Dear Brian and Ninon
Now that I am back in Newcastle can I thank you both for making the New End Theatre available for the rehearsed reading of Death of a Nightingale, and especially you, Ninon, for your invaluable input.
I attach the final version which addresses all the criticisms and comments I received. You will see that I have made a number of changes – some new lines, one or two restored ones and some general tidying up.
In particular I have reworked Act 2 Scene 3 with brand new top and tail, the ending coming as much as a surprise to me as it will probably come to you. Then I have discovered that sometimes characters can surprise their author as their parts are acted out – that is, of course, one of the great virtues of a rehearsed reading by good actors. So my thanks to them as well.
Alan
ACT TWO
Scene 3
TRACY Eileen Winterton, our chair of governors, badly wanted to understand why Margaret had tried to take her own life. She thought Joan Errington, her partner and my wonderful English teacher, would be the best person to tell her. She would be, wouldn’t she? She invited Joan to a local coffee house for a chat.
(Eileen enters with a cup of coffee on a tray, shortly followed by Joan with a pot of tea and a chocolate brownie)
JOAN ERRINGTON Sweet tooth. I can’t resist their brownies.
EILEEN WINTERTON Chocolate’s better than tobacco?
JOAN ERRINGTON Just. I need something for sure.
EILEEN WINTERTON I’m so pleased you could come. How are you?
JOAN ERRINGTON Still a bit fragile.
EILEEN WINTERTON I can believe it, especially as it was you who found Margaret. Do tell me though, do try and explain to me why she did such a terrible thing.
JOAN ERRINGTON Please don’t press me too much. It’s still very painful.
EILEEN WINTERTON I do need to know.
JOAN ERRINGTON Well, just say she’s a casualty of the world we are living in. That’s certainly where you have to start.
…………………………………………………………………………………………………
JOAN ERRINGTON It makes me so sick at times, especially now. When terrible things like this happen – you know I’m very, very close to Margaret – you really start to think. I’ll give you a strange thought. The word ‘Equality’ is a lot of the problem. It’s mucked up, fucked up education for years. We are not all equal.
EILEEN WINTERTON No, that’s heresy. Surely there’s got to be equality of opportunity?
JOAN ERRINGTON What does that actually mean? What does it mean? Don’t you see? All kids are different, very different, our kids especially, and they need different kinds of opportunity. Fair play is what they all want, not equality. The needs of gifted and talented youngsters are every bit as important as the needs of kids in our school, from the country’s point of view maybe even more important. Those that trumpet equality don’t begin to understand that. If kids are not given the opportunity that’s right for them – and they’re all different – they’ll never meet the challenge of the times.
EILEEN WINTERTON Then, of course, they’ll never be included in it.
JOAN ERRINGTON Yes, and this country needs them to be.
EILEEN WINTERTON I’ve always thought that another word for Equality is mediocrity.
JOAN ERRINGTON And what’s even worse, for many people the quest for Equality is simply built on envy.
EILEEN WINTERTON Or guilt. Well, the opposite of envy is ambition. Envy somehow diminishes you. Ambition enlarges you.
JOAN ERRINGTON Interesting you should put it that way. Emma – she’s for ever quoting the Bible – she keeps saying there’s no sin in ownin’, but there is a sin in covetin’.
EILEEN WINTERTON It’s not surprising that a lot of kids have lost their way.
JOAN ERRINGTON They’ve never been shown it, Eileen. – you know, the way to live that’s right for them – that’s what education should be about. What these kids want is not equality of opportunity. It’s just, well, opportunity.
EILEEN WINTERTON It certainly is a rat race these days and a different kind of rat race from any before.
JOAN ERRINGTON But a rat race you can’t run away from. It has got its good side, if you know where to find it. I’m sure none of this sadness would have happened to Margaret if people realised like we do that all kids have very different needs.
EILEEN WINTERTON Poor Margaret. I’m afraid our old friend Karl Marx is still around in education. People are looking for that elusive level playing field, and with the proviso that no-one actually competes on it.
JOAN ERRINGTON Yes, , they are forever looking for solutions to the world’s problems in the libraries of their minds, not in the classrooms of the real world.
EILEEN WINTERTON They don’t see how complicated it all is these days.
JOAN ERRINGTON Yes, they think it’s so simple, so very simple. And they think that what they would want for themselves, everyone else should want as well.
EILEEN WINTERTON That’s why they keep putting square pegs into round holes.
JOAN ERRINGTON Yes, with epoxy glue.
EILEEN WINTERTON And when it all goes wrong – you know how the old saying goes – they point a finger at other people when they should see where their other three fingers are pointing.
JOAN ERRINGTON I like that. I hadn’t heard it before.
EILEEN WINTERTON It’s not just Karl Marx you know. Liberals are the very worst people for thinking things are simple. The Achilles’ heel of the Liberal is naiveté. And, when you don’t know you’re naïve, well it’s highly dangerous.
JOAN ERRINGTON Insanity.
EILEEN WINTERTON No, I’d put it another way. You can care too much. You can you know, if you see people how you’d like them to be, and not how, I’m afraid, most of them are.
JOAN ERRINGTON Yes, I think we’re getting there. If you want to know why poor Margaret tried to kill herself, don’t look just at her. And, don’t think it was all to do with the LEA either. That was literally the last straw, the straw that broke the camel’s back. You have to look at the world she lived in, as I know she saw it. She why she was so depressed, why she kept taking those goodnight pills all the time. Then you’ll begin to understand. You’ve got to dig deep. When people go as far as she went, you’ve got to dig deep to understand.
EILEEN WINTERTONI do see it now. Yes, it’s ironic isn’t it? Right at the very bottom, there are two dreams in Western Society, the Marxist dream and the Liberal dream, separately and together, both of them, the opium of the brainy classes. And why? Because they inhabit the world of “wouldn’t it be nice if.” Wouldn’t it be nice if only such as such were the case?
JOAN ERRINGTON And, of course, it very rarely is.
EILEEN WINTERTON Give a function to the State to make the world a better place, put a value on individual worth, yes, but allow for human frailty as well. They don’t do that. That’s where they both go badly wrong.
JOAN ERRINGTON That’s why they make such a mess of things.
EILEEN WINTERTON And some folk hate globalisation too. But you can’t turn the clock back. You just can’t. We don’t need an old clock. We need a brand new compass.
JOAN ERRINGTON . Well, once upon a time the big problem used to be private wealth and public squalor. Today, it is private stress and public unhappiness. Just look at poor Margaret and our parents…and me.
EILEEN WINTERTON Oh dear, I shouldn’t have started all this. I really am sorry I encouraged you to sound off.
JOAN ERRINGTON Don’t apologise. I badly, badly needed it. I don’t much like the world I see. I can’t pretend I do. But I’ll find a way of living through it. You’ve just got to.
EILEEN WINTERTON Our little discussion has been cathartic for both of us. It has certainly helped me to understand why Margaret did what she did. It was the LEA, but it went far beyond that.
JOAN ERRINGTON I am sure that it did. There is a word that covers it, and it probably applies to most people who try to take their own lives, including all those children who have been persistently bullied with no-one stopping it.
EILEEN WINTERTONAnd the word?
JOAN ERRINGTON Despair, just total utter despair. What is very sad for me is that at the end, I became one more part of it. You know the day before she tried to take her life we had a little tiff, she thought about resigning, not taking her own life, – no, she never said that – she asked me to leave her.
EILEEN WINTERTON I didn’t know that.
JOAN ERRINGTON Those twenty four hours, what she must have gone through! It never even crossed my mind she’d take an overdose. It must have been a very long night after I left. Poor soul, it must have felt like an eternity
EILEEN WINTERTON For heaven’s sake, don’t blame yourself here. Don’t do that. As you said, right at the beginning, one way or another, we’re all of us walking wounded, not just Margaret.
JOAN ERRINGTON I guess so. I must go. (Stands up to leave) …….You know, I’ve just really seen it. It wasn’t the pills that kept her going. It wasn’t me either. It was the kids, and she did so worry about the world they’d have to grow up in. She knew, you see, she knew. In those twenty four long hours she suddenly realised that whatever she did, whatever she did, do the bidding of the LEA or resign, she’d lost everything that made her life worthwhile.
(Eileen also stands up to leave)
EILEEN WINTERTONOf course, you’re right. That was her despair. Thank you for your time. I do appreciate it.
JOAN ERRINGTON Oh, I don’t like my world at the moment one little bit.
EILEEN WINTERTON Look, there’s a lot wrong with this world of ours. There always has been. There always will be. But there’s an awful lot right as well, isn’t there? You’ve just got to ride that roller coaster between the two. And try not to fall off.
JOAN ERRINGTON I suppose so. See you again soon. Bye,
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