Captain Cat, the retired blind sea-captain, asleep in his
bunk in the seashelled, ship-in-bottled, shipshape best
cabin of Schooner House dreams of
SECOND VOICE
never such seas as any that swamped the decks of his S.S.
Kidwelly bellying over the bedclothes and jellyfish-slippery
sucking him down salt deep into the Davy dark where the fish
come biting out and nibble him down to his wishbone, and
the long drowned nuzzle up to him.
FIRST DROWNED
Remember me, Captain?
CAPTAIN CAT
You're Dancing Williams!
FIRST DROWNED
I lost my step in Nantucket.
SECOND DROWNED
Do you see me, Captain? the white bone talking? I'm Tom-Fred
the donkeyman...we shared the same girl once...her name was
Mrs Probert...
WOMAN'S VOICE
Rosie Probert, thirty three Duck Lane. Come on up, boys,
I'm dead.
THIRD DROWNED
Hold me, Captain, I'm Jonah Jarvis, come to a bad end, very
enjoyable.
FOURTH DROWNED
Alfred Pomeroy Jones, sea-lawyer, born in Mumbles, sung
like a linnet, crowned you with a flagon, tattooed with
mermaids, thirst like a dredger, died of blisters.
FIRST DROWNED
This skull at your earhole is
FIFTH DROWNED
Curly Bevan. Tell my auntie it was me that pawned he ormolu
clock.
CAPTAIN CAT
Aye, aye, Curly.
SECOND DROWNED
Tell my missus no I never
THIRD DROWNED
I never done what she said I never.
FOURTH DROWNED
Yes they did.
FIFTH DROWNED
And who brings coconuts and shawls and parrots to my
Gwen now?
FIRST DROWNED
How's it above?
SECOND DROWNED
Is there rum and laverbread?
THIRD DROWNED
Bosoms and robins?
FOURTH DROWNED
Concertinas?
FIFTH DROWNED
Ebenezer's bell?
FIRST DROWNED
Fighting and onions?
SECOND DROWNED
And sparrows and daisies?
THIRD DROWNED
Tiddlers in a jamjar?
FOURTH DROWNED
Buttermilk and whippets?
FIFTH DROWNED
Rock-a-bye baby?
FIRST DROWNED
Washing on the line?
SECOND DROWNED
And old girls in the snug?
THIRD DROWNED
How's the tenors in Dowlais?
FOURTH DROWNED
Who milks the cows in Maesgwyn?
FIFTH DROWNED
When she smiles, is there dimples?
FIRST DROWNED
What's the smell of parsley?
CAPTAIN CAT
Oh, my dead dears!
FIRST VOICE
From where you are you can hear in Cockle Row in the spring,
moonless night, Miss Price, dressmaker and sweetshop-keeper,
dream of
SECOND VOICE
her lover, tall as the town clock tower, Samsonsyrup-gold-maned,
whacking thighed and piping hot, thunderbolt-bass'd and
barnacle-breasted, flailing up the cockles with his eyes
like blowlamps and scooping low over her lonely loving
hotwaterbottled body.
MR EDWARDS
Myfanwy Price!
MISS PRICE
Mr Mog Edwards!
MR EDWARDS
I am a draper mad with love. I love you more than all the
flannelette and calico, candlewick, dimity, crash and merino,
tussore, cretonne, crepon, muslin, poplin, ticking and twill
in the whole Cloth Hall of the world. I have come to take
you away to my Emporium on the hill, where the change hums
on wires. Throw away your little bedsocks and your Welsh
wool knitted jacket, I will warm the sheets like an electric
toaster, I will lie by your side like the Sunday roast.
MISS PRICE
I will knit you a wallet of forget-me-not blue, for the
money, to be comfy. I will warm your heart by the fire so
that you can slip it in under your vest when the shop is
closed.
MR EDWARDS
Myfanwy, Myfanwy, before the mice gnaw at your bottom drawer
will you say
MISS PRICE
Yes, Mog, yes, Mog, yes, yes, yes.
MR EDWARDS
And all the bells of the tills of the town shall ring for
our wedding.
[Noise of money-tills and chapel bells
FIRST VOICE
Come now, drift up the dark, come up the drifting sea-dark
street now in the dark night seesawing like the sea, to the
bible-black airless attic over Jack Black the cobbler's
shop where alone and savagely Jack Black sleeps in a
nightshirt tied to his ankles with elastic and dreams of
SECOND VOICE
chasing the naughty couples down the grassgreen gooseberried
double bed of the wood, flogging the tosspots in the
spit-and-sawdust, driving out the bare bold girls from the
sixpenny hops of his nightmares.
JACK BLACK (Loudly)
Ach y fi!
Ach y fi!
FIRST VOICE
Evans the Death, the undertaker,
SECOND VOICE
laughs high and aloud in his sleep and curls up his toes as
he sees, upon waking fifty years ago, snow lie deep on the
goosefield behind the sleeping house ; and he runs out into
the field where his mother is making welsh-cakes in the
snow, and steals a fistful of snowflakes and currants and
climbs back to bed to eat them cold and sweet under the
warm, white clothes while his mother dances in the snow
kitchen crying out for her lost currants.
FIRST VOICE
And in the little pink-eyed cottage next to the undertaker's,
lie, alone, the seventeen snoring gentle stone of Mister
Waldo, rabbitcatcher, barber, herbalist, catdoctor, quack,
his fat pink hands, palms up, over the edge of the patchwork
quilt, his black boots neat and tidy in the washing-basin,
his bowler on a nail above the bed, a milk stout and a slice
of cold bread pudding under the pillow; and, dripping in
the dark, he dreams of
MOTHER
This little piggy went to market
This little piggy stayed at home
This little piggy had roast beef
This little piggy had none
And this little piggy went
LITTLE BOY
wee wee wee wee wee
MOTHER
all the way home to
WIFE (Screaming)
Waldo! Wal-do!
MR WALDO
Yes, Blodwen love?
WIFE
Oh, what'll the neighbours say, what'll the neighbours...
FIRST NEIGHBOUR
Poor Mrs Waldo
SECOND NEIGHBOUR
What she puts up with
FIRST NEIGHBOUR
Never should of married
SECOND NEIGHBOUR
If she didn't had to
FIRST NEIGHBOUR
Same as her mother
SECOND NEIGHBOUR
There's a husband for you
FIRST NEIGHBOUR
Bad as his father
SECOND NEIGHBOUR
And you know where he ended
FIRST NEIGHBOUR
Up in the asylum
SECOND NEIGHBOUR
Crying for his ma
FIRST NEIGHBOUR
Every Saturday
SECOND NEIGHBOUR
He hasn't got a log
FIRST NEIGHBOUR
And carrying on
SECOND NEIGHBOUR
With that Mrs Beattie Morris
FIRST NEIGHBOUR
Up in the quarry
SECOND NEIGHBOUR
And seen her baby
FIRST NEIGHBOUR
It's got his nose
SECOND NEIGHBOUR
Oh it makes my heart bleed
FIRST NEIGHBOUR
What he'll do for drink
SECOND NEIGHBOUR
He sold the pianola to
FIRST NEIGHBOUR
And her sewing machine
SECOND NEIGHBOUR
Falling in the gutter
FIRST NEIGHBOUR
Talking to the lamp-post
SECOND NEIGHBOUR
Using language
FIRST NEIGHBOUR
Singing in the w
SECOND NEIGHBOUR
Poor Mrs Waldo
WIFE (Tearfully)
...Oh, Waldo, Waldo!
MR WALDO
Hush, love, hush. I'm widower Waldo now.
MOTHER (Screaming)
Waldo, Wal-do!
LITTLE BOY
Yes, our mum?
MOTHER
Oh, what'll the neighbours say, what'll the neighbours...
THIRD NEIGHBOUR
Black as a chimbley
FOURTH NEIGHBOUR
Ringing doorbells
THIRD NEIGHBOUR
Breaking windows
FOURTH NEIGHBOUR
Making mudpies
THIRD NEIGHBOUR
Stealing currants
FOURTH NEIGHBOUR
Chalking words
THIRD NEIGHBOUR
Saw him in the bushes
FOURTH NEIGHBOUR
Playing mwchins
THIRD NEIGHBOUR
Send him to bed without any supper
FOURTH NEIGHBOUR
Give him sennapods and lock him in the dark
THIRD NEIGHBOUR
Off to the reformatory
FOURTH NEIGHBOUR
Off to the reformatory
TOGETHER
Learn him with a slipper on his b.t.m.
ANOTHER MOTHER (Screaming)
Waldo, Wal-do! what you doing with our Matti?
LITTLE BOY
Give us a kiss, Matti Richards.
LITTLE GIRL
Give us a penny then.
MR WALDO
I only got a halfpenny.
FIRST WOMAN
Lips is a penny.
PREACHER
Will you take this woman Matti Richards
SECOND WOMAN
Dulcie Prothero
THIRD WOMAN
Effie Bevan
FOURTH WOMAN
Lil the Gluepot
FIFTH WOMAN
Mrs Flusher
WIFE
Blodwen Bowen
PREACHER
To be your awful wedded wife
LITTLE BOY (Screaming)
No, no, no!
FIRST VOICE
Now, in her iceberg-white, holily laundered crinoline
nightgown, under virtuous polar sheets, in her spruced and
scoured dust-defying bedroom in trig and trim Bay View, a
house for paying guests, at the top of the town, Mrs
Ogmore-Pritchard widow, twice, of Mr Ogmore, linoleum,
retired, and Mr Pritchard, failed bookmaker, who maddened
by besoming, swabbing and scrubbing, the voice of the
vacuum-cleaner and the fume of polish, ironically swallowed
disinfectant, fidgets in her rinsed sleep, wakes in a
dream, and nudges in the ribs dead Mr Ogmore, dead Mr
Pritchard, ghostly on either side.
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
Mr Ogmore!
Mr Pritchard!
It is time to inhale your balsam.
MR OGMORE
Oh, Mrs Ogmore!
MR PRITCHARD
Oh, Mrs Pritchard!
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
Soon it will be time to get up.
Tell me your tasks, in order.
MR OGMORE
I must put my pyjamas in the drawer marked pyjamas.
MR PRITCHARD
I must take my cold bath which is good for me.
MR OGMORE
I must wear my flannel band to ward off sciatica.
MR PRITCHARD
I must dress behind the curtain and put on my apron.
MR OGMORE
I must blow my nose.
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
In the garden, if you please.
MR OGMORE
In a piece of tissue-paper which I afterwards burn.
MR PRITCHARD
I must take my salts which are nature's friend.
MR OGMORE
I must boil the drinking water because of germs.
MR PRITCHARD
I must make my herb tea which is free from tannin.
MR OGMORE
And have a charcoal biscuit which is good for me.
MR PRITCHARD
I may smoke one pipe of asthma mixture.
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
In the woodshed, if you please.
MR PRITCHARD
And dust the parlour and spray the canary. IS
MR OGMORE
I must put on rubber gloves and search the peke for fleas.
MR PRITCHARD
I must dust the blinds and then I must raise them.
MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD
And before you let the sun in, mind it wipes its shoes.
FIRST VOICE
In Butcher Beynon's, Gossamer Beynon, daughter, schoolteacher,
dreaming deep, daintily ferrets under a fluttering hummock
of chicken's feathers in a slaughterhouse that has chintz
curtains and a three-pieced suite, and finds, with no surprise,
a small rough ready man with a bushy tail winking in a paper
carrier.
GOSSAMER BEYNON
At last, my love,
FIRST VOICE
sighs Gossamer Beynon. And the bushy tail wags rude and ginger.
ORGAN MORGAN
Help,
SECOND VOICE
cries Organ Morgan, the organist, in his dream,
ORGAN MORGAN
There is perturbation and music in Coronation Street! All
the spouses are honking like geese and the babies singing
opera. P.C. Attila Rees has got his truncheon out and is
playing cadenzas by the pump, the cows from Sunday Meadow
ring like reindeer, and on the roof of Handel Villa see the
Women's Welfare hoofing, bloomered, in the moon.
FIRST VOICE
At the sea-end of town, Mr and Mrs Floyd, the cocklers, are
sleeping as quiet as death, side by wrinkled side, toothless,
salt and brown, like two old kippers In a box.
And high above, in Salt Lake Farm, Mr Utah Watkins counts,
all night, the wife-faced sheep as they leap the knees on
the hill, smiling and knitting and bleating just like Mrs
Utah Watkins.
UTAH WATKINS (Yawning)
Thirty - four, thirty - five, thirty - six, forty - eight,
eighty-nine...
MRS UTAH WATKINS (Bleating)
Knit one slip one
Knit two together
Pass the slipstitch over...
FIRST VOICE
Ocky Milkman, drowned asleep in Cockle Street, is emptying
his churns into the Dewi River,
OCKY MILKMAN (Whispering)
regardless of expense,
FIRST VOICE
and weeping like a funeral.
SECOND VOICE
Cherry Owen, next door, lifts a tankard to his but nothing
flows out of it. He shakes the tankar ' It turns into a
fish. He drinks the fish.
FIRST VOICE
P.C. Attila Rees lumps out of bed, dead to the dar and still
foghorning, and drags out his helmet from under the bed;
but deep in the backyard lock-up of his slee a mean voice
murmurs
A VOICE (Murmuring)
You'll be sorry for this in the morning,
FIRST VOICE
and he heave-ho's back to bed. His helmet swashes in the dark.
SECOND VOICE
Willy Nilly, postman, asleep up street, walks fourteen miles
to deliver the post as he does every day of the night, and
rat-a-tats hard and sharp on Mrs Willy Nilly.
MRS WILLY NILLY
Don't spank me, please, teacher,
SECOND VOICE
whimpers his wife at his side, but every night of her married
life she has been late for school.
FIRST VOICE
Sinbad Sailors, over the taproom of the Sailors Arms, hugs
his damp pillow whose secret name is Gossamer Beynon.
A mogul catches Lily Smalls in the wash-house.
LILY SMALLS
Ooh, you old mogul!
SECOND VOICE
Mrs Rose Cottage's eldest, Mae, peals off her pink-and-white
skin in a furnace in a tower in a cave in a waterfall in a
wood and waits there raw as an onion for Mister Right to
leap up the burning tall hollow splashes of leaves like a
brilliantined trout.
MAE ROSE COTTAGE
(Very close and softly, drawing out the words)
Call me Dolores
Like they do in the stories.
FIRST VOICE
Alone until she dies, Bessie Bighead, hired help, born in
the workhouse, smelling of the cowshed, snores bass and
gruff on a couch of straw in a loft in Salt Lake Farm and
picks a posy of daisies in Sunday Meadow to put on the grave
of Gomer Owen who kissed her once by the pig-sty when she
wasn't looking and never kissed her again although she was
looking all the time.
And the Inspectors of Cruelty fly down into Mrs Butcher
Brynon's dream to persecute Mr Beynon for selling
BUTCHER BEYNON
owlmeat, dogs' eyes, manchop.
SECOND VOICE
Mr Beynon, in butcher's bloodied apron, spring-heels down
Coronation Street, a finger, not his own, in his mouth.
Straightfaced in his cunning sleep he pulls the legs of
his dreams and
BUTCHER BEYNON
hunting on pigback shoots down the wild giblets.
ORGAN MORGAN (High and softly)
Help!
GOSSAMER BEYNON (Softly)
My foxy darling.
FIRST VOICE
Now behind the eyes and secrets of the dreamers in the
streets rocked to sleep by the sea, see the
SECOND VOICE
titbits and topsyturvies, bobs and buttontops, bags and
bones, ash and rind and dandruff and nailparings, saliva
and snowflakes and moulted feathers of dreams, the wrecks
and sprats and shells and fishbones, whale-juice and moonshine
and small salt fry dished up by the hidden sea.
FIRST VOICE
The owls are hunting. Look, over Bethesda gravestones one
hoots and swoops and catches a mouse by Hannah Rees, Beloved
Wife. And in Coronation Street, which you alone can see it
is so dark under the chapel in the skies, the Reverend Eli
Jenkins, poet, preacher, turns in his deep towards-dawn
sleep and dreams of
REV. ELI JENKINS
Eisteddfodau.
SECOND VOICE
He intricately rhymes, to the music of crwth and pibgorn,
all night long in his druid's seedy nightie in a beer-tent
black with parchs.
FIRST VOICE
Mr Pugh, schoolmaster, fathoms asleep, pretends to be sleeping,
spies foxy round the droop of his nightcap and pssst! whistles up
MR PUGH
Murder.
FIRST VOICE
Mrs Organ Morgan, groceress, coiled grey like a dormouse,
her paws to her ears, conjures
MRS ORGAN MORGAN
Silence.
SECOND VOICE
She sleeps very dulcet in a cove of wool, and trumpeting
Organ Morgan at her side snores no louder than a
spider.
FIRST VOICE
Mary Ann Sailors dreams of
MARY ANN SAILORS
The Garden of Eden.
FIRST VOICE
She comes in her smock-frock and clogs
MARY ANN SAILORS
away from the cool scrubbed cobbled kitchen with the
Sunday-school pictures on the whitewashed wall and the
farmers' almanac hung above the settle and the sides of
bacon on the ceiling hooks, and goes down the cockleshelled
paths of that applepie kitchen garden, ducking under the
gippo's clothespegs, catching her apron on the blackcurrant
bushes, past beanrows and onion-bed and tomatoes ripening
on the wall towards the old man playing the Harmonium in
the orchard, and sits down on the grass at his side and
shells the green peas that grow up through the lap of her
frock that brushes the dew.
FIRST VOICE
In Donkey Street, so furred with sleep, Dai Bread, Polly
Garter, Nogood Boyo, and Lord Cut-Glass sigh before the
dawn that is about to be and dream of
DAI BREAD
Harems.
POLLY GARTER
Babies.
NOGOOD BOYO
Nothing.
LORD CUT-GLASS
Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock.
FIRST VOICE
Time passes. Listen. Time passes. An owl flies I home past
Bethesda, to a chapel in an oak. And the dawn inches up.