Come On Over

Conor McPherson

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781780014395
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

A short play for two performers, from the author of The Weir.

A Jesuit priest, sent to investigate a 'miracle' in his home town, re-encounters the woman who loved him thirty years before.

Conor McPherson's Come On Over was first performed at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in September 2001.

There are two chairs onstage.

MATTHEW and MARGARET enter together from the same side.

They both wear plain clothes and hoods.

The hoods should look like mass-produced sacking and have neat holes for the eyes and mouth.

Margaret might wear a simple silver-chain necklace.

They sit and regard the audience.

MATTHEW.

There were tomato plants spiralling up these sticks there in the window ledge.

The sunlight was coming in through all the leaves.

Me and Margaret were looking at them and counting the tomatoes.

I was shocked at how she’d aged.

We’d hardly said a thing since I came in. In off the main street and into her narrow hallway and up the stairs into the spare room.

Her daughter had planted these tomatoes before she’d left to go on her travels.

Margaret watered them and I put my suitcase down and sat on the bed.

Outside, the little town was dead.

So many shopfronts boarded up.

The silence was overwhelming.

The house where I grew up was gone.

I’d stepped off the bus into my past.

Into the shocking reality of myself and everything I’d been through.

Margaret turned away from the plants towards me and took my hand for a moment before she left and I heard her go downstairs.

I’d spent the last two months recovering from an experience I’d had in Africa.

I’d slept and dreamed and prayed in a seminary in Belgium until Father Sebarus came to see me.

He was as sympathetic as always but also businesslike because he was my boss.

He held an A4 envelope on his lap while he sat there gravely talking to me.

I didn’t feel any terror any more but even though I was medicated I sensed that the envelope would change me even further than I’d already gone.

Maybe even back to what I had been.

MARGARET.

I was watering Nuala’s tomatoes.

Matthew. Father Matthew sat behind me on the bed.

I stood looking down at them much longer than I needed to because I was starting to cry.

He seemed so old.

This boy I once knew.

And the tomatoes were reminding me, do you see, of a day thirty-odd years ago when we’d taken a walk in the rose gardens in the park. It was October and it was the last of the roses.

He was always huddled in his big coat and I’d always have my hand in his pocket. Holding his hand.

And I loved him so much.

I always remember that day, in the rose gardens.

With the roses dying. And him miles away.

And me wanting to tell him that I’d worn a skirt instead of trousers because I wanted him to touch me.

But I knew I’d already lost him.

He was lost.

MATTHEW.

Father Sebarus wanted me to look into this one for a few reasons. Well namely the main one was because it had happened in the town I was born in.

He opened the envelope and in it were photographs of a little girl maybe thirteen or fourteen.

She was asleep and someone had placed blue flowers all around her. She was a corpse.

She’d been found in the graveyard at St Monica’s, the parish I’d grown up in.

They’d sold some land there and when they were moving some coffins, hers had burst open.

And everyone nearly died.

Because she was perfectly preserved.

She’d been buried four hundred years ago.

MARGARET.

Matthew was a Jesuit. He was a scientist.

He’d been all over the world looking into what I suppose people thought were miracles.

He was a very rational sort of person.

And although I hadn’t seen him for many years I could tell from his letters that he was reluctant to give his imprimatur that he had ever come across anything that was really a miracle. I suppose he saw a rational cause for everything.

And he’d always been like that.

I was shocked naturally when he said he thought he had a vocation all those years ago.

But there had always been a kindness in him. And I loved him for it.

And he was so courageous taking such a huge step.

I respected him, naturally, and I supported him.

But I don’t think I need to tell you that it broke my heart.

MATTHEW.

I had a restless night.

It was deathly quiet.

But more than that it was a quiet I’d grown up with, and at about three or half three in the morning I went into the bathroom and took some toilet roll.

And I took it back into my room and I cried my fucking eyes out, ’til I thought I couldn’t breathe.

I thought then that I heard Margaret stirring so I put the light out and I waited until it started to get bright and I began to feel slightly better.

Almost dreading and wanting to get to work.

A car was picking me up at eight.

And it’s not good for a man to lie there all night terrified.

It’s not right.

MARGARET.

I had his breakfast ready at seven.

He came down all neat and shaven.

But he couldn’t really eat.

When I’d ran the B&B anyone that passed through, the salesmen’d usually go to town on the brekkie, so I was, it was a bit of a habit. I was piling toast and eggs and the best of rashers and sausages in front of him. But he just drank some tea.

Apologising to me. Always apologising. But all he did was smoke Silk Cut reds and drink his tea....

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Original Production
• Characters
• Come On Over
• Afterword
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information