Fishskin Trousers

Elizabeth Kuti

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781848423626
• eBook ISBN: 9781780019833
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

'From that very first minute I sin 'im - strung up by his feet and howling - oh I certainly knew we had business all right.'

A haunting play about loss and grief, set in the mists of Suffolk.

Fishskin Trousers weaves together the haunting tales of three lost people from different eras, united by the common setting of the fishing village of Orford in Suffolk, its castle and its mysterious island, Orford Ness.

From the twelfth century, Mab gives an eyewitness account of the legendary Wild Man of Orford, caught in the nets of fishermen... Eight hundred years later, at the height of the Cold War, Ben, a young Australian scientist, hears strange noises on the Ness as he tries to fix the island's radar system. While Mog, in 2003, is faced with a heartbreaking decision...

Suffused by the landscape and traditional folk tales of East Anglia, their echoing voices and stories reveal how deeply and intimately their lives touch each other, though decades – and even centuries – separate them.

Elizabeth Kuti's Fishskin Trousers premiered at the Finborough Theatre, London, in 2013, and was revived at Park Theatre, London, in October 2017.

This volume also contains the short plays Enter A Gentleman and Time Spent on Trains.

MAB

I knew the first minute there was to be some heavy business between us

– from that very first minute I sin ’im – strung up by his feet and howling – oh I certainly knew we had business all right –

And knew also that this time

There’d be no doubt

We would see it through –

To whatever end – or final chapter – had to be.

For that deep stir in my gut – this ache I got, this throb, in my wound here – (Touches the side of her head.) the place I know you from –

it were that that told me our business needed finishing this time; no more sliding, no more look-away

But the end of it, when it came, was, I’ll confess – unexpected –

Not that I’m a fearful girl

Run a mile jump a stile eat a country pancake?

Me and the girls by the stream

What about you, Mab Green?

Die by fire or die by drowning?

I’d take the sweet soft drown any day – so I’d always said – and when it come to it – when I were thrown from the quay –

Do it proper, Mab. Me mam ud say. Don’t get it all crossways, start from the beginning.

So

It start the day the fishermen brung him in, the merman.

They catched ’im, see, out beyond the Ness. ’E come up in the haul. That were the story.

The boat were a good deep ways out, so it goos, the nets easy, and the fishermen dawsey from the early start… when on a sudden there’s a great pull and the nets start sliding out and the boys are fightin to hold ’em – and in the great struggle, what do they see but this great man-fish, white flash of thigh and shoulder, great clumps of drenched hair flowin like seaweed – all over – wild – like a beast, they say –

’E near capsized ’em, and their amazement, of course, boundless.

A fish in the shape of a man, cry Manny Jolt, and the others, soft noodles, hollerin too – must have been a boat full of holler, with the three fishermen, Manny Jolt, Peter Hankin, and Little Ben the boat-boy, frightened for their silly skins, and the poor sea creature howling in the net, thrashin and thrashin to be free…

God and all his holy saints, breathe Little Ben, what in the name of Jesus have we brung up?

Peter Hankin is jabbering they’d better fling it deep agin – A monster from the deep, he bawl – can only mean hexes and witchery and all darkness and damage imaginable.

But Manny Jolt beg to differ, and Manny says, says ’e, let’s tek him to the castellan – de Glanville, that is – Bartholomew de Glanville, he of the castle at Orford – de Glanville will reward them for a wonder such as this –

So – they brung the Wild Man in – and of course de Glanville, so I hear, can’t believe his luck. Be that fish or merman, or dead sailor possessed by dark sea spirit or what all he be, de Glanville mean to be the revealer of the horrid story. Beside ’imself with glee no doubt with this miracle to be snouting inter.

Stupid bugger de Glanville, never liked him, the rutting dog, always pressing girls in corners filthy animal the ones too weak to stop him.

Well – there’s mardle and bustle, and great whisper goin round the Castle that the fishermen hev net a monster, some wild man, or fish-man – they dunno… and Minnie Hinday’s agitatin about the place – they got that demon in the dark room below the basement – roped like a pig for the slaughter! So what, Minnie Hinday, I say? Her eyes go huge and starin – God, Mab, she cry, what kinda fool are you! Master’s lorst is mind, ’e gorn and let the Devil in!

Soppy daft gal that Minnie Hinday. I says as much to her.

But I’ll confess I were curious. Same as everybody.

So when the men below want water an all to scrub that clean, I offers to go down with the pail and brushes, thinkin, well, be worth the toil down the stairs to see such a wonder

Well I git to the trapdoor in the basement – and it bolted down fast so I knock –

And I hear such strange cries and noises goin on below – wah-wah-wah and yowling and howling mixed with laughter –

And then this pitiful mew, high-pitched –

She mews high-pitched, an unearthly sound.

And grunts, and long shaking groans – like an animal that’s caught and can’t die – and I’m afeared and wonderin should I ditch the pail, run back up the stairs and look away from whatever’s happening in the dark basement below but then the bolt clank back and I climb down into the dark prison chamber –

And what I see –

The Wild Man

Wrongways

Head down and that’s feet high up roped near the ceiling and that’s poor bloodshot eyes rolling and that’s arms and neck chafing from the ropes

And all those sounds come from the Wild Man, with that’s bulging throat, and mouth like a torn pocket –

And the blood trickle slowly

I dumps the pail and brushes and they set to, the boat-boys – they scrub at his shiny skin more naked and pitiful than a chicken plucked for cooking.

I got out then, didn’t want to see no more.

Over the days though, I learned bits about you piecemeal, I strained my ears for tidings. De Glanville every day’s inventing some new test to measure you by.

They brung you to church to see if you have any kind of soul. But you won’t kneel in church nor bless yourself but howl and yabber like a babe at a christening full of demon.

No sound from you but jabber-jabber-wawl-wawl and sometimes that mewing when you’re frightened and the flap-flap-flap when troubled.

They want you to speak but you won’t.

Can’t, I reckon to meself, but they think different.

They think he can but will not. They think he taunt them. He defy them. So they got him pig-wise, by the feet, and they drench him with icy water and they burn ’im, and they –

I sin the tongs, I sin the cleaver, I –

Defy? Taunt?

Who taunt who?

Was my question.

What they can’t grasp –

If a creature can’t speak –

He come from the sea, what can he speak, sea-words? Got a lungful of water, how can he breathe out what they want?

Whatsomiver they want anyhow?

What can he tell them?

How many toes on a mermaid? The smell of a conch? How many sides has a pearl?

Squit!

And then of course there’s food. What to give the beast?

They’re powerful fond of bugs beam Cook, but course ’e won’t take the rainy bugs and worms they gonned him. I knew he would not, I said as much to Cook! So Cook say, you so clever, Mab, what’ll he take for victuals then? Red face sweatin at me. Mab, hey, go on then, tell us, if you be so wise in the ways of the fish-folk!

Says I, I dunno, Cook – a bit cautious-like cos there’s a rum edge to her sneer and I don’t like it – I dunno nothing about no fish-folk, be dashed if I dew, I say.

Can’t even hazard a guess, Mab? We all heard about you and your secret dips – Like a sea-witch, ent you, Mab Green, love to be waved-on, she do, out in the splash when it get choppy – and all wise and Christian folk are home by the fire!

Mebbe that’s why you ent got no husband and you close to thirty!

Cook got little flecks of summat nasty at the corner of her mouth, dried spittle, bit of spit-froth, like some venomous bite she just waiting to discharge.

I look at her cool-like though inside my heart goo bang-bang bang-bang like I’ll bust.

Fish, I say. I wager the thing’ll eat fish.

Cook near reel orf her fat feet.

What fried, baked, what?

Raw, I say, in a bucket. I’ll give it him.

So I do.

Nice big bucket of pretty shiny fish, all gleaming eyes and glinting coats

Wild Man dev...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• Original Production
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• The Wild Man of Orford
• Characters
• Fishskin Trousers
• Time Spent on Trains
• Enter A Gentleman
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Rights Information