Diving For Pearls

Katherine Thomson

• Publisher: Currency Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781760621650
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

Katherine Thomson's story about aspiration and reinvention is one of the great Australian plays. Set in Wollongong during the economic rationalism of the late 80s, Diving for Pearls remains startlingly relevant—the political decisions of that time planted the seeds of divide we continue to witness between those with opportunity, and those without.%##CHAR13##%%##CHAR13##%With the town she grew up in changing all around her, Barbara is determined to change with it. Dreaming of a way out, she sets her sights on landing a job at one of the new resorts popping up all over town. Meanwhile, her partner Den is having change forced upon him. The steelworks he's worked at his whole life has been sold and Den must reinvent himself to survive. The arrival of Barbara's daughter, Verge, just might be the thing that tips Barbara and Den over the edge.

ACT ONE

BARBARA has been running. She arrives up on the hill. She stumbles, it is uneven and rocky. She takes off her shoe and examines it. There is a hole right through to the cardboard inner-sole.

She takes a cigarette out of a packet, but after three or four attempts, it is obvious that the lighter is not going to work. She throws it behind her and finds a book of matches in her bag. Only one match is left however, and she almost burns her finger, then it disintegrates without lighting the cigarette.

The funeral which she has just attended is the final straw in a long line of events. Still no luck with the cigarette. She wears a uniform dress with a cardigan over it.

BARBARA: Unbelievable … honestly to God …

She continues to fumble with the shoe.

Don’t tell me funerals aren’t a waste of time. Felt like seeing two people in the entire church and one of them was in a box.

She searches again for a match, then looks down towards the church.

And don’t put yourself out. Don’t bother getting a person’s name right—bloody priests, probably didn’t slip him enough. John this. John that. Jacko. Jacko. I didn’t know who he was talking about. Not a mention that he hung himself, of course. Start up a trend.

The sound of a coal truck going by. Later we hear it returning.

You live next door to someone eighteen years, you’d know if anyone ever called him John. Which they didn’t.

DEN arrives. He has followed her up the hill, unsure as to whether he should have come. She acknowledges him; she thought he would probably show up.

Well, you won’t have a light.

There is the sound of a coal truck and they wait for it to pass.

I thought that was you. Thought that was you at the back of the church.

DEN: Yes. [A nervous smile] So …

BARBARA: Then I thought it wasn’t.

Pause.

I mean I didn’t come up here expecting you to follow me. I’m not thirteen. I have been up on this hill without you, you know.

DEN: Just to see how you were. Just to see how you’re getting on.

BARBARA: Oh, well brilliant of course. Getting on brilliant.

DEN: Bit of a shock. [Looking back down towards the church] All very sudden. Heart I thought someone said … You wouldn’t think …

BARBARA is silent, and DEN produces a lighter in a leather case. He gives it to her and she hangs it around her neck. Pause.

Didn’t know if you realised you left it.

Pause.

I came back from getting the chips and it was where you’d been sitting, on that bench. And of course you were … Quite a few months old, might be dried out by now …

BARBARA lights a cigarette.

You look nice.

BARBARA: Well, how was I supposed to know you’d be there? And all them. Everyone I’ve ever known practically, all having a gawk. God, funerals are stupid.

Pause.

You wouldn’t have been mates with Jacko.

DEN: Well, work—I used to see him.

BARBARA: But you wouldn’t have known him. You wouldn’t have played cards with him at lunch for instance.

DEN: I told you what I’m like—a quiet corner with a cowboy novel and a couple of devon sandwiches.

BARBARA: No, you’d steer clear of any troublemakers.

DEN: Kept him pretty busy, shaking things up.

BARBARA: Someone has to.

DEN: Fills in the time.

BARBARA: Someone has to. People rely on people like him to give things a shake-up. You probably never spoke to him.

DEN: There’s a lot of men in that plant.

BARBARA: Used to be.

DEN: Yes.

BARBARA: Opposite of you, he was. He didn’t let that place get to him. He got to it.

Pause. DEN longs to talk to her and doesn’t know what to say. BARBARA looks down the hill.

DEN: His old man knew mine. Miners’ Federation. Why I came.

Pause.

I was hoping I’d see you. I remembered once that you said you knew him.

BARBARA: Why that church? Very woggy if you ask me. Couldn’t be woggier if they tried. [Looking] And that bloody mob from the Northern Beaches. [To them] Sorry you had to drag yourselves south of the steelworks. Still hanging round. Yap yap yap yap. All kissing each other.

She draws a line in the air.

You could divide this city in half, I reckon. They’re getting everything up there. [To DEN] We used to feel sorry for them, stuck out on bloody cliffs, living in their poky little shacks. ‘Oh, Barbara, people are coming down and paying a quarter of a million dollars for our little miners’ cottages!’ They used to be bloody communists.

DEN: I’ve been thinking about you—quite a bit.

BARBARA: Shocking bloody view—look at that.

DEN: Oh well.

BARBARA: Oh well what?

DEN: No smoke from the steelworks and we’d ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• First Production
• Characters
• Setting
• Diving for Pearls
• Act One
• Act Two
• Copyright Details