Under Milk Wood Read online

  BOYO

  Me, Nogood Boyo, up to no good in the wash-house.

  MISS PRICE

  Me, Miss Price, in my pretty print housecoat, deft at the clothesline, natty as a jenny-wren, then pit-pat back to my egg in its cosy, my crisp toast-fingers, my home-made plum and butterpat.

  POLLY GARTER

  Me, Polly Garter, under the washing line, giving the breast in the garden to my bonny new baby. Nothing grows in our garden, only washing. And babies. And where’s their fathers live, my love? Over the hills and far away. You’re looking up at me now. I know what you’re thinking, you poor little milky creature. You’re thinking, you’re no better than you should be, Polly, and that’s good enough for me. Oh, isn’t life a terrible thing, thank God?

  [Single long high chord on strings]

  Now frying-pans spit, kettles and cats purr in the kitchen. The town smells of seaweed and breakfast all the way down from Bay View, where Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard, in smock and turban, big-besomed to engage the dust, picks at her starchless bread and sips lemonrind tea, to Bottom Cottage, where Mr Waldo, in bowler and bib, gobbles his bubble-and-squeak and kippers and swigs from the saucebottle. Mary Ann Sailors

  MARY ANN SAILORS

  praises the Lord who made porridge.

  Mr Pugh

  MR PUGH

  remembers ground glass as he juggles his omelet.

  Mrs Pugh

  MRS PUGH

  nags the salt-cellar.

  Willy Nilly postman

  WILLY NILLY

  downs his last bucket of black brackish tea and rumbles out bandy to the clucking back where the hens twitch and grieve for their tea-soaked sops.

  Mrs Willy Nilly

  MRS WILLY NILLY

  full of tea to her double-chinned brim broods and bubbles over her coven of kettles on the hissing hot range always ready to steam open the mail.

  The Reverend Eli Jenkins

  REV. ELI JENKINS

  finds a rhyme and dips his pen in his cocoa.

  Lord Cut-Glass in his ticking kitchen

  LORD CUT-GLASS

  scampers from clock to clock, a bunch of clock-keys in one hand, a fish-head in the other.

  Captain Cat in his galley.

  CAPTAIN CAT

  blind and fine-fingered savours his sea-fry.

  Mr and Mrs Cherry Owen, in their Donkey Street room that is bedroom, parlour, kitchen, and scullery, sit down to last night’s supper of onions boiled in their overcoats and broth of spuds and baconrind and leeks and bones.

  MRS CHERRY OWEN

  See that smudge on the wall by the picture of Auntie Blossom? That’s where you threw the sago.

  [Cherry Owen laughs with delight]

  You only missed me by a inch.

  CHERRY OWEN

  I always miss Auntie Blossom too.

  MRS CHERRY OWEN

  Remember last night? In you reeled, my boy, as drunk as a deacon with a big wet bucket and a fish-frail full of stout and you looked at me and you said, ‘God has come home!’ you said, and then over the bucket you went, sprawling and bawling, and the floor was all flagons and eels.

  CHERRY OWEN

  Was I wounded?

  MRS CHERRY OWEN

  And then you took off your trousers and you said, ‘Does anybody want a fight!’ Oh, you old baboon.

  CHERRY OWEN

  Give me a kiss.

  MRS CHERRY OWEN

  And then you sang ‘Bread of Heaven,’ tenor and bass.

  CHERRY OWEN

  I always sing ‘Bread of Heaven.’

  MRS CHERRY OWEN

  And then you did a little dance on the table.

  CHERRY OWEN

  I did?

  MRS CHERRY OWEN

  Drop dead!

  CHERRY OWEN

  And then what did I do?

  MRS CHERRY OWEN

  Then you cried like a baby and said you were a poor drunk orphan with nowhere to go but the grave.

  CHERRY OWEN

  And what did I do next, my dear?

  MRS CHERRY OWEN

  Then you danced on the table all over again and said you were King Solomon Owen and I was your Mrs Sheba.

  CHERRY OWEN [Softly]

  And then?

  MRS CHERRY OWEN

  And then I got you into bed and you snored all night like a brewery.

  [Mr and Mrs Cherry Owen laugh delightedly together]

  From Beynon Butchers in Coronation Street, the smell of fried liver sidles out with onions on its breath. And listen! In the dark breakfast-room behind the shop, Mr and Mrs Beynon, waited upon by their treasure, enjoy, between bites, their everymorning hullabaloo, and Mrs Beynon slips the gristly bits under the tasselled tablecloth to her fat cat.

  [Cat purrs]

  MRS BEYNON

  She likes the liver, Ben.

  MR BEYNON

  She ought to do, Bess. It’s her brother’s.

  MRS BEYNON [Screaming]

  Oh, d’you hear that, Lily?

  LILY SMALLS

  Yes, mum.

  MRS BEYNON

  We’re eating pusscat.

  LILY SMALLS

  Yes, mum.

  MRS BEYNON

  Oh, you cat-butcher!

  MR BEYNON

  It was doctored, mind.

  MRS BEYNON [Hysterical]

  What’s that got to do with it?

  MR BEYNON

  Yesterday we had mole.

  MRS BEYNON

  Oh, Lily, Lily!

  MR BEYNON

  Monday, otter. Tuesday, shrews.

  [Mrs Beynon screams]

  LILY SMALLS

  Go on, Mrs Beynon. He’s the biggest liar in town.

  MRS BEYNON

  Don’t you dare say that about Mr Beynon.

  LILY SMALLS

  Everybody knows it, mum.

  MRS BEYNON

  Mr Beynon never tells a lie. Do you, Ben?

  MR BEYNON

  No, Bess. And now I am going out after the corgies, with my little cleaver.

  MRS BEYNON

  Oh, Lily, Lily!

  Up the street, in the Sailors Arms, Sinbad Sailors, grandson of Mary Ann Sailors, draws a pint in the sunlit bar. The ship’s clock in the bar says half past eleven. Half past eleven is opening time. The hands of the clock have stayed still at half past eleven for fifty years. It is always opening time in the Sailors Arms.

  SINBAD

  Here’s to me, Sinbad.

  All over the town, babies and old men are cleaned and put into their broken prams and wheeled on to the sunlit cockled cobbles or out into the backyards under the dancing underclothes, and left. A baby cries.

  OLD MAN

  I want my pipe and he wants his bottle.

  [School bell rings]

  Noses are wiped, heads picked, hair combed, paws scrubbed, ears boxed, and the children shrilled off to school.

  [Children's voices, up and out.]

  Fishermen grumble to their nets. Nogood Boyo goes out in the dinghy Zanzibar, ships the oars, drifts slowly in the dab-filled bay, and, lying on his back in the unbaled water, among crabs’ legs and tangled lines, looks up at the spring sky.

  NOGOOD BOYO [Softly, lazily]

  I don’t know who’s up there and I don’t care.

  He turns his head and looks up at Llareggub Hill, and sees, among green lathered trees, the white houses of the strewn away farms, where farmboys whistle, dogs shout, cows low, but all too far away for him, or you, to hear. And in the town, the shops squeak open. Mr Edwards, in butterfly-collar and straw-hat at the doorway of Manchester House, measures with his eye the dawdlers-by for striped flannel shirts and shrouds and flowery blouses, and bellows to himself in the darkness behind his eye.

  MR EDWARDS [Whispers]

  I love Miss Price.

  Syrup is sold in the post-office. A car drives to market, full of fowls and a farmer. Milk-churns stand at Coronation Corner like short silver policemen. And, sitting at the open window of Schoone
r House, blind Captain Cat hears all the morning of the town.

  CAPTAIN CAT [Softly, to himself]

  Maggie Richards, Ricky Rhys, Tommy Powell, our Sal, little Gerwain, Billy Swansea with the dog’s voice, one of Mr Waldo’s, nasty Humphrey, Jackie with the sniff… Where’s Dicky’s Albie? and the boys from Ty-pant? Perhaps they got the rash again.

  [A sudden cry among the children’s voices]

  Somebody’s hit Maggie Richards. Two to one it’s Billy Swansea. Never trust a boy who barks.

  [A burst of yelping crying]

  Right again! It’s Billy.

  And the children’s voices cry away.

  [Postman’s rat-a-tat on door, distant]

  That’s Willy Nilly knocking at Bay View. Rat-a-tat, very soft. The knocker’s got a kid glove on. Who’s sent a letter to Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard?

  [Rat-a-tat, distant again]

  Careful now, she swabs the front glassy. Every step’s like a bar of soap. Mind your size twelveses. That old Bessie would beeswax the lawn to make the birds slip.

  WILLY NILLY

  Morning, Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard.

  MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD

  Good morning, postman.

  WILLY NILLY

  Here’s a letter for you with stamped and addressed envelope enclosed, all the way from Builth Wells. A gentleman wants to study birds and can he have accommodation for two weeks and a bath vegetarian.

  MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD

  No.

  WILLY NILLY [Persuasively]

  You wouldn’t know he was in the house, Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard. He’d be out in the mornings at the bang of dawn with his bag of breadcrumbs and his little telescope…

  MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD

  And come home at all hours covered with feathers. I don’t want persons in my nice clean rooms breathing all over the chairs…

  WILLY NILLY

  Cross my heart, he won’t breathe…

  MRS OGMORE-PRITCHARD

  and putting their feet on my carpets and sneezing on my china and sleeping in my sheets …

  WILLY NILLY

  He only wants a single bed, Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard.

  [Door slams]

  CAPTAIN CAT [Softly]

  And back she goes to the kitchen to polish the potatoes.

  Captain Cat hears Willy Nilly’s feet heavy on the distant cobbles.

  One, two, three, four, five …That’s Mrs Rose Cottage. What’s to-day? To-day she gets the letter from her sister in Gorslas. How’s the twins’ teeth?

  He’s stopping at School House.

  WILLY NILLY

  Morning, Mrs Pugh. Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard won’t have a gentleman in from Builth Wells because he’ll sleep in her sheets, Mrs Rose Cottage’s sister in Gorslas’s twins have got to have them out…

  MRS PUGH

  Give me the parcel.

  WILLY NILLY

  It’s for Mr Pugh, Mrs Pugh.

  MRS PUGH

  Never you mind. What’s inside it?

  WILLY NILLY

  A book called 'Lives of the Great Poisoners'.

  CAPTAIN CAT

  That’s Manchester House.

  WILLY NILLY

  Morning, Mr Edwards. Very small news. Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard won’t have birds in the house, and Mr Pugh’s bought a book now on how to do in Mrs Pugh.

  MR EDWARDS

  Have you got a letter from her?

  WILLY NILLY

  Miss Price loves you with all her heart. Smelling of lavender to-day. She’s down to the last of the elderflower wine but the quince jam’s bearing up and she’s knitting roses on the doilies. Last week she sold three jars of boiled sweets, pound of humbugs, half a box of jellybabies and six coloured photos of Llareggub. Yours for ever. Then twenty-one X’s.

  MR EDWARDS

  Oh, Willy Nilly, she’s a ruby! Here’s my letter. Put it into her hands now.

  Down the street comes Willy Nilly. And Captain Cat hears other steps approaching.

  CAPTAIN CAT

  Mr Waldo hurrying to the Sailors Arms. Pint of stout with a egg in it.

  [Softly] There’s a letter for him.

  WILLY NILLY

  It’s another paternity summons, Mr Waldo.

  The quick footsteps hurry on along the cobbles and up three steps to the Sailors Arms.

  MR WALDO [Calling out]

  Quick, Sinbad. Pint of stout. And no egg in.

  People are moving now up and down the cobbled street.

  CAPTAIN CAT

  All the women are out this morning, in the sun. You can tell it’s Spring. There goes Mrs Cherry, you can tell her by her trotters, off she trots new as a daisy. Who’s that talking by the pump? Mrs Floyd and Boyo, talking flatfish. What can you talk about flatfish? That’s Mrs Dai Bread One, waltzing up the street like a jelly, every time she shakes it’s slap slap slap. Who’s that? Mrs Butcher Beynon with her pet black cat, it follows her everywhere, miaow and all. There goes Mrs Twenty-Three, important, the sun gets up and goes down in her dewlap, when she shuts her eyes, it’s night. High heels now, in the morning too, Mrs Rose Cottage’s eldest Mae, seventeen and never been kissed ho ho, going young and milking under my window to the field with the nannygoats, she reminds me all the way. Can’t hear what the women are gabbing round the pump. Same as ever. Who’s having a baby, who blacked whose eye, seen Polly Garter giving her belly an airing, there should be a law, seen Mrs Beynon’s new mauve jumper, it’s her old grey jumper dyed, who’s dead, who’s dying, there’s a lovely day, oh the cost of soapflakes!

  [Organ music, distant]

  Organ Morgan’s at it early. You can tell it’s Spring.

  And he hears the noise of milk-cans.

  Ocky Milkman on his round. I will say this, his milk’s as fresh as the dew. Half dew it is. Snuffle on, Ocky, watering the town.

  Somebody’s coming. Now the voices round the pump can see somebody coming. Hush, there’s a hush! You can tell by the noise of the hush, it’s Polly Garter. [Louder] Hullo, Polly, who’s there?

  POLLY GARTER [Off]

  Me, love.

  CAPTAIN CAT

  That’s Polly Garter. [Softly] Hullo, Polly, my love.

  Can you hear the dumb goose-hiss of the wives as they huddle and peck or flounce at a waddle away? Who cuddled you when? Which of their gandering hubbies moaned in Milk Wood for your naughty mothering arms and body like a wardrobe, love? Scrub the floors of the Welfare Hall for the Mothers’ Union Social Dance, you’re one mother won’t wriggle her roly poly bum or pat her fat little buttery feet in that wedding-ringed holy to-night though the waltzing breadwinners snatched from the cosy smoke of the Sailors Arms will grizzle and mope.

  [A cock crows]

  CAPTAIN CAT

  Too late, cock, too late

  for the town’s half over with its morning. The morning’s busy as bees.

  [Out background organ music.]

  There’s the clip clop of horses on the sunhoneyed cobbles of the humming streets, hammering of horseshoes, gobble quack and cackle, tomtit twitter from the bird-ounced boughs, braying on Donkey Down. Bread is baking, pigs are grunting, chop goes the butcher, milk-churns bell, tills ring, sheep cough, dogs shout, saws sing. Oh, the Spring whinny and morning moo from the clog-dancing farms, the gulls’ gab and rabble on the boat-bobbing river and sea and the cockles bubbling in the sand, scamper of sanderlings, curlew cry, crow caw, pigeon coo, clock strike, bull bellow, and the ragged gabble of the beargarden school as the women scratch and babble in Mrs Organ Morgan’s general shop where everything is sold: custard, buckets, henna, rat-traps, shrimp-nets, sugar, stamps, confetti, paraffin, hatchets, whistles.