never have agreed to be part of.”
The image of a girl comes up behind the man and puts her hands over his eyes.
“I had been staring out the window, the New York night enveloping my vision, a sound of a gunshot and a scream from a freshly made widow ricochets, rebounds and reverberates down the street, pounds on the glass that separates me from the outside world like a recently bereaved vampire desperately wanting to re-join this living breed. Then, just as suddenly, I feel a tap on my shoulder as her mother tries to introduce me to her friend, a woman whose family had settled in New York around the time my Grandfather’s Sister was being born into a home so small that it barely qualified as a shed. I had walked to the bar, found our ever gracious barmaid, the keeper of my soul and felt the hands of a beautiful woman as she placed them with such gentleness over my eyes, shielding them from my journey before she span me round and smiled as if this was the greatest moment of her life. You were there when we met old friend, you tried…so magnificently…to implore me not to go along with her plan to fund me the money I needed to win the t-shirt from Harry’s Hula Hut but would I listen? Instead after time together I found it harder to leave whilst all the time looking for that door. A dropped glass, the polite laughter as someone took the piss out of the drunk who had smashed it whilst balancing it on his dark red fake leather bulging wallet. We danced for a short while and all the time our barmaid was mouthing at me to run and not to forget about her, the one I had run away from in the first place.”
The girl takes her hands away from the man’s eyes and leads him dancing round the bar for a moment before slipping back into the darkness, only to reappear behind the bar.
“So North I found myself bound early the next morning after leaving you a note and asking you to say thank you to all but this life was not for me. I needed air, north was the place in which to go, the splendour of the sound of Niagara Falls crashing in the darkness as I found my way to a bar in which I sat all night transfixed at the celebrating, singing and cheering goings on as Bill Clinton became their President. Would I like a pint? Would I dare to have more than one, did I know their aunt who lived in London? Ears, mouth, couple of eyes, slightly old but with a warm winning smile and tales of the war which was won with a good supply of biscuits by the cheery black marketer who then served time for murder? I replied, seemingly the answer was yes as they bought me more drinks! Staying in the bar till two, whisky consumed, beer spilt, no headache in the morning as I walked confidently but eyes blinking hard as the sun’s energy bounced off the rails of Rainbow Bridge and the sound of my future, some 40 years off, rumbled and crashed as if I was being trampled underfoot by the weight of expectation.”
I thought of her as I sat on the bench close to the metal railing that separated the spray and droplets of water. I sat there through the entire day, my eyes transfixed by the water rushing over the edge, tumbling down, down, down…until (barmaid smacks hands together) smashing in the maelstrom below, smashed into a thousand insignificant molecules which rose up and hovered in the air before falling once more on me. Now that I loved! I watched pretty women and the thought of history enveloped me like a shrouded fine mist, of people who had sat in the seat and sweltered in the sun or froze in the winter surrounded by six foot snow drifts as they marvelled at the blocks of ice that were lured onto the rocks by the call of the Siren. I thought of her long past the time I should have made my way to Hamilton and I found myself sleeping rough but happy before I managed to get a bus to Hamilton. What happened there?”
(Man bows his head for a moment and the bar-maid comes over and takes away his drinking glass, returning a look to Carlos/Audience with a frown and shaking her head.)
“A story for another time old friend, perhaps one day I shall return to this bar, I will find you here on my seat, perhaps I might even find a drink waiting for me if we are still in touch. I made my way back into America, (noise from the other side of the bar briefly disturbs the story as the sound of gunfire is heard and the light goes down on the bar) I spoke at length to a family that were Amish about their life and they asked me questions about mine, stunned, surprised, perhaps even shocked that a young lad would make his way so far and know so little. I asked if they would mind if I took their photograph, knowing the answer the elder of the group would say no but feeling just as surprised when they agreed as long I never publish it my life time…If I don’t have children Carlos, I will send it to you in my will, It might put a firework up your arse to get off the island once in your life…You have never even been to Ellis Island! I found my way to Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia and Media in which I found a friend in a bar.”
(A young woman appears to the side of the bar with a pint in hand as man moves to centre of stage.)
“I sat in the bar, the sound of a thousand tales flowing around me…laughter loud and boisterous, for the first time I felt lonely, aloof, exhausted and cut off from the world for the first time since I was 14, nowhere to turn and then a group of American students sat at my table and took over the space I had carefully gained and made me feel stranded and not knowing where I stood in my thoughts. The tap on my shoulder (woman taps man on shoulder) made me look up and there was a woman who smiled, banishing all the negativity that had been building up.
“You’re English aren’t you?” (Woman)
“She said to me.”
“I can tell, you’re all the same, do you want a drink? (Woman)
“She asked and before I could answer, she had disappeared and brought me back a beer, cold, void of taste but given to me by a warm-hearted friend. We spoke at length; she became important to me and still is. A group of Hells Angels we saw the next day and she introduced me to the Charles Dickens bar, the Liberty Bell and I now on first name terms as she took a photo of the moment. I wish I had asked her to dance.”
(The light focuses on the man only for a minute as the bar-maid appears back behind the bar.)
“After the relaxation of Pittsburgh, the terror of Buffalo, the wilderness of Canada and the hectic nature of the last part of the journey, the final couple of days I found myself surrounded by so many people on a beach in New Jersey, the music, the dope, the drink and a conversation unspoken across a camp fire in the dead of night with a woman who urged me to keep travelling, to get to Dallas, California, San Francisco, take in the atmosphere, not to head back to England, to keep moving, never stopping for too long should I lose who I was or indeed who I had finally become. Her girlfriend kissing her gently through the haze of smoke and I lay back on the sand and fought this way and that in my head on whether I go back to England or do I keep walking, I had enough time. I watched everybody enjoying themselves and whilst I wasn’t lonely, the conversation buzzing back and forth fuelled by hedonism, my book, this book Carlos, dope and drink. The music that been a companion on my journey, the sounds of Genesis, Floyd, Supertramp, Marillion, the Pop, the Prog, The Metal and the Folk flowed along a sandy shoreline and danced with bright glowing fire. I did want to get up and leave the party for the final time, left or right, west or east. I chose east with a tight fear in my stomach, perhaps knowing full well I would never see the Pacific Ocean and I phoned you old friend.”
(The barmaid comes from behind the bar and collects glasses, turns off the lights and goes behind the bar again and starts tidying up.)
“Now here I am perhaps for the final time pal, this old bar in which we called home and even now I could stay forever in. Will she ever forgive me for leaving her like that? Will either of them for that matter. I am not sure which one I would be more concerned of seeing, the one whose heart I broke or the one who wanted me to be her project, to take the English boy and turn him into a teller of stories. Well old friend, the book is finished. I will leave it here for you to read if you want. The hour is late and our bar-maid friend wants to go home. I have a couch reserved there for a few hours, one last drink with the girl who calls me English, a few tales to impart to keep the memory alive.”
(The man lifts the rucksack onto his shoulders as the final light goes off and the bar-maid comes from behind the bar and takes the man’s arm.)
“We are after all Carlos in the end, just stories.”
Fade.
Ian D. Hall