arcadia act 2 scene 7

	Arcadia Act 2 scene 7
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VALENTINE and CHLOE are at the table. GUS is in the room.
CHLOE is reading from two Saturday papers. She is wearing workaday period clothes, a Regency dress, no hat.
VALENTINE is pecking at a portable computer. He is wearing unkempt Regency clothes, too.
The clothes have evidently come from a large wicker laundry hamper, from which GUS is producing more clothes to try on himself. He finds a Regency coat and starts putting it on.
The objects on the table now include two geometrical solids, pyramid and cone, about twenty inches high, of the type used in a drawing lesson; and a pot of dwarf dahlias (which do not look like modern dahlias).

CHLOE : 'Even in Arcadia - Sex, Literature and Death at Sidley Park'. Picture of Byron.
VAL : Not of Bernard?
CHLOE: 'Byron Fought Fatal Duel, Says Don'....Valentine, do you think I'm the first person to think of this?
VAL : No.
CHLOE: I haven't said yet. The future is all programmed like a computer - that's a proper theory, isn't it?
VAL : The deterministic universe, yes.
CHLOE: Right. Because everything including us is just a lot of atoms bouncing off each other like billiard balls.
VAL : Yes. There was someone, forget his name, 1820s, who pointed out that from Newton's laws you could predict everything to come - I mean, you'd need a computer as big as the universe but the formula would exist.
CHLOE: But it doesn't work, does it?
VAL : No. It turns out the maths is different.
CHLOE: No, it's all because of sex.
VAL : Really?
CHLOE: That's what I think. The universe is deterministic all right, just like Newton said, I mean it's trying to be, but the only thing going wrong is people fancying people who aren't supposed to be in that part of the plan.
VAL : Ah. The attraction that Newton left out. All the way back to the apple in the garden. Yes. (Pause.) Yes, I think you're the first person to think of this.
        (HANNAH enters, carrying a tabloid paper, and a mug of tea.)
HANNAH: Have you seen this? 'Bonking Byron Shot Poet.'
CHLOE: (Pleased) Let's see.
        (HANNAH gives her the people, smiles at GUS.)
VAL : He's done awfully well, hasn't he? How did they all know?
HAN : Don't be ridiculous. (To CHLOE) Your father wants it back.
CHLOE: All right.
HAN : What a fool.
CHLOE: Jealous. I think it's brilliant. (She gets up to go. To GUS) Yes, that's perfect, but not with trainers. Come on, I'll lend you a pair of flatties, they'll look period on you -
HAN : Hello, Gus. You all look so romantic.
         (GUS following CHLOE out, hesitates, smiles at her.)
CHLOE: (Pointedly) Are you coming?
         (She holds the door for GUS and follows him out, leaving a sense of her disapproval behind her.)
HAN : The important thing is not to give two monkeys for what young people think about you.
        (She goes to look at the other newspapers.)
VAL : (Anxiously) You don't think she's getting a thing about Bernard, do you?
HAN : I wouldn't worry about Chloe, she's old enough to vote on her back. 'Byron Fought Fatal Duel, Says Don'. Or rather - (sceptically) 'Says Don!'
VAL : It may all prove to be true.
HAN : It can't prove to be true, it can only prove to be false yet.
VAL : (Pleased) Just like science.
HAN : If Bernard can stay ahead of getting the rug pulled till he's dead, he'll be a success.
VAL : Just like science.... The ultimate fear is posterity....
HAN : Personally I don't think it'll take that long.
VAL : ...and then there's the afterlife. An afterlife would be a mixed blessing. 'Ah - Bernard Nightingale, I don't believe you know Lord Byron.' It must be heaven up there.
HAN : You can't believe in an afterlife, Valentine.
VAL : Oh, you're going to disappoint me at last.
HAN : Am I? Why?
VAL : Science and religion.
HAN : No, no, been there, done that, boring.
VAL : Oh, Hannah. Fiancée. Have pity. Can't we have a trial marriage and I'll call it off in the morning?
HAN : (Amused) I don't know when I've received a more unusual proposal.
VAL : (Interested) Have you had many?
HAN : That would be telling.
VAL :   Well, why not? Your classical reserve is only a mannerism; and neurotic.
HAN : Do you want the room?
VAL : You get nothing if you give nothing>
HAN : I ask nothing.
VAL : No, stay.
         (VAL resumes work at his computer.. HAN establishes herself among her references at 'her' end of the table. She has a stack of pocket-sized volumes, Lady Croom's 'garden books'.)
HAN : What are you doing? Valentine?
VAL : The set of points on a complex plane made by -
HAN : Is it the grouse?
VAL : Oh, the grouse. The damned grouse.
HAN : You mustn't give up.
VAL : Why? Didn't you agree with Bernard?
HAN : Oh, that. It's all trivial - your grouse, my hermit, Bernard's Byron. Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final. (She looks over VAL's shoulder at the computer screen. Reacting) Oh!, but....how beautiful!
VAL : The Coverly set.
HAN : The Coverly set! My goodness, Valentine!
VAL : Lend me a finger.
             (He takes her finger and presses one of the computer keys several times.)
See? In an ocean of ashes, islands of order. Patterns making themselves out of nothing.
I can't show you how deep it goes. Each picture is a detail of the previous one, blown up. And so on. For ever. Pretty nice, eh?
HAN : Is it important?
VAL : Interesting. Publishable.
HAN : Well done!
VAL : Not me. It's Thomasina's. I just pushed her equations through the computer a few million times further than she managed to do with her pencil.
          (From the old portfolio he takes Thomasina's lesson book and gives it to HAN. The piano starts to be heard.)
You can have it back now.
HAN : What does it mean?
VAL : Not what you'd like it to.
HAN : Why not?
VAL : Well, for one thing, she'd be famous.
HAN : No, she wouldn't. She was dead before she had time to be famous...
VAL : She died?
HAN : ....burned to death.
VAL : (Realizing) Oh....the girl who died in the fire!
HAN : The night before her seventeenth birthday. You can see where the dormer doesn't match. That was her bedroom under the roof. There's a memorial in the Park.
VAL : (Irritated) I know - it's my house.
           (VAL turns his attention back to his computer. HAN goes back to her chair. She looks through the lesson book. )
HAN : Val, Septimus was her tutor - he and Thomasina would have -
VAL : You do yours.
            (Pause. Two researchers.

             LORD AUGUSTUS, fifteen years old, wearing clothes of 1812, bursts in through the non-music room door. He is laughing. He dives under the table. He is chased into the room by THOMASINA, aged sixteen and furious. She spots AUGUSTUS immediately.)
THOM : You swore! You crossed your heart!
           (AUGUSTUS scampers out from under the table and THOM chases him around it. )
AUG : I'll tell mama! I'll tell mama!
THOM : You beast!
           (She catches AUG as SEPTIMUS enters from the other door, carrying a book, a decanter and a glass, and his portfolio.)
SEPT : Hush! What is this? My lord! Order. order!
          (THOM and AUG separate.)
I am obliged.
          (SEPT goes to his place at the table. He pours himself a glass of wine.)
AUG : Well, good day to you, Mr. Hodge!
          (He is smirking about something. THOM dutifully picks up a drawing book and settlers down to draw the geometrical solids. SEPT opens his portfolio.)
SEPT : Will you join us this morning, Lord Augustus? We have our drawing lesson.
AUG : I am a master of it at Eton, Mr Hodge, but we only draw naked women.
SEPT : You may work from memory.
THOM : Disgusting!
SEPT : We will have silence now, if you please.
             (From the portfolio SEPT takes Thomasina's lesson book and tosses it to her; returning homework. She snatches it and opens it.)
THOM : No marks?! Did you not like my rabbit equation?
SEPT : I saw no resemblance to a rabbit.
THOM : It eats its own progeny.
SEPT : (Pause) I did not see that.
             (He extends his hand for the lesson book. She returns it to him.)
THOM : I have not room to extend it.
             (SEPT and HAN turn the pages doubled by time. AUG indolently starts to draw the models.)
HAN : Do you mean the world is saved after all?
VAL : No, it's still doomed. But if this is how it started, perhaps it's how the next one will come.
HAN : From good English algebra?
SEPT : It will go to infinity or zero, or nonsense.
THOM : No, if you set apart the minus roots they square back to sense.
               (SEPT turns the pages. THOM starts drawing the models.

                HAN closes the lesson book and turns her attention to her stack of 'garden books'.)
VAL : Listen - you know your tea's getting cold.
HAN : I like it cold.
VAL : (Ignoring that) I'm telling you something. Your tea gets cold by itself, it doesn't get hot by itself. Do you think that's odd?
HAN : No.
VAL : Well, it is odd. Heat goes to cold. It's a one-way street. Your tea will end up at room temperature. What's happening to your tea is happening to everything everywhere. The sun and the stars. It'll take a while but we're all going to end up at room temperature. When your hermit set up shop nobody understood this. But let's say you're right, in 18-whatever nobody knew more about heat than this scribbling nutter living in a hovel in Derbyshire.
HAN : He was at Cambridge - a scientist.
VAL : Say he was. I'm not arguing. And the girl was his pupil, she had a genius for her tutor.
HAN : Or the other way round.
VAL : Anything you like. But not this! Whatever he thought he was doing to save the world with good English algebra it wasn't this!
HAN : Why? Because they didn't have calculators?
VAL : No. Yes. Because there's an order things can happen in. You can't open a door till there's a house.
HAN : I thought that's what genius was.
VAL : Only for lunatics and poets.
               (Pause)
HAN : 'I had a dream which was not all a dream.
              The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars
              Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
              Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
              Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air....'
VAL : Your own?
HAN : Byron.
             (Pause. Two researchers again.)
THOM : Septimus, do you think that I will marry Lord Byron?
AUG : Who is he?
THOM : He is the author of 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage', the most poetical and pathetic and bravest hero of any book I ever read before, and the most modern and the handsomest, for Harold is Lord Byron himself to those who know him, like myself and Septimus. Well, Septimus?
SEPT : (Absorbed) No.
             (Then he puts her lesson book away into the portfolio and picks up his own book to read.)
THOM : Why not?
SEPT : For one thing, he is not aware of your existence.
THOM : We exchanged many significant glances when he was at Sidley Park. I do wonder that he has been home almost a year from his adventures and has not written to me once.
SEPT : It is indeed improbable, my lady.
AUG : Lord Byron?! - he claimed my hare, although my shot was earlier! He said I missed by a hare's breadth. His conversation was very facetious. But I think Lord Byron will not marry you, Thom, for he was only lame and not blind.
SEPT : Peace! Peace until a quarter to twelve. It is intolerable for a tutor to have his thoughts interrupted by his pupils.
AUG : You are not my tutor, sir. I am visiting your lesson by my free will.
SEPT : If you are so determined, my lord.
            (THOM laughs at that, the joke is for her. AUG, not included, becomes angry.)
AUG : Your peace is nothing to me, sir. You do not rule over me.
THOM : (Admonishing) Augustus!
SEPT : I do not rule here, my lord. I inspire by reverence for learning and the exaltation of knowledge whereby man may approach God. There will be a shilling for the best cone and pyramid drawn in silence by a quarter to twelve at the earliest.
AUG : You will not buy my silence for a shilling, sir. What I know to tell is worth much more than that.
        (And throwing down his drawing book and pencil, he leaves the room on his dignity, closing the door sharply. Pause. SEPT looks enquiringly at THOM.)
THOM : I told him you kissed me. But he will not tell.
SEPT : When did I kiss you?
THOM : What! Yesterday!
SEPT : Where?
THOM : On the lips!
SEPT : In which county?
THOM : In the hermitage, Septimus.
SEPT : On the lips in the hermitage! That? That was not a shilling kiss! I would not give sixpence to have it back. I had almost forgot it already.
THOM : Oh, cruel! Have you forgotten our compact?
SEPT : God save me! Our compact?
THOM : To teach me to waltz! Sealed with a kiss, and a second kiss due when I can dance like mama!
SEPT : Ah yes. Indeed. We were waltzing like mice in London.
THOM : I must waltz, Septimus! I will be despised if I do not waltz! It is the most fashionable and gayest and boldest invention conceivable - started in Germany!
SEPT : Let them have the waltz, they cannot have the calculus.
THOM : Mama has brought from town a whole book of waltzes for the Broadwood, to play with Count Zelinsky.
SEPT : I need not be told what I cannot but suffer. Count Zelinsky banging on the Broadwood without relief has me reading in waltz time.
THOM : Oh, stuff! What is your book?
SEPT : A prize essay of the Scientific Academy in Paris. The author deserves your indulgence, my lady, for you are his prophet.
THOM : I? What does he write about? The waltz?

SEPT : Yes. He demonstrates the equation of the propagation of heat in a solid body. But in doing so he has discovered heresy - a natural contradiction of Sir Isaac Newton.
THOM : Oh! - he contradicts determinism?
SEPT : No!....Well, perhaps. He shows that the atoms do not go according to Newton.
         (Her interest has switched in the mercurial way characteristic of her - she has crossed to take the book.)
THOM : Let me see - oh! In French?
SEPT : Yes. Paris is the capital of France.
THOM : Show me where to read.
         ( He takes the book back from her and finds the page for her. Meanwhile, the piano music from the next room has doubled its notes and its emotion.)
THOM : Four-handed now! Mama is in love with the Count.
SEPT : He is a Count in Poland. In Derbyshire he is a piano tuner.
        (She has taken the book and is already immersed in it. The piano music becomes rapidly more passionate, and then breaks off suddenly in mid-phrase. There is an expressive silence next door which makes SEPT raise his eyes. It does not register with THOM. The silence allows us to hear the distant regular thump of the steam engine which is to be a topic. A few moments later LADY CROOM enters from the music room, seeming surprised and slightly flustered to find the schoolroom occupied. She collects herself, closing the door behind her. And remains watching, aimless and discreet, as though not wanting to interrupt the lesson. SEPT has stood, and she nods him back into his chair.

CHLOE, in Regency dress, enters from the door opposite the music room. She takes in VAL and HAN but crosses without pausing to the music room door.)
CHLOE: Oh! - where's Gus?
VAL : Dunno.
        (CHLOE goes into the music room.)
LADY C: (Annoyed) Oh! - Mr Noakes's engine!
        (She goes to the garden door and steps outside.
          CHLOE re-enters.)
CHLOE: Damn!
LADY C: (Calls out) Mr Noakes!
VAL : He was there not long ago.
LADY C: Halloo!
CHLOE: Well, he has to be in the photograph - is he dressed?
HAN : Is Bernard back?
CHLOE: No - he's late!
           (The piano is heard again, under the noise of the steam engine.
             LADY C steps back into the room.

             CHLOE steps outside the garden door. Shouts.) Gus!
LADY C: I wonder you can teach against such a disturbance and I am sorry for it, Mr Hodge.
         (CHLOE comes back inside.)
VAL : (Getting up) Stop ordering everybody about.
LADY C: It is an unendurable noise.
VAL : The photographer will wait.
          (But, grumbling, he follows CHLOE out of the door she came in by, and closes the door behind them. HAN remains absorbed. In the silence, the rhythmic thump can be heard again.)
LADY C: The ceaseless dull overbearing monotony of it! It will drive me distracted. I may have to return to town to escape it.
SEPT : Your ladyship could remain in the country and let Count Zelinsky return to town where you would not hear him.
LADY C: I mean Mr Noakes's engine! (Semi-aside to SEPT) Would you sulk? I will not have my daughter study sulking.
THOM : (Not listening) What, mama?
         (THOM remains lost in her book. LADY C returns to close the garden door and the noise of the steam engine subsides.

HAN closes one of the 'garden books', and opens the next. She is making occasional notes.

       The piano ceases.)
LADY C: (To THOM) What are we learning today? (Pause) Well, not manners.
SEPT : We are drawing today.
            (LADY C negligently examines what THOM had started to draw.)
LADY C: Geometry. I approve of geometry.
SEPT : Your ladyship's approval is my constant object.
LADY C: Well, do not despair of it. (Returning to the window impatiently) Where is 'Culpability' Noakes? (She looks out and is annoyed.) Oh! - he has gone for his hat so that he may remove it.
          (She returns to the table and touches the bowl of dahlias.

HAN sits back in the chair, caught by what she is reading.)
For the widow's dowry of dahlias I can almost forgive my brother's mariage. We must be thankful the monkey bit the husband. If it had bit the wife the monkey would be dead and we would not be first in the kingdom to show a dahlia. (HAN,still reading the garden book, stands up.) I sent one potted to Chatsworth. The Duchess was most satisfactorily put out by it when I called at Devonshire House. Your friend was there lording it as a poet.
(HAN leaves through the door, following VAL and CHLOE.)

         Meanwhile, THOM thumps the book down on the table.)
THOM : Well! Just as I said! Newton's machine which would knock our atoms from cradle to grave by the laws of motion is incomplete! Determonism leaves the road at every corner, as I knew all along, and the cause is very likely hidden in this gentleman's observation.
LADY C: Of what?
THOM : The action of bodies in heat.
LADY C: Is this geometry?
THOM : This? No, I despise geometry! (Touching the dahlias she adds, almost to herself.) The Chater would overthrow the Newtonian system in a weekend.
SEPT : Geometry, Hobbes assures us in the Leviathan, is the only science God has been pleased to bestow on mankind.
LADY C: And what does he mean by it?
SEPT : Mr Hobbes or God?
LADY C: I am sure I do not know what either means by it.
THOM : Oh, pooh to Hobbes! Mountains are not pyramids and trees are not cones. God must love gunnery and architecture if Euclid is his only geometry. There is another geometry which I am engaged in discovering by trial and error, am I not, Septimus?
SEPT : Trial and error perfectly describes your enthusiasm, my lady.
LADY C: How old are you today?
THOM : Sixteen years and eleven months, mama, and three weeks.
LADY C: Sixteen years and eleven months. We must have you married before you are educated beyond eligibility.
THOM : I am going to marry Lord Byron.
LADY C: Are you? He did not have the manners to mention it.
THOM : You have spoken to him!
LADY C: Certainly not!
THOM : Where did you see him?!
LADY C: (With some bitterness) Everywhere.
THOM : Did you, Septimus?
SEPT : At the Royal Academy where I had the honour to accompany your mother and Count Zelinsky.
THOM : What was Lord Byron doing?
LADY C: Posing.
SEPT : (Tactfully) He was being sketched during his visit..by the Professor of Painting...Mr Fuseli.
LADY C: There was more posing at the pictures than in them. His companion likewise reversed the custom of the Academy that the ladies viewing wear more than the ladies viewed - well, enough! Let him be hanged there for a Lamb. I have enough with Mr Noakes, who is to a garden what a bull is to a china shop.
(This as Noakes enters.)
THOM : The Emperor of Irregularity!
           (She settles down to drawing the diagram which is to be the third item in the surviving portfolio.)
LADY C: Mr Noakes!
NOAKES: Your ladyship -
LADY C: What have you done to me!
NOAKES: Everything is satisfactory, I assure you. A little behind, to be sure, but my dam will be repaired within the month -
LADY C: (Banging the table) Hush!
           (In the silence, the steam engine thumps in the distance.)
Can you hear, Mr Noakes?
NOAKES: (Pleased and proud) The Improved Newcomen steam pump - the only one in England!
LADY C: That is what I object to. If everybody had his own I could bear my portion of the agony without complaint. But to have been singled out by the only Improved Newcomen steam pump in England, this is hard, sir, this is not to be borne.
NOAKES: Your lady -
LADY C: And for what? My lake is drained to a ditch for no purpose I can understand, unless it be that snipe and curlew have deserted three counties so that they may be shot in our swamp. What you painted as forest is a mean plantation, your greenery is mud, your waterfall is wet mud, and your mount is an opencasr mine for the mud that was lacking in the dell. (Pointing through the window) What is that cowshed?
NOAKES: The hermitage, my lady?
LADY C: It is a cowshed.
NOAKES: Madam, it is, I assure you, a very habitable cottage, properly founded and drained, two rooms and a closet under a slate roof and a stone chimney -
LADY C: And who is to live in it?
NOAKES: Why, the hermit>
LADY C: Where is he?

NOAKES: Madam?
LADY C: You surely do not supply a hermitage without a hermit?
NOAKES: Indeed, madam -
LADY C: Come, come, Mr Noakes. If I am promised a fountain I expect it to come with water. What hermits do you have?
NOAKES: I have no hermits, my lady.
LADY C: Not one? I am speechless.
NOAKES: I am sure a hermit can be found. One could advertise.
LADY C: Advertise?
NOAKES: In the newspapers.
LADY C: But surely a hermit who takes a newspaper is not a hermit in whom one can have complete confidence.
NOAKES: I do not know what to suggest, my lady.
SEPT : Is there room for a piano?
NOAKES: (Baffled) A piano?
LADY C: We are intruding here - this will not do, Mr Hodge. Evidently, nothing is being learned. (To NOAKES) Come along, sir!
THOM : Mr Noakes, bad news from Paris!
NOAKES: Is it the Emperor Napoleon?
THOM : No. (She tears the page off her drawing block, with her 'diagram' on it) It concerns your heat engine. Improve it as you will, you can never get out of it what you put in. It repays eleven pence in the shilling at most. The penny is for this author's thoughts.
          (She gives the diagram to SEPT who looks at it.)
NOAKES : (Baffled again) Thank you, my lady.
          (NOAKES goes out into the garden.)
LADY C: (To SEPT) Do you understand her?
SEPT : No.
LADY C : Then this business is over. I was married at seventeen. Ce soir il faut qu'on parle francais, je te demande, Thomasina, as a courtesy to the Count. Wear your green velvet, please, I will send Briggs to do your hair. Sixteen and eleven months...!
      (She follows NOAKES out of view.)
THOM : Lord Byron was with a lady?
SEPT : Yes.
THOM : Huh!
           (Now SEPT retrieves his book from THOM. He turns the pages, and also continues to study Thomasina's diagram. He strokes the tortoise absently as he reads. THOM takes up pencil and paper and starts to draw SEPT with Plautus.)
SEPT : Why does it mean Mr Noakes's engine pays eleven pence in the shilling? Where does he say it?
THOM : Nowhere. I noticed it by the way. I cannot remember it now.
SEPT : Nor is he interested by determinism -
THOM : Oh...yes. Newton's equations go forwards and backwards, they do not care which way. But the heat equation cares very much, it goes only one way. That is the reason Mr Noakes's engine cannot give the power to drive Mr Noakes's engine.
SEPT : Everybody knows that.
THOM : Yes, Septimus, they know it about engines!
SEPT : (Pause. He looks at his watch.) A quarter to twelve. For your essay this week, explicate your diagram.
THOM : I cannot. I do not know the mathematics.
SEPT : Without mathematics, then.
           (THOM has continued to draw. She tears the top page from her drawing pad and gives it to SEPT.)
THOM : There. I have made a drawing of you and Plautus.
SEPT : (Looking at it) Excellent likeness. Not so good of me.
          (THOM laughs, and leaves the room.
            AUG appears at the garden door. His manner cautious and diffident. SEPT does not notice him for a moment. SEPT gathers his papers together.)
AUG : Sir...
SEPT : My lord....?
AUG : I gave you offence, sir, and I am sorry for it.
SEPT : I took none, my lord, but you are kind to mention it.
AUG : I would like to ask you a question, Mr Hodge. (Pause) You have an elder brother, I dare say, being a Septimus?
SEPT : Yes, my lord. He lives in London. He is the editor of a newspaper, the Piccadilly Recreation. (Pause) Was that your question?
           (AUG, evidently embarrassed about something, picks up the drawing of Septimus.)
AUG : No. Oh....it is you?    I would like to keep it. (SEPT inclines his head in assent.) There are things a fellow cannot ask his friends. Carnal things. My sister has told me...my sister believes such things as I cannot, I assure you, bring myself to repeat.
SEPT : You must not repeat them, then. The walk between here and dinner will suffice to put us straight, if we stroll by the garden. It is an easy business. And then I must rely on you to correct your sister's state of ignorance.
           (A commotion is heard outside - BERNARD's loud voice in a sort of agony.)
BERN : (outside the door) Oh no - no - no - no -oh, bloody hell! -
AUG : Thank you, Mr Hodge, I will.
             (Taking the drawing with him, AUG allows himself to be shown out through the garden door, and SEPT follows him.

BERN enters the room, through the door HAN left by. VAL comes in with him, leaving the door open and they are followed by HAN who is holding the 'garden book'.)
BERN : Oh, no - no-
HAN : I'm sorry, Bernard.
BERN : Fucked by a dahlia! Do you think? Is it open and shut? Am I fucked? What does it really amount to? When all's said and done? Am I fucked? What do you think, Valentine? Tell me the truth.
VAL : You're fucked.
BERN : Oh God! Does it mean that?
HAN : Yes, Bernard, it does.
BERN : I'm not sure. Show me where it says. I want to see it. No - read it - no, wait....
(BERN sits at the table. He prepares to listen as though listening were an oriental art.)
Right.
HAN : (reading) 'October 1st, 1810. Today under the direction of Mr Noakes, a parterre was dug on the south lawn and will be a handsome show next year, a consolation for the picturesque catastrophe of the second and third distances. The dahlia having propagated under glass with no ill effect from the sea voyage, is named by Captain Brice 'Charity' for his bride, though the honour properly belongs to the husband who exchanged beds with my dahlia, and an English summer for everlasting night in the Indies.'
(Pause)
BERN : Well it's so round the houses, isn't it? Who's to say what it means?
HAN : (Patiently) It means that Ezra Chater of the Sidley Park connection is the same Chater who described a dwarf dahlia in Martinique in 1810 and died there, of a monkey bite.
BERN : (wildly) Ezra wasn't a botanist! He was a poet!
HAN : He was not much of either, but he was both.
VAL : It's not a disaster.
BERN : Of course it's a disaster! I was on 'The Breakfast Hour'!
VAL : It doesn't mean Byron didn't fight a duel, it only means Chater wasn't killed in it.
BERN : Oh, pull yourself together! - do you think I'd have been on 'The Breakfast Hour' if Byron had missed!
HAN : Calm down, Bernard. Valentine's right.
BERN : (Grasping at straws) Do you think so? You mean the Piccadilly reviews? Yes, two completely unknown Byron essays - and my discovery of the lines he added to 'English Bards'. That counts for something.
HAN : (Tactfully) Very possible - persuasive, indeed.
BERN : Oh, bugger persuasive! I've proved Byron was here and as far as I'm concerned he wrote those lines as sure as he shot that hare. If only I hadn't somehow.... made it all about killing Chater. Why didn't you stop me? It's bound to get out, you know - I mean this - this gloss on my discovery - I mean how long do you think it'll be before some botanical pedant blows the whistle on me?

HAN : The day after tomorrow. A letter in The Times.
BERN : You wouldn't.
HAN : It's a dirty job but somebody -
BERN : Darling. Sorry. Hannah -
HAN : -and, after all, it is my discovery.
BERN : Hannah.
HAN : Bernard.
BERN : Hannah.
HAN : Oh, shut up. It'll be very short, very dry, absolutely gloat-free. Would you rather it were one of your friends?
BERN : (Fervently) Oh God, no!
HAN : And then in your letter to The Times -
BERN : Mine?
HAN : Well, of course. Dignified congratulations to a colleague, in the language of scholars, I trust.
BERN : Oh, eat shit, you mean?
HAN : Think of it as a breakthrough in dahlia studies.
          (CHLOE hurries in from the garden.)
CHLOE: Why aren't you coming?! - Bernard! And you're not dressed! How long have you been back?
         (BERN looks at her and then at VAL and realizes for the first time that VAL is unusually dressed.)
BERN : Why are you wearing those clothes?
CHLOE: Do be quick!
        (She is already digging into the basket and producing odd garments for BERN)
Just put anything on. We're all being photographed. Except Hannah.
HAN : I'll come and watch.
        (VAL and CHLOE help BERN into a decorative coat and fix a lace collar round his neck.)
CHLOE: (To HAN) Mummy says have you got the theodolite?
VAL : What are you supposed to be, Chlo? Bo-Peep?
CHLOE: Jane Austen!
VAL : Of course.
HAN : (To CHLOE) Oh - it's in the hermitage! Sorry.
BERN : I thought it wasn't till this evening.   What photograph?
CHLOE: The local paper of course - they always come before we start. We want a good crowd of us - Gus looks gorgeous -
BERN : (aghast) The newspaper!
       (He grabs something like a bishop's mitre from the basket and pulls it down completely over his face.
(Muffled) I'm ready!
(And he staggers out with VAL and CHLOE, followed by HAN.
A light change to evening. The paper lanterns outside begin to glow. Piano music from the next room.

SEPT enters with an oil lamp. He carries Thomasina's algebra primer, and also her essay on loose sheets. He settles down to read at the table. It is nearly dark outside, despite the lanterns.
THOM enters, in a nightgown and barefoot, holding a candlestick. Her manner is secretive and excited.)
SEPT : My lady! What is it?
THOM : Septimus! Shush!
      (She closes the door quietly.)
Now is our chance!
SEPT : For what, dear God?
    (She blows out the candle and puts the candlestick on the table.)
THOM : Do not act the innocent! Tomorrow I will be seventeen!
    (She kisses SEPT full on the mouth.)
There!
SEPT : Dear Christ!
THOM : Now you must show me, you are paid in advance.
SEPT : (Understanding) Oh!
THOM : The Count plays for us, it is God-given! I cannot be seventeen and not waltz.
SEPT : But your mother -
THOM : While she swoons, we can dance. The house is all abed. I heard the Broadwood. Oh, Septimus, teach me now!
SEPT : Hush! I cannot now!
THOM : Indeed you can, and I am come barefoot so mind my toes.
SEPT : I cannot because it is not a waltz.
THOM : It is not?
SEPT : No, it is too slow for waltzing.
THOM : Oh! Then we will wait for him to play quickly.
SEPT : My lady -
THOM : Mr Hodge!
       (She takes a chair next to him and looks at his work.)
Are you reading my essay? Why do you work here so late?
SEPT : To save my candles.
THOM : You have my old primer.
SEPT : It is mine again. You should not have written in it.
         (She takes it, looks at the open page.)
THOM : It was a joke.
SEPT : It will make me mad as you promised. Sit over there. You will have us in disgrace.
    (THOM gets up and goes to the furthest chair.)
THOM : If mama comes I will tell her we only met to kiss, not to waltz.
SEPT : Silence or bed.
THOM : Silence!
       (SEPT pours himself some more wine. He continues to read her essay.
          The music changes to party music from the marquee. And there are fireworks - small against the sky, distant flares of light like exploding meteors.

HAN enters. She has dressed for the party. The difference is not, however, dramatic. She closes the door and crosses to leave by the garden door. But as she gets there, VAL is entering. He has a glass of wine in his hand.)
HAN : Oh....
(But VAL merely brushes past her, intent on something, and half-drunk.)
VAL : (To her) Got it!
(He goes straight to the table and roots about in what is now a considerable mess of papers, books and objects. HAN turns back, puzzled by his manner. He finds what he has been looking for - the'diagram'.

Meanwhile, SEPT reading Thomasina's essay, also studies the diagram.
SEPT and VAL study the diagram doubled by time.)