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King of Infinite Space A seedy bed-sit. An unmade bed. Empty cans and other rubbish litter the
stage. Piles of old books, gathering dust. There is a battered packing
case half under the bed covered in bits and pieces, and a couple
of broken chairs. A rickety press holds a quantity of canned food,
a few more books and other miscellaneous items. HENRY: [reads label on can in sardonic manner] Prime processed peas... processed... pro-cessed... Hmm. Prime... [rolls the word around his mouth] P-rrrime... p-p-p-peas. Hmm... [starts to open the can] Prime processed peas [repeats the phrase, getting faster and faster, muddling up the words. Laughs sourly] "Henry Chapman passed away yesterday, leaving his collection of puns and tongue-twisters to the nation. He will be sadly missed, badly pissed, rest in peace, rest in peas." [sniffs contents of can. Grimaces.] Not, let it be understood, that I'd have touched prime processed peas with a bargepole -- if I'd ever had a bargepole or even a barge -- not in the old days... [pause] "The barge she sat in", eh?.... How does it go? [clicks fingers] The barge she sat in Like a burnished poop.... No. Like a burnished... poop? No.... [searches for a spoon] Poop. Now there's a funny word. [Noise like a train] Poop poop. Not very... Shakespearean.... although.... [Gives up on spoon. Gets a knife] Ah, the good old days.... Where are they now? Eh? Eh? And don't try to tell me the good old days never existed because I know better. I know. They were good. They were very good.... [addresses can] Look at me. Go on, look at me. Can't you tell that I am a man who has fallen upon hard times. Fallen.... yes.... Fallen from a great height, fallen from grace, whoever she was. Fallen... how does it go? [clicks fingers] That poem? You know the one.... on the tip of my... [eats the peas from the can with the knife] What? What? If you don't like my manners you can with all due respect shove it. Shove. It. Up. Your.... Poop. [eats] It's true, though. I'd never have done this in the good old days. Not me. I'd have eaten my prime processed peas off a porcelain platter with a silver knife and fork, a porcelain platter so delicate you could hold it up to the light and see your fingers as dark shadows through its bluey whiteness... "I eat my peas with honey..." How does it go? [click] "I eat my peas with honey. .. Dadumdedumdedum... It makes the peas taste funny..." Well, it would, wouldn't it. Honey. I mean to say... Honey and prime processed... [Looks at cans] What will I do when they're all gone. What then? [Roughly counts the cans] Twenty, would you say? Twenty five at most. A month. Less. That's going on a can a day... Not long to wait, then. Not long now, Henry old Chapman... But you know something. I can hardly manage to get them down, even so. I can hardly stomach them. My stomach can hardly... [puts can aside] "I eat my peas with honey..." Ha, that would make a change, all the same. Honey would make a tasty change... Fat chance of a taste of honey around here. Although, having said that... [Rummages in the baggy pockets of his cardigan] Found a coin the other day. A kind of a burnished kind of a coin. Don't know where it came from. Can't.... [finds it] Here! Some class of a burnished coin. Might be enough to buy a pot of honey, at that. Not pure Mexican acacia honey. Not Dutch wild clover honey. Some cheap blend. [Looks at coin carefully] Can't recognise the.... Who is that? Some king or other? Some queen? A queen bee for the honey? Might be nice. Might make a pleasant and palatable change. But then... I was thinking of saving it for a rainy day. A day on which the rain falls. Falls. [click] Yes. That's it. "Him the Almighty Power Hurled headlong flaming from the... something sky.... With hideous ruin...." Hideous ruin. Hideous. Hid-e-ous... Bugger! It's all turned to dust. Dust. [pause] [Picks up can. Puts it down again] They go straight through me anyway, these prime processed peas. So in a way I can't help wondering, what's the point? I mean to say, they come out almost the same as they go in... Still neatly wrapped up in their green skins, their almost unnaturally bright green skins... What? Have I overstepped the....? You can't stand a bit of elementary physiology? Fizzzziology: I crap. Thou crapest. He she it craps. You crap. They crap. We all bloody well crap. [Tosses the coin] A rainy day... "I am the king of a rainy country"... Hmm. Only it's better in French. That's what.... that's what they say. I am the heir to a great tradition. Only... only... no one wants me in this modern world. This brave new... that hath such people... Such people. Right. People who don't feel the need.... Hurled headlong flaming from the something sky With hideous ruin and... combustion Yes, that's it, com-bus-tion... down To bottomless [click] bottomless bottomless... Bottomless what? I knew it all once. I had a good education. The best. What you might even term a classical education. The family business ensured that. But... [indicates room] ... how are the mighty etcetera etcetera... Not that I was ever exactly mighty. No. Not me. [Picks up can and studies it] The world was already turning from the good old ways by the time I came on the scene. My father held his own. Just about. But his father and grandfather and all those great great great grandfathers... now theirs were the glory days. That was when we were... well, I can't say respected. That's not the word. Feared? No... Not that. Although that did come into it. Held in awe... maybe [eats] I eat my peas with honey I've done it all my life... Actually, to tell the honest truth, peas didn't figure much on the menu in those far off good old days. And if they did it was succulent garden peas, newly popped from their pods. Everything that passed my lips in those days was tasty. I was reared on choice morsels. My father used to take a... not a doggy bag, no, that sounds so... so... An appropriate container, yes, pots within pots so that the different dishes didn't get mixed up into a... well, a dog's dinner, if you like. Our repast would of course depend on the largesse... well, that's not the word either... the degree of remorse, perhaps, of my father's clients.... They would know he had a growing family to support and generally put aside part of the... feast... The good old ways... Mmmm.... [pause] When I say "feast" of course I use the word in its broadest... Could be simple but sustaining fare: bacon and cabbage. We never scorned it. But it could also be.... cordon bleu. Meats delicately stewed in creamy sauces, with almonds, mushrooms.... herbs -- coriander, rosemary, tarragon -- and spices even in days not noted for culinary experimentation: ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, cumin. I consumed cardamom with my mother's milk before it had been heard of among the hoi polloi.... Veal, goose, grouse, duck, sirloin steak.... Sirloin, knighted by King Henry VIII of England, no less. "Arise Sir Loin and be eaten forthwith..." Not all guaranteed to aid digestion of course. My dear mother, God rest her, would often scream at my father as he produced yet another set of appropriate containers full of poached sweetbreads or chicken liver risotto in aoili sauce with raisins. "Why don't you throw it in?" she'd yell. "Get a proper job. One where they don't pay you in bleeding bulls' balls!" But of course she didn't understand. None of the womenfolk ever really understood. They never saw it as a calling, you see. That's why....well... [eats] I eat my peas with honey I've done it all my life It makes the peas taste funny But it keeps them on the knife It keeps them on the... Damn it, damn it all.....[long pause] Largesse. A good word, all the same. Makes me think of a buxom woman for some reason. A buxom smiling woman. Large-bosomed. Warm-hearted. Larg-esse. My forefathers all had beautiful wives. That was part of it, too. Part of the... [clicks] not respect. No. Not fear. Servility...? Appeasement...? Conciliation...? Something like all that. And yet... [pause] My mother, she was a beauty. Well, of course by the time I was able to notice such things, she had changed, changed utterly. But there were pictures... There should still be pictures, in point of... [rummages in press] A true beauty. If only I could.... But then, it seems to me -- and I'm far from being an expert in such matters -- it seems to me that for beauty to survive, it has to be nurtured... with... what would you say... what's the word... [clicks] well, with love, I suppose. With love. Love can transform the plain, the ugly even, into beauty.... At least, that's what I think can happen... I'm certainly no expert on the matter, although, that said, I have given it some considerable thought... Anyway, where there's no love, where there's only scorn and disgust and loathing, then everything starts to curdle, turning ugly and disgusting. I only remember my mother as ugly. Pinched and thin and full of recriminations. No largesse, you see. None. Not a....Oh... [pause] They sent me Minnie. Squinting Minnie. Only at the time I couldn't see straight. I was squinting, right back at her. I was too young to understand that perhaps love could have... Anyway, it's too late now. Now it's... well, it's like this [gestures around himself] Prime processed peas in profusion. Ha! That's good. Even better. Prime processed peas in profusion. [Repeats faster. Gets muddled up] My tongue is even more twisted than before, me lud. Perhaps I should... write it down.... a pen... [looks around] A pen, a pen my kingdom for a... my rainy kingdom for a ... [Gives up] Ah, but when I think of the food. That groaning table. The largesse. And from what my father and grandfather said, it was even better in their heyday. Their hey-nonny-no day. Veritable banquets... Of course, on the other hand, there was the downside. I suppose I should be grateful I have been spared the worst of all that. And I am grateful, but... [Finds picture] Here she is. My mother. See what I mean. A beauty. Those fine bones. Hair like a raven's wing. Mouth like Cupid's bow... And if you think she's lovely, you should have seen my grandmother. Even in old age, she still had... well a radiance, I suppose you'd call it. That's because women in those days.... Don't get me wrong. I don't necessarily think it's right or good. It's just that people were more accepting of the way things were. Whatever fate dished out to them, so to speak. Whoever fate dished out. Dished out whether on a porcelain platter or in a tin can. They made the best of... And now they aren't prepared to do that any more. Is that good or bad? I don't know. It's just different. What I do know for sure is that the spiritual side of life has gone down the toilet. Flushed away like a heap of... crap. People live for the moment. For what they can get out of it. As easily as possible. As conveniently as possible. The Instant society. Powdered gratification. Just add hot water, stir well, then sit back and enjoy your... cuppa-life... Hedonism, do you see, that's what's behind it all. The pleasure principle. They don't think about... accountability... punishment... retribution... Anyway, I'm suffering for the new ways. I'm the victim here. Hurled headlong, so to speak... The downside, though. That could be nasty. Broken arms, broken ribs. Bruises. Cuts. Bad cuts. One time my father was concussed. That set my mother off, of course. My God, instead of giving him the care and attention he required and merited, she started screaming the place down. She cursed him. She cursed his father. His father's father. His radiant mother. She cursed her own father for selling... I mean sending her into such a life. And when I say cursed, I don't mean a few bad words. I mean obscenity, gutter talk, filth. All this in front of a child. Me that is, as I was. Six, seven, eight? The heir apparent. Oh yes, my mother may once have had the face of a Raphael madonna but she had the rough tongue, the twisted tongue, of a dockside whore. And why wouldn't she? Isn't that, after all, where they got her. "The barge she sat in.." She sat in a barge, all right. She lay back in a barge. Night after... Yes. Oh, my forefathers may have been provided with beautiful brides, only... for pity's sake don't enquire too closely where they were got. Even my radiant grandmother was a foundling. No decent family would consider giving a daughter of theirs to the likes of us. They drew the line. Well, until Minnie, that is, and then only because she... Anyway, that was long ago. And in another country... Another country of the mind... No good regretting anything. Look on the bright side. In so many ways I may not have done as well as my forefathers, but at least I've been spared the... [Places mother's picture on the press, where it can be seen] Wasn't she a beauty all the same? Once upon a time. Wasn't she just? Music. Lights fade down |
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