The Ostraka Plays: Volume Three - THE ANDALUSIAN STUDY

By Francis Hagan

Spain, 1949, now exhausted after a bitter Civil War and adrift from a Europe devasted by WWII,and Bill Alexander arrives fresh from University to catalogue and order an ancient collection of dusty books. Here, in the manorial estate of the blind 'Averroes', skirted by his daughter, Mira, Bill Alexander falls prey to whimsy and revelation as father and daughter use him to fight out a long-seated bitterness. Bill, however, has a secret all his own and it is one which will threaten their very world.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Francis Hagan
• Release date: Jan 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781465799395

Francis Hagan

I have been writing on and off since I was a shy lad hiding under the bed and scribbling in an out of date diary (I think it was about my space travels). Most of my works have been either plays populated with grotesques who stumble around ruins and those odd places we forget about or epic tales of those last Roman legionaries as they falter and fall at the end of Empire. Over the last three years, I have embarked on a series of plays which I have entitled 'The Ostraka Plays' and in which I am exploring that space where the irrational and the seductive collide. I remain fascinated by a poetics which allows an imagination to populate a forgotten nook in history outside our conventions and expectations. In these plays, the audience is invited into worlds which remain provisional and insecure - and where freedom is that release from convention. The other side of my writings could not be more opposite - in these stories, the dying light of Rome flutters one last desperate time as I seek to follow the last of the Eagles down into their fates. Here, archaeological record, literary fragments, and my own invention intertwine to set a stage ripe for heroics and betrayal.

Book preview

THE OSTRAKA PLAYS, VOLUME THREE

THE ANDALUSIAN STUDY

By

FRANCIS HAGAN

Published by Francis Hagan at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Francis Hagan

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given

away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an

additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it or it was not

purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

T H E A N D A L U S I A N S T U D Y

By

Francis Hagan

‘A story neither begins nor ends, it merely feigns to . . .’

- Cervantes

Copyright Sept 2011

CHARACTERS

BILL ALEXANDER - A male in his mid-twenties, distant, worn.

AVERROËS - A patriarchal figure, blind, magisterial.

MIRA - His daughter, in her mid-twenties, aristocratic and somewhat wilful.

LOCATION

The manorial estate of Averroës high in the rugged hills of the Sierra Morena in Andalusia, Spain. It is early summer, 1949.

The Arrival

(A dim hazy light covers the stage. It shifts and pulses with uncertain shapes and colours.)

(A young man is revealed in this light. He is gazing up, both lost and entranced. He wears a crumpled linen suit, shabby with use. In one hand, he holds a travel case. One clasp is broken and a tie is now knotted around that part of the case.)

(The light shifts as if alive leaving the stage indeterminate. A large wall emerges like the flank of an unseen creature. It is cracked and riddled with old colours and half-remembered designs.)

(The young man gazes up as the light shifts about him. He is oblivious to the wall.)

(Petals drift down through the light; delicate; endless.)

(Slowly, the young man reaches up his free hand into the falling petals. They brush across his skin.)

(The light shifts again in oceanic complexity. The large wall fades. The young man is suspended in light and falling petals, his hand still held high. He turns it slowly, as if it is alien to him.)

(He sighs deeply and then frowns.)

(The figure of a young dark woman appears beside him. She is barefoot.)

(Petals fall upon them and each is absorbed by their patterns and colours.)

(The light slowly ebbs from them to reveal a sparse room with simple but elegant country fittings.)

Mira (Gazing upon the man.) . . . The orchard is a thousand years old . . .

Bill (His hand remains high.) It is endless . . .

Mira Yes. They say the Sephardim planted it. Lemon trees. Orange trees. The fruit of Andalusia, you see.

Bill (He pulls his hand down. It is feathered in blossom.) . . . The Sephardim?

Mira The Jews of old Spain. All gone now of course. But they say – the peasants here in the mountains – that the Sephardim planted that orchard over a thousand years ago . . . And the blossom falls on us here like a balm, like a mercy, every year. (She laughs.) There is a superstition here, Mr Alexander! Would you like to hear it?

Bill (He steps back from the fading rain of petals.) I thought – after the war – we had left superstition behind –

Mira Call it local colour then –

Bill (A beat.) As you wish.

Mira Mercy falls lightly like blossom but if you indulge in it, if you bathe yourself in it, it will drown you and wash you away . . .

Bill A local superstition, is it? This saying?

Mira The Sephardim left us with a blessing and a curse, yes, Mr Alexander. May I? (She reaches out and takes the case from him before he can object.)

Bill I’d rather –

Mira (She moves to heft the battered suitcase onto a nearby table – then she pauses in surprise and holds it out at arm’s length. She twirls it about.) – It’s –

Bill Empty, yes.

Mira (Smiling.) And yet sealed with a tie?

Bill It is an affectation. Of course to that. That suitcase is cardboard – demob issue naturally. Men in their thousands are carrying that case now. Across Europe. Across their lives indeed. I expect, though of course I am merely surmising, that many of these young men in fact have not fought at all. Sutlers. Or cooks, I imagine – but that suitcase! It floods a continent, you see. And one can pick one up for a penny in any market.

Mira (She drops it on the table.) Are you mocking them, Mr Alexander, or yourself, I wonder?

Bill (He gazes at her, lost.) . . . The tie is silk. Jenners of Edinburgh. Two shillings. Pre-war, of course.

Mira Jenners?

Bill The Harrods of the North – by Royal Appointment, no less.

Mira (She laughs.) - How strange . . .

Bill That I use a silk tie to bind a broken clasp? I had to use something.

Mira No, not that. That a man from Scotland, a graduate of the University of Edinburgh no less, should end up here in the orange and lemon groves of Andalusia, Is it not? A dark petal among all these others, I think.

(A pause.)

Bill . . . There was a gorge, some hours’ drive back, the road crossed it on this tiny stone bridge – medieval, I expect - and below a hundred feet of rock and the white foam of a stream.

Mira That would be the Duenne.

Bill I stopped the car on the bridge. Opened the suitcase – that was when I snapped the lock, you see – and tipped it all out, into the gorge. All of it . . . Have you ever thrown your whole wardrobe away?

Mira A girl may murder, Mr Alexander, but she is never allowed to vacate her wardrobe. Imagine the scandal.

Bill Quite . . . And then I closed it up again, using my tie . . . (He laughs sourly.) What does that say about me, I wonder?

Mira That the tie is good quality.

(A pause.)

Bill (Taking a step towards her.) I always admire –

Mira (Brushing him aside.) You will find clothes in the wardrobe there. Some will fit you, no doubt. Use them as you see fit, please.

Bill (A beat.) I will. Thank you.

Mira My father is expecting you downstairs. He has not seen the blossom in a long, long, time. Remember that, Mr Alexander.

Bill Of course. His blindness, I understand -

Mira When you talk to him . . . be gentle and spare him your lies. (She looks hard at him – and then smiles.) They might amuse me but I would never forgive you if you treated him as a fool. You understand?

Bill . . . Perfectly.

Mira Good. Half an hour, shall we say?

Bill Half an hour, it is, then.

(She leaves.)

(Bill waits. The petals drift slowly away. He removes his crumpled jacket and places it over the back of a chair. Underneath, he is wearing a light shirt. A bullet-hole lies over his heart on the shirt and around it is the claret-stain of dried blood.)

Bill . . . Yes, this will do nicely. This will do very nicely indeed . . .

The Meeting

(A Study in some disarray. Books spill everywhere with abandon. Ancient objects litter the place as though cast carelessly aside.)

(Hot light streams in from several high windows. These windows are narrow and tall, like church windows.)

(Bill stands lost in this chaos. He has changed and is now wearing a light flannel shirt. He is drawn to a curious antique object amongst all the books. He picks it up and slowly examines it.)

(An old man appears out of a recess. He cocks his head to one side slowly and then smiles.)

Averroës (Entering.) Eleventh century, is it not?

Bill (Putting it down in haste.) I beg your pardon –

Averroës Don’t be silly, Mr Alexander. Please, examine it, if you wish. Those like us who have lived too much in books sometimes forget what it is to touch the past. Tell me what you see.

Bill Eleventh century, you say? (He picks up the object again.)

Averroës (Laughing.) Mr Alexander, I am afraid you are the expert here. Not I. I was told by a man, with some repute it must be said, that it was of that period – Moorish obviously. Of Andalusian origin, he claimed, all the while haggling over its price.

Bill How much did