Under Milk Wood Read online

  You can hear the dew falling, and the hushed town breathing.

  Only your eyes are unclosed to see the black and folded town fast, and slow, asleep.

  And you alone can hear the invisible starfall, the darkest-before-dawn minutely dewgrazed stir of the black, dab-filled sea where the Arethusa, the Curlew and the Skylark, Zanzibar, Rhiannon, the Rover, the Cormorant, and the Star of Wales tilt and ride.

  Listen. It is night moving in the streets, the processional salt slow musical wind in Coronation Street and Cockle Row, it is the grass growing on Llareggub Hill, dewfall, starfall, the sleep of birds in Milk Wood.

  Listen. It is night in the chill, squat chapel, hymning in bonnet and brooch and bombazine black, butterfly choker and bootlace bow, coughing like nanny-goats, sucking mintoes, fortywinking hallelujah; night in the four-ale, quiet as a domino; in Ocky Milkman’s lofts like a mouse with gloves; in Dai Bread’s bakery flying like black flour. It is to-night in Donkey Street, trotting silent, with seaweed on its hooves, along the cockled cobbles, past curtained fernpot, text and trinket, harmonium, holy dresser, watercolours done by hand, china dog and rosy tin teacaddy. It is night neddying among the snuggeries of babies.

  Look. It is night, dumbly, royally winding through the Coronation cherry trees; going through the graveyard of Bethesda with winds gloved and folded, and dew doffed; tumbling by the Sailors Arms.

  Time passes. Listen. Time passes.

  Come closer now.

  Only you can hear the houses sleeping in the streets in the slow deep salt and silent black, bandaged night. Only you can see, in the blinded bedrooms, the combs and petticoats over the chairs, the jugs and basins, the glasses of teeth, Thou Shalt Not on the wall, and the yellowing dickybird-watching pictures of the dead. Only you can hear and see, behind the eyes of the sleepers, the movements and countries and mazes and colours and dismays and rainbows and tunes and wishes and flight and fall and despairs and big seas of their dreams.

  From where you are, you can hear their dreams.

  Captain Cat, the retired blind seacaptain, asleep in his bunk in the seashelled, ship-in-bottled, shipshape best cabin of Schooner House dreams of

  never such seas as any that swamped the decks of his S.S. Kidwelly bellying over the bedclothes and jellyfish-slippery sucking him down salt deep into the Davy dark where the fish come biting out and nibble him down to his wishbone, and the long drowned nuzzle up to him.

  FIRST DROWNED

  Remember me, Captain?

  CAPTAIN CAT

  You’re Dancing Williams!

  FIRST DROWNED

  I lost my step in Nantucket.

  SECOND DROWNED

  Do you see me, Captain? the white bone talking? I’m Tom-Fred the donkeyman… we shared the same girl once… her name was Mrs Probert…

  WOMAN’S VOICE

  Rosie Probert, thirty three Duck Lane. Come on up, boys, I’m dead.

  THIRD DROWNED

  Hold me, Captain, I’m Jonah Jarvis, come to a bad end, very enjoyable…

  FOURTH DROWNED

  Alfred Pomeroy Jones, sealawyer, born in Mumbles, sung like a linnet, crowned you with a flagon, tattooed with mermaids, thirst like a dredger, died of blisters.

  FIRST DROWNED

  This skull at your earhole is

  FIFTH DROWNED

  Curly Bevan. Tell my auntie it was me that pawned the ormolu clock…

  CAPTAIN CAT

  Aye, aye, Curly.

  SECOND DROWNED

  Tell my missus no I never

  THIRD DROWNED

  I never done what she said I never…

  FOURTH DROWNED

  Yes, they did.

  FIFTH DROWNED

  And who brings coconuts and shawls and parrots to my Gwen now?

  FIRST DROWNED

  How’s it above?

  SECOND DROWNED

  Is there rum and lavabread?

  THIRD DROWNED

  Bosoms and robins?

  FOURTH DROWNED

  Concertinas?

  FIFTH DROWNED

  Ebenezer’s bell?

  FIRST DROWNED

  Fighting and onions?

  SECOND DROWNED

  And sparrows and daisies?

  THIRD DROWNED

  Tiddlers in a jamjar?

  FOURTH DROWNED

  Buttermilk and whippets?

  FIFTH DROWNED

  Rock-a-bye baby?

  FIRST DROWNED

  Washing on the line?

  SECOND DROWNED

  And old girls in the snug?

  THIRD DROWNED

  How’s the tenors in Dowlais?

  FOURTH DROWNED

  Who milks the cows in Maesgwyn?

  FIFTH DROWNED

  When she smiles, is there dimples?

  FIRST DROWNED

  What’s the smell of parsley?

  CAPTAIN CAT

  Oh, my dead dears!

  From where you are, you can hear in Cockle Row in the spring, moonless night, Miss Price, dressmaker and sweetshop-keeper, dream of

  her lover, tall as the town clock tower, Samson-syrup-gold-maned, whacking thighed and piping hot, thunderbolt-bass’d and barnacle-breasted, flailing up the cockles with his eyes like blowlamps and scooping low over her lonely loving hotwaterbottled body.

  MR EDWARDS

  Myfanwy Price!

  MISS PRICE

  Mr Mog Edwards!

  MR EDWARDS

  I am a draper mad with love. I love you more than all the flannelette and calico, candlewick, dimity, crash and merino, tussore, cretonne, crépon, muslin, poplin, ticking and twill in the whole Cloth Hall of the world. I have come to take you away to my Emporium on the hill, where the change hums on wires. Throw away your little bedsocks and your Welsh wool knitted jacket, I will warm the sheets like an electric toaster, I will lie by your side like the Sunday roast…

  MISS PRICE

  I will knit you a wallet of forget-me-not blue, for the money to be comfy. I will warm your heart by the fire so that you can slip it in under your vest when the shop is closed…

  MR EDWARDS

  Myfanwy, Myfanwy, before the mice gnaw at your bottom drawer will you say

  MISS PRICE

  Yes, Mog, yes, Mog, yes, yes, yes…

  MR EDWARDS

  And all the bells of the tills of the town shall ring for our wedding.

  [Noise of money-tills and chapel bells]

  Come now, drift up the dark, come up the drifting sea-dark street now in the dark night seesawing like the sea, to the bible-black airless attic over Jack Black the cobbler’s shop where alone and savagely Jack Black sleeps in a nightshirt tied to his ankles with elastic and dreams of

  chasing the naughty couples down the grassgreen gooseberried double bed of the wood, flogging the tosspots in the spit-and-sawdust, driving out the bare bold girls from the sixpenny hops of his nightmares.

  JACK BLACK [Loudly]

  Ach y fi!

  Ach y fi!

  Evans the Death, the undertaker,

  EVANS THE DEATH

  laughs high and aloud in his sleep and curls up his toes as he sees, upon waking fifty years ago, snow lie deep on the goosefield behind the sleeping house; and he runs out into the field where his mother is making welshcakes. in the snow, and steals a fistful of snowflakes and currants and climbs back to bed to eat them cold and sweet under the warm, white clothes while his mother dances in the snow kitchen crying out for her lost currants.

  And in the little pink-eyed cottage next to the undertaker’s, lie, alone, the seventeen snoring gentle stone of Mister Waldo, rabbitcatcher, barber, herbalist, catdoctor, quack, his fat pink hands, palms up, over the edge of the patchwork quilt, his black boots neat and tidy in the washing-basin, his bowler on a nail above the bed, a milk stout and a slice of cold bread pudding under the pillow; and, dripping in the dark, he dreams of

  MOTHER

  This little piggy went to market

  This little piggy stayed at h
ome

  This little piggy had roast beef

  This little piggy had none

  And this little piggy went

  LITTLE BOY

  wee wee wee wee wee

  MOTHER

  all the way home to

  WIFE [Screaming]

  Waldo! Wal-do!

  MR WALDO

  Yes, Blodwen love?

  WIFE

  Oh, what’ll the neighbours say, what’ll the neighbours…

  FIRST NEIGHBOUR

  Poor Mrs Waldo

  SECOND NEIGHBOUR

  What she puts up with

  FIRST NEIGHBOUR

  Never should of married

  SECOND NEIGHBOUR

  If she didn’t had to

  FIRST NEIGHBOUR

  Same as her mother

  SECOND NEIGHBOUR

  There’s a husband for you

  FIRST NEIGHBOUR

  Bad as his father

  SECOND NEIGHBOUR

  And you know where he ended

  FIRST NEIGHBOUR

  Up in the asylum

  SECOND NEIGHBOUR

  Crying for his ma

  FIRST NEIGHBOUR

  Every Saturday

  SECOND NEIGHBOUR

  He hasn’t got a leg

  FIRST NEIGHBOUR

  And carrying on

  SECOND NEIGHBOUR

  With that Mrs Beattie Morris

  FIRST NEIGHBOUR

  Up in the quarry

  SECOND NEIGHBOUR

  And seen her baby

  FIRST NEIGHBOUR

  It’s got his nose

  SECOND NEIGHBOUR

  Oh, it makes my heart bleed

  FIRST NEIGHBOUR

  What he’ll do for drink

  SECOND NEIGHBOUR

  He sold the pianola

  FIRST NEIGHBOUR

  And her sewing machine

  SECOND NEIGHBOUR

  Falling in the gutter

  FIRST NEIGHBOUR

  Talking to the lamp-post

  SECOND NEIGHBOUR

  Using language

  FIRST NEIGHBOUR

  Singing in the w.

  SECOND NEIGHBOUR

  Poor Mrs Waldo

  WIFE [Tearfully]

  Oh, Waldo, Waldo!

  MR WALDO

  Hush, love, hush. I’m widower Waldo now.

  MOTHER [Screaming]

  Waldo, Wal-do!

  LITTLE BOY

  Yes, our mum?

  MOTHER

  Oh, what’ll the neighbours say, what’ll the neighbours…

  THIRD NEIGHBOUR

  Black as a chimbley

  FOURTH NEIGHBOUR

  Ringing doorbells

  THIRD NEIGHBOUR

  Breaking windows

  FOURTH NEIGHBOUR

  Making mudpies

  THIRD NEIGHBOUR

  Stealing currants

  FOURTH NEIGHBOUR

  Chalking words

  THIRD NEIGHBOUR

  Saw him in the bushes

  FOURTH NEIGHBOUR

  Playing mwchins

  THIRD NEIGHBOUR

  Send him to bed without any supper

  FOURTH NEIGHBOUR

  Give him sennapods and lock him in the dark

  THIRD NEIGHBOUR

  Off to the reformatory

  FOURTH NEIGHBOUR

  Off to the reformatory

  TOGETHER

  Learn him with a slipper on his b.t.m.

  ANOTHER MOTHER [Screaming]

  Waldo, Wal-do! What you doing with our Matti?

  LITTLE BOY

  Give us a kiss, Matti Richards.

  LITTLE GIRL

  Give us a penny then.

  MR WALDO

  I only got a halfpenny.

  FIRST WOMAN

  Lips is a penny.

  PREACHER

  Will you take this woman Matti Richards

  SECOND WOMAN

  Dulcie Prothero

  THIRD WOMAN

  Effie Bevan

  FOURTH WOMAN

  Lil the Gluepot

  FIFTH WOMAN

  Mrs Flusher

  WIFE

  Blodwen Bowen

  PREACHER

  To be your awful wedded wife

  LITTLE BOY [Screaming]

  No, no, no!

  Now, in her iceberg-white, holily laundered crinoline nightgown, under virtuous polar sheets, in her spruced and scoured dust-defying bedroom in trig and trim Bay View, a house for paying guests at the top of the town, Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, widow, twice, of Mr Ogmore, linoleum, retired, and Mr Pritchard, failed bookmaker, who maddened by besoming, swabbing and scrubbing, the voice of the vacuum-cleaner and the fume of polish, ironically swallowed disinfectant, fidgets in her rinsed sleep, wakes in a dream, and nudges in the ribs dead Mr Ogmore, dead Mr Pritchard, ghostly on either side.

  MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD

  Mr Ogmore!

  Mr Pritchard!

  It is time to inhale your balsam.

  MR OGMORE

  Oh, Mrs Ogmore!

  MR PRITCHARD

  Oh, Mrs Pritchard!

  MRS PRITCHARD

  Soon it will be time to get up.

  Tell me your tasks, in order.

  MR OGMORE

  I must put my pyjamas in the drawer marked pyjamas.

  MR PRITCHARD

  I must take my cloth bath which is good for me.

  MR OGMORE

  I must wear my flannel band to ward off sciatica.

  MR PRITCHARD

  I must dress behind the curtain and put on my apron.

  MR OGMORE

  I must blow my nose.

  MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD

  in the garden, if you please.

  MR OGMORE

  In a piece of tissue-paper which I afterwards bum.

  MR PRITCHARD

  I must take my salts which are nature’s friend.

  MR OGMORE

  I must boil the drinking water because of germs.