Jennifer's Gwenhwyfar (or The Lost Land) A School Play

 

Jennifer’s Gwenhwyfar (aka Margot’s Guinevere) 1992-2024

The aim of Jennifer’s Gwenhwyfar was to reveal the eternally present Matter of Britain in the lives of contemporary British teenagers. The original 1992 script was worked out with the main teenage actors of its 70+ cast; I provided the legend; they the teenage issues.  It sold out a huge hall five nights in a row and did indeed (life mirroring art) make the drama department more at the box office in one week than its annual capitation. The script developed through years of school productions (three of the four neighbourhood comprehensives put it on), youth theatre groups, a publication by Homerton College Cambridge and a spread in a best-selling English text book. The girl who played the first Green Knight (pictured front cover) went on to campaign for the Greens in London. Another who enjoyed the script in youth theatre later became a drama teacher and directed a 2007 production herself. Hers is the version you see mapped in the appendix, the last version still short enough to be staged as a school play.  This is the writer’s cut (where coincidentally I finally got the title and names of the heroine right) which allows the story to breathe beyond the constraints of a 2 hour staging; the conscientious foregrounding of the female aspects of the legend and the fact that there are always five good actresses for every one good actor at a school audition.  Previously muted ‘male’ sides of the story returned (though never to their traditional dominant position) notably a more complete version of Merlay’s story (as performed at the Edinburgh fringe as a piece of one man verse theatre and reviewed in The Scotsman) Owain’s story, and a larger vista of the legend - which made a more satisfying sense of the whole and provided a backbone that held everything else in place. It’s still very much Jennifer’s Gwenhwyfar (Fay’s Morgan, Elaine’s Lady Elaine etc etc) but the ‘male’ stories now provide a second subject rather than just a continuo.

The basic trope was and remains: a drama teacher and his students put on a school play about an Arthurian Britain which profoundly mirrors their own lives. (But “which is the mirror and which the reflection?”) If you don’t have a six episode TV series/ Wagnerian opera in mind, you might stage the two Acts as separate self-contained stories or cut yourself a single vibrant school production from the whole.  This final iteration of this play is dedicated to all the young actors who engaged with it 1992-2007 and to any who do so in the future.   

Characters in the play (arranged to show where they can be doubled)

Jennifer West/ Queen Guinevere

Fay ‘Joy’ Morgan/ Morgan le Fay  

Elaine Fisher/ The Lady Elaine (The Grail Maiden)

Owain Pendle/ King Arthur

Tristan Castle/ Sir Lancelot of the Lake

Dr Vortigern/ The High King Vortigern

Councillor Wyvern West/ Sir Leodegran King of the Summer Country

Merlay Ynys-Wydrin/ Merlin

Candy Miller/ The Queen of the Wastelands (and a Saxon)

Jade Knight (Fay’s mother*) / Green Knight and Igraine

Superintendent Barren/ A Saxon

Constables Bentcop and Faircop / Castle Guards

Bruce, a Saxon Chemicals security guard/ A Saxon

Nobby, a Saxon Chemicals security guard/ A Saxon

Chorus of Rioters

Wayne Knight/ Sir Gawaine

Che/ Sir Cei

Jerry Hardstaff/ Sir Geraint

Pupils/Knights and Ladies

Viviane Glass, Daily Mirror reporter/ The Lady of the Lake 

Victor Saxon/ The Saxon King

Red Dragon

White Dragon

Busker/ Troubadour

Uther Pendragon (King Arthur’s father)

Gorlois (Igraine’s husband)

Chorus of Saxons

School Governors 

Mordred/ Sir Mordred

Tom The Caretaker

St Padraig (Patrick)/ The Bishop of Sarum

Norman Castle (the new go a Head)

Fisher King (a derelict football star)/ The Maimed King

Couriers/ Servants

(*like many mothers, plays multiple roles) 

ACT ONE. 

Scene 1. The Corbenic Estate, an urban wasteland set among lush Somerset hills, overlooked by a distant Glastonbury Tor. There is an area sign CORBENIC with a thirded crest: the red wyvern of Somerset/ a white chalice/ a red hart. Barbed wire along the roof of the community centre, boarded up shop fronts and a vandalised street mural of Arthurian Britain. Graffiti on the metal shutters, a burned out car and rusted prams extending into the aisles and seating, even the theatre entrance. RIP FISHER KING sprayed untidily on a shop shutter in red. Enter through audience Elaine in jeans and a football shirt with a spiky group of rioters. They punch the air with raised fists and chant.

Elaine We got no future!

Rioters We got no future!

Elaine We got no Joys!

Rioters We got no Joys! 

Elaine We’re the Corbenic

Rioters We’re the Corbenic

Elaine Boot! Boys! 

Rioters Boot! Boys!

A flash-light rakes the stage, revealing Superintendent Barren, Barren has a megaphone. Councillor West joins him. The rioters move towards them through audience.

West (points) That boy at the front with a brick. I know him! That’s Owain Pendle!

Owain ducks out of sight. Fay Morgan replaces him in the front line  with her camera, and adds her voice to Elaine’s.

Elaine/Joy We got no ROMANCE!

Rioters We got no ROMANCE!

Elaine/Joy We got no frills!

Rioters We got no frills!

Elaine/Joy We’re the Corbenic

Rioters We’re the Corbenic

Elaine/Joy Boot! Girls! 

Rioters Boot! Girls!-

Bentcop Who’s that fat cow egging them on! 

Jade Knight, in EARTH MOTHER T shirt, looking for Fay, strikes a large slightly ungainly figure among all the youngsters.

West Fay Morgan’s mother! Is it any wonder the kids are running wild with that kind of example?

Barren (interrupting through megaphone) This is Superintendent Wilfred Barren, Albion Police. You are trespassing in a restricted area. Move away from Saxon Chemicals and return to your places of residence-

West Hooligans! 

Elaine (at West) MURDERERS!

Rioters advance nearer the stage.

Elaine We got no future!

Rioters We got no future!

Elaine We got no Joys!

Rioters We got no Joys! 

Elaine We’re the Corbenic

Rioters We’re the Corbenic

Elaine Boot! Boys! 

Rioters Boot! Boys!

Fay takes a photo of Barren.

Elaine We got no ROMANCE!

Rioters We got no ROMANCE!

Elaine We got no frills!

Rioters We got no frills!

Elaine We’re the Corbenic

Rioters We’re the Corbenic

Elaine Boot! Girls! 

Rioters Boot! Girls! 

West You’ll have to do better than that, Barren. Saxons put their blessed Fisher King in a wheelchair. It’s the bloody Dark Ages out there.

Barren As long as we keep them inside the Corbenic estate and away from the Saxon Works, they can’t do too much damage.

A sound of breaking glass.

West Saxons! It’s the estate I want protected! I got people in those streets who vote for me!

Barren We haven’t got enough men.

West And what about the school?

Barren Bog Standard Comp! They started it!

Something is thrown on stage, narrowly missing West. 

Tristan Elaine! Be careful!

Owain Don’t say her name, you soft twat! 

West (points) That girl with the camera. I know her. That’s Fay Morgan-

Elaine We got no future!              

Constables Bentcop and Faircop emerge from behind Barren and seize Elaine. Fay photographs the arrest, is nearly caught, ducks out of sight.

Rioters We got no future!

Elaine We got no Joys!

Rioters We got no Joys! 

Elaine We’re the Corbenic

Rioters We’re the Corbenic

Elaine Boot! Boys! 

Rioters Boot! Boys!

Blackout

Elaine (in anguish) Fisher!

Barren (sighs) Interview with female riot suspect, conducted by Superintendent Wilfred Barren and Constables Bentcop & Faircop. Also present the School Caretaker as an eye  witness and Councillor George West in absentia parentis as Head of Bog Standard Comprehensive School Governors. Interview commencing 10.55 pm. (to Elaine) Name?

Elaine Malcolm X. 

West Yeah and my name is Charles X! 

Barren Are you going to us give us a real name or not?

Elaine Yeah I’ll give you a real name. Victor Saxon. It’s Victor Saxon you ought to be arresting. He’s the Chemicals Giant after your school playing-fields. He’s the murdering swine who wasted Fisher.

West Now that’s libel. Fisher King isn’t actually dead. He’s just in a wheelchair- 

Elaine He’ll never play football again!

West He may recover. And it was a car accident. Nothing to do with Victor Saxon.

Elaine Except it was Saxon’s van.

West His career was over anyway. He wasted his talents. And you shouldn’t be running with a has been old enough to be your father, young lady.

Elaine Who should I be running with? Absent Dad and Druggie Mum?

Barren And I wouldn’t listen to Jade Knight about the school playing fields if I were you. Corbenic’s One-Woman Green Army. Saving the planet. Ha! She’d be better employed keeping the streets safe for her daughter.

Elaine That’s what she’s doing, you idiot. And we’re right about Saxon as well.

West Even if you were, rioting isn’t the way to stop him!

Elaine Oh yeah? So what are you and your Round Table fogeys doing about it?

Supt Barren Oi! Keep a civil tongue in your head.

West Don’t they teach you civics in school these days? We were trying to hold a meeting to discuss a course of democratic action until you barbarians broke it up. Really! It’s managed moves like you give Bog Standard Comprehensive a bad name.

Merlay and Supt Barren exchange a ‘you think Bog Standard Comprehensive is a good name?’ look. 

Elaine Bog Standard is not a Comprehensive. It’s a dump. Year 10’s got more tarts in it than a baker’s shop. If it weren’t for that new Saxon Chemicals contraceptive, there’d be so many waters breaking over the school, the whole of Corbenic would be swept away! And if Bog Standard’s so bloody good, why are you planning on sending your daughter to Malory Towers.

West (the great liberal angst) Who told you… How do you…  .. er

Faircop/Bentcop It’s good enough for our daughters.

Caretaker It’s too good for mine!

West Teenagers. You think you know everything. You know nothing. Doesn’t anyone teach character anymore?! We were in the School league Table plays off final against Avalon High until this (looks around at the riot damage)

Merlay (superbly;  the speech of his life) And we used to teach character in a subject called English Literature and civics in a subject called English. State School arts subjects you had to pass major examinations in. Until some privately-schooled Westminster village idiot ripped the heart out of those subjects and handed them to exhausted amateurs to ‘deliver’ like Amazon couriers as ‘personal and social education’ from a teaching-by-numbers plastic folder covered in post-it notes in hacked off Friday afternoon form periods. They made character an option, centuries of Freeborn English into a ‘Literacy Strategy’ – studying bus tickets, menus and adverts - whose main effect was to stunt the very Literacy it threw out all the reading, imagination and emotional education to ‘improve.’ Reading is what makes us literate; stories are how we work out who we are and legends make us legendary: these are not ‘options’.… There’s more character and citizenship and literacy and family values for broken families - conveyed through the daring and adventure of No Boats on Bannermere by Geoffrey Trease than in three years of your civics by numbers. ‘They don’t write ’em like that anymore’! No because the modern children’s writer has to sell a screen-swiping climax of drug-taking and swearing at your mother with every prod or the extract-sized attention span their readers are carefully schooled in will pass on to the next cheap thrill.   

He realises no-one is listening. 

Merlay (to audience) Speaking of ‘Literacy’ strategies, Tophet’s torturous taut-ologies and the departmentalising Dis-integration of texts, if no-one hears a speech, is it still a speech?

He tears up his speech and makes to exit. Elaine stands suddenly, addressing the audience. 

Elaine Me name’s Elaine Fisher. I lives on Corbenic, where life’s a bitch and then you die. It’s an urban wasteland. I sees these four magpies picking at something in the road. The magpies takes off one by one. One for sorrow, two for Joy- 

Barren (pouncing on a name) Joy Morgan? 

Elaine free for a girl, four for a- 

Faircop She must mean Fay Morgan, Sir.

Barren Are you saying it was Fay Morgan started all this?

Elaine –we never ’ad a car of our own to get out of Corbenic in. (shouts) ’ow are we supposed to get anywhere eh? We’re not all councillor’s kids.

Barren and Faircop force her back down into the chair. They freeze. Merlay, 35 going on 17, moves centre stage in front of them.

Merlay The May King's crown and spring's bright star

Is summerberry red in the hedgerow as I drive Back 

To School. The cornfield nods, under the blade in an hour;

The rowan's a druid sacrifice in bright scarlet blood.

I have a slice of the moon in my pocket

And the wild red rose of desire. 

I want this road to go on forever

Where tawny-eyed Merlin and Arthur and Gwenhwyfar

Return to reclaim the whole of Britain

And the spring-white hawthorn and the flushed druid witchen

And the pale solstice mistletoe of Morgan le Fay

All bloom together on the same tree.

And the long exile of the bards is over (pause)

And I don't have to go to school anymore.

(making a wish) Oh for a world where truth, beauty, mercy and justice rule. Logres forever!

He puts on Merlin’s cloak and hat like the cool drama teacher who can make your wishes and dreams come true, waves a wand and uniformed pupils start to come on with rowan, hawthorn etc, transforming the stage into Celtic Britain. But, apart from those assembling Camelot/Shalott – a fairytale Arthurian castle in the clouds – upstage and on a balcony, they dramatically freeze at his next words. 

Merlay No, wait! I’m not sure I want this enough. So many lifetimes. So many failures, betrayals, disappointments, humiliations. All that work, all the conflicts. All that cultural innapropriation from crypto-skinheads using it as a shield for their Breck’s Isle Folk Club. Can I really face it all again? I said wait!

Those assembling Camelot/Shalott stop. One is poised to hoist a flag, showing the wyvern of Somerset/The Somer Country, up a pole on a high gothic tower.

Merlay Keep Camelot and call it Castle Hill. Take the rest of the Myth away. 

‘Cloudbusting’ by Kate Bush plays. The flag is hoisted and a few bits of greenery left strewn around upstage; the rest of Celtic Britain is taken off again. A large palatial Mirror and an antique desk are lugged on by overworked couriers supervised by Cllr West, feathering his Castle Hill nest. Jennifer enters here, in her green school uniform, with its red hart /white chalice badge, and hangs up Guinevere’s dress as everyone else leaves the stage. 

 

Scene 2

Jennifer’s princessy bedroom in Castle Hill. Desk piled high with homework.  She studies herself in the Mirror, then sits at the desk. She writes, a complacent smile on her face. ‘Cloudbusting’ fades.

Jennifer (reading out what she’s written) The Dress. (after a pause) He was fit but it wasn’t that. He was king of the streets. (pause) The streets of the Corbenic Estate, where ‘King George West’– to you, “Daddy Boy’ to me - was a councillor. No place for the faint hearted. If you walked down Questingbeast Crescent and looked like you couldn’t take care of yourself, they’d have the glass slipper off your foot,  the dress off your back and the laptop out of your laps. Crying for your mummy. (pause) And I haven’t got a mummy. (pause) When Owain walked by, they stepped back. And they looked at the girl by his side like a peasant in the Middle Ages looked at a towered queen. Hating her, yeah. Wanting her in the gutter. Wanting her. But not getting. That’s how I felt walking through Corbenic with Owain. (admiring herself in mirror) They looked. And it’s no accident they looked. I spent half of my life making sure they looked and the other half making it look accidental. All right, maybe it is Tarty to hand round drinks at Daddy Boy’s councillor’s parties in a dress so short it looks like I’ve forgotten to put on my trousers. To enjoy that moment where the men who run Somerset suddenly lose the clever plot they’re hatching in a furtive glance, my little princess smile. “Sherry, councillor?” Oh, I know what I’m doing. The ‘c’ word. Control. I enjoy usurping their career wives and mistresses too. The fury in their look! Priceless. But most of all I enjoy how it annoys Daddy Boy. Never mind ‘who wears the trousers in that house’, I can rule Daddy Boy’s Castle Hill rooms, the Corbenic streets, the World, with a dress. Even Oxbridge. Oh, I’m no dumb blonde. Is that what you thought? Made you look stupid then haven’t I? I got the best GCSE results in the school – even if the school in question is only Bog Standard Comprehensive. Broke the school record, again. Eleven A stars. Head Girl, Editor of the Edge online, the school newspaper, romantic lead in the school play. Again. And the first Oxbridge candidate for four years. (yawns) That mock interview they governors gave me. What a hoot. They bowled me their old boy ‘googlies’ and I hit those goolies for six. And guess what ‘advice’ Victor Saxon the assistant Head of Governors had for me, at the end? The self made man whose action speak louder than words but whose shorts are even louder than his actions. He shook hands, his shirt saying louder than any words could, “I am a prize ass!” and said, ‘We’re all depending on you, young lady. Make sure you look the part.” And I could see what part was really doing the talking. And, before he could stop himself, he blurted out ‘wear that dress.’ And I pouted into his piggy eyes and said, “Oh, Mr Saxon. I couldn’t possibly wear this used old rag to Oxbridge. (laughing at the memory, returns to the exercise book at her desk) It’s the holy grail to those governors but I want the world. Oxbridge is the ancient step I’m going to walk over to get to it.  At the side of its king, whoever that is. I’ll find him, don’t worry. I just need the right dress. (adds something, aloud) The ghost-white dress. The pure bridal dress.

West (calls, off) Princess! Can you come down please?

Jennifer I’m doing my homework!

A knock. She hides the book she was writing in 

Jennifer Tch. (sarcastic) Come in!

He enters. Pause

West You’re working late! 

Jennifer Trying to.

West There’s no need to be sarcastic. 

Silence

West (sarcastic) “Hello Dad! How are you? Good day?” (pause) Jennifer! I’m talking to you. Remember me? I’m your father.

Jennifer This homework’s for tomorrow. 

West You can do Corbenic homework in your sleep. We need to talk, Princess - about a change of school.

Jennifer Not this again. I am NOT going to your precious Malory Towers. I’m Head Girl at Bog Standard. I run the school newspaper. I get the top grades. All my friends are there-

West Yes and all your friends were turning the precinct into bloody Beirut tonight…

She gives him her full attention for the first time.

Jennifer A riot?

West I nearly got my head knocked off, Jennifer. And after the arrest we was held siege at the police station for nearly half an hour. I’m a bag of bloody nerves. I says to the doctor, doctor I says, I’m a bag of bloody nerves… If you think I’m going to let you stay in that sink now-.

Jennifer Was Owain there? 

West Owain Briton was there all right. He should have been arrested. Throwing bricks with some convict’s daughter.

Jennifer Convict’s daughter?

West Called herself Malcolm X. She was arrested.

Jennifer (to herself) Elaine Fisher. Was Fay Morgan there?

West Oh your little shadow was there all right, snapping away as always. Isn’t it time you grew out of her? That article-…

Jennifer What article?

West (caught out so going on the offensive) An article describing my work for the Cadbury Round Table as “a load of old farts sucking up to Saxon while pretending to be knights in shining armour.”

Silence

West I’m not so much cross as disappointed. 

Jennifer How d’you know about that article?

West looks uncomfortable.

Jennifer You’ve been reading my diary haven’t you?

Silence

West I have a reputation!

Jennifer I have a right to privacy.

West You are fifteen and I am responsible for you. You’re my daughter.

Jennifer I’m sixteen tomorrow. And being your daughter doesn’t make my diary your property.

West It’s the only way I can keep track. I don’t know you anymore. You were going to print lies about your own father!

Jennifer Ha! What lies?

West It’s an evil world out there, Jennifer. I’m councillor for the area God help me, I’m Head of Governors at your school. I can’t afford for my own daughter to be the chink in my armour. 

Jennifer Saxon wants to expand his chemicals factory all over our school playing fields and you’re helping him! 

West You teenagers think you know everything- you know nothing.

Jennifer Whose fault is that? 

West Just keep your nose out of things that don’t concern you, ok? 

Jennifer Things like diaries?

West Tch. (pause) Look we never used to be like this.

Jennifer We’ve always been like this.

Pause. As he reminisces his  carefully bridled accent relaxes into its West Country roots.

West No we ’aven’t. (crosses to window.) I remembers us in our little old council house down there in Corbenic when you was little. All I ‘ad in them days were a patch of clay for a garden but we ’ad the best mountain ash in Glastonbury. No beaten tracks then. Me and your Mu used to push you across the fields in the pram. Many’s the time we got stuck in the mud but there was always someone to ’elp. Corbenic people was different then. Innocent and optimistic. It was a brand new estate with a village green at its heart and a new church on the green - with a new vicarage and a new resident doctor’s surgery and the future stretching off like the lush lanes to Somerset. And big bright buses into town.  Now look at it. A bleddy wasteland. THREE Joy-ridden wrecks rusting up that stream down in the spinney, not to mention the supermarket trolleys and dead prams. And bus crews that get attacked at 3 in the afternoon. One minute you’ve got Glastonbury Tor and streams and haystacks and the cider orchards of my boyhood-  the next you’ve got a mile-wide unofficial waste tip. And that school’s not going to drag you back down to the gutter with it. Why else d’you fink – (correcting himself) why else do you think I sold our council ’ouse – house -and moved us up here to Castle ’ill? Hill. 

Jennifer You said it right the first time. Castle Ill. Can you get out of my room, please? I need to change.

West I only came in to check what you wants for your birthday.

Jennifer (writing) A diary with a lock on it.

Exit West, hurt.

Jennifer (looking up) Or a father I could believe in.

Lights fade to blackout.

Scene 3. Enter Merlay is putting the finishing touches to a scene from his new school play. He tries it out in the mirror.

Merlay Logres forever!...

The rest is history, or Arthur Mee legend.

A lost summer country hollow Inn,

The Green Man, cheering on a great British win, 

An Avalon that isn't there in the morning;

A dream awoken to this light’s cold day 

Where, in spite of our shin-struck, wounded need

For thundering hooves in defence of these islands,

He doesn't come back. And he was never

Called ‘Arturus Rex’, whoever he was,

And in some accounts not even ‘Arthur’.

And he was never mediaeval and never a king.

And who cares? Not me. I stand on this tumulus 

Of boyhood, layers of chalk written on clay,

Craters and knolls, his monk-buried legend

Scarred in my flesh, his doubt-defying

Desperate defence of wonder - which

Is what he was - an earth ditch like mine; 

His weapons, tin and strapped wood and skin,

Like mine, on a May hill that may have been Badon

And may – who cares? - have not; blades

Of peaceful grass troubled only -

And not just now - by rain, wind and ghosts

And a White Horse, God-large in memory

God-large still.

(long pause, taps the page) Brilliant! (picks up a bag of props and costumes. Exit.)

Scene 4

A school bell sounds, too loud, too long, then loses power and comically subsides. Lights up on a school classroom.  Last lesson of the day. BOG STANDARD COMPREHENSIVE and its inspection boast (THIRD) BEST SCHOOL IN GLASTONBURY are visible through a window. THE MATTER OF BRITAIN is written on the board. The school motto STRIVING FOR COMPETUNCE is displayed above a school honours board as is a blank POINT OF THE WEEK board which some joker has headed WHAT’S THE POINT? Jennifer West, wearing an iPod, files in followed by Fay Morgan, Elaine Fisher, Owain Pendle (in a motorbike helmet), Tristan, Wayne, Gary, Geraint and others.  They stand behind their desks. An elderly history master, Dr Vortigern, falls out of a cupboard with dusty books, throat clearing for a comically long time, becoming an Oxford drawl, the words being just another form of incoherence.  The drawl becomes a speech.  

Dr Vort. Ahehehehehehehem. The Matter of Britain. Some time early in the fifth century AD, the last Roman legions were withdrawn from Britain to defend Rome. Pendle, Helmet off and behind my desk. 

Owain tuts and complies.

Dr Vort. and the British were left to hold off the invading Saxons as best they could. 

Enter Candy Miller, in a non-school top, applying make up.

Dr Vort. Miller. Top off.  

Laughter. 

Dr Vort. Make up off.

Candy ignores him.

Dr Vort. In the end, they failed and the withdrawal of Rome was the beginning of the Dark Ages. It is to some time early in these ‘Dark Ages’ that King Arthur belongs. A Roman Briton who, when the dark tide of barbarians came flooding in 

Enter more pupils, rowdily ‘late’ from PE, slapping each other with wet towels

Dr Vort. did all a great leader could to hold them back and save something of civilisation. 

Candy This is pointless. I’m leaving. (exit)

Enter Merlay Ynys-Wydrin, a drama teacher, 35 going on 17, with a script, bag of props and costumes.

Merlay Excuse me, Dr Vortigern, I’m just letting classes know the play auditions are after school today.

Jennifer (taking off iPod) What’s this one about, Sir?

Merlay Gwenhwyfar.

Dr Vort. (correcting him) Guenevere.

Fay Gwena Oo?

Merlay (ignoring Vortigern’s correction) Gwenhwyfar. Literally “The White Phantom”. King Arthur’s queen. 

Elaine King oo?

The bell goes. The class pack up immediately.

Dr Vort. I’ll leave you to your myth-making, Merlay. I’ve done my best to drill them in the historical facts. We’re a man down in the Games department and there’s a cricket match to umpire. The pitch a little dew in it still. The crack of oiled willow on cork and leather. The emerald sun-kissed lawns of Tennyson; the post-imperious Antonys of Eden! 

Merlay (under his breath) The oak-panelled corridors of impotence. 

Merlay That match-saving fifty stand by Hauberk and Greaves against Middlesex at the Yeovil Oval! I can still hear the crowd cheering now. Sure you won’t join us in the pavilion, old man? Much more civilised than running about with all these thespians. Most of whom wouldn’t know the difference between Malcolm X and Charles X if you wrote it out on a blackboard. No? Ah well. (turns back to the class)

  

Elaine Did that old fart call me a lesbian? And what’s a blackboard?

Merlay Thespian, Elaine. Actress. And please don’t call your Super Head an old fart. He’s got a lot on his plate at the moment. (to audience) A free dinner with local con-men and then a meeting to sell off the school, to be precise. 

Dr Vortigern (to the class) Now Swallows. What have Cinderella’s glass slipper and the Biblical phrase ‘apple of his eye’ got in common? No? All right, I’ll hand that over to Amazons?

Merlay (to audience) Dr Vortigern’s classical teaching methods are always in the guard’s van of educational progress.

Dr Vortigern (pleased) Correct! They are each mis-translations more effective than the original. Ten points to… 

The class and classroom changes from old school order to new school now.  Exit Dr Vortigern. Merlay addresses the audience

Merlay I was 35 years old the first March I looked out of my English classroom window at the starry new hawthorn and felt tired. For ten years I’d unloaded more new government initiatives than my pupils had had free school dinners. Soon after I took a downwards move into Drama. After a big rom com hit about an unappreciated 35 year old English teacher’s flashback romance with the girl next door who grew up to become his English department colleague that had the school buzzing for weeks, I fell head over heels with theatre. Within a month I was getting the cast back together.

Exodus of terrified boys, except for a slightly sheepish Gary, Geraint and Wayne, and an influx of excited girls, led by Viviane.

Merlay Are you auditioning Owain?!

Owain No! Can I just get my helmet, sir? Hoary confiscated it.

Merlay Dr Vortigern to you.

Owain ‘Hoary’ to you.

Merlay laughs then pretends he was coughing. Owain secures his crash helmet.  Enter Tristan, a handsome Sixth Form actor type, new to the school. He studies the script, catching the eye of Merlay anxious for a male lead in an audition dominated by females and of Fay (Owain’s girlfriend). Owain, not at all the drama type, checks Tristan out as a potential rival and zips up his motorbike jacket, ready to go as soon as Fay is.

Merlay The comprehensive catchment of Bog Standard Comprehensive, Little-Britain-on-Avalon, known locally as the Glass Island, included the sink estate of Corbenic and the leafy lakeside villages of Castle Hill, Camelot and Crom Cruach. And although it was founded about half way between these two Britains, the distance between them as I drove in to work seemed to be getting bigger and bigger.  The Corbenic kids kicked against a system that held them down and the Castle Hill, Camelot, Crom Cruach kids against a system that held that back. Those that hadn’t already gone West to a private education at the Malory Towers. You could see it in the way a subject like drama, for all its dream-education and posh cultural credentials from Greek Tragedy to Shakespeare, lost the top streams as soon as it became an option at GCSE. Meaning, apart from the school production when I got the ‘top girls’ and the one top boy who could also act, I spent most of my GCSE pursuit of an art perfected by Sophocles, Aeschylus, Euripides and Aristotle - addressing social deprivation. 

Fay (diffident) Can we play hair dressers again in a little while?

Merlay (furious, stressed, yelling into her face) NO! I’m trying to address social deprivation!

Fay (placatory, a lifetime of not getting what she wants) All right.

Merlay (horrified) Sorry. 

Fay (fondly) My step-dad used to shout at me like that. 

Merlay (appalled at finding himself in loco parentis of that absent dad) No-one should shout at you like that. Ever. Please accept my apologies. (clutching his chest) I’m a bit stressed about the production. We’ll use your hair-dressing impro as a warm-up from now on.

Fay Yay!  

She swings round happily into:

Elaine Were you dissing my step-dad?

Fay He was my step-dad first.

Elaine and Fay explode into a shockingly violent scrap which Merlay is hardly able to contain.

Merlay Stop being so prickly! Mindless violence never saved the world, Elaine, Fay, any more now than in King Arthur’s time. 

Elaine Sorry. Time of the month.

Fay Ha! You’re always time of the month.

Merlay But a cause to fight for - daring and adventure and the vision of a better world – that just might. Just because you’re peasants doesn’t mean you’re not kings and queens on the inside, right? 

Elaine and Fay looking puzzled at this doubtful compliment recede into the class tableau. Merlay winces at his condescension and addresses the audience again.

Merlay I didn’t just mean Corbenic either. 

Jennifer looks at Fay.

Merlay Castle Hill was as just as deprived in another way. Officially I was going to make Arthurian romance flower in all their teenage wastelands, like the male and female nettles of May. Unofficially, I was going to appropriate some teenage angst, graft it onto my version of King Arthur and get a second consecutive hit. Then I was going to quit teaching-

He tries to pull a sword out of his bag of props. Fails. Owain extracts it without any difficulty and looks at it. Jennifer checks out Owain and the script.

Fay Can I be Guinevere?

Merlay Guinevere needs to be blonde really. Romance convention. 

Jennifer looks up.

Fay (taking in Jennifer’s blonde hair and not questioning this ‘romance convention’ for a moment) What else is there?

Merlay (handing her a script) Morgan le Fay?

Fay What’s she?

Jennifer A witch.

Merlay An earth mother – in an age where mothers were worshipped. And (taking in Fay’s hair-colour) dark.

Fay (resigned) OK. (to Elaine) She always gets the main part. And she always flirts with my boyfriends.

Elaine I fought you and Owain was litter mates.

Fay Who told you that?

Elaine Jennifer. 

Fay She would. Owain and me are soul mates. That doesn’t make us family. 

Elaine He’s looking at her.

Fay I know. If only I wasn’t so fat.

Elaine Did Jennifer say you were fat? 

Fay No. The mirror.

Elaine You need a new mirror, pal. You’re anorexic. (picking up and waving a weapon) Can I be Lance-a-lot? 

Merlay There’s a Lady Elaine if you’re interested. She’s the Grail maiden. She falls in unrequited love with (French pronunciation) Lancelot, tricks him into making her pregnant and has a baby… 

Elaine (unimpressed with that) Wot about King Arfer?

Merlay Er… (he looks at Owain)

Tristan is watching everyone, absently holding a female costume. 

Elaine Oi! (laughing) Oo said you could wear my frock!

He drops it. Laughter

Owain Trish’ll do you a lovely King Arthur, Sir. He’s the ultimate drama queen.

Tristan (with a playful punch) ‘Tristan.’ 

Owain Trishtram. Mind you, I am the King. 

He fun-wrestles Tristan to the floor. Tristan doesn’t rise to the challenge but you feel he could.

Tristan I’d rather be Lancelot. He gets Guinevere.

Jennifer is looking in a full length mirror. She turns, becoming her reflection.

Jennifer “Guinevere looked in the mirror and saw the intense restless eyes gaze back at her, the long graceful features framed with golden hair, the swan white skin, the full crimson lips. She tossed her head like the arrogant young queen she was.”

She IS Guinevere and everyone at the audition knows it. She mounts a stage and looks down. Owain is fascinated by her transformation into Guinevere. He decides he might be in the play after all.

Jennifer (as Guinevere) 

Let them play at boyish games round

A table. Though walled up, bound,

In an unpublished garden, stone

Tower with window, all alone,

This court still revolves around me.

Owain tries on King Arthur’s red dragon surcoat. Tristan tries out Lancelot’s shield in the full length mirror. He will turn as his reflection when the name ‘Lancelot’ is mentioned. Gerry and Wayne will turn on the words ‘Geraint’ and ‘Gawaine’

Jennifer (as Guinevere) 

I twist them all round my pretty

Little finger, a studded ring:

The champion knight, the maimed king,

Geraint, Gawaine, my Lancelot.

It’s the only power I know.

He comes through enchanted forests,

Rough-horses, haunted castles, mists;

From slaying giants, big bad knights:

Barons with feudal appetites;

Impossible quests for Our Lady,

Sowing wild seeds Love meant for me;

Greets Arthur, “mon vieux!” – clash of mail 

Tristan and Owain look at each other.

Jennifer - So grieved his crown still lacks a graal -

So tedious! He comes to me

Who waits… and do not wait to see

The object of his worship pass,

Wasted, into this looking glass,

Wheat-hair, rose-lips, unsown, should he

Choose to deny himself – and me.

A moment. Everyone is moved. Enter Jennifer’s father, Councillor West, shattering the spell.

West (furious) Ynys-Wydrin! It’s nearly five thirty. The girl has got extra Latin homework, you know.

Tristan (aside to Owain) Who the hell’s that?

Owain (amused) Councillor George West. The wannabe king of Somerset!

Jennifer (embarrassed) Dad!

West And I can’t wait around all night for a wretched play. Some of us have council meetings to run later. (pulling rank) About the very future of this school.

Merlay Yes. Sorry. Good luck. I hope you can persuade County to take a more civilised attitude about it all.

West Indeed.

Merlay (buttonholing West) After all, if there isn’t a bit of idealism in the system, education as a national ‘service’ - the education of every child in the nation for the wider good of the nation - rather than a so-called business; then schools are no different from savage fiefdoms hacking chunks out of each other.

West Yes, yes, I’m aware of your views. Atlas, Amadeus, get in the car…

Amusement at the super-aspirational names. His sons obey.

West Genevieve! The car!

Laughter at the posh name.

Jennifer (through gritted teeth) It’s ‘Jennifer.’ I’m putting my stuff away!

Merlay And you must know that the staff would find any Special Science Status package involving Saxon Chemicals completely unacceptable? Just because Victor Saxon bankrolled Corbenic Albion FC up three divisions doesn’t make him any less a crook. The new Head of Science is already threatening to resign.

West He resigned this morning.

Merlay Well, how much more evidence do you need? 

West (going) I really don’t see what Saxon’s Affordable Rescue Package has to do with you – or with me for that matter.

Merlay It’s got everything to do with you. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, Councillor. 

Caretaker enters, furious. West exits.

Caretaker This re-hearsal should have ended an hour ago! I’ve got a meeting to set up.

Merlay Sorry. Sorry. 

Caretaker ’Oary says e’s going to charge my overtime to your drama capitation.

Owain (mock stern) That’s Dr Vortigern to you, Caretaker. Hoary to us.

Merlay Cut it out, Owain. (rubbing his chest, to Caretaker) I think charging your overtime to drama capitation is a joke, Tom. (worried though) We only had ninety quid for the year and that’s gone already.

Caretaker It didn’t sound like no joke to me! Right, I’ve ’ad enough of this! (exit)

Owain Bye Tommy!

Merlay (now worried by the caretaker’s umbrage as well but disguising it with jolly energy) Okay everyone. Costumes in the box! Scripts in your bags!  Let’s get these props put away!

Everyone helps except Jennifer who continues posing in the mirror.

Fay You going to help, Jennifer? 

Jennifer What?

Fay I know you just found out Father Christmas isn’t yer dad but you know…

Jennifer And one day you’ll find Merlay isn’t your Father Christmas either.

West (re-entering) Genevieve!

Jennifer God’s sake! And it’s Jennifer!

Fay Ha! Poshos like you don’t even do drama, ‘Genevieve’! You called it “baby-sitting for the lower streams” until the minute before you got the star part. It’s been the same since we was three years old.

Exit Jennifer. West follows. 

Merlay Ahem. Right, good rehearsal everybody! Anyone need a lift home? (taps pocket: has lost keys)

Every hand goes up. Merlay looks dismayed. The kids waiting for a lift get increasingly restive He gets a chest pang. 

Elaine You still on for later, Owain?

Owain Course.

Elaine You told everyone?

Owain Just Trish. And told her it was confidential. Him, sorry. So now everyone knows.

Laughter

Elaine You got the banners and stuff organised?

Owain I asked Fay to do it.

Fay finds Merlay’s keys.

Elaine You ever do anything yourself?

Owain It’s called leadership.

Elaine sees her image in the mirror and corrects a perceived flaw in her appearance.

Merlay We’ll hold the mirror up to life, like the Lady of Shalott.

Tristan (looking at Elaine) Didn’t she die?

Merlay (recognising a bright lad, the ardent schoolboy he was himself) In Tennyson’s version, yes.  But his Lady of Shalott fell in love with a knight’s reflection in the mirror and then pursued him in the real world, so the curse came upon her. That mirror is the Lady of the Lake and she’s dangerously powerful: she walks on water. Like Christ Himself.  I think it’s a warning, Tristan. The reflections on the surface of a river are not the river.  (Pause) Don’t fall in love with the character and think it’s the actress – (another twinge) 

Fay (handing him his keys) You all right Sir?

Merlay (he isn’t) Absolutely.

Blackout.

 

Scene 5. 

Jade Wales’s tower block kitchen. The Mirror is now a TV screen, which she watches while cooking and nibbling. Enter Fay Morgan from the rehearsal, upset. She dumps a school bag.

Jade Ullo love. Good rehearsal?

Fay No. What’s for tea?

Jade (eyes on the TV) Isn’t that Mandy Killer!?

Fay Keeler. (wonderstruck) What, on the telly? 

They recede to the side of the stage, watching, as:

Scene 6. “My Lean Baby” by Frank Sinatra plays. Enter Candy Miller to a lab at Saxon Chemicals. Unwholesome steam and noises, animal testing screams, lab assistants etc. Candy addresses the audience in an advert voice holding a test tube. 

Candy Hi! I’m Candy Miller, the new Face of Saxon Chemicals. I used to be dumpy Mandy Keeler the work experience donkey at Saxon’s Chemists in the precinct. Now I’m ‘Can-do’ Candy. The Queen of the Wastelands! And all (waving test tube like a magic wand) because of New triple action Twiggyfast with new extra power Beautywitch. Now completely safe. Puts the pep back into your life.  Carries on working all through the day. And all through the night. Completely non-addictive. Takes all the weight off in huge slabs while you just get on with your life! And it’s completely non-addictive! New non-addictive Twiggyfast keeps your skin naturally soft and bleaches your hair a sunny shiny fertility blonde, while killing all known sperms – dead - and fighting the ageing process forever. New Twiggyfast uses a new scientifically proven natural ingredient from the female Cuckoo Wrasse, a fish which when the male dies turns itself from a fluffy pink female into a lean blue male. There’s nothing in Saxon chemicals range you won’t find in Nature. So you can eat as much and as often as you like. You can kiss goodbye to PMT, pregnancy and the Curse all in one natural scientifically targeted system! And the best thing about it is, it’s completely non-addictive! (drops the advertising voice). I was born on Corbenic – where life’s a bitch and then you dye. Your hair. Blonde. My parents moved here when the estate was a new directionless mudbath with nowhere to push the pram. But no-one’s pushing me around now. I don’t intend being a damsel in distress. I don’t intend riding the menstrual cycle when I can drive a Porche. If the world’s run by big men with big lances, my lance is going to be the biggest of the lot.  I don’t intend rioting with the peasants outside the rich man’s castle. I’m going up there myself, where no-one can touch me up or rape me or kill me. I’m going to KING CANDY.

MY LEAN BABY plays. Candy swigs Twiggyfast. Fay goes to the mirror and looks in, enjoying Candy as her reflection as she does her hair, pats under her chin etc 

Fay Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?

Exit Candy. Fat Jade replaces Candy as Fay’s reflection. 

Jade Not you fatso, that’s for sure. Not even Twiggyfast can help you.

Fay Why not?

Jade Because you’re worthless

Fay I wants to be Jennifer. 

Jade Because she’s worth it.

Fay I wants Mr Ynys-Widrin to wave his wand and turn me into an underwear model and marry a footballer and be famous. I wants Owain and Tristan and all the boys to want me.

Jade Fat chance!

Fay puts her head in her hands.

Jade (emerging from mirror as the real Jade) Fay?

Fay You’re Fay. (mad) I’m Jennifer. (madder) I’m Jennifer’s Guinevere!

Jade Fay, what’s going on. You’re scaring me.

Fay starts to cry.

Jade Would it ’elp to talk?

Fay No. 

Jade I knows ’ow you feel, love. I’ve bin there.

Fay A long time ago and that was you, not me. Get lost.

A knock. Exit Jade, hurt, to answer it. Fay goes to mirror and looks in, terrified. No reflection.

Fay Nobody!

A second knock, nearer.

Fay (irritated) Come in!

Enter Jennifer behind her. Fay sees her in the mirror.

Jennifer Hi, Fay.  All right?

Fay Not really. 

Jennifer It’s about the Edge. We’ve got a problem with the Saxon story. Dad’s read about it in my diary.

Fay (swings round) What did you write about it in your diary for?

Jennifer I always write about the mag in my diary.

Fay Oh you ‘always write about it in your diary!’ I sweated blood on that story! I got the photo of your old man and Saxon because you ‘couldn’t possibly.’ I did all the donkey work - as usual. I even got Tina at Saxon’s to copy that planning report.

Jennifer Let’s not fall out. We’re up against the big boys here Fay. I’m shopping my own father. It’s not easy.

Fay What’s hard about it? Your dad’s behind Saxon and Saxon is after our playing fields. 

Jennifer That’s unfair. Dad’s wrong to do deals with Saxon - and I’m going to do something about it - but he’s as upset as anyone about the playing fields.

Fay No he isn’t because he knows you’re getting better ones at Malory Towers.

Jennifer I told you before I’m not going to Malory Towers.

Fay I stole the report. You steal the limelight. The byeline. The headlines…

Pause. Fay turns from the mirror to face Jennifer.

Jennifer Is this about the play? Look, I’m sorry about getting the lead role instead of you.

Fay O don’t worry. I’m used to it. In lessons, up the youth club, on the Edge. 

Jennifer Fay?

Fay Let’s face it, the only way Bog Standard’s ever been good enough for you is if you’re top girl. 

Jennifer Fay?

Fay And keep your hands off Owain. You never gave him a second look until I wanted him. Now he’s the best thing on two legs between here and …

Jennifer I didn’t know you wanted him. Owain! 

Fay What’s wrong with Owain? 

Jennifer Nothing really. I just thought you had a… brother and sister relationship-

Fay I cares about ’im, ok? And e’s too bloody good for the likes of you up on Castle ’ill, looking down on us all the time. Just because I’m fat you think you can take my life. You’ve got the Head Girlship and Guinevere and the exam results and the Edge. What more do you want?

Jennifer (unconsciously to herself) Tristan.

Exit Jennifer  

Fay (shouts after her) Well, you can’t ’ave everythin’! 

Fay goes back to the mirror and puts her Morgan le Fay head-dress on. She sighs. 

 

Scene 7. “Woke King Arthur” by Peacock’s Tale plays. 

Merlay (a wish) Oh for a world where truth, beauty, mercy and justice rule. Only this time with feeling. Bring on the whole Myth.

Merlay is brought a wizard’s hat and robe and becomes Merlin.  He waves the wand and dances as pupils come on dressing the whole stage now - as a mythical Celtic Britain, the ‘Lost Land.’ Arthur (played by Owain), Guinevere (played by Jennifer), the Grail Maiden (played by Elaine) Sir Lancelot (played by Tristan) Gawaine (Wayne) Sir Cei (Gary), Sir Geraint (Jerry) and other knights and ladies (played by pupils) enter with sprays of rowan, hawthorn, mistletoe and other red, white and greenery, challenging the wilderness of Corbenic and establishing Arthurian Britain. The effect is of a lush emerald and ruby Somerset moving in to challenge an arid estate. Enter The Queen of the Wastelands and Queen Morgan le Fay, played by Candy and Fay respectively. The Lady of the Lake holds Excalibur and a mirror-shield and wears a mercury robe. An area of the stage remains Waste: the Wasteland of the legend here and, in the modern scenes, the Corbenic estate. Upstage we see Avalon of the Apple Trees - a green Celtic Eden glowing somewhere between heaven and Glastonbury. This becomes the station throughout the play from which the magical characters - The Lady of the Lake, Morgan le Fay, The Queen of the Wastelands and Merlin - come and go. The Ladies bring the mirror to the front of the stage. It detaches and is taken stage left and stage right by Morgan le Fay and the Queen of the Wastelands. The mirror is now the whole stage. The Lady of the Lake holds the sword Excalibur aloft like a wand. She addresses the audience.

Lady Children of Britain. I draw from your heart here and hold before all eyes a vision of what Britain can be, a dream to spur you on in this age without dreams. This is Excalibur, lightning blade, mightiest of the seven swords of Britain. Emblem of a realm where might is governed by right; where the poor are fed; the weak defended; age and wisdom honoured; calculation led by daring; youth given bridle but a full rein too. Whoever holds this sword can challenge the giants of greed and self-interest, the dwarf and barbarian hordes of low desires. He can build a realm where the earth is sacred and chivalry is bred in the bone.

Merlin He is at hand. I feel it.

Lady Children of Britain. I am your mirror, the Lady of the Lake. Ride West with me now to Ynys Widrin on the shores of Avalon. On a strong white stallion along a sword edge across a dream. Into a Mirror all mirrors drain to like clouded rivers to a clear Lake. The Mirror of Myth! Yourselves As You Really Are. 

Pale Blue Eyes (“from If I could make the world as pure and strange as what I see”) by the Velvet Underground plays. The actors swirl around like a reflection forming.

Lady We begin in the dark age between Rome and King Arthur. When High King Vortigern reigned and death haunted the once settled farms and forests of Britain. And only Merlin’s eye in the eagle heavens saw the guiding Light of the age.

She exits with the other two Queens to Avalon. They watch the action. Exeunt all other actors except Merlin who stands staring at something high above the audience’s heads. The three Queens sing

The Ballad of Merlin

His small eye revolving his treasure -

Little Britain and all it contains -

The King steals from Merlin a vision

His tiny mind hardly sustains:

"Your castle, King Breck, keeps collapsing 

Because built on the underground lair

Of two warring dragons, the red split

In the white's jaws of victory there.

 

"The red dragon stands for Britannia, 

The white for the English-to-be 

And your red worm is turning - and driving

The white dragon into the sea."

"But the red dragon's head is young Uther!"

Says King Breck, "And it ought to be mine!"

"My Breck's Isle exists on division,

I’m the crack in Great Britain's behind."

Merlin magically helmets young Uther,

Who cleaves to his dead captain's wife.

She believes he's her lost war-dead husband 

In the hottest night of her life

And bears him a son, an Arth/Ursus,

A high noon in our deepest night sky,

The May-Winter King of a Lost Land

That Was Never, but Is, and Can't Die.

Let a nation divided/ in battle be joined,

Raven and Eagle conceiving the dove

As the Little is lost in the Greater Britain

Let Arth/Ursus cleave; hate is conquered by love.

 

Scene 8. Post-Romano, Celtic Britain, second half of the Fifth Century AD. A torch-lit room in a Castle high in the Place of Eagles. Enter the High King Vortigern, battle stained (played by Dr Vortigern). He goes to a window and looks down. Enter Leodegran, king of the Summer Country, one of Vortigern’s more shrewd lieutenants (played by Councillor Wyvern). 

King Vort. Leodegran! 

Leodegran High King Vortigern! (bows)

 King Vort. Who is that fool on the mound below, gazing endlessly into the sky?

Leodegran (dryly) Oh most vertiginous majesty, that ‘fool,’ is your chief Oak-Druid. Merlin.

King Vort. I need soldiers, not Druids.

Leodegran With respect (but not much) my liege, the Saxons you hired to ‘defend’ us - and who now kill us and carry off our daughters - were soldiers. What we need now are men of Britain. Druids have the roots and springs of Britain at their fingertips.  They can soar like eagles through all the light and dark places of the heavens. They can know the stars, read the future, even change shape. And this is The Myrddin, the Oak Druid, the greatest of them all. He and Britain are one. Let him help you. They say he can scorch away an enemy’s mind just by looking at him.

King Vort. (rhetorically) Aye, but can he can tell me why my Castle fastness tumbles to the ground every night no matter how hard my slaves work to build it up by day? 

Leodegran (puncturing the rhetoric) Yes! That’s his job.

King Vort. And yours is King of the Summer Country by my grace and favour not telling me how to do mine!

Leodegran I merely offer advice, my liege.

King Vort. (mocking) “Just doing my job, my liege! Just saving my skin, my liege.”(pause, reflects)  Very well, I will see the druid. But let him know he is dealing with a High King! (calls) Guards! Drag the wizard in.

Leodegran Vortigern, remember to show resp-

Enter Merlin, roughly handled by guards. He casts proud red eyes over his treasure (Britain and everything in it) then locks eyes with Vortigern.

Merlin (Welsh) So, vertiginous Vortigern, seller of the three Britains to mercenaries, you beg my aid at last! 

King Vort. I beg of no-one! I…I demand your service. Is my kingdom doomed or not? Answer me!

But he cannot hold Merlin’s gaze. He breaks his own, rubbing his eyes.

Merlin Your kingdom is on the threshold of its greatest glory.

King Vort. (warming to the druid) I see! (glancing at Leodegran) A pity my advisers don’t take that view. (to Merlin) So what glories lie in wait for me?

A sound of something collapsing.

King Vort. And if so why does my Castle keep falling down-

Merlin I spoke of Britain, not you, fool. Of Arthur Pendragon, son of Uther, a man whose armour straps Uther himself is not fit to buckle. And you wish me to speak of you! Your castle – if you can grace a last ditch by such a name – keeps falling down because you founded it on an underground lake, the disputed lair of two dragons. The red dragon of Britain and the white dragon of the Saxons. Shall we see them?

King Vort. (terrified) No!

Merlin (a spell) Goleuo!

A flash of light. Music. Enter dragons. A dragon-dance representing the conflict of Saxon and Briton. During this, Leodegran flees behind Merlin and Vortigern is killed horribly by the white dragon. The larger white dragon drives the red almost offstage. Enter Uther Pendragon, with a red dragon shield.  The red dragon now begins to resist the white but this resistance freezes at a vital moment. Enter Igraine with her husband Gorlois. Uther is distracted by her beauty. Gorlois offers his help to Uther against the white dragon. Uther fights Gorlois for Igraine instead and kills him. Igraine has covered her face. Uther takes Gorlois’s helmet and cloak and goes in disguise to Igraine. The music fades.

Igraine (in relief) Husband! Thank the Goddess! You killed the High King! You saved me. (giggles as he embraces her) Gorlois! Not here. Come inside.

She takes his hand and leads him off to bed.

Leodegran Who was that?

Merlin Uther Pendragon, the high king after Vortigern.

Leodegran But she called him Gorlois, ‘husband’. How could Igraine believe that disguise?

Merlin Because deep down she wanted to. (wryly) The spell I put on the helmet only works with a bit of help from the female gaze.  

Leodegran So Igraine will bear Arteus, Uther’s child. 

Merlin King Arthur, yes. Hidden for his own safety with humble foster parents.

Leodegran Then how will we know him?

Merlin After Uther is killed by traitors and the kingdom is leaderless again, his boy alone will have the strength to pull this sword from this stone. (thrusting Uther’s discarded sword into a stone and red dragon shield next to it.  He casts a spell over both.)  To anyone else, it will be like trying to pull a dragon’s tooth. Wait here.

Leodegran What for?

Merlin The age of Arthur. (a spell) Orffen!

The dragon unfreeze and exit. Merlin follows them off. Leodegran waits impatiently, looks shiftily about and approaches the sword in the stone. It looks easy. He tries to pull it out but fails.

Leodegran Twelve years so far.  And still no word of this Arthur Pendragon. But he would still be a boy, an orphan… (sighs) These are dark days for Britain. They say Uther and Igraine of Cornwall had a son orphaned by Uther’s assassination and fostered out by Merlin the Druid. He would be heir to Uther’s realm and perhaps also to his military prowess. But where is he? Soon the borders of my own little kingdom, the Summer country, could fall and join the Heartlands of Logres in a Saxon wasteland. A little king like me has to make what shift he can. Uther Pendragon could lead warrior men better than the Saxons themselves but he divided the kingdom by seizing the wife of his Tintagel ally, Gorlois. He put love before country! Now, I love a motherland overflowing with milk and honey as much as the next man and worship the Goddess who once gave us a matriarchy where land was plentiful and women ruled the settled farms and there was peace. But we don’t live in a fantasy. These days it’s every man for himself. I have a future, a daughter, to protect. One who thinks climbing trees in the Great Forest instead of showing little hints of herself off in a castle window to prospective husband is a useful way to spend her time! (looks furtive) So if you’ll have to excuse me. I have a secret meeting with Saxons at my Round Table to attend. If you can’t beat ’em – as the old, saying goes -  marry ’em, to your daughter… (shrugs, calls) Guinevere!

 

Scene 9.  Jennifer’s bedroom in SUMMERLANDS, Cllr Wyvern’s modern castle in Castle Hill. The Guinevere costume is hanging up next to the mirror. Jennifer is at a desk groaning under the weight of homework books. She hears her name called and wonders where it’s coming from. 

Leodegran   (off, his distant voice seeming to come through the mirror) Guinevere!

She approaches the mirror curiously.  

 

Scene 10. Christmas time in Dark Age Celtic Britain. Christmas Music. 

Leodegran. Guinevere! Guinevere! (to himself) Saxons! There’s no dealing with them. I made them a Round Table offer they couldn’t refuse. A regiment of horse just to keep out of the Summer Country. And they refused it.  They won’t stop until they’ve turned the whole of Britain into Angleland. Guinevere! I have a suitor for you and you’re not even dressed properly!

Jenneifer puts on the dress, becoming Guinevere. A mime. Enter Merlin with a group of quarrelsome knights. The knights queue to pull out the sword in the stone without success. Leodegran goes first and sneaks back for several extra goes. The knights go off arguing. The boy Arthur enters. He is studying the sword in the stone when attacked from three sides by rough young knights Geraint, Gawaine and Cei, Arthur’s big brother. They take his helmet and throw it to each other, piggy in the middle with Arthur always piggy. 

Gawaine (Scots) Lackland!               Cei     Stepbrother! 

Geraint (Welsh) Bastard!                Cei      Orphan! 

Arthur –his honour at stake in front of the girl – looks for a weapon, pulls the sword out of the stone and turns to find them stunned by this action, kneeling before him (except Cei). Guinevere, equally stunned, hands him the red dragon shield and kneels. 

Leodegran Guinevere! I told you to stay inside the castle – Oh! (taking in the scene before him, kneeling) Arthur!

Arthur looks at the sword curiously and then at all these people it gives him power over. The quarrelsome Knights return curious but unconvinced that the boy Arthur is king. Merlin motions that the sword should be returned to the stone. Arthur pulls it out again easily. Puzzled, he repeats the action. 

Sir Cei (boasting) I can hold my breath under water for nine days and nights. Anyone I wound no doctor can heal. If my kid brother’s king, I’m a giant.

Cei fails. More knights try and fail. Arthur repeats the action once more time and the meaning of it begins to dawn on him. He is the High King. 

Leodegran (with the swift calculation of a politician) My liege, Merlin predicted that only the rightful king, Uther’s son and heir, could pull out that sword. We’ve been waiting for you. I can offer you my famous Round Table for your knights, a hundred of the best cavalry horses in the kingdom and my daughter’s hand in marriage.

Guinevere What?

Leodegran (to Guinevere) Shh. You want a future don’t you? 

Guinevere But I don’t know him.  

Leodegran Never mind that. We’ll stage the fightback! Somerset will be the cultural capital of Britain! I’ll have the High King’s ear.

Guinevere looks at Arthur doubtfully.

Leodegran He is Arthur, the one Merlin promised. We’re going to be High Queen of Britain girl! Go on – be a woman to him.

Guinevere A what?

Leodegran A… woman. You know! (pause) Tch. It’s at times like these I wish your mother were still here. 

Arthur approaches Guinevere, waves Leodegan away. Leodegran backs off

Guinevere I hear we are to be wed, my lord.

Arthur Yes. Your father has the horses and the Round Table. And the Summer Country: there are good forts here, good places to turn the tide of the invasion. And I have the sword from the king-stone to lead an army. 

Guinevere You sound like a High King already.

Arthur It always felt wrong being nobody. Now I know why. But how do you feel about it? 

Guinevere No-one’s ever asked me that.

Arthur Do you want to marry me?

Guinevere (glancing at Leodegran.) Will I be able to order him about like you did?

Arthur Yes.

Guinevere Can I go out in the garden without an escort?

Arthur You can have the biggest garden in the kingdom.

Guinevere Can I climb trees?

Arthur A whole wood of trees - oak, ash, elm, hazel, beech, willow, sycamore, chestnut and towering lime. We can climb them together if you like.

Guinevere All right. You’re on. (they shake hands) Fancy a ride in the Great Forest?

Pause

Arthur The Great Forest is full of Saxons. And worse. Let me clear them first.

Music. Enter ladies, including the Lady Elaine, and St Padraig for the wedding. He  makes the sign of the cross over Arthur and Guinevere. The Three Queens stand in Avalon. Court ladies add Celtic rituals of winter fertility. (Mistletoe, apples etc). The Lady Elaine puts a wedding veil on Guinevere’s head. Merlin and the knights come over with the crown. Guinevere grabs it playfully and puts it on Arthur’s head. Some disapproving looks. Leodegran is horrified. 

Guinevere (hardly able to believe it) Husband! High King!

Arthur (ditto) Wife. Queen of Britain! Gwen…

The Lady Elaine holds the mistletoe above their heads.

Guinevere (giggles) I’ll kiss you if you can catch me.

She turns to run. Arthur hands the crown to Leodegan and runs after her. Morgan calls. 

Morgan (grown up voice) Arthur! Aren’t you going to introduce me to your young wife? She’ll think you’re ashamed of me. (holding her bump) And after we’ve been so close…

All other characters freeze. Arthur, in the act of chasing Guinevere, but turning towards Morgan, freezes with Guinevere into a picture of young fun. Leodegran is a statue of displeasure at his daughter’s behaviour. A mobile phone rings. Lights fade.

 

Scene 11. Enter Merlay, on a mobile phone.

Merlay Hullo? I can’t really speak now, Headmaster. I’m in the middle of a production. Yes, I do realise the hall is needed for assemblies as well. Yes I do realise you’re responsible for the whole school but do you realise  I’m responsible for an entire world? All right, I’ll move the rostra blocks! Thank you very much! (breaks call, taps in numbers) Damien? About the backdrop? I’m ever so sorry but the Dark Age wallpaper just isn’t…. Neither is the willy-pink plastic peeping through the painted silver swords. Look, love, I’ve got enough drama queens in the script without you starting. Hullo? Tch (taps in more numbers) Reprographics? (in a school production, add the actual Reprographics person’s name for comic effect) I’m ever so sorry - again - but I do need just one last final change to the script, again. (holds phone away from ear: we hear yelling) Sorry, yeah 50 new copies. Again, yeah. Ready? Page 34. Delete conscience. Insert sinful flesh. 

Ends call, groans, severe pain in chest. 

Merlay It was around this point in the rehearsal schedule that Jennifer’s dad decided she wasn’t to be in the play anymore. If there was ever a parent who needed to Let Go, Cllr West was it. However, despite predatory  offers from Elaine and Fay to replace her, she refused. Fair play to the kid. I think she told councillor daddy she was staying after school to work on her Saxon Chemicals scholarship. I would never have been able to replace her at that stage. Plus Fay and Elaine – when Elaine wasn’t lost in some wasteland of her soul – were so good already as themselves, I mean as Morgan and the Grail Maiden, it would have been a crime to uproot them. No, all the roles were perfectly cast. Except Owain. He wasn’t supposed to be in love with Guinevere and he wasn’t acting. And apart from unbalancing the mood, that upset his girlfriend, Fay. And having a King Arthur besotted with his Queen Guinevere wasn’t the only way I was losing the plot. Everyone hated me. I was getting poison pen letters from members of my tutor group jealous that I was giving all my attention to the cast. And complaints from parents about neglecting my ordinary English classes. And from the Head of Music because I wasn’t spotlighting his annual prog chorus this year. And from the Head of ICT after I told a trainee ICT student from Mars who couldn’t explain the simplest process that he by that definition he had all the makings of an ICT teacher. And from ‘Steve on the Sound’ because I hadn’t built in his annual five minute standing ovation at the end.  And even that wasn’t the worst.  Damien’s costumes – everything from Celtic mythology and Dark Age history through Christian romance into Pre-Raphaelite Victoriana – were all magic but no-one – cast, producer and audience knew where they were. The staff were sick of my announcements and rehearsal spaces.  And the lighting team – Ashley – left for College. Mindyou, it wasn’t all bad news.  I got some unexpected help from Science. Phil Green offered to do the lights for the play if it could be linked to his wind turbine project. He said the Christmas scene would be a marvel, if we got a windy night. 

Blackout.

Scene 12. Long Lankin by Steeleye Span. A spectacular and ostentatious Camelot Christmas. Knights and Ladies regally feasting. Gawain enters right splendidly attired, a pentangle on the front of his shield, the Virgin on the reverse, his body and weapons silked and penanted, the mediaeval rock-star knight. A deafening blend of noise off – the giant roar of mocking laughter; the thunder of deathly hooves; ‘a wonder breme noyse…clattered in the cliff, as hit cleve shulde/ as one upon a gryndelston hath grounden a sythe…wharred and wette, as water at a mulne’ (ie the death screech sharpening of an axe blades)- silences everything. General terror. The Green Knight – a giant (played by Jade) - enters left, shadow first, then seen - emerald green all over, including his hair. He bears a gruesome gleaming axe in one hand and a festive holly tree in the other. His costume emphasises his extra height by having a false head.

Green 

Knight Feasts and soft ladies! Is any of you man enough to save Mother Earth?

Long pause.

Gawain (glances for encouragement at the Virgin on the reverse of his shield) I am. 

Green Knight The knightly Gawain! The lady’s man?

Gawain Arthur’s champion! And his nephew.

Green Knight Ah yes! By his sister Morgan le Fay. A real woman. (indicates the giggling court ladies) Not like this gaggle of guineveres. You’ll do.

He hands Gawain an axe and offers his neck.

Gawain What must I do?

Green Knight All nature benefits from the pruning shears of winter; the clarity of death. Strike the first blow. As long as I have the second. I think that’s a fair exchange.

Consternation then a dawning of unexpected confidence and then a hush as the ritual is set up. Gawain strikes hard and true with the axe, decapitating the Green Knight. Cheers until-. 

Green Knight Tim….ber!!!!

The Green Knight stands headless, a holly-red cloth of blood releasing over his shoulders. Horror.

Gawain What now?

THE HEAD SPEAKS, AMPLIFIED TO A SCARY VOLUME

Head of GK A yere yernes ful yerne  -  and yeldes never like

The forme to the finiment – foldes ful selden

Forthi this Yol overyede – and the yere after

And eche sesoun serlepes – sude after other

Gawain What?

Head of GK Colde clenges adoun – cloudes upliften,

Sheer shedes the rain – in showers ful warme,

Falles upon fair flat – flowres there schewen,

Both groundes and the greves – grene at her wedes

Briddes busken to blide – and bremlich singen

For solace of the softe somer – that sues thereafter bi bonk;

Gawain What?

Head of GK And blossumes bolne to blowe

Bi rawes rich and ronk,

Then notes noble innoghe

Ar herde in wod so wlonk

Gawain That’s not so bad?

Head of GK The leves lancen from the linde – and lighten on the grounde,

And algrayes the gres – that grene was ere;

Thenne al ripe sans rotes – that ros upon first,

And thus yirnes the yere – in yisterdayes mony,

And winter windes again …

Gawain Oh.

Exit Green Knight.

Gawain (to the court) Next Christmas, after the crabbed lentoun and one full cycle of the passing seasons, I head off through the howling Wilderness to his Green Chapel and pay my respects to his Mother, Earth. (rubs throat nervously) After a Christmas to die for, he goes off to hunt down a reindeer, a boar and a wily fox as gifts for me while I lie in a luxurious bed ‘luf talkying’ with his wife. Anything I let her do to me, I have to do to him in exchange! And at the very last she will unfasten her girdle and slip it to me to wear under my armour. Which, if I accept it, will save my head, but break my oath: a badge of shame for the rest of my days! It seems a foxy kind of quest.

Arthur Yes there’s something rather queer about the whole thing. But we would all wear that badge of humility with you. And as long as you don’t run away from that return axe blow and the exchange of heads, the honour of Camelot is satisfied. Don’t let us down. 

Roars of approbation and encouragement from the court. Heavy metal guitar riff. Exeunt all but Gawain

Gawain It’s not his battle-axe that bothers me.

Scene 13. Motor bike roars. Lights up on a big red motorbike facing the audience. Red dragon helmet on the seat. Enter Owain, still wearing Arthur’s leather but no longer fully costumed or in role as him. He is now a hell-raising rebel rocker. He leaps on the bike, throttles, rides, waves, V signs, brakes, looks up, horns. After a few moments, Jennifer appears above, disappears, then runs on to join him. She sits behind him, grabs the red dragon helmet, shakes her hair loose.

Owain (affecting a local accent) Woss fink of e?

Jennifer (strokes bike, copying his accent) ‘I reckon er might do.’ 

Owain Er’s big, bold and beautiful! Like I. (posh voice) ‘Where to, fairest damosel?’

Jennifer (laughs) Poser! The Red Hart of course. What’s this on the back?

Owain Timber and soil from Saxon’s building site. Fought Ynys-Wydrin might find it useful for props dinnus? 

Cllr Wyvern (off) Jennifer!

Jennifer ‘Dinnus’! (laughs) He can’t use stolen property in a school play!

Cllr Wyvern (off) Jennifer!!

Jennifer (distracted, looks up at the house, the mirror) What?

Owain Don’t ’ave to know where it comes from do e? Besides, it’s our fields. 

Wyvern enters, furious. He is holding Leodegran’s robe.

West Jennifer! Who said you could use my civic robes for your school play! You’d better not be presenting me as the villain! Where are you going? Who with? What time are you coming back? Put your lights on! What about supper? Have you got your phone? Is it turned on? Has it got credit? Don’t show me up! Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t get into a car with anyone, don’t take drugs! Don’t bring the police home with you! Don’t talk to strangers! Don’t do anything! Put that helmet on! Don’t …die!

Owain grins, throttles, makes to ride off. Jennifer waves to West. Blackout.

 

Scene 14. A classroom. Dr Vortigern is drawling incoherently at a bored class, all variously engaged in other activities. 

Dr Vort. Ahemahemahemahem.

Fay and Owain rehearse the play. Fay arranges Morgan’s powerful and mysterious head-dress and veil as Owain speaks. The beauty of her look distracts him

Owain They have no vision in their blue eyes, the Saxons. Their shrunken hearts beat to a primitive drum; stomachs charged with charred meat and none of the delicacies of Rome. Drug-crazed berserkers with brass-ringed biceps flung through the flying legs of Hengroen my white horse to rend his faithful belly, raddling us in the battle-mud and gore. My war dog Cabal has more soul than they. I have fought battles since I was a boy. I yearn constantly for-

Fay (she knows Jennifer’s lines) The warm kisses of love.

Owain (checking script) Hang on that’s Jennifer’s line isn’t it? 

Fay (laughs) I’m reading her for you, remember? So you can learn your lines. (aside) She’s too busy with Tristan.

Owain (getting muddled) But don’t you - Morgan – say something first.  (testing this) I yearn constantly for-

Fay (as Morgan) “One who offers comfort to our land’s saviour. You have heard of Eden, which we call Afalen, Avalon of the Apple Trees. Come there with me. Come out of the Saxon storm for a while.” That was cut. 

Owain But that’s the best bit!

Enter Vernon a boy from drama in full Saxon costume with axe.

Vernon Can Mr Ynys-Widrin have Fay and Owain for rehearsal?

Dr Vort. How dare you invade my room without knocking! You think this is a farmyard. What would your father say if you saw you charging in here like that?

Vernon He’s a farmer sir.

Dr Vort. How dare you answer me back! Learn some manners. GET OUT! (chasing him)

Exit Vernon pursued by bore. Owain addresses a prop of the sword in the stone.

Owain What did they unearth exactly, 

Under the soiled Norman Carnage, 

Somewhere between a Saxon stronghold

And a Bronze age fort? Wooden look-out towers

‘More Cymbeline than Caesar’, a hill defence system

Of water-ditch, timber and earth, Celtic to its 

Rubble-core.  But the rubble was Roman -

Tiles and blocks of dressed Roman tufa -

And the Earth moved round that post-Roman Fact.

A red dragon flew in the cold light of day –

Pillaging pirate English of coin and pot,

Building a wooden-towered Camelot,

Defending there what was left of Rome!

 

They found a Man. 

  

Legends have to start somewhere.

In this kitchen-sink-real mumsy domestic 

Gossiping for England 

Mundane to fried egg week-without end 

I grapple for the gauntlet thrown down 

By my earth castle boyhood King In the West… 

Scene 15.

Music. Enter Jennifer as Guinevere holding out an iron skullcap, with bronze strapping and panels to protect the nose and sides of the face, and then other Dark Age battle kit and weapons. Owain dons these in turn - a short-sleeved mail shirt, a thick wooden shield covered with leather and reinforced with a metal rim. The shield is brightly and crudely decorated with a flaming red dragon on a green and white background, Celtic style. His sword is of the Roman gladius type – about two and a half feet long with a stunted cross guard.

Owain Grip Excalibur, his magic sword… 

Enter Dr Vortigern pulling Saxon-attired Vernon by the ear.

Dr Vortigern That’s not Excalibur. That’s the sword from the king-stone.

Exit Vernon attached to Dr Vortigern by the ear 

Owain Wynebgwrthucher, his red dragon shield, 

Rhongomiant, his spear, Carwennan, 

His knife, Cafall, his faithful war-dog, 

Hengroen, his milk-white stallion; take 

His epic action-movie lonely westering 

Leap of faith into red-tinted closure.

He is now Arthur. 

Arthur The ‘Walh’ they call us, these Saxon savages. Foreigner in their four letter language. The cheek of it! I am sick of the smell of blood. Sick of the thunder of horse-hooves and of men screaming in death-throes. Fighting for a vision, as blunted as this sword, that hurts me more than the enemy. The Saxons have no vision in their wide blue eyes. Their hearts beat to a primitive drum. Their gods are vandals, like them. Their stomachs are charged with charred meat, not the subtle dishes we learned from Rome. Cabal, my war dog, has more soul than they.

Battle howls in the distance. Morgan beckons him from Avalon.

Arthur I’ve fought battles since I was boy. I’m tired. I need a woman at my side. I fear the cold kiss of death in some nameless battle before I ever share the warm kisses of love.

Guinevere You don’t have to wait for the warm kisses of love. Come with me now, out of the Saxon storm for a while. (exit glancing back at him to follow)

Battle cries. Arthur is caught between following her off and remaining to face the battle. Enter Merlin.

Merlin Let her go, Arthur. Your quest is to cut the first clearing in the Dark; to rekindle the wick of Righteousness by which all the noble deeds of Logres can follow. To torch the beacon of a dream that will light up a thousand years-

Arthur (it doesn’t add up) You have been the father and guide of my youth. You have taught me ever to deny all fear and weakness. To find the manhood in myself. But you have never before asked me to deny my own heart. 

Merlin Even a beauty passing fair, passes my son. Will you love her then, in the winter of her years, when her white skin has yellowed, her glowing locks greyed to ash; when she has broken your Magic Circle of Logres, splintered the Round Table, scattered the best company of knights this world will ever see? Betrayed you with your bedwyr, your best friend.

Enter Lancelot.

Lancelot My liege! The Saxons are already at Badon Hill. We must ride out at once. 

Arthur Lancelot! My ‘bedwyr’. What are our chances?

Lancelot Not good. If only we had more cavalry captains. Gawaine, Geraint, Cei, the Green Knight…

Arthur They have their own little kingdoms to defend - against Picts and against each other. They do not see the great battle is theirs, as I do.

Lancelot Would they did. A good calvaryman properly led is worth ten foot soldiers. And this is the biggest Saxon host I’ve ever seen. 

Arthur And if we could break it?

Lancelot We can’t.

Arthur But if we could.

Lancelot The Saxons wouldn’t recover in our lifetime. 

Arthur Then let us try! (their battle cry) Logres and the Light!

Lancelot (knowing it’s hopeless, but follows) Logres and the Light!

Merlin Wait! 

He lifts his rowan wand. Avalon by Bryan Ferry plays.  Enter exquisite Faeries of bewitching beauty and subtle power - The Lady of the Lake, The Queen of the Wastelands and Morgan le Fay - at a ceremonial pace from Avalon. They are richly costumed, with head-dresses of rowan, dead leaves and mistletoe respectively. The Lady of the Lake carries Excalibur; the Queen of the Wastelands carries a mirror shield, Morgan le Fay carries the scabbard. Guinevere re-enters and stands at Arthur’s side.

Lady The soul of Britain stands with you in this fight. You are the May King; the Sun of Britain. Gwalchmei Hawk of May whom some now call Sir Gawain, whose strength waxes with the summer and wanes with the winter, is your captain. I am the Lady of the Lake. I bring you Excalibur, the brand of Britain, symbol of Britain’s well being. Use it to defend the right and it will never fail you. 

Arthur grabs it.

Lady Do not grasp it so fiercely. Let it hold you (pause.) And, in time, let it go.

Morgan I am Morgan le Fay, your female counterpart. Your older reverse image in the timeless Mirror. Goddess of birth, marriage and death. Take this scabbard, woven with Celtic magic. Wearing it, no matter how badly you are wounded, your blood - the blood we share through Igraine of Cornwall – can never be shed. 

Arthur fastens it to his belt. The Lady presents Lancelot with the shield. A woman by a Lake holding a grail is painted on it. 

Lady You have served Arthur well, my son. It is time you remembered who you are. Do you recognise your mother?

Lancelot I never knew my mother.

Lady (waves her hand across his eyes) Know her now.

Lancelot You! Then – who was my father?

Lady (laughs) It is hard to be sure in the Hollow Hills, at the roots of Britain. Perhaps the light-god Llugh. God of light and harvest. After whom is your capital Londinos named.

Lancelot The Hollow Hills? But that was a dream.

Lady It was where I kept you safe from the forces of the dark.

Lancelot I remember now, running along the shore of a Lake towards you. I was completely loved. I was… (shocked) completely naked! 

Lady Because you were a baby. Now you are a man of the dangerous world. Take this shield, Lancelot of the Lake, my Son. It will give you the strength of three men.

Morgan Your force in battle will recall the lightning god Llugh. You will be the Queen’s champion and the King’s best knight.

Lancelot You know more about me than I do. Who are you?

Morgan I am legion, Lancelot. Morgaine of the Fairies. Sorceress of the Sea. The Healer. The King’s female counterpart.

Lancelot A female King? A female Arthur?

Morgan A god as he is. Our mother was Igraine who, under the magic of Merlin, lay with Uther, her husband’s killer. My father’s killer.

He is not listening to the end of this ominous speech. He tries out his mighty shield. The Queen of the Wastelands presents the mirror shield to Guinevere, who stares into it intently.

Queens (chorally) Guinevere, Fairest! First Lady of these Islands, Wife of Britain. 

Lady This is my Lake-Mirror, my Looking Glastonbury. Use it well. A breath of vanity distorts it. 

Queen of W It is the Mirror of mirrors, a pure glass, recording. Every secret look. Every private move. Each smut of shame. Each real face. 

Lady Few guess its depths. 

Queens (chorally) It senses the future. It is a measure. What Britain is or might become. It drowns the surface, the mind’s troubled shallows, and seeks the soul’s stillness. The mirror reflects but it also reverses. It shows you yourself but also another. And which is the watcher and which is the watched? Which is the water and which the reflection?

Lady (as The Mirror) 

Few fathom my depths. I am a measure

By alder and elder. What Britain is or might become. 

I drown the surface, the mind’s troubled shallows, 

And seek the soul’s stillness. I sense the future

Elder by alder. My mirror reflects but it also reverses: 

Which is the watcher and which is the watched? 

Which is the water and which the reflection

Which shows you yourself but also another? 

The Summer Country That Never Was

Where strong mothers ruled the settled farms 

And milk and love and honey flowed

Before land-greed brought men to arms

 

Whose shining mail and mirrors now

Are daily touch-screens streaming stain

And measuring swords in territory wars

All clouding the heart but all these drain

 

Queens    Where a chalk horse guards the last ditch

Of civilisation, alone and stark 

At the end of a long golden afternoon,

In a red dragon sunset against the dark. 

  

Lady   This clear, I-spinning, Looking Glass 

Reflection you are or could become,

This land given bridle but a full rein too,

This trance-sending 2020 vision,

This perfect Other, this cloud-Lanced Self,

This Logres that Isn't, where might serves right,

And self-interest giants with dwarf-desires

By daring and chivalry are put to flight,

Queens Where a chalk horse guards the last ditch

Of civilisation, alone and stark, 

At the endless end of a night-soiled age

In a red dragon sunrise against the dark.

Merlin And this is my witchen, my wand of rowan, to ward off evil.

Lady (to Merlin) Arthur has Excalibur now. He is no longer a boy but a man. Let go the Wand. 

Merlin (fiercely) I am the Father of Britain! (hand on Arthur’s shoulder) He needs me.

Lady A good Father can let go.

Leodegran looks shifty. Merlin points his rowan wand at her and fixes her in his red eye’s burning glare. 

Lady Let mind give way to heart. Your love is great. You are very great - but Britain has become too dear to you. Soon you would become not its master but its slave. Come. Let it go.

He surrenders the wand. Follows her.

Arthur (heartbroken) You’re leaving?

Merlin I never leave you. Look for me when the spring-white hawthorn is in bloom, when it is loaded summer berry red, when the wind blows winter music through the thorns. 

Music. The Lady, holding Merlin’s wand, leads him out, followed by the other two Queens. Guinevere is still looking into the mirror shield when Lancelot comes up behind her. She sees his reflection in it and catches her breath, turns to look at him. Their eyes meet, stunning his.  

Guinevere You are Lancelot, I think? Captain of my husband’s knights? 

Lancelot I have that honour, royal lady. 

Guinevere What do you call this fay fell sword ?

Lancelot Joyeux. (drawing it) And at your command it will serve you above all others - except the king.

Guinevere Then such is my command.

Arthur (lifting Excalibur at the audience) Logres has a Queen and the Queen has a champion. Now if only Sir Gawaine and the others were with us. 

Enter Gawaine who stands beside Arthur.

Gawaine I answer Excalibur’s call. (lifting sword) Let us fight for the glory of our father Sun whose parade of days is clouded by the Dark Knight and his evil company.

Enter the Green Knight who stands beside Gawaine.

Green 

Knight (lifting sword). Let us fight for the honour of our mother Britain who lies disgraced and dishonoured by rapacious hands!

Enter Cei who stands beside the Green Knight.

Cei (lifting sword) Let us drive back the giants who crush the poor and oppress this land. 

Enter Geraint who stands beside Cei.

Geraint (lifting sword) Let us rid this land of barbarians forever.

Arthur and the knights look at Lancelot who is still gazing at Guinevere. 

Lancelot (recovering, lifting sword) Let the battle for Logres begin!

Arthur Logres and the Light!

All knights (very loud) Logres and the Light!

Music. Leodegran sneaks in at the side, as for an in-crowd photo, now that things are looking better. Many knights assemble. Court ladies take their places beside them. A tableau of Logres in its shining glory: Arthur at the centre holding Excalibur aloft and his knights, swords aloft, each side of him - a mythical mirror of the riot. Pause. Knights move DS in battle line to Badon and court ladies exit behind, waving, to Camelot. Guinevere lingers the longest, watching Lancelot and Arthur. But which one is she waving to? Exit Guinevere. The stage darkens 

Dawn breaks slowly into blood-red sunrise through the speech. A red dragon morning. Arthur narrates his definitive victory at Badon Hill. (/ = the knights crash swords onto shields). Knights join in from ‘Celtic hoof prints’ to the end.

Arthur At the end of the world, 

Death-cries in long-axed waves on the wind,

The howling of sea-wolves

Breaking from thick throats like heart’s hope

At the end of the world,

The cry of a thousand farmboys dead. 

At Badon Hill,

Our heels print the end of that world in a line 

In the Westering turf that holds and holds

And gives back and holds and pens it

Lladd, for the lightning charge of the British

Driven against a last ditch in their own land

There like a squealing boar for slaughter. 

Hard British lines in the soft wet earth

These pirate pig-English could not read

 (Though pushed around later/

By strokes of non-combatant Latin/

And monks who couldn’t fight/). 

Celtic hoof-prints that would not admit/

Corbenic deconsecrated/,

The Grail put to hard use in kitchens/,

Grail-maiden wastes fertilised/

In fierce field-brothels of endless yielding/,

Guinevere plucked as a concubine/,

Her white phantom beauty/

Laid like a ghost on a bloodsoaked bed/

And called by a c word that isn’t Cymru/, 

Breeding an Angle country/

Where monk-curse is less than the air/

Saesneg is written on, the snorting ash/

Civitas burns to. Instead of which/,

Thanks to our play of thundering hooves/,

Thundering hooves in defence of these islands/,

The land remains Britain for fifty years/

And Logres forever!

A school bell rings.

Scene 16. Lights up on Dr Vortigern writing incomprehensible words on a board.  A few pupils drift in behind him, Elaine at their rear reading her phone. 

Dr Vort. Ahehehehehehehem. (doing the register mechanically without looking round) Owain Briton? Tristan Castle? Wayne and Gary Knight? 

Gary Sir.

Dr Vort Where’s your brother Wayne?

Gary I’m Gary, sir.

Dr Vort I know. If I’d meant “Where is your brother, Wayne?” I’d have put a comma before Wayne wouldn’t I?

Gary (looking totally lost) Sir, I don’t know.

Dr Vort You don’t know where Wayne is. Terrific!

Gary I don’t know where that comma is. I know where Wayne is!

Dr Vort Well where is he?

Gary Kissing the Green Knight Sir.

Dr Vort Don’t be impertinent. Fifty lines. 

Gary Sir. (aside) 50 more than I get in the play!

Enter Wayne

Wayne (unheard by Dr V) Here sir.

Dr Vort. Jerry Hardstaff? 

Laughter. Jerry enters

Jerry Sir.

Dr Vort Just in time!

Wayne Justin Thyme’s left Sir. Went to Malory Towers.

Dr Vort Jennifer West? Fay Morgan?

Elaine (who has reached her seat the instant he turned round) Not ’ere, sir. 

Dr Vortigern turns to see the class half empty

Dr Vort. I can see that, Fisher. My class is half empty! 

Elaine Or half full, sir, if you look at it optimistically.

Dr Vort. Don’t be impertinent. Fifty lines. 

Elaine Tch!

Dr Vort Make that a hundred. 

Elaine Fuck sake.

Dr Vort I beg your pardon? 

Elaine Gut’s ache, Sir. Stomach cramps.

Dr Vort Where are they?

Elaine (indicates where) Here Sir. May I be excused Sir?

Dr Vort No. I meant Owain Briton? Tristan Castle? Wayne Knight? Jennifer West? Fay Morgan? Where are they?

Silence. No-one wants lines for impertinence.

Dr Vort. Wayne Knight! You said you weren’t here!

Wayne I wasn’t Sir! 

Dr Vort Where were you?

Wayne Kissing the Green Knight.

Dr Vort Don’t be impertinent. Fifty lines! 

Wayne Sir. (aside to Gary) Two more than I get in the play!

Enter Jennifer, hurrying, still dressed as Guinevere.

Jennifer Sorry I’m late, Sir. Rehearsal ran over again. 

Dr Vort. Tch. Merlay and his timeless myths! One is trying to instil some historical discipline here. A sense of passing time.

Pupils check various devices to see how much longer they have to endure this torture.

Dr Vort Where’s my C.S Lewis?

Enter Fay carrying her neatly folded Morgan costume and Vortigern’s copy of CS Lewis which she places on his desk. He frowns his thanks at her. There follow the other missing pupils then finally Owain still wearing King Arthur’s battle helmet and one gauntlet. Pupils laugh. Fay looks up for him to sit next to her but he chooses Jennifer instead.

Dr Vort. Right, for Pendle’s benefit, who can remind us of what CS Lewis said about chivalry?

Fay puts her hand up.

Dr Vort. How would you know, girl? You weren’t here!

Owain and Jennifer are all but snogging. Elaine puts her hand up. 

Dr Vort. Fisher?

Elaine Sir, can I got to the toilet?

Dr Vort. Of course not!

She goes anyway, taking out her ciggies and borrowing a lighter from Owain on the way out. Fay throws Owain’s gauntlet at Jennifer and storms out. 

Dr Vort. Pendle!!

Owain (emerging from Jennifer’s face) He said “the Age of Chivalry is dead. It always was. Let no-one think less of it on that account. These phantom periods of history are truer than many that bear the name.” 

Dr Vort. How would you know that boy? You weren’t even here! (determined to win this little battle) Right, perhaps you can remind us of what I said at the start of the lesson about the real living conditions of this Mythical Britain you’re all making such a song and dance about in my… in the Great Hall, incommoding the proper business of this school!? Hmm? Ha!

Owain “Living conditions would have been far removed from the splendour of the huge Gothic castles of the High Middle Ages…” 

Jennifer Chivalry and romance came centuries later from mediaeval Normandy via Provence. 

Owain “In the Dark Ages, even a chieftain would have lived in little more than a single roomed hall with wattle and daub walls and a thatched roof…

Jennifer “…And defences would not have been stone walls, battlements and draw-bridged mats, but timber stockades, earthen banks and water-filled ditches.”

Pause

Dr Vort. That is excellent, Pendle and West. Keatman and Phillips themselves could not have put it better. Right, copy this down. (looks for his book ineffectually.) Anyone seen my Keatman and Phillips? 

Owain holds the book up in triumph to class as Dr Vort. is looking elsewhere. Laughter. 

Dr Vort. Fay? You always find my things.  (looks for Fay) Where’s Fay?

Owain Not here, Sir.

Dr Vort. (exploding) I can see tha-

The bell goes. The class instantly packs up and exits in a stampede.

Dr Vort. (addressing an empty room) Right, homework. Page 90-298. Copy out the rules of courtly love, courtly war and polite society – in short, of ‘courtesy’ - in Norman England, tracing the origins of Norman chivalry in the courts of Provence-

Enter West through the exit stampede. He picks up a pair of court shoes which someone has left behind.

West Excuse me, headmaster. 

Dr Vort West! Why on earth are you holding a pair of court shoes?

West I assumed a pupil of yours dropped them in the stampede to escape your history lesson. 

Dr Vort “History is a nightmare from which I am trying to escape.” (identifies the quote) Stephen Dedalus. (clarifying further) Joyce (and further) Ulysses. (and further) The Nestor episode.

West (looks at the court shoes and then at Dr Vortigern quizzically) How you cope with all their identify crises is beyond me. 

Dr Vort How they cope with them is beyond me. A simple surname and a string of abuse was enough for us. But I fear we are at cross purposes. No pupil would ever be allowed into my school wearing court shoes. (confiscates them into a desk drawer) Those are either one of Merlay’s props or the ones Miss Hockey keeps here for parents’ evenings.

West (sits) We are meeting here now are we not?

Dr Vort. What? (remembering) Ah yes. Round Table. 

West No. Emergency Governors’ Meeting with Saxon Chemicals. 

Dr Vort. Ah, yes. Yes. Er yes. Where’s the caretaker? He should be here to rearrange the room by now.

West He’s off with a broken back. We’d better do it before Saxon sees the pickle we’re in. Quick.

Enter several school Governors, looking worried. They hurriedly set up the desks into a meeting mode. 

Miss Hockey Anyone seen my shoes?

West They’re in Vortigern’s desk.

A moment. She retrieves and puts them on, taking on a regal character as she does so.

Dr Vort. Who’s going to take minutes? Miss Hockey?

Miss Hockey You are joking?

West Surely the secretary…?

Dr Vort. Resigned this morning. Vicar, could you do it?

Vicar (Governor 1) reluctantly agrees. Everyone sits in an uneasy show of team spirit – a team riven with dissension and doubt - glancing nervously at two empty chairs., the real power in the room. The Round Table is in session. Enter Victor Saxon accompanied by Candy Miller. Saxon is smoking a cigar, wearing a football chairman’s overcoat and is generally in his pomp. Candy Miller is acting as Saxon’s PA. They make the governors look the amateurs they are. In the absence of any real authority and leadership or vision in the room, they take the chairs like the usurpers they are.  

Dr Vort (playing the fondly remembered old Head he thinks his pupils remember him as, to Candy) You’re looking very prosperous, Candy.

Candy (not playing that game) More than I can say for you, Hoary

Saxon laughs.

Candy Best thing I ever did, getting out of this dump.

Dr Vort. Yes, we need to talk about that. You’re actually still supposed to come in to us on Fridays.

Candy What for? 

Dr Vort. Citizenship and Character. Some moral bearings? (a gentleman’s joke Candy is more than equal to) And courtesy as a foreign language perhaps? 

Candy Meet the real world – ‘Sir’.

West Ahem. Gentlemen, ladies, if I may bring this meeting to order

Everyone gets serious.

West Headmaster –

Dr Vort. (revealing a paper and ) You will see from your hidden agendas that we are concentrating this evening on a single pressing issue. The future of Bog Standard Comprehensive. John-

Miss Hockey John died the year we went Comprehensive and Co-educational, Horace. And stopped being Treasurer just after women got the vote.

Dr Vort Sorry. Er… (can’t remember her name) Hilda.

Miss Hockey Helen. The figures show that without some form of private sector sponsorship we can’t survive. County and Government want to see what deals we can manage within the latest legislation-

Mrs Millstone SEN Governor

(strident, one-eyed) Apply for Special Needs Status!

Candy (witheringly) Do you mean the pupils’ or yours?  

Millstone (strident) Special Needs Status!

MFL Gov Wouldn’t Modern Foreign Languages Status be better? 

Millstone (strident) SPECIAL NEEDS STATUS NOW! (chaining herself to a chair) FREE THE CORBENIC ONE! (she carries on shouting this like her most disruptive charges throughout the following)

Dr Vort The entire MFL department resigned this morning.

Business Gov Surely Business College Status?

PE Gov Surely, Sports College Status!

Character and Civics Governor Character and Civics!

Dr Vort No longer compulsory.

Merlay arrives late from rehearsal, stressed, rubbing his chest

Merlay Sorry I’m la-

Caring Harpy (Pastoral Governor) Special status for all the children who can’t face attending this pointless Bog Standard grindstone without my Tender Loving Care (to Merlay) Where the hell have you been, sicko!?! Not impressed!

Merlay Have I missed anything vital?

Caring Harpy Yes. Me!

Millstone No! Me!

Character and Civics Governor (sarcastic, stung by the rejection above) Only Character and Civics!

Hum/ties Gov Only Humanities College Status!

Dr Vort. Humanity is no longer an option.

Literacy Gov. Only Culture and Education Through Literacy College Status! 

Merlay “Literacy is not Education, Education is not Culture, and all of these together are not Gnosis. That stands in a class by itself.”

SEN Never mind that. What about Inclusion!

Merlay And Exclusion, especially when it seems to mean the same thing. But I mean Civilisation, Higher Aspirations, Society, The Soul-

Candy The what?

Saxon (cutting the crap) There is no Society. Especially when it needs a classroom to itself which this school can no longer afford to finance. What there is, is this. You’re skint. You’re losing staff. You’re gaining bad pupils on managed moves like Elaine Fisher but for every bad one you gain you lose three good ones who are trying to escape the bad. Government approved Special Science Status could save you but for that you need decent facilities to start with.

Dr Vort. (sighs) “To him that hath shall be given…” –

Candy What?

Dr Vort The Bible.

Candy What?

Saxon (checks watch) And your facilities are Biblical. 

Candy What?

Saxon They’re state of the ark. (laughs) 

Candy What?

Saxon So you’ve ’ad it. Except - you’ve got me. And you can be the first to know that I’ve just taken over Angle-land Construction too on a merger deal. 

Applause.

Saxon (laughs) Even if some greenhorns tried to block it. 

Candy The Greens are always on about wastelands but from where I’m sitting the only bit of Corbenic that’s showing green shoots of recovery is Saxon Chemicals. We slimmed down and moved ahead, slaughtered our competitors and now we’re even bigger than before.

Saxon Anglo-Saxon Chemicals will carry out an audit and write a business plan for the school. Axe the deadwood and all unprofitable courses. Flatten those old labs-

Candy Hit me, hit me. 

Saxon Build new ones to the same specifications as the research labs in the new Saxon factory. Throw in a scholarship to bring on more young business go-getters like Candy here. 

Governor 3 Doing what?

Candy Testing tranquillisers on monkeys overdosed with strychnine. Keeping them on the strychnine until they get a heart attack, and then giving them Dummydoze - our new tranquilliser– which not only brings them back to life but makes them sleep for ten straight hours like a baby. Think what that could do for child care.

West is trying not to look appalled.

Candy And my cutting-edge research into the Cuckoo Wrasse. 

Merlay Cuckoo what?

Candy It’s a sea-creature. Kill the male and his pink flabby female turns into a lean blue male. Apply that and abracadabra! Your mediaeval schoolbooks say I can’t do it. But I have.

West (now openly appalled) What have you done?

Candy Combined a slimming amphetamine with a contraceptive. New Twiggyfast. 

Vicar Sex change in a pill. God help us!

Candy Who needs God when we’ve got Twiggyfast?

Dr Vort. A contraceptive out of a gender-crossing fish. In the middle ages they’d have called it magic. Now it’s called science.

Saxon We call it business. Big business.

Candy So in conclusion, we’ll give you Real World science teaching, sharp end Saxon scholarships, cutting edge child care, cutting edge sex education, cutting edge birth control and - instead of some fairytale dreamed up by business studies teachers pretending to be businessmen - a Real World Business Plan to drive up standards. And all you have to give us is-

Governors looking worried.

West (grasping the nettle for them) our school playing fields. 

Candy And the Lake. We need the Lake now as well.

Dr Vort. (gasps) What about Sports Day! The Regatta. The Maypole Elections; The Merlin Drama Festival. Centuries of tradition!

Saxon I’m glad you asked that. As club chairman I can offer exclusive use of The Hawthorns, home of Corbenic AFC, during school hours. And I’ll even throw in some professional coaching from the players. You’ll be top of the School league tables in no time!

This goes down very well with the Governors.

West Right. All those in favour of accepting Victor’s offer?

All hands go up. West remains neutral.

West That motion is duly carried nen con.

Saxon Just don’t forget to recommend me for a knight’ood!

Laughter

West Any other business? No?

Everyone is hoping there isn’t so they can go down The White Boar)  Saxon makes to exit with Candy on his arm, puffing a Jimmy Saville cigar. Everyone rises to follow him. except Wyvern.

West Well, before everyone heads off to the White Boar-

Merlay Not everyone. The White Boar’s full of fogies. I’m off to The Green Man.

Harpy So am I.

Merlay Not with me.

Dr Vort Oh you’re so “down…”. Er.

Merlay “Down with the kids.”?

Dr Vort Exactly. Familiarity breeds contempt, Merlay.

Merlay The kids are where it’s at. The end of the world is nigh.

West - I do have one item.

Everyone groans and sits. 

West (holds up a copy of The Edge) This is a suspiciously well-informed story about some of the less scrupulous aspects of our bid for Special Science Status in the latest edition of the The Edge, the school newspaper. As you see (shows Victor’s photo, to winces). there’s a grisly photograph of Victor hosting a business lunch with the notorious Anglo family. It’s an interesting caption.

Saxon (reads it) THE FACE THAT LUNCHED A THOUSAND SHITS.

Everyone tries not to laugh.

Saxon Kids’ stuff. It can’t hurt us. 

West I think it can. Viviane Glass called. 

Enter to the Mirror Viviane Glass, on a phone. She watches

West Mercurial shining Reporter on the Daily Mirror. We’re their front page splash tomorrow.

The atmosphere changes. 

West It’s not just about the Anglo family and their gangster tactics… It’s about Fisher King.

Dr Vort. Go on.

Wyvern Brilliant footballer, known as Pele by his teammates at Corbenic Albion. Partly the ball control; partly the Brazil-blue shorts. The papers called him the Kingfisher because of his darting runs into the penalty area.  Big future 

PE Gov. Big everything.

Wyvern … until he wasted Victor Saxon’s chauffeur a in a road rage incident on the Knight’s Hill roundabout. 

Female gov What is it about having a suit of metal around them that makes perfectly reasonable men start behaving like Sir Lance-a-lout? Ten years in prison - and a wheelchair for life - for ten seconds of testosterone!

Viviane (moves CS) Except Fisher’s now changed his story. Claims Victor’s so-called chauffeur was one of Anglo’s boys, employed to stop him leaving Albion. And the chauffeur got more than he bargained for when he tried to drive him off the road. Fisher only kept his mouth shut about it because he couldn’t remember what happened and, when he did, they said they’d get to his protégé Elaine if he said anything. But his protégé’s convinced him she can look after herself.  

Pause.

Saxon (sits) Shit!

Lights fade.  End of Act 1.

 

ACT TWO.

Scene 1. 

Lights up on Dr Vortigern facing the audience in his Headmaster’s gown. It is very hot. On a table beside him is a Cup and Shields. There is an honour board from 1510, his own name visible. School motto STRIVING FOR COMPETUNCE in gold letters above him. Governors are lined up across the back of the stage, looking grave. Victor Saxon is with them, impassive. Mercurial shining Daily Mirror reporter Viviane Glass, chasing a scandal, London-sharp and London-dressed, stands in The Mirror watching, the most powerful person in this play. 

Merlay (aside, to audience) I haven’t got time for this. And they’re using my stage. I’ll have to reset everything before the next show. (checking prop damage) And they’ve wasted half the Arthurian Forest plucking the berries harsh and crude with their forced fingers rude. And it would have been nice if someone had told me Elaine’s father had just gone down for GBH before I suggested she play her Lady of Shalott speech as a prison scene.  

Elaine IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE FUNNY?!

Merlay I didn’t laugh. Yes. Turns out her bleeding heart waste of talent footie hero father figure Fisher King was her real dad all along. But Pastoral Care aka the FBI decided that needed to be confidential, even though I’m the one working with her all day! And now dear dad’s inside for hacking down one of Anglo’s thugs from behind with his state of the art motorised wheelchair. She comes with a permanent PMT edge, Elaine, the edge of her father’s self-destruct. Sometimes it’s attractive; sometimes it scares you, like the glint of a knife or a crack in a mirror. Oh bleeding inside for her father and ‘WANTING TO BE LOVED’ even more than the rest of us no doubt. But just the sort of young summer wastrel who gets herself pregnant by the first hopeless boy she meets in a desperate effort to embrace a broken world and starts the whole bloody mess all over again.

West Shhh. 

Merlay rolls his eyes, then scoffs at the following speech. During it Viviane Glass takes out a compact and makes up, is her own reflection in The Mirror. 

Dr Vort. (mopping his brow) Ahemahemahemahem. Since 1510, this school, as the Chalice Grammar School, my old school - has served the roll-swelling village of Castle Hill and the retirement village of Crom Cruach, whose junior school closed the day Margaret Thatcher took away the children’s free milk… 

The Mirror flashes as it takes a self-screenshot.  Dr Vort poses with a silly and inappropriate smile.

Dr Vort. …and a vast empty area of outstanding natural beauty around Glastonbury Abbey. Since the advent of the new Corbenic Estate Secondary Modern School in 1954 and its merger with Chalice Grammar in the 1971, we have exploded into Bog Standard Comprehensive. 

An explosion off, followed by naughty boy hysterics.

Dr Vort This is the finest hour of that Comprehensive. I would like to thank the local Round Table; our long-suffering Head of Governors Councillor West and our glorious benefactor, Victor Saxon… 

Saxon Chemicals factory smoke

Dr Vort for their tireless help in achieving our quest. To tell you there is now no reason for pupils to absent themselves, from our striving for competence in all subjects and for a special competence in science. I would like to share the glorious moment when, at six o’clock yesterday evening, I spoke on the telephone to Sir Norman Clark the Minister for Education, and received Government approval of our Specialist Needs Science Status!

Forced applause

Dr Vort. I would like to but I can’t.

Silence. Bruce and Nobby, uniformed Saxon Security guards, enter through audience: a hint of coup d’etat.

Dr Vort. My Holy Grail for thirty years, as Head Boy, History Master, Head of History, Housemaster, Headmaster, Headmaster Emeritus and now returning Emergency ‘Super’ Head, has been to secure the future of this school. That quest should have been achieved today. I have to ‘thank’ our own lost youth, sixth formers and others from this very school, for plucking defeat from the dragon-jaw of victory. (sweating) In their tiresome quest for celebrity for celebrity’s sake, these fancy-freelances, these self-appointed young royalty, have pig-swilled a fantasy about a local businessman to a national newspaper and now we must all wait for the smears in the Mirror to be clear. Credendum est nobis, dum Roma urit! We must fiddle while Rome burns! (mops brow) Rest assured, we shall! You have been warned. 

Exit.

Governor 2 How many times did he rehearse that Specialist Science Status speech?

Governor 3 Fifteen.

Governor 4 He’s worse than Merlay and the kids. 

Tristan and Elaine take the stage, directed by Merlay.

Merlay Now Tristan this is supposed to be HOT. 

Governor 2 At least their show’s going on. Ours can’t now.

Saxon (heavy hand on Gov 2 shoulder) It’s got to.

Exeunt, glaring, through audience, Bruce and Nobby acting CIA fashion as Saxon’s bodyguards. 

Tristan But I’m used to doing this with Jennifer.

Merlay Well Jennifer isn’t here. Poor Elaine isn’t even in the scene and she’s giving it everything.

Tristan (sullen) “Your beauty silences me.”

Elaine (as Jennifer’s Guinevere) “And keeps you away for..” what was it?

Merlay Tch!

Tristan “Two years”

Merlay Stop! Start again, please. Music (pause) Hauberk and Greaves! Music! (exits, stressed, to deal with it)

Awkward pause. They stand ‘mirroring’ each other. 

Tristan Do you know why girls coats do up the mirror-opposite way to boys?

Merlay (off) HAUBERK AND GREAVES. CALL YOURSELVES ‘SOUND MEN’ HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU? HOW MANY TIMES BEFORE YOU GET IT INTO YOUR THICK SKULLS! IF THE MUSIC COMES IN LATE AFTER  “YOUR BEAUTY SILENCES ME,” IT SOUNDS LIKE A JOKE! AND I’M NOT LAUGHING BOY. DO I LOOK LIKE I’M LAUGHING? HAUBERK! GREAVES! DO I LOOK LIKE I’M LAUGHING!

Tristan Knights laced their armour up on the right-hand side so that their shields protected the gaps. (demonstrates). That’s all it is.

Elaine I’m sick of this.

Tristan The play? But Merlay says-

Elaine Not just the play. Everything! A boy can ’ave a face like a bag of spanners and still act like a queen but a girl’s got to be pretty, like Jennifer.

Tristan No she hasn’t. 

Elaine glares at him. He realises it’s hardly a compliment.

Elaine Guinevere isn’t me. 

Tristan I know. We mustn’t lose ourselves in-

Elaine She’s Jennifer. I got my own story. The “Cursed Grail Maiden” (becoming the Lady Elaine) My father the Fisher King maimed and bleeding until the holy vessel is found, his lands lain waste. Never loved by Sir Lancelot, the knight I love, except as a surface mirroring his true love Guinevere’s image. Our love affair conducted in a looking glass, if I see his real face, I die. I am too lily-pure for this world yet I bear the burden of Lancelot’s passion, Guinevere’s beauty and Arthur’s heartbreak. In all the dark sins of the world, and my own annihilation, I bring forth Galahad the Pure, the Grail Finder.  The Light!

Tristan (terrified) Jesus!

They freeze as mirror images of each other. Re-enter Merlay, watching, wonderstruck.

Merlay (to audience) The Lancelot and Elaine scenes certainly caught fire after that. Tristan and Elaine stole every scene; even the ones they weren’t in! It didn’t solve the problem of Jennifer’s absence from so many rehearsals – even when she turned up, she was still absent – but I had an even bigger problem. Fay went on strike and that didn’t just mean I lost Fay’s Morgan. I lost the musical plot, my producer’s notes, my rehearsal schedule, my car keys, the props, everything. Fay said she wouldn’t come back until I sorted out Jennifer’s attendance and also told me Elaine was getting into hot water with the Saxon Chemicals protests and that Lancelot, I mean Tristan, had to keep bailing her out. You should get Dr Vortigern to tell Saxon’s where to get off she said. I said I think you overestimate the powers of a Head of Drama to influence a Head teacher, or the regional economy. At this point Dr Vortigern was delegating everything to a Saxon-sponsored member of the Senior Management Team, a former Science Adviser by the name of Michael Mordor, 6 feet three of poisonous dwarf, so a showdown with Saxon seemed unlikely. The Year 9 squirt I had playing Mordred kept using him as a character model and the dwarf himself would suddenly appear at my elbow making notes about it. I was telling Fay I’d talk to Mr Mordor on Elaine’s behalf, trying to sound more hopeful than I felt, when she suddenly started crying and said Owain had dumped her. The professional thing would have been to refer her to the seven versions of school pastoral. So I did the unprofessional thing of saying, from the heart, that Owain was a dipstick preferring a drama queen, however desirable, like Jennifer to a Joy of a girl like her-

Fay They’re always late and they always arrive together. What does he see in her anyway?

They enter through the mirror with fancy shopping bags.

Merlay (answering Fay’s question) Guinevere. 

Owain I used to think the Body Shop was a funeral parlour until I went shopping with Jenny. 

Merlay What time do you call this? You’re letting everybody down.

Jennifer You sound like my father!

Merlay I’m not Father Christmas just because he wasn’t. If you carry on like this, princess, I’ll offer your part to someone else.

Jennifer storms off. 

Fay Owain.

Owain (his eyes following Jennifer) What?

Fay You left your asthma inhaler on the bus.

Owain (reluctantly moved) Thanks

Owain dithers, looking at Fay, then follows Jennifer.

Fay Bitch.

Merlay She’s not a bitch.  She’s a long way up herself and we’re all liable to get lost on that road but being lost in her own looks is what she’s been taught all her life. Fairy stories, adverts, gender-modelling, window-dressing, marketing, the Myth of Beauty. It’s everywhere. She’s the queen of the May at the moment but so was Anne Boleyn. And look at it from Owain’s point of view. At the moment he’s got the fantasy Jennifer – Guinevere – and the real Fay. You. But – and this is the really hard lesson for you, Fay: romance – thrilling divine romance – is still true, if you can dodge all the reductions and exploitations. It’s the Grail we’re all searching for, in the convent; in the monastery of marriage, in the gutter. You’re Owain’s real friend but, as far as true romance goes, she’s it. He’s growing up. Perhaps you need to grow (feels a pang) … out of him too.

Fay Sir?

Merlay (to audience) It was all taking its toll on the old ticker. (rubs his chest, grimaces) Excuse me (exit)

Fay Sir, are you OK? (follows him off)

Scene 2. Fisher in a wheelchair, on a drip. He is reading a magazine which he tosses aside. West country accent.

Fisher Life was simpler then, a boy’s romance

Of Dunkirk, Badon and Crecy 

A fifteenth century Commando mag,

A fifth century Victor comic:

The Alf Tupper interpretation of history.

Flying down the wing, I was Georgie Boy, the Best

A red shirt dragon making a green May

Of midfield, defence and keeper

Before cutting loose

An unstoppable angled drive,

Then holding aloft the Holy Grail…

Arthur’s battling Perfidious Albion

Come from behind

To knock out the favourites at Badon ’ill!

The flower of French chivalry

Shot down at Agincourt

By the British V sign…

Fairytale victories about as genuine

In any lasting political sense

When deconstructed now

By sober Oxford tomes,

Or unreported then

In Gildas’ Church Times

As an offside goal. 

Goodbye green man, goodbye lost king of May,

European grail winner, Best knight.

Goodbye red dragon on a green field.

Nothing could un-mast your glory,

Your beauty’s truth leaping muscle-bound fouls

The dreams of youth without its injured ordinariness

Or age’s silting of its genius,

The best without the thickening uncouth

Slurred self-disgrace, the bruising disproof

Of the mean;

The tarnishing insinuations of time,

The drip-drip discrediting

Of a hero. 

Elaine was always my biggest fan. Even when I started to fade. (indicates wheelchair) Even when this happened. She kept faith. It started when I was injured and did that celebrity coaching day for the local schools’ male and female player of the year. Elaine and Wayne. Her mum and step dad thought girls shouldn’t play and were never there for her anyway. At first, I thought the two star kids would link up in real life too but he never seemed that interested in girls. Crikey at his age I wasn’t interested in anything else!  ‘I want to concentrate on football. I just want to be the best player in the world’ he said. He wasn’t even the best player in that school. Our Elaine was. ‘I’m doing it for you,’ she told me. But there was no fun in it, no joy on the ball like I had in the spring of my career. No spring in that teenage wasteland. 

Elaine (sings, off) Come hither far from Court and Keep

And wounds that forever bleed;

Come furthest of all from these wasted hearts

That Love alone can seed…

Fisher strains to hear as the lights fade.

Scene 3. Music. Lights up on Sir Gawaine enjoying the May sunshine. An atmosphere of mediaeval romance. Enter, singing, the Lady Elaine from the woodshore dressed in pure white, with a headdress of summer cornfield flowers. She is exhausted. The music fades.

Gawaine (solicitous) My Lady… Elaine?

Lady Elaine When did you get back from the Saxon wars?

Gawaine The wars have been over for ten years, lady, thanks to King Arthur. The Saxons will not trouble us again. All those ‘us’ who were not slain. How do you not know this?

Lady Elaine It is ten years since I was a maiden here at Queen Guinevere’s wedding. My father has lain wounded and his kingdom of Corbenic has been blighted by a curse all that time. The sun there is a torment, not warming and pleasant as here, and a rain shadow has scorched the crops for ten summers. Nothing grows but pollution and plague and my father’s wound. I have returned through great peril to Camelot to beg help from the greatest Knight of the Round Table.

Gawaine I am at your service, lady.

Lady Elaine If my chosen knight can find the Holy Grail, the curse will be broken and our land will be fruitful again. I will be his. But the quest is perilous. He must be the best knight of the Round Table. 

Gawaine I am Arthur’s champion - and his best remaining knight.

Lady Elaine Then you are Sir Lancelot? I didn’t recognise you after all this time. Sir, I owe you my life. I was in Dolorous Gard, the Castle of wicked enchantments. Doomed to sit in a perpetual bath of scalding water. You unlocked all its spells and set me free. You renamed the Castle that held me Joyous Gard. I’ve loved you ever since.

She yearns towards him. 

Gawaine (reluctantly honourable and honest) No, lady, I am not Lancelot. I am Gwlachmei, hawk of May, known as Sir Gawaine. Lancelot returned from hunting a hideous questingbeast –three days ago. He was wounded in body and weary in soul. He left again this morning on the quest of the red hart, carrying the Queen’s favour. (pause, kneels) But I am the best remaining knight, proven in the quest of the Green Knight. I am fresh and eager to test myself against all things. Give me your favour, lady, and I will seek your Grail.

Gawaine lowers his vizor. Lady Elaine unties her scarf as favour but before she can give it to him, Sir Mordred enters. He is in black armour, the unwieldy machine-like kit which appeared at the end of the Middle Ages, vizored and dehumanised. His shield is marked with a grotesque viper and several abatements of honour. He casts a shadow. Gawaine salutes him coldly, lifting his vizor. Mordred laughs inside his helmet, not returning the courtesy, as he crosses the stage and exits. 

Lady Elaine (alarmed) Who was that?

Gawaine (darkly) Sir Mordred, the King’s…nephew

Lady Elaine It is as if my grandmother’s tales of Medrawt, the evil shadow, had come alive before my eyes. The king’s nephew!

Gawaine In truth, ma demoiselle, his son. The monks teach us a witch called Morgan le Fay tricked Arthur – her young half brother - into a lovebed. 

Lady Elaine Morrigan – but she is a goddess, a healer!

Gawaine They say she spawned his own shadow upon him.

Lady Elaine (disgusted) A questingbeast in his own image! Of his own flesh!

Gawaine We all have them. Arthur has Mordred; Lancelot a panting red hart with the face of Guinevere; Guinevere her own lovely shadow in the mirror. Many such a demon has blocked my Forest path and each of them, slain, has borne my own face. But I shall be rid of them when, with God’s grace, I find your Grail.

He touches his vizor in salute, lowers it and exits. 

Lady Elaine (calls after him, waving the scarf) Sir Gawaine! Wait! You need my favour!

But he’s gone. She sighs and exits the other way. A troubadour with a lute enters like a mediaeval pop star and plucks the opening of “Guinnevere”. He makes to sing but Sir Gawaine re-enters (from the grail quest) on his hands and knees, lost, beaten, all his glory gone. Two years have passed.  The troubadour supports him off the other way. 

 

Scene 4. “Guinnevere” by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young plays. Enter Guinevere to her garden. She is stitching repairs to Excalibur’s scabbard. Enter Lancelot from his two year quest of the red hart.

Guinevere (not smiling) Well, ‘champion’?

Lancelot Majesty?

Guinevere Is that all you have to say to me? 

Lancelot Your beauty silences me.

Guinevere And keeps you away for more than two years?

Lancelot Summer haze or winter blizzard, your face was before me always.

He presents her with a pennant on which is embroidered a red hart like a Certificate of Achievement. Applause. She is unimpressed.

Guinevere Why do you keep avoiding me? 

Lancelot I am Arthur’s captain not yours. You are his queen, not mine.

Guinevere He loves Logres not me.

Lancelot He is Logres: the light within the lamp of Britain. Remember the Saxon legions he drove back into the dark? There is something Godly in him. He is greater than I, Lady. Greater than both of us.

Guinevere What is greatness without love? I was a child when I married him: a girl marrying her friend to escape her stupid father. I traded one prison tower for another. Now nothing bears fruit. If I could give Arthur a child, God knows I would. But Logres has no heir. (pause) Because I love you, Lancelot. (desperate) And nothing else makes sense.

Enter Morgan le Fay. Lancelot draws his sword.

Morgan Be still, Lancelot. No blade but Excalibur can harm me.

Lancelot freezes.

Guinevere (petrified) Guards!

Morgan It’s useless calling them. They are simple men, little minds running lost in my enchantments. All men seek some female end. A woman is the sky that rounds their world. The barque by which they come hither-. 

Guinevere Then why are we all so barren! Enid. Isolde. Elaine. Beautiful empty vessels!

Morgan You know why. I am a goddess. Arthur’s female counterpart. Arthur in female form. Friend to God not mortals. I punish and reward what IS, not what should be. You pledged your love to Arthur. Yet you did not love him.

Guinevere I was a girl of twelve! They were giving our hearts away away like tables and horses. And I do love him, dearly - as a brother. 

Morgan But not as a husband. Poor Lancelot, caught like a badger between Guinevere and grail, spurring his old warhorse into any oblivion, how can he surrender to God a heart he has already given to you? He quests you like a lost land from the days of the matriarchs when land was plentiful and women ruled settled farms and there was peace. A summer country flowing with milk and honey. And yours, Guinevere, first lady of these islands, to give. (pause) But you must choose. Lancelot or Arthur? As Lancelot must choose. Monk or husband? King’s captain or Queen’s champion? What keeps you all in this fruitless quandary?

Guinevere (despair) A lifetime. Everything

Morgan Well, you can’t have everything. (indicating the scabbard and taking it from her) Mine, I think. (exit)

Lancelot unfreezes. 

Guinevere (dully) I was supposed to guard that scabbard with my life. Now male and female are sundered. Arthur can bleed. He can die.

Lancelot, hands trembling, tries and fails to sheathe Joyeux. Guinevere holds the scabbard steady.  He sheathes Joyeux.

Lancelot Don’t you think I dream of Arthur dying in battle so that I could come to you without guilt? Our love would destroy a kingdom, the way Uther’s did for Igraine. It’s better that we yearn, better that the Light beyond the Forest remains beyond the forest. (makes to go)

Guinevere Don’t leave me.

Lancelot I never can leave you. Though I follow the quest of your red hart across all the wildernesses and slippery precipices of this world, my own heart remains unachieved. Now Arthur has chosen me - his best knight! - to seek the Holy Grail. And one strand of your golden hair is worth a thousand grails as soon as I am away from you.

Guinevere Then Seek me. Find me.  (closer, whispering) The lips of your grail cup are here…

Pause. He makes to kiss her. Then-

Lancelot Lady, I dare not. (exit, Blackout)

Scene 5. Lights up on Saxon Chemicals. Candy comes into a plush office and sits. She is wearing a short sharp shock business skirt and works with speedy efficiency. Animal squeals from horror labs behind. A puff of unholy smoke, repeated once. Dying plant on desk. A buzzer sounds.

Candy (answering a phone) Yes? Of course, Mr Saxon. Victor. (pressing a buzzer) Nobby. Bring them in please.

Nobby – a thug-sized Saxon Security man sporting a gorgeous black eye – fetches Jennifer (in a denim jacket over her Guinevere dress) and Fay. Fay has an expensive camera and Excalibur’s scabbard in which she has a camera tripod - and gauntlet eyes for Jennifer. Candy ignores both girls, looking at some reports. They stand waiting. 

Candy (absently) Thank you, Nobby.

Nobby exits. Candy sprays Heaven Scent, the Saxon air freshener. Fay and Jennifer frown.

Candy Would you rather smell his BO all day? A few CFCs aren’t the end of the world.

Fay Yes they are.

Candy Nice look by the way.

F and M Thanks

Candy I meant Miss West. (checks list for Fay’s name) Miss...

Fay Morgan.

Candy (finding it) Ah yes. Joy Morgan.

Fay Fay Morgan.

Candy Fay Morgan? Are you sure?

Fay Yes!

Candy (studying list) Fay Morgan. Couldn’t read Mr Saxon’s handwriting. 

Jennifer Apparently that was always happening to Malcolm X. They kept calling him Charles X-

Candy (studying Jennifer) Yes, a very nice look indeed.

Jennifer It’s ‘Guinevere’. From the school play. 

Candy ‘Guinevere?’ (notes it down as a possible product name) Now. Mr Saxon has asked me to see if we can clear up our misunderstandings before any more get smeared over the Daily Mirror. Saxon Coffee? 

Jennifer Thank you.

Candy Joy?

Fay Fay. I’d rather eat pork scratchings marinated in lager vomit thanks.

Candy Wouldn’t we all, but the EU stopped us making them.  (into intercom) Two coffees. Cream? One with cream. And don’t forget the cake for the birthday girl. Thank you. (to Jennifer) Now, Mr Saxon wants to congratulate you, Jennifer, on grabbing the Mirror. As a fellow West Countryman, he’d like to give you the kind of inside story on Saxon’s that will make the Mirror see you as a front page journo rather than some country bumpkin. This is a chance for the whole West to shine.

Jennifer Thank you. (pre-empting Fay’s rebuke) For the birthday cake.

Enter Bruce, the next thug-size up from Nobby. Candy sprays more Heaven Scent.

Fay (looking askance at Jennifer) And what does the old man want in return?

Candy Old man?

Fay Saxon.

Candy Nothing much. A bit of respect perhaps for one of the captains of the West. You’re now doing a feature on Fisher King I understand?

Jennifer Yes? 

Fay A WASTED KING.

Candy Very true. And that’s fine. But Mr Saxon will want it headline-clear that Saxon’s were in no way responsible for  his career-ending injury-

Fay Apart from trashing his car. 

Candy All very sad, but not murder, Joy.

Fay Fay. 

 Candy Fisher was wasted on coke and booze. I thought that was required behaviour for a footballer but apparently not. You can quote Mr Saxon saying it’s a tragedy ‘because King was just the brilliantly gifted player Albion needs for the top flight’. But we both know he destroyed himself.

Jennifer (nods) OK. So – when do we interview Saxon?

Candy Mr Saxon to you.

Fay Victor to you.

Candy I have to establish a few ground-rules first.

Fay takes a photo of Candy Miller.

Candy (tight smile) No photos for example. We can give you the official portrait of Mr Saxon. Bruce.

Bruce hands Jennifer a giant publicity folder then resumes the bouncer position.

Candy Nice camera. ‘Borrowed’ from school?

Fay Media Studies. You saying I stole it? 

Candy No, no.

Fay Because I’m a Corbenic kid, yeah?

Candy So am I dear. I’ve come on a bit since then.  

Fay takes another aggressive photo.

Candy Tch. Must she keep doing that?

Jennifer Well, we are a newspaper. 

Candy And we’re a business. The only business in Corbenic that is expanding.

Jennifer Expanding? I thought that was all off now, in exchange for us giving Viviane Glass some stuff to make you look good in The Mirror. (sweetly) Expanding where?

Candy (caught off guard) Uh-

Bruce (the company motto) ‘You can’t bake a cake without breaking a few eggs.’

Candy Thank you Bruce. (spinning this gaffe) You must realise that we are in business to supply demand and provide work in a depressed area. 

Jennifer Not to make a profit then?

Candy Is profit a dirty word?

Fay Does the Pope shit in the woods?

Candy Our processes are all perfectly clean and safe now.

Jennifer Like your Twiggyfast slimming plan responsible for large scale female obesity in the 70s?

Bruce ‘You can’t bake a cake-.’

Candy (shutting him up) Bruce. (to Jennifer) New Twiggyfast has corrected that. 

Bruce ‘- without breaking a few eggs.’

Candy Bruce! … Now we can give every woman what she dreams of. Food without fatness. Pregnancy-free sex. Eating her cake-

Bruce (pruriently) And having it.

A buzzer goes. Candy answers the phone.

Candy Yes? (listens) Hmm. You’d better bring her in.

Re-enter Nobby, manhandling Elaine. Elaine, in ‘swampy’ zip-jeans and SAXON COSTS THE EARTH T shirt - looks scared. Candy sprays her. Fay gets a photo of all this.

Candy (to Fay) Quite the professional little outfit aren’t you?

Fay What’s she done?

Candy (a trick to learn her name) Who?

Fay (pointing to Elaine rather than saying her name) Her. 

Candy You’re the daughter of Corbenic’s resident green knight, Fay. I think you’d know this little disciple of hers.

Fay Only from school, like you. 

Candy I remember nothing from school.

Jennifer What’s she’s done?

Candy I may look it but I’m not just a Pretty Face. This isn’t a game, princess. This is a Chemicals factory –a dangerous chemicals factory - and top secret research goes on here.  She was trespassing. She was also wrecking company property. And if she ended up burnt or blinded with chemicals she would have only herself to blame, however your Mirror came after us for it. And when Nobby tried to explain all this, she bit his ear. 

Nobby shows his ear.

Candy And then she gave a false name. Your name, actually, Fay.  And that confused Nobby who had you on his list for this meeting. And confusing Nobby’s not a good idea because he and Bruce are not exactly the brains of this outfit and when they get confused they get upset. And when they get upset, they get angry. And when they get angry they go berserk and hurt people. 

N and B ‘You can’t bake a cake without breaking a few legs.’

Fay I’m calling the police.

Candy Be my guest.

Elaine No! 

Candy No?

Silence. 

Bruce (prim) She’s got drugs on her. (holds them up)

Elaine Belladonna. Rowan – Mountain Ash. Natural remedies.

Bruce and Nobby look appalled. Candy reacts to the Rowan like a spooked witch. 

Candy (takes a Dummydoze) Take her down the lab. Find out how legal those ‘remedies’ are.

Bruce drags Elaine out.

Elaine (scared) Jennifer!

Candy Oh! She seems to know you now. Sure you’re not all working together? What’s her name?

Jennifer What’s going to happen to her?

Candy Oh don’t worry. She won’t be hurt. Badly. Name/

Elaine (off) GET OFF ME!

Fay Get off her!

Candy Or what? You’ll set your big bad Green Knight on me?

Fay I wouldn’t start a fight with my mum if I were you.

Candy Oh I’m scared. If she was so brave why did she send a little girl in her place? 

Fay She’s not so little. And maybe they both want to stop you wasting the Earth with your virus capitalism. 

Candy And maybe you’re just a bit…green behind the ears with envy that your mother chose her instead of you?

Fay She’s a sister. We all are.

Jennifer (scared into this) You’d better not hurt her. My dad’s got connections. 

Nobby laughs. And can’t stop laughing. After a while, Candy laughs with him. His hysterics are infectious.

Jennifer Why is that funny?

Fay Connections?

Candy We know. D’you really think The Mirror would look at your little girls’ comic if you weren’t Councillor West’s daughter? Whose idea do you think this big exclusive was in the first place?  Oh yes, you’ve got the connections – though I don’t think daddy would approve of the naughty girls you’re playing with. But that waste of space sitting with you hasn’t. Nor does the one in there with Bruce. She doesn’t even seem to have parents –not the kind who care where she is. 

Fay I knew it. It’s all a set up. This is all just about you being top girl again. (to Candy) Let her go, you pill-popping tart!

Jennifer Fay, shh. She’s just trying to divide us.

Candy Tell us her name and we will.

Elaine (yelling, off) HELP ME!

Fay (panicking) Elaine! 

Candy So it’s Elaine is it? Thank you. (writes it down) Elaine who?

Elaine screams off.

Jennifer Stop it. Her name’s Elaine Fisher. I’m telling my father about this.

Candy He already knows. (writes it down) Fisher.

Fay (yells) Elaine!

Candy Address?

Fay runs to help and is restrained by Nobby. He confiscates Fay’s camera. Extracts the sim card and destroys it.

Candy Relax, Fay. She won’t be marked. Have some Dummydoze. 

They refuse. Nobby looks agitated at Candy’s pill popping and her delays. Enter Mordred, a hideous dogsbody, with the coffee and a cake with a birthday candle burning. Candy pops a Dummydoze capsule and washes it down with Saxon coffee. Nobby checks his watch.

Candy Thank you Mordred. (handing coffee and then the cake to Jennifer, rambling with the Dummydoze) Sorry to hear about the points on your licence by the way. What was it this time?

Mordred Speeding. Past the school. Mr Saxon says he hasn’t got all day. 

Candy The devil he hasn’t. Men drivers eh, girls? Put a suit of armour around them and they’re death-charging each other like …   well,  

Mordred knights of the road. (exit)

Candy Where was I? (takes a Twiggyfast, which has an immediate effect) Ah yes! Here! Now!... Nothing will happen to Elaine Fisher if you co-operate. You can go home. Elaine Fisher can go home too if she’s got one. (pill popping mechanically, now a Dummydoze) We can all go home. Won’t that be nice? (yawns) And I can give you a nice sisstery chat about how a real girl gets out of the real Corbenic on the arm of a real prince, instead of the frog-kissing fairy tales they spin you in school… (almost asleep.) 

Phone buzzes. Candy fumbles. Nobby snatches it up. Candy pops another Twiggyfast, gets speedily efficient again. 

Candy Gimme!  Here. Now! 

She takes phone from a tight-lipped Nobby.

Candy Mr Saxon? Victor (intimate giggle) Jennifer West from the Edge is ready for you now.  Oh yes, she’s got the story all right. She knows you can give her what she wants. We can give them all what they wants, can’t we Victor?  (giggles, replaces phone) Ah, girls, life has its ups and downs but when you love your work, who needs holidays? Life’s a beach - and then you dive! Nobby. Show Miss West into her Mirror front page with Victor the Saxon King would you?

Nobby snaps to and leads Jennifer off. Fay tries to follow. Bruce returns and bars her path.

Candy (writing) Not you.

Bruce shoves Fay into a chair.

Fay (scared) What do you want?

Candy That Castle Hill goldilocks is really going places isn’t she? Places you can never go. 

Fay (sullen) She makes I look like a peasant.

Candy You can look like a princess. (She picks up a new bottle of New Twiggyfast and idles with it.) I didn’t always have the Barbie Girl figure I’ve got now. I can help you even things up a bit. 

Fay With Jennifer you mean? (eager) How?

Candy You make the wish. We’ll make it come true.

Candy smiles and offers the bottle. Fay looks at it. Blows out Jennifer’s birthday candle. Blackout. A mobile rings.

 

Scene 6. Enter Merlay on his mobile.

Merlay Jwenhwyfar’s moving schools! (gets a pang, rubs his chest) But what about the production! (appalled) No I can’t use a blonde wig. What d’you think this is – pantomime? She’s the face, the hair, the brand. (staggering) What do you mean, it’s only a play! Yes Elaine Fisher has taken the female lead in rehearsals lately - because you keep taking Jwenhwyfar home early - and yes Fay has been helping Owain learn his lines because Jwenhwyfar’s too busy with ‘extra-Gwenhwyfar activities’– but Elaine and Fay have got their own parts. You don’t understand - it’s a team.  Well I think you’re self-centred. You may very well be the head of Governors but I don’t think you’ve ever understood what we’re doing here. (Another speech of a lifetime no-one hears) This is a comprehensive school, a school for everybody. Under our tutelage, she’s developed all her talents to an enviable degree. Well if you’re a Governor in an ungovernable school, I’m a voice in the wilderness! (pause) Councillor West, if anyone needs to let go, it’s you. 

Merlay rings off. He has severe chest pangs. He punches some buttons.

Merlay Fay? I need you to give up Morgan.  …Because you’ll have to be Guinevere. Jennifer’s quit the play. Well, the school. That’s OK, history says Guinevere should be dark anyway ‘the ghost-skin and raven hair’ of the Celts. You can!? You’d love to! Oh! Great! Thanks! Thanks, Fay. You’re a life saver. 

He rings off, rubs his chest. Blackout.

Scene 7. Lights up on Fay’s bedroom.  Very late. Enter Fay, haggard, white as Death, closing her mobile. She looks in the mirror. Does her hair etc. Jade reflects her actions. 

Fay (despair) You again! Who d’you fink you are? My fairy godmother?

Jade (coming out of the mirror) Just your mother.

Fay You make me look fat.

Jade Well you’re not. I hope you’re not starving yourself for some boy.

Fay Fat chance. All the boys want the Barbie Doll Jennifer. That’s why I use – New Twiggyfast.

Jade That’s why you use what?

Fay New Twiggyfast. It’s going to turn me into Jennifer. I don’t intend being a Corbenic Comprehensive girl for the rest of my life.

Jade Neither did I. Then I got pregnant. Then married, to your father 

Fay who was never here

Jade Then ex-married. Then married to your step-father.

Fay Morgan. I liked him.

Jade So did I.  That’s why you still have his name. Unfortunately, the rest of him went to Afghanistan with the 17th Cornish and only his green beret came back. So we’re left with your biological father who seems to have forgotten who you are.

Fay D’you think if I’m Jennifer’s Guinevere, in the limelight, he will see me?

Jade The limelight isn’t real life, Fay. 

Fay What is? Saving the planet on your own?

Jade I know what they tell you on the streets. I’m a Bad Mother 

Fay “too busy being a green knight campaigning for social and environmental justice” 

Jade but what could be more maternal than that? And anyway I’m your mother first. Women have got to be at least two people at once in this world. It’s like being asked to play two completely different roles in your school play on stage at the same time. It’s impossible but you do it. If you don’t know that already from your own maternal instincts, you’ll definitely find out when you’re a mother yourself. I have to fight for Mother Earth. But I’m always here for you Fay. 

Fay Bullshit. Get lost.

Jade I fink I got lost too often-

Fay Yeah, in fat. (pause) I don’t blame you. I’m horrible.

Jade I’ve tried not to hold onto you like some parents do – but believe me I wanted to. It seems whatever I try, it’s wrong. Fay-

Fay (swallows the Twiggyfast) I’m not Fay. You are! I’m Jennifer. I’m Jennifer’s Guinevere. Get out of my face.

Candy replaces Jade in the mirror.

Fay Hey! Candy!

Candy (silky smirk) Fay! I’m actually a bit busy at the moment. Some experiments with leeches.

Fay is on tenterhooks. So are the leeches. Candy keeps her waiting. 

Candy (looking up at last) Now how can I help?

Fay More Twiggyfast. More Twiggyfast. Quick.

Candy Already?

Fay Yeah! I’m Jennifer’s Guinevere 

Candy Naturally.

Fay And I wants to see our dad.

Candy What for?

Fay I just wants to see ‘im.

Candy But what do you want to see him for?

Fay I just wants to see ‘im.

Candy But what for?

Fay I just wants to see ‘im!

Candy BUT WHAT FOR?

Fay I JUST WANTS TO SEE ’IM!

Silence

Candy I’ll request an appointment for Absent Father’s Day (checking a diary) Hmm. I’m afraid Mr Saxon is busy until the end of the century.

Candy holds out a larger bottle of Twiggyfast. Fay makes to seize it. Candy holds it out of reach.

Fay I want to see Dad!

Candy But he doesn’t want to see you. At least not like that. Look at this picture he keeps of you on his desk. That’s the little girl he remembers. (waves Twiggyfast bottle) This can bring her back. But you’ve got to help us first.

Fay (dreary, as she realises she is addicted) Life’s a bitch and then you diet. What do you want?

Candy gives the bottle which Fay unscrews and pours into her mouth. But it’s empty.

Candy Oh just a little dirt. On Jennifer. Something to give us the edge. A bit of control. Or on Jennifer’s dad maybe. I’ll leave you to…think it over.

Exit Candy. Fay goes cold turkey. The lights brighten. Enter Jade in a nightie behind Fay.

Jade Fay. It’s gone midnight You’ve been awake for three days! What’s going on?

Jade picks up the empty bottle of New Twiggyfast, looks at the white-faced and sleep-deprived Fay, works it out, glares in the direction of Saxon Chemicals, seizes a huge kitchen knife. She exits murderously. Blackout.

 

Scene 8. “Candy Says” by The Velvet Underground plays. Lights up on Saxon Chemicals, after dark. Candy is working late on an experiment, popping Twiggyfast, past a deadline, frantic. A loud security alarm goes off. Enter Jade holding the knife. She stabs the alarm and it cuts off.

Candy (petrified) I can’t see you without an appointment-

Jade Well I can see you – and you’re five stones thinner than me. 

Candy BRUCE! NOBBY!

Jade You should get out more. Everyone’s at the Red Hart fancy dress party. 

Candy (panic) What are you going to do?

Jade (brandishes knife) Oh, just a few cutbacks in the office staff. Think of all the pounds I could save you.

Candy It’s not so great being thin. It’s like you’re one of the boys but feminine at the same time. Men can’t get over it. Anything goes. I didn’t plan to poach him from you. 

Jade Not from me, love. That happened a long time ago.

Candy He surprised me in my student flat once before I was ready. There was a week of jeans and dirty linen all over the floor.

Saxon Come here, you dirty blonde.

Candy And it was such a blast - until I realised it was nothing to do with me. I was just a mirror who’d get smashed if I didn’t tell him he was the finest of them all. Every time he stayed the night, it was like he really just wanted the place to himself.

Jade I remember the feeling. My name’s Jade Wales by the way. Fay’s mother. A thousand years ago, when I was one of your boss’s office flings, Saxon’s Original Twiggyfast Plan turned me into this. Now, you’re turning my daughter into a thinness addict. Any comment?

Candy (gulps some Dummydoze) I’m not supposed to get stressed.

Jade advances menacingly. Candy grabs a test tube full of frothing liquid and brandishes it at Jade.

Candy D’you know what this is? 

Jade Tell me.

Candy A new corrosive I’m developing for our explosives section. Mainly sulphuric acid. Devastating on skin and flesh - not quite so hot on bones. Would you like a free sample?

Stalemate. 

Candy (fascinated) Your hand’s shaking. Mine’s dead still.

Jade That’s because I’m terrified, love. And so would you be if you weren’t sucking Dummydoze like an absent mother’s milk. (pause) What do I call you again?

Candy A berserker ducking under the cavalry charge to gut an old mare. 

Jade I meant your name.

Candy Candy Miller.

Jade Your real name.

Candy (she’s almost forgotten it) Mandy Keeler.

Jade I know nothing else about you is real –face, hair, eyelashes, shape – but you should at least keep your real name. Look Mandy, I’m furious about what you and your chemicals have done to my daughter but now I see you -  I fink you’re as much a victim as she is.  What say we both put these weapons down now and you put me in touch with the real culprit. Fay’s dad.

Candy Victor… He’s at a Slim Down and Move Ahead Conference. (pause) He blames me for the latest distortions in the Mirror. Says I let three little schoolgirls outflank me. Says I’ve set the company image back twenty years. (broken) Says he’s finished with me. 

Saxon (appears in the Mirror) Greed is God. Viral capitalism makes the world go round and round and round and round and round and round and round and round and Society makes it go flat. Keep the wheels of the virus turning. There is no society. You can’t bake a cake without breaking a few hearts.

Jade I’m putting the knife down now. There… Give me the test tube.

Candy offers it but then gets paranoid. 

Candy There’s a snake! A viper!

Jade Where?

Candy Ssssssss! There!

Jade (looks) Mandy, there’s nothing there. 

Candy Ssssssss! There! There!

Jade There’s nothing there! 

Candy Ssssssss! THERE! By your foot! (screams) 

She reacts, tries to throw the acid at the ‘viper’ and instead pushes it at Jade. Jade, on a reflex knocks it back. The acid hits Candy’s face. Candy screams. Jade gapes at her appalled. Silence. Blackout. The screams continue. 

 

Scene 9. Red hell lights up on the Red Hart fancy dress disco. An atmosphere of drink and drugs. Dancers freeze in a series of still pictures as if strobe lit. Elaine and Tristan (in shades) meet. Tristan has a bottle of wine that they will share through the scene.

Tristan That really suits you. 

Elaine A virgin costume! Yeah right. I’ve got more love bites on me neck than Mrs Dracula.

Tristan You look like the Lady Elaine.

Elaine Fangs very much!... No, really. Fanks. If only you weren’t– 

Tristan What? 

Elaine Gay. (horrified) Is that why you like me?

Tristan I’m not gay. Unless it’s gay to get turned on by a girl like you.

Elaine They all calls you Trish though.

Tristan (laughs) Yeah - because I read books with long words in!

Elaine (pause) I likes your voice – educated. They says I got a voice like a Corbenic Albion centre ’alf. (a fantasy commentary) ‘And it’s Fisher getting the ball from King. Goodness! Look at this! She beats one man. She beats two. What’s she going to do now? She shoots! And SHE’S SCORED!’ (turns to celebrate and finds herself kiss-close to Tristan. Pause) I don’t spose you can walk I ’ome can you? There’s always trouble on Corbenic at this time of night.

Tristan Ha! You cause most of it!

Lights change from hell red to heaven gold and blue.

Elaine (softer) That’s no way to speak to a Lady Elaine! “The summer girl wiv winter eyes.” I can be very …romantic. 

Tristan Can you?

Elaine Yeah! Like when I plays Guinevere in our change scene. Well most of Jennifer’s scenes since she’s gone part time. “Your beauty silences me.” “And keeps you away for-” what is it?

Tristan Two years. (sighs) But you never seem to be there with me.

Elaine At least I turns up to re’earsals! 

Tristan Yeah – and you always bring Fisher with you.

Elaine “Saw a dead magpie today. And I fought of you...” 

Tristan There you go again. 

Elaine “Black suit. White shirt. And that touch of blue.” 

Tristan Lost on some fay dreamboat to death like the Lady of Shalott.  

Elaine “One for sorrow. Two for Joy.” 

Tristan Joy? You could have fooled me. 

Elaine “Free for a girl. Four for a boy.” 

Tristan Stop it!

Elaine It’s called Remembrance.

Tristan Of what though?

Elaine Of a dead king.

Tristan Exactly. Maybe it’s time you forgot?

Elaine Maybe. 

Tristan Let’s drink to forget. 

Elaine (a toast) To Fisher. Who are you drinking to forget?

Tristan I can’t remember.

They laugh. Pause.

Elaine I do forget e’s gone sometimes. I got arrested smashing windows with ’im at Saxon’s yesterday. And when they caught me, I was there on me own.

Tristan Spooky.

Elaine Not for me. There was somefin’ spooky though. When the guard was chasin’ me, I ran up where they’ve dug out the ’ill, where that ’awthorn ’edge used to be. I swear there was some kind of earth tremor going on an’ I ’eard this ’orrible ghostly groaning so I went back to ’elp what I fought was a guard in pain. That’s ’ow they caught me. But it was comin’ out of the ’ill. 

Tristan They’re digging into the hill? 

Elaine Castle ’ill, yeah. Forty tonne lorries screechin’ down the track wiv loads of soil and rubble. An the rubble ’ad Roman tiles and blocks in. And Doctor Vortigern was there -

Tristan (laughs) Revisiting his 4th century childhood ?

Elaine Banging on about how the Romans didn’t use foundations like that under wooden forts but that post-Roman Britons did. And that if you’ve got Roman ruins as a foundation for a Dark Age Celtic fort then… 

Tristan The legend was real. 

Elaine And look what fell off the back of a lorry 

Tristan examines the coin.

Tristan A Saxon coin.

Elaine “Five for silver, six for gold.” Apart from anyfin’ else, I fink Saxon Chemicals might be vandalising an Arfur site. Stealing our history.

Tristan Exploding our myths. Boom!

Pause

Elaine You don’t believe me, do you?

Tristan Not about the earth groaning, no. Bit ‘New Age’. How stoned were you?

Elaine I wasn’t!  

Tristan Yeah but you said you weren’t stoned that day in the car with Fisher and you both were.

Elaine Only on testosterone – and beer. Except I just wanted to live a bit. Fisher wanted to die. Or kill. Just like my dad. “I could’ve been Pelé without this injury, this bad start, that red card, the world…” 

She cries. Tristan hesitates to comforts her then does.

Elaine Fisher.

Tristan …You just called me Fisher!

Elaine Sorry. Tristan. (put her arms round his neck, seductive) You can call me Jennifer if you like. Guinevere. Anything you like… 

Tristan I like Elaine.

Elaine Aw thanks Fisher, you’re a-

Tristan Elaine! I’m not Fisher.

He exits. Elaine curses then stands brooding for a moment. Lights fade. Lights up on Bruce and Nobby, completely hammered, in the Red Hart toilets.

Bruce And what did she say to that?

Nobby “You’re not getting it without paying for it.”

Bruce Bitch! 

Nobby So I necked ’er.

Enter Tristan. They bar his way.

Tristan Excuse me.

Nobby (mocking posh) “Excuse me.”

Bruce The Ladies is next door.

Tristan Actually, if you could read, you would see it says ‘Gentlemen.’ 

Nobby You what? 

Tristan Perhaps you’re here to meet a gentleman’s gentleman? But you’re no bloody gentlemen.

They back off slightly, pressing their backsides against the door

Bruce So what are we then you tosser?

Tristan It’s written on the door behind you, pal.

Bruce (reads) TOILET. 

Tristan Except the ‘I’ has turned into a cartoon dick by some overgrown schoolboy. And that’s what you are. 

Nobby An overgrown schoolboy?

Tristan An ‘I’ that’s been turned into a dick. 

Nobby What?

Tristan A cartoon dick. TO LET. 

Bruce What?

Nobby This is like being back at school. Poetry on a Tuesday afternoon with…

Bruce Mr Eliot.

Nobby S. T. Eliot on the reports.

Bruce TOILETS backwards. Got a bit flushed when we pulled his chain.

Nobby (to Tristan) Well we enjoyed our little poetry lesson about the door.  And we hope you’ll enjoy the lesson we’re going to teach you with it now. Say goodbye to your pretty face. ‘Pal.’ 

Bruce’s mobile rings. He answers it and listens.

Bruce What? (closes call, stares at his colleague) Nobby. There’s been a break in at the Works. Candy’s been blazed!

They hurl Tristan to the floor out of the way and hurry out. Tristan lets out a sigh of relief, gets up, washes his drunken face in the mirror. The lights wobble.  He looks up startled to find Elaine reflecting his actions. He salutes her. She mirrors the action.

Tristan That’s how the knights of old used to let their friends know not to kill them. They lifted their vizors. 

Elaine A salute, I know. 

Tristan What are you doing in the Gents?

Elaine I’m in the Ladies. You’re talking to yourself in the mirror. Do your shirt up. (reflecting him) There you are. 

Tristan Knights had to buckle their armour chinks on the left side, under the shield. That’s why we still do it the other way round to you.

Elaine I know. Knights go on quests. Ladies get quested. But I can’t wait for someone to rescue me. Ladies got to do it for themselves. Knights fail. Ladies…

Tristan (finishing her sentence) “try to embrace a broken world, get pregnant - and start the whole bleeding mess all over again.” There’s a crack in you, Elaine. I should keep well clear.

He makes to kiss her 

Elaine Fisher, listen-. 

Tristan Tristan.

Elaine Tristan. Sorry. If Saxon’s are caught wasting an Arthur site for profit on top of all this dirt in the Mirror…

Tristan Go on.

Elaine They really will have unearthed a monster. They-

Tristan (blurts this out) I’ll help you!

Elaine (pause) You’ve changed your tune.

Tristan (meaning Nobby and Bruce) Saxon’s thugs can be very persuasive. Whatever they want me to do, I want the opposite.

Elaine Are you sure, Trist? Saxon’s mean business. Big business.

Tristan “The squire grows to knighthood, 

the heart learns to dance…

Elaine   An eye for the ladies, an arm for the lance;

A foot for the stirrup’s blind date with chance…

Tristan Leaps the last ditch of history

For the lawns of romance.”

What’s ’appened to the Trish who wanted the hell out of Fisher’s car?

Tristan He met a girl who didn’t. One hell of a girl. Fisher’s girl ‘twin’ and my absolute bloody opposite but boy it beats sitting on a Roman wall in the precinct all night. But listen, we don’t fight them like Fisher did. Understood? We make Saxon crash. A story like this in The Mirror, well...

Elaine Trist, you know they say opposites attract?

Tristan Yeah.

Elaine They’re right. (pause, sighs) But a boy can ’ave a face like a bag of spanners and still win. A girl’s got to be pretty.

Tristan No she hasn’t. Anyway you are pretty, Elaine. Let’s get out of here.

They move outside and pass a busker singing ‘Angel’.

Elaine I love the river this time of night. All the lights of the city. Did you just say I was pretty?

Tristan Very pretty.

They kiss. Blackout. Exit Tristan. In the blackout, Elaine completes Lady Elaine’s costume 

 

Scene 10. ‘ Lancelot and the Grail Maiden’ plays.  (Lady) Elaine still in kiss pose but Tristan has gone. The three Queens enter from Avalon holding a Cup. The music fades.

The Queens (chorally) Grail maiden, Elaine of the White Lilies. You are too pure for this world. You shall never be loved by your perfect knight, except as a surface reflecting his true love. But in all the sins of the world you shall bear Galahad the Pure, man in God’s image, Grail Finder.  With this overflowing Cup we curse you, we bless you. 

They sprinkle holy waters from the Cup. The Queens exit. 

Queen (off, lovee’s voice) WAS I ALL RIGHT? 

‘Mordred’ (off) You were wonderful darling!

The Lady Elaine goes to her window. Sir Lancelot passes below.

Lady Elaine My lord?

Lancelot (expecting Guinevere) Guinevere? (turns) Not Guinevere. Who are you?

Lady Elaine The Lady Elaine. My father is King of the Wastelands.

Lancelot You! (nervous) Many a good knight has broken his heart in your service. Even the great Gawaine. What do you want of me? I am seeking the Grail.

Lady Elaine I can show you where to find it.

Lancelot (eager) Where?

Lady Elaine In a rich-wooded valley near here with a hollow and a holy well. You must ride there with me now.

Lancelot I have never seen such a valley near Camelot.

Lady Elaine But you have seen a summer hawk sometimes – a gwlachaved – hovering in the light beyond the forest?

Lancelot Yes. 

Lady Elaine It is the spirit of your son, Galahad, waiting to be born. The hidden valley is there.

Lancelot My son?

Lady Elaine Our son – his soul shining as bright as any noon. He will be the greatest knight in the world. He will achieve what your love-stained soul cannot.

Lancelot You know that – I will never achieve the grail?

Lady Elaine Never in your own person. Though your failure will blaze a trail of matchless glory.

Lancelot Because I desire ….  a woman I cannot have?

Lady Elaine You can have her – in another. One who loves you so much she would be anything you desire.  

Lancelot I desire only Guinevere.

He realises what he has said. Enter Morgan le Fay from Avalon with Guinevere’s wedding veil. Lady Elaine replaces her scarf/ favour with this veil.

Lady Elaine I am Guinevere.

He climbs up to her. Lights fade to blackout. In the blackout, Guinevere replaces Lady Elaine. Reprise ‘Guinnevere’ Lights rise on a tableau: Guinevere facing Lancelot; Lancelot caught; Mordred spying on them.

Guinevere (cold) You love the Lady Elaine!

Lancelot I was bewitched. I love you!

Pause

Guinevere Prove it.

He unbuckles his sword belt; and a life of unfulfilled longing with it. They embrace. Sir Morded emerges, triumphant, beckons to someone off. He points at the lovers. Arthur reluctantly comes on and witnesses Lancelot, his queen’s champion, his captain and best friend, embracing his queen. Arthur unsheathes Excalibur. Even now, he is chivalrous. He throws Joyeux (Lancelot’s sword) in its belt to the unarmed Lancelot. Lancelot reluctantly unsheathes Joyeux. They cross swords. Other knights enter. Civil war. Mordred snakes up behind Arthur and mortally wounds him. Arthur turns, faces and kills Mordred. A terrible scream off. They all turn very slowly towards it. Enter, nightmare-slowly, Candy Miller. Her face is in a diagonal half-mask concealing horrific burns pictured on a portrait she is holding. They all back away from her. She moves DCS, faces audience. 

Candy Hi! I’m Candy Miller. The Face of Saxon Chemicals-

Blackout. Ensemble performance of the poem as Merlay has his heart attack. 

"Throw back, throw back, Excalibur!"

I begged Bedwyr - and twice more -

"Throw back, grown black, Excalibur

That I might live forever

That Light might strike forever!

In wicked shifting thickets, the thorn

Of my heart's bursting must be:

Rose-clad, at home, and sleeping,

Or gone is the dazzling dream

That Artos, once man Arthur,

(Mis-mothered where life faltered

On long-fought malice Mordered)

Is God, is lord immortal:

A dream too real to live, thrown

Out of your world and hurled, look!

A Christ sword to Word your sky!"

Fay’s voice in the dark.

Fay Mr Ynys-Wydrin’s had a heart attack! We’ve got to stop! 

Otherworldy light. Enter Merlay in a white suit.

Merlay (to audience) Believe me, the out of body radiance was very tempting. Better than coming back to this awful tangle of pain. But I realised, hovering somewhere above the coronary, that what we think of as real life is really just a play. A play we write, produce, cast and star in but that we can’t control. Not just the little things like me providing Owain’s Arthur with an unrehearsed ceremonial six feet long military sword loaned from an ex-army parent at the last minute to face Lancelot’s three foot painted toy Joyeux in what became an audience-rocking off-script penis joke. No, the whole Five Act comedy experienced by its manifold creatures as a tragedy. And that however bitter the End – the Show Must Go On … 

The scene unfreezes and all exeunt in confusion watched calmly by Merlay. He moves aside to watch the next scene start, then exits.

Scene 11. Guinevere, played by Fay.

Guinevere Lord Arthur is gone, I laud my Beloved:

Cross on invincible shield, blood-red,

Dragon on young-summer green, red,

The terrible clatter of returning hooves.

I never quite believed. Always feared him

Dead. But he always came.

Arthur is gone, I laud my Beloved:

Swift white charger swooping like a spear

On the bonfire builders, the wolvers of women,

Scourging the rat run inroads of Europe,

Animal tracks of attacking Saxon,

His spur-tensed Britons beat back the Beast.

Gone my Beloved, my Beloved I mourn:

Then Llugh fought battles within himself,

Cei fought his own rule, Bedwyr fought Llugh,

And some sought long for the holy caldron,

Sought it like a spoil of war,

And, gentle as light, my Beloved loved me.

And Medraut gnawed through the golden years

Myrddin called a threshold to the dark,

And its beacon. Medraut, eyes on me

Like a dog’s on the moon, snapping his moment.

To Camlann the coastland, carried me off.

Gone my Beloved, my Beloved I mourn.

And little the faith I had yet in Arthur,

The Angel campaigner, strong as light,

His sun-bright stars above the wicked forest

Seeming to fade. Rusty the scabbard,

Still magic the sword. And, once more, he came.

I’ve believed too little. I make my Confession.

At last I understood. The flincher from spears,

Medraut, was part of Arthur, his shadow,

Chancel and gargoyle had to be cancelled 

Where all deeds are drowned, all swords returned:

Avalon. And I’ll run no more.

I’ve believed too little. I make my Confession.

Night and this nunnery will fall. Ravens

Will flock on the gore. Let others keep

A glimmer, a glorious page, of Logres alight

Until the dawn. My confession’s done.

Still my heart waits for hoofbeats.

(Still, my heart waits for hoofbeats…)

Long fade to blackout. A distant motorbike revs.

Scene 12. Merlay in Avalon. Otherworldly light. The Lady of the Lake stands, luminous, as the mirror.

Merlay The play failed, of course. Fay was a brilliant Guinevere but lacked that one decisive advantage Jennifer’s Guinevere had: Fay’s Morgan. Fay’s deep shadow opposing Jennifer’s light, not comprehending it but making it comprehensible. Even Tristan’s dazzling performance as Lancelot couldn’t quite save it without that. Jennifer left school for good the week before the production. I saw her getting into her dad’s Mercedes– a vision in ruling class tartan but leaving me and the rest of the cast holding the rat sandwich. Owain was expected to leave but didn’t - which is why I think the fortnightly Saxons Chemicals bulletins kept disappearing from the School Notice Board – but he did actually take some responsibility after Jennifer left. Fay took over the Guinevere role- Elaine was too obviously pregnant by then – and Fay as a dark Gwenhwyfar with Elaine as a looming pregnant Morgan le Fay pulling her strings  serendipitously gave the whole thing a Dark Age Celtic mythos which I probably should have gone for from the start, but it couldn’t quite conceal that a thousand years of French romance had left the building. Viviane’s rather wet younger sister Niniane – “come on, ‘ave a cwch” – the new Lady of the Lake, showed some hidden depths as well. Naturally on doctor’s orders I wasn’t supposed to be working but equally naturally I couldn’t Let It Go.

Enter Fay to the mirror. The Lady of the Lake reflects her.

Lady of 

The Lake Beauty isn’t fashion, daughter. It isn’t even mortal. The swan and raven otherworldliness of the Celts; the sun-haired demoiselles of romance; the pregnant-sailed lady headed vessels of merchant England; the peasant-tanned asset striplings of Now. If Beauty were really only skin deep, it would long have faded from the world.

A knock. Fay is distracted. 

Lady of

The Lake (as she goes) Even when the surface is troubled and disturbed, I reflect the real deep-down Joy.

Fay My other name. Joy. I’d forgotten that. (to audience) How about you?

A knock. The Lady exits to Avalon. Enter Jennifer in her Malory Towers uniform. Expensive private school tartan skirt and blazer. Motto “Aim High” (in Latin) embroidered in gold. 

Fay Well?  

Jennifer I saw the show. I just – wanted to say how good you were.

Fay You think my Guinevere is good?

Jennifer Fay, you were Guinevere.   

A moment. Jennifer has acknowledged Fay for the first time ever.

Jennifer (difficult) I’ve missed you, Fay. It’s really good to see you again.

Fay It’s really good to be seen. (pause) Is that a school uniform or a Victorian porn shot? 

They burst out laughing and hug. Childhood friendship grown up.

Fay (to audience) That’s the fantasy. Not quite what really happened. (to Jennifer) Come in again.

Scene 13.  A dressing room with applause off. Fay picks up Twiggyfast. There is a knock.

Fay Don’t come in! (failing to hide the Twiggyfast in time) 

Jennifer (entering) Fay? 

Fay (sarcastic) Tch. Come in!

Jennifer What’s that? Not Twiggyfast!

Fay Fat lot you care.

Jennifer Why on Earth do you need it?

Fay ‘Why on Earth do you need it?’ Oh fuck off, Jennifer! You know why. Because I want to look like you. You’ve got Everything. Including an education that’s going to aim higher than I can even imagine.

Jennifer Well I’ve lost Everything then, including Owain. If you think dads are a problem, try going out with a boy who’s never had one! (pause) Anyway, I just wanted you to know what I thought of your Guinevere, but… (going)

Fay Wait. What did you think of her?

Jennifer Fay, you were Guinevere. 

Fay She needs to be blonde.

Jennifer She needs to be beautiful. And you are. 

Jennifer takes the Twiggyfast from her.

Jennifer Is this what wasted Candy Miller?

Fay (flat) Yeah. 

Jennifer Jesus. Can’t you give it up?

Fay I’m trying. Being Guinevere helps.

Jennifer And directing the whole thing for Mr Ynys-Wydrin as well. You’re amazing.

Fay Fanks. That ’elps too. 

Jennifer You’re worth it. Listen, Fay. I hated losing that part. But you’re better than I was. More character, or hunger or something. And you do not need this. 

Pause. Fay nods. Jennifer bins the Twiggyfast. They exchange a look. They know it’s only a gesture but it’s start.

Fay You think I’ll be rooting about in that bin later don’t you?

Jennifer Yes but 

Fay it’s a start.

Jennifer So what happened with you and Owain?

Jennifer He promised me Caer Siddi in Annwn. (rueful laugh) We got as far as Weston.

Fay Don’t tell me he ran out of petrol.

Jennifer Yep. 

They laugh

Jennifer (difficult) I’ve missed you, Fay. It’s really good to see you again.

Fay It’s really good to be seen.

They hug. 

Fay Can you remember Guinevere’s lines?

Jennifer Er…yes!

Fay Well, it’s the Last Night tomorrow. I wants you to play ’er again.

Jennifer No!

Fay Yeah. I liked the way you did it. (pause) And I liked the way you kept The Edge on Saxon when he tried to buy you with a Mirror front page too.  Exposed him in the Mirror instead - and shared the byeline with me, even when I fought you was selling out. And (hands her Guinevere’s white dress) well – I’m letting ’er go too. If I can kick Twiggyfast, I can give up Guinevere.

Pause.

Jennifer OK!

Fay Our Mu’s doing costumes. Ask her to take it in a couple of sizes.

Jennifer Fay! If anything it’s too small, look! (holds it up)

 

Exit Jennifer with Guinevere’s dress. Fay goes to the bin and retrieves the Twiggyfast. She drifts to the mirror to take it when a hideously disfigured Candy enters it.  Horror. She hands it to Candy who exits with it, then enters the mirror as her own reflection. She remembers something. 

Fay (calling) Mum! …Mum?

Exit Fay out of the back of the mirror to look for Jade. Enter Jade from other side to empty room answering Fay’s call. She sits musing sadly on the way life’s gone. Re-enter Jennifer in costume as Guinevere.

Jennifer Oh Mrs Wales, I thought you were-

Jade Fay?

Silence. Jade looks at the beauty she might have been.

Jennifer Jennifer. Well Guinevere really. What do you think?

Jade You looks beautiful my dear. Like a dream.

Jennifer Thanks to Fay. She should be wearing it really.

Jade No, it’s you, love. She knows that.

Jennifer She knows a lot more than I do!

Jade Yes. Because she loves you. She always ’as you know. But she doesn’t need to be you anymore. She’s found ’erself.

Blackout.

Scene 14. Guinevere (played by Jennifer) stitching a Standard in Malory Towers colours.

Guinevere Belle ami, si est de nous.

Ni vous sans moi, ni moi sans vous.

I twist them all round my pretty

Little finger, a studded ring:

The champion knight, the maimed king,

Geraint, Gawaine, my Lancelot.

It’s the only power I know.

He comes through enchanted forests,

Rough-horses, haunted castles, mists;

From slaying giants, big bad knights:

Barons with feudal appetites;

Impossible quests for Our Lady,

Sowing wild seeds Love meant for me;

Greets Arthur, “mon vieux!” – clash of mail 

- So grieved his crown still lacks a graal -

So tedious! He comes to me

Who waits… and do not wait to see

The object of his worship pass,

Wasted, into this looking glass,

Wheat-hair, rose-lips, unsown, should he

Choose to deny himself – and me.

I have a heart, self-determined

Core of I AM, God-underpinned,

Won on the Cross, for me. It can

Choose a Beloved, a ‘husband’

The Church would make him. But marriage

On earth’s not as it is (a rich

Royal land transaction) as one

With my Lancelot, in heaven.

A crescendo of deafening applause. Moves to exit. Turns

Jennifer And it’s harder for a poor little rich girl to enter heaven than it is for a camel to thread the eye of a needle. 

She exits as the following scene is set up.  

Scene 13. Dr. Vortigern and a table-top of bouquets. Also a wreath of mountain ash. Merlay, in ghost-white, stands stage left.

Dr Vort Congratulations-

The motorbike roars and halts nearby, drowning out Merlay’s first sentence. He lets it finish then starts again.

Dr Vort Congratulations to everyone involved in another great school production. A completely convincing if not always  strictly historical interpretation. 

Owain enters stage left in crash helmet etc. The modern knight. He stands next to, but can’t see, Merlay. Merlay acknowledges him but receives no response.

Dr Vort And particular congratulations to Fay Morgan. Quite the most authentic Gwenhwyfar I’ve ever seen. 

Owain (aside) And he should know, he’s seen a few. Including the original.

Dr Vort And thanks also to …uh. Or rather … Thanks also to Fay who produced it. It’s no wonder we are getting applications to study drama here. Well done!

Dr Vortigern presents a large bouquet to the wrong person and a small one to Fay, then corrects this mistake and re-presents them. 

Owain And well done to Dr, Vortigern who not only teaches Archaeology but who, to all intents and purposes, IS Archaeology.

Laughter. Dr Vortigern is about to move on, job done (he thinks) 

Dr Vort Thank you all for coming. We have had five full houses and earned the school a profit of  (insert a sum three times that of the school drama department’s capitation)

Merlay More than the drama department’s entire capitation for the year. 

Dr Vort And before you go, may I take this opportunity to invite you …

Fay whispers something in his ear. 

Dr Vort Er. (parenthetically) And of course congratulations to our Head of Drama Merlay Ynys-Wydrin, who, as you know, was sadly unable to complete his cherished production due a heart attack, from which sadly he never regained consciousness. 

Merlay What?

Dr Vort (upbeat) May I take this opportunity to invite you all to our Annual Cheese Show along Riverside and to give advanced warning that the Fabulous Pharmaceuticals Fair sponsored there by Saxon Chemicals will not now occur. This is due to a showering of County Preservation Orders and not to recent uh smears about uh Saxon all over the Daily Mirror.  You have no doubt heard that Norman Castle was yesterday appointed Head Teacher from next term.

Owain And that therefore Dr Vortigern is once again what he has taught here for 30 years – History.

Laughter

Dr Vort (oblivious) May I also take this opportunity to announce that Mr Michael Mordor has taken up an exciting new post as a sales representative at Saxon Chemicals and to quash rumours of a collapse of our Special Status bid. Such rumours are, like those of Phil Green’s retirement, and my own death, wildly exaggerated. The bid goes on – and on! 

Owain And on and on and on and on and on… 

Laughter

Dr Vort Thank you. (going, sees someone off, coming back) Oh and Caretaker asks that you don’t forget his Vernon the Viking Evenings next Woden’s day and Thor’s day. (exit)

Exeunt except Fay and Owain.

Fay Ah my knight in shining leather!

Owain No need to be sarcastic.

Fay Isn’t there?

Pause

Owain What you doing?

Fay Just enjoying the moment. I can’t let it go – yet. (pause) Unlike you! You missed the curtain call. You didn’t even stay for the final scene.

Owain I did. But then I had to get my motorbike from-.

Fay Where?

Owain Jennifer’s.

Merlay looks at his ghost-white suit, working it out.

Merlay (to Fay and Owain) You can’t see me can you?

Fay Why was it at Jennifer’s?

Owain It’s been there since Sunday. We were running away to Glastonbury. (pause) We got as far as Weston…

Fay What was it this time? The exhaust?

They laugh

Owain Na. I started missing you. 

Fay At last! How soon?

Owain Very soon. On the bridge just before Buckland Dinham.

Fay Buckland Dinham? Is that anywhere near Hobbiton? 

Owain Ha! And I couldn’t let the cast down could I?

Pause

Owain Is it worth saying I’m sorry? 

Silence

Owain About Jennifer I mean.

Fay Are you sorry?

Merlay (to himself, studying Owain) No. I thought not.

Owain (to Fay, earnestly) Yeah I am.

Merlay (to audience) And then you turn over and the last page is missing. And that version of the endlessly revised computer file is lost, beyond all software to recall. So that’s it. We’re dead.

Fay and Owain are frozen in this abbreviated ‘end’. 

Merlay But the thing is, the ‘otherworld’ is actually the real one. And rumours of the death of this author have been exaggerated. I’ve never felt so alive! 

Fay and Owain revive

Owain Look, I’ve got the bike now. Fancy a moonlight mile to Caer Siddi?

Fay (sceptically) Caer Siddi in Annwn? 

Merlay (to audience) A Fairy castle or mound or spooky Otherworld from where the original grail – the sacred cauldron of plenty of the Celts –was quested and brought home by Arthur himself. In the mythical days before he took the throne at home job like a Headmaster and actually led the quests himself. Caer Siddi is The Grail Castle BC basically. This is what happens when you delve below the shining legend and lead the children of Britain astray into the deep dark mirror of myth. 

Owain (more realistically) Avalon then. I’m a bit short of petrol.

Merlay (to audience) This world is actually all a dream so you might as well make it a happy one.

Fay (laughs) All right. (putting Morgan’s black scarf over her crash helmet) It wasn’t just an Arthurian fort we un-wasted from Saxon’s. It was Arthur’s grave. I don’t mean the Tudor propaganda. I mean the real Arthur’s grave.

She has become Morgan. Owain puts on Arthur’s crown on his helmet.  He becomes Arthur.

Arthur Rex quondam ach rexque futurus and never now

When you need me, buried alive

Under the Hawthorns’ hollow hill

In dreams of bedrock

Or under this creaking sign of The White Boar

Watching your televised Celtic Rangers battle

Joined divisions

Win the Nationwide Avalon Ciden Cup

For my Man-uniting City till you die.

What use am I?

Triple crown prince of the Lost Lands,

Out of printmaster Avatar of Britain.

I sought the Cauldron so long

Its name and Faith changed 

To the Holy Grail

And you still haven’t grasped it.

Enter the Lady of the Lake and the Queen of the Wastelands who join Fay in a final chorus of the three Queens

Queens But while you fiddle,

The rainforest burns.

Who spoiled in Annwn

And held Excalibur 

The brand of Britain

Against the Wasteland

Now holds the world:

Long live the long dead King!

Raising the standard of Civilisation

Against the barbarian

Outside himself

But also within.

Though the Grail is lost

Beyond climate and change,

You must seek it here,

Through space, in time.

Or none return

From Caer Siddi.

Morgan He doesn’t need to come back. 

He is the King of a Castle

That belonged at first to the Celts

Then also to Christendom;

A land Alfred founded but that Arthur haunts;

That does not exclude the dragon from its Union flag.

As you outgrow the Lost Land of childhood

And fail to outgrow the invasion games of sport,

I see his Inner Kingdom on the Mount without

As plain as the flags on our pikestaff.

He is everywhere.

He is here.

Arthur and Morgan mount the bike.

Merlay “They rode off together into the not unclouded but still possibly shareable sunrise

Lights fade to blackout. 

 

Act 1, Scene Who is in it? What happens? Location

1 Rioters, Elaine, Barren, West Tristan, Owain, Fay. The riot – find out that Fisher King has died. Estate.

2 West, Jennifer Jennifer’s homework: ‘The Dress’, reveals her ‘Top Girl’ character. Scene shows the relationship between father & daughter. Jennifer’s bedroom.

3 Jennifer, Dr. Vort, Tristan, Fay, Candy, Elaine, Wayne, Gary, Jerry, Owain, Merlay, West, Caretaker Scene displays type of school / status – introduction of school play idea / Saxon rescue plan. School / Classroom

4 Candy Scene shows Candy as a member of Saxon chemicals – highlights the type of products they make. Lab

5 Fay, Jade, Jennifer Scene shows Fay’s low self esteem and her jealousy of Jennifer – They discuss the article. Fay’s Bedroom

6 Lady of the Lake, Fay, Candy, Owain, Jennifer, Elaine, Tristan, Wayne, Gary, Jerry, Merlay Play comes to life through narration. Mythical

7 Dr. Vort, West, Merlay, 2 Dragons, Uther Celtic Britain and the war – via dragons. The story of Arthur begins. Fantasy / Castle

8 Owain, Wayne, Gary, Jerry, Jennifer, West, Elaine, Bishop, Merlay, Fay Sword in the stone – rise of Arthur – arranged marriage to Guinevere – the wedding Mythical 

9 Merlay Teacher stressed about the production. School

10 Owain, Jennifer, West Jennifer rebels against her dad with Owain. Outside

11 Owain, Jennifer, Merlay, Tristan, West, Fay, Lady of the Lake, Candy, Wayne, Jade, Gary, Jerry Arthur and his reign – showing the distance between him and Guinevere in their relationship – discovers that she and Lancelot will betray him – they meet. Prepare for battle. Battle of Badon. Mythical

12 Dr. Vort, Elaine, Jennifer, Jerry, Wayne, Gary, Owain, Fay, Tristan, West, Governors 1,2 &3, Saxon, Candy, Teach-Gov. School scene until governors meeting to discuss the merger; propose and agreed – discuss the article. School / Classroom

Act 2, 

Scene Who is in it? What happens? Location

1 Dr. Vort, School kids Announcement that the school has been awarded specialist status - NOT. School / assembly

2 Elaine, Gawaine, Mordred, Troubadour 10 year on in the mythical story- Lady Elaine awaits Lancelot; she wishes for him to find the holy grail – Gawaine attempts the task and re-enters defeated. Myth/fantasy

3 Tristan, Jennifer, Fay, Guinevere and Lancelot‘s relationship is cemented – Morgan enters and is aware of their growing love – the forbidden love. Myth / fantasy

4 Candy, Nobby, Jennifer, Fay, Bruce, Elaine, Mordred Jennifer and Fay go to Saxon Chemicals to discuss the article / death of Fisher King. During the scene Elaine is discovered trespassing and is restrained by Saxon Security thugs – Jennifer leaves to talk to Victor whilst Candy pushes ‘Twiggyfast’ onto the vulnerable Fay. Saxon chemicals 

office

5 Merlay Fay is asked to replace Jennifer in the school play as Guinevere. School

6 Fay, Jade, Candy Jade attempts to talk to her daughter about her addiction – Fay seems to be dreaming / hallucinating that Saxon is her father. Fay’s bedroom

7 Candy, Jade Jade confronts Candy as the drugs pusher; a fight breaks out and a slip with some acid! Jade reveals Saxon IS Fay’s father. Saxon Chemicals

8 Tristan, Elaine, Bruce, Nobby Tristan and Elaine’s relationship is blossoming, they remember Fisher King – They kiss! Red Hart Disco

9 Fay, Candy, Elaine, Tristan, Mordred, Jennifer, Owain, Merlay The trickery (with Morgan’s magic) of the character Lady Elaine who manipulates Lancelot into believing that she is Guinevere – Scene snaps back to reality (rehearsal) as Merlay has a heart attack. Myth/fantasy

10 Fay, Jennifer, Jade Jennifer and Fay reconcile discussing the show – Fay decides that Jennifer should play Guinevere on the final night. Dressing room