The Veil (NHB Modern Plays)

Conor McPherson

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781780012841
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

Set around a haunted house hemmed in by a restive, starving populace, The Veil weaves Ireland's troubled colonial history into a transfixing story about the search for love, the transcendental and the circularity of time.

May 1822, rural Ireland. The defrocked Reverend Berkeley arrives at the crumbling former glory of Mount Prospect House to accompany seventeen year-old Hannah to England. She is to be married off to a marquis in order to resolve the debts of her mother's estate. However, compelled by the strange voices that haunt his beautiful young charge and a fascination with the psychic current that pervades the house, Berkeley proposes a seance, the consequences of which are catastrophic.

'an atmospheric and haunting tale of lost souls' - Evening Standard

'bold and intriguing... McPherson keeps you guessing to the last' - Financial Times

ACT TWO

Night, around midnight on Thursday May 23rd. GRANDIE is sitting quietly near the fireplace as the fire dies. A wind is picking up outside. HANNAH slowly plays a single note over and over on the piano. There is a knock. The door to the hallway opens and BERKELEY and AUDELLE enter. They stand near the door, wrapped up in their coats.

BERKELEY. Ah, some nighthawks! We didn’t expect anyone to still be up.

HANNAH (rises). Sometimes Grandie gets up. She never knows when it’s night-time.

BERKELEY. Well, we had a lovely moonlight stroll. To walk off our dinner. Are we alone?

HANNAH. Everyone was in bed.

BERKELEY. Of course. Will we join you for a moment?

BERKELEY and AUDELLE come further into the room.

HANNAH. What time is it?

BERKELEY. It’s after midnight! Goodnight, Grandie. How fares the world? You know, I was only saying to Mr Audelle, Thursday was always my favourite day of the week when I was a little boy. It was the one day I was permitted out of the nursery and could sit all afternoon with my mother while my father wrote his lectures. I keenly remember the fascination and privilege I felt in their company. Every Thursday.

AUDELLE. I used to watch my father writing his sermons.

BERKELEY. I saw him preach. He was a great believer in the corrective terror of hell and damnation which lent his oratory an extra impassioned forcefulness, I remember! (Laughs.Pause.) You look tired, Hannah.

GRANDIE looks at him blankly then gives a slight smile of acknowledgement, turning her face back to the fire.

HANNAH. Well, yes I am, rather.

BERKELEY. Mr Audelle tells me you were kind enough to bring him up to the Queen’s Tomb yesterday.

HANNAH. Yes.

BERKELEY. But you didn’t stay long.

Short pause.

HANNAH. Yes, well, the weather was inclement.

AUDELLE. I was just telling the Reverend, for myself, laying my hand upon those prehistoric stones induced a sense of connectedness to the mysterious ancestors of this place, the sheer… force of which I had never experienced before.

BERKELEY. Oh, yes. I have always found it to be a place of dark enchantment. And you, Hannah? Did you experience a… sense of connectedness?

HANNAH. Well, I… I did not remain there for long, so…

Pause.

BERKELEY. You know, I often think of your poor father on nights such as this, Hannah.

HANNAH. I think of him regardless of the day or night.

BERKELEY. He is in your prayers.

HANNAH. With all of my family.

BERKELEY. With all of us. My dear Alice is still alive – in my mind, her fragile bones still shining beneath her transparent skin, just as poor old Edward still lives in yours. He is so strong there. So… real. In which case, how can anyone say he doesn’t exist? Of course he still exists! These recent times weigh hard on you, I suspect, Hannah.

HANNAH. Well. I have many blessings. I shouldn’t complain.

BERKELEY. Yes, but even good news can bring its difficulties, especially when set against a tragedy so terrible as the one we have witnessed in Jamestown.

HANNAH. Especially when it occurred on the very evening you sought to summon the spirits of the dead.

BERKELEY (laughs, almost delighted she has risen to the bait). ‘The dead’! We didn’t cause those buildings to fall down. Hasn’t the Colonel himself said as much. Now, I hope you don’t mind, but you will be aware I have learned something of your recent experiences, Hannah.

HANNAH. Yes, well, I don’t want to discuss that.

BERKELEY. And I will come straight out with it and say it’s a pity you consider the specialness of your gift a burden – when rightly it should be something you ought to cherish. And be grateful for.

HANNAH. I just want to stop it now, so…

BERKELEY. Stop it?! Well, it’s my belief that would be a dreadful shame. What you really need is to understand it. Yes. You can take the sting of its unknowability away, and we would like to help you.

Pause.

HANNAH. How can you help me?

BERKELEY. Do you know what a… seance is, Hannah?

HANNAH. I have heard of it.

BERKELEY. Yes, on the Continent one hears a lot of rubbish about these matters, I’m afraid. The facts are quite simple. I can explain precisely why you are in your predicament, Audelle?

AUDELLE. It’s really quite straightforward.

BERKELEY. Dear me, that’s quite a draught. Is that door closed, Audelle?

AUDELLE goes and shuts the door quietly.

You see, Hannah, there is only God. (Pause.) Nature comes from God. It is a part of God. And man is part of nature. But we are a very special part, because only the human being can know itself and think for itself. Consider a fish or a dog. They are prisoners of their instinct, slaves to nature, where man is free.

HANNAH. No. A dog is freer than a man, if you ask me.

AUDELLE. But a dog cannot choose. No animal can. When it’s hungry it will eat, when it’s tired it must sleep. Thus it has no choice, correct? But man – a man may deny his instinct, suppress his appetite and decide for himself what is right or wrong. He is even free to destroy himself!

BERKELEY. Can a dog do that?

AUDELLE. Being conscious means man is both part of nature and yet free of it – all at once.

BERKELEY. You see, it has recently been proven, Hannah, beyond logical denial –

HANNAH goes to interrupt.

Beyond logical denial, that with the emergence of the human subject there is finally a part of nature which knows itself! Do you understand? All of this, everything around us, and you and I and Audelle –

AUDELLE. And Grandie –

BERKELEY. And Grandie and everything else – this is all… the mind of God awakening and coming to know itself. And when we look at each other, just as I am looking at you now, it is as though God is looking at Himself in a mirror. And each eye, the beholder and the beheld, reflect the other back and forth as mirrors do, into a kind of genuine infinity. The infinity of God. You see? We are God… Isn’t that wonderful? Now, knowing that we are God is of course a great responsibility but it’s not something we want to bandy about!

AUDELLE. Of course not.

BERKELEY. For so long we have all felt cut away from God, somehow seeking ‘forgiveness’ in order to be reunited. But we were never separate from Him! So you need not feel any guilt, Hannah. Your feelings are holy! And just as in any walk of life we meet people with great gifts, this one a great carpenter, that one a great musician, so you have a great talent, Hannah.

HANNAH. You call it a gift.

AUDELLE. Hannah, your gift is simply consciousness itself. That’s right. And so profound is your talent in this case, so acute its perceptiveness, you are capable of beholding not just what is here in this moment, but what is beyond and before time.

BERKELEY. That’s all it is! Nothing more! (Laughs.) And certai...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Original Production
• Characters and Setting
• Act One
• Act Two
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information