The Small Things

Enda Walsh

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781854598431
• eBook ISBN: 9781780012834
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

A fierce and devastating fable about enforced silence.

Two houses, each perched on a mountain top, stare at each other across a deep valley. A man and a woman talk about the small things – parquet floor zigzagging down corridors, the memory of mother's breasts, brown sauce and soggy chips. But these minutiae disguise a bigger story of brutality and unfaltering loyalty which emerges horrifically through the chit chat.

Enda Walsh's play The Small Things was first performed by Paines Plough as part of the 'This Other England' season at the Menier Chocolate Factory, London, in January 2005.

Heavy red-velvet curtains open slowly to the sound of a loud dramatic drum roll on timpani drums.

At the front of the large stage are two armchairs beside each other, sort of faced towards each other.

In one of them sits an elderly MAN, his age indecipherable, his face worn and tired. He wears a cardigan and a shirt and bow tie. His trousers a little worn. Surprisingly, he wears a very polished pair of small black children’s shoes with red laces. His expression like a bemused clown. He holds a battered wind-up clock and stares at it.

In the other armchair is an old tape recorder.

To the left and behind the MAN, a WOMAN sits at a small oak table with a lace tablecloth, polishing twelve small ceramic animals lined up in a row. Her age again difficult for us to gauge, her face a little tired and loose. She wears a housecoat over a plain skirt and blouse and a pair of slippers. Similarly to the MAN, in front of her is a wind-up clock, though hers is immaculate.

On the back wall of the stage is an enormous window/screen. A yellow-grey light emanates from it and light moves slowly in and out of shadow like cloud passing.

The two sit for a while doing very little as the sound of the drums continues loud.

She looks over towards the window.

The drum roll suddenly stops with a flourish.

WOMAN (to the window). Window. Knick-knacks. Song.

His clock sounds. He slaps it off and begins.

MAN. It’s been raining for the past two weeks which would account for dampness. Not that I could remember. How could I remember. Impossible to remember! But dampness is there, its cause forgotten but dampness is everywhere. My shoes on the parquet floor and Mother’s shoes in front. We’re marching me and her. Parquet floor zigzagging down corridors. I understand my damp hands as fear and I’m sort of crying. I had cried in car but forgotten I was upset. But in crying now I remember the tears of before and remember that this day’s primary feelings are fear, you see. Fear. Each salty tear a reminder, each clammy hand putting me in my place. Mother’s heels on hard floor, anxious. Marking out seconds. They’re alternating ’tween her tight breath and beat of heels. The clip clop, the tight breath. The clip clop. My breath.

He pants three times and stops.

I’m three years old and all talk is me and future and books and learning and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited because in truth I’m dead excited. I’m leaving behind a life that’s somewhat lumpen – HEY!

He stops and suddenly writes in a small notebook with a pencil.

Fine word ‘lumpen’. A single rhyme with pumpkin, love. (Closes the notebook.) For what are babies but lumps. Happy lumps granted but lumpen and sat still all day much like I am sat right now. Difference ’tween babies and me, is lumpen babies must give in to life while my giving in will be to death. One a cheery departure and one not so cheery… though in honesty which one is which. Slight joke. No need for slight jokes when no one’s laughing, the bastards! The clip clop stops. She kneels in front of me. She hugs me. She kisses me on cheek. Starts telling me to enjoy my day but all this time I’m looking right down her blouse. I never loved my mother in that way. Never had feelings of… feelings of lust… too strong, easy now… lust?!!… feelings of…? I know what I mean! Frankly she was never very loving to me. That hug in the classroom an unusual show of affection more to do with doing right thing than telling me of her love, self-pity, very attractive in an old man.

He laughs. She laughs.

Oh, very good! Very nice!

They both stop laughing.

I drop my school bag and reach in and hold my mother’s breasts.

WOMAN. Oh!

MAN. It’s an action that lasts all of a split second and at first I’m amazed that the motion is so fluid for a three year old and that I make contact so precisely and also that in my hands both titties weigh exact same measure. This is my moment! Beginning of my professional life. Yes! Before she slaps my hands away and belts me across head, before my new classmates burst into laughter and I start my journey into a childhood of ridicule and psychological torture, not true, though interesting! Before any of this shite and it’s just me with Mother’s tits held in perfect symmetry in my hands… at that moment I promise myself a life in engineering. I am ready… for order.

He looks at the clock. She’s looking at her clock.

WOMAN. I’m up out of bed and flinging myself through house like a mad thing, like a rag doll. And downstairs dragging sweaty fingers down walls. Into kitchen and a breakfast scene. Dozy-chat mixing with pop music off radio – ding-aling. Cornflakes crunching above the quiet din of breakfast time and all is a deadly normal but for Dad’s face. Dad’s face! Crikey! He’s been complaining about a headache for the past month! Last week Mother caught him staring at the clouds, staring at the birds and shaking his head and mumbling to himself, ‘What chaos in the world. What terrible chaos.’ I saw him walking around town in dead straight lines while all around the world is going about the day-to-day business of accident and chance. Accident and chance, them two words churning Dad’s stomach. This morning and his eyes are stuck out of his face like they want to be rid of his head. Still sat in his jim-jams he pours the cornflakes out onto table, sits there and starts to count them out one by one. Sets out cornflakes into a neat square and my brother starts to giggle. An orange square and the disorder of the cornflakes are set to a pattern, you see. Well, skip forward to dinner time, still sat in his jim-jams and he has us whispering our words. No dinner sounds and us all hushed and careful. He wipes the sauce off his spaghetti and lays spaghetti out into a simple grid-shape and for the first time we hear these new words, ‘Where would any of us be without order, kids?’

MAN. Christ.

WOMAN. Suddenly it’s us who’s starting each day wondering where we’d be without order. What terrible shape the world would be if the great Lord h...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Original Production
• Characters
• The Small Things
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information