The Shadow Factory (NHB Modern Plays)

Howard Brenton

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781788500272
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Autumn 1940. The Battle of Britain rages.

Southampton is home to our only hope of victory: the Spitfire. But, in one of many devastating raids on the town, the Luftwaffe destroy the Woolston Supermarine Spitfire factory. The Government requisitions local businesses to use as shadow factories – but meets resistance. Fred Dimmock won't give up his family laundry for anyone.

As the Dimmocks, and other families, struggle to keep control of their lives and livelihoods, a story of chaos, courage and community spirit emerges.

Telling the remarkable story of how a city triumphed over adversity, The Shadow Factory opened Southampton's brand-new theatre, NST City, in 2018, directed by Nuffield Southampton Theatres' Director Samuel Hodges.

ACT ONE

Scene One

JACKIE DIMMOCK (twenty-one years) and her friend POLLY STRIDE (twenty-four years). JACKIE has an air rifle, POLLY has a basket.

JACKIE (aside). A lovely day. September, 1940. You just want to reach out and – eat it!

POLLY (aside). Sneaked up here after work. Her idea.

JACKIE (aside). Grounds of Lady Cooper’s stately home. Hursley House.

POLLY (aside). Dark green, yellowy.

JACKIE (aside). Woods and fields. And money.

POLLY (aside). Really pretty.

JACKIE. There’s one!

She fires the rifle. Misses.

Oh sod it!

POLLY. Do you think we really ought to do this?

JACKIE. Come off it, Poll, they say the old girl’s got a Mercedes Benz, a Panhard Dynamic and three Rolls-Royces. She’s loaded! I don’t think she counts her rabbits.

POLLY. Jackie, it’s poaching.

JACKIE. Great, in’t it. Course, if I had a real gun, not this pea-shooting air thing, I could bag one of Lady Da-di-da’s deers.

POLLY. I think you say ‘deer’, not deers.

JACKIE. Ooh, pisscake, Polly the Precise!

POLLY. Deer is a collective noun, that’s all.

JACKIE. Yeah yeah, Miss Clever Clogs.

POLLY. Let’s have our picnic.

JACKIE. And our beer.

They sit. POLLY takes out a rug from the basket and they lay it down. They sit on the rug. POLLY takes two bottles of beer out of the basket and a bottle opener. She opens the bottles of beer, hands one to JACKIE. They chink bottles and drink. They relax.

POLLY takes out a sketchpad.

Think they’ll come today?

POLLY. If not it’ll be tomorrow.

A pause. JACKIE drinking beer, POLLY drawing.

JACKIE. I know a man who’s got a Lee-Enfield.

POLLY. An army gun? Who?

JACKIE. That’d kill a deer. Blow its head right off!

POLLY. But if you did, really did, shoot a deer, what would you do with it?

JACKIE. Eddy Rose the butcher would hang it for us and we’d sell it on the – (Touches her nose.) Eddy’s a friend of my dad’s. You know – trouser legs.

POLLY. Trouser what?

JACKIE (low, quick). Masons.

POLLY. Your family and its fiddles –

JACKIE. It’s the war! You find yourself doing things you never – I mean, look at you. Only woman in the Woolston factory office and twenty-four years old, designing Spitfires?

POLLY. I’m not designing them!

JACKIE. What you doing then?

POLLY. You know I can’t say.

JACKIE. Is it the wings? I imagine you doing the wings.

POLLY. Stop it, you know it’s secret.

JACKIE. Secret, secret, I dunno why they don’t keep the whole war secret. Not let people know why they’re getting bombed at all. Bang! Oh, who bombed my house? Was it Germans in a Junkers 88? Not allowed to say, it’s a secret.

POLLY. Jackie, sometimes you are very silly.

JACKIE. Yeah, in’t I.

JACKIE drinks. She is restless, POLLY is content, drawing.

POLLY. Anyway, who is this man with an army gun?

JACKIE. Oh he’s nothing much.

POLLY. But he’s in the army.

JACKIE. Actually he’s with the machine-gun post on the roof at Woolston.

POLLY. Not – Not Billy Lewis.

JACKIE (a shrug). Maybe.

POLLY. You’re going out with Billy Lewis!

JACKIE. Oh, we’re well past ‘going out’.

POLLY. I see. I hope you know what you’re doing.

JACKIE. Course I do. (A beat.) Can I tell you a secret?

POLLY. Must you?

JACKIE. I’m going to marry him.

POLLY is stunned.

POLLY. But he’s –

JACKIE. Yes I give in, yes he is gorgeous.

POLLY. He is gorgeous, very. But I mean, Jackie – he’s from Portsmouth.

JACKIE. So?

POLLY. So what does your dad say about you marrying a Pompeyite?

JACKIE. I haven’t told him yet.

POLLY. Rather you than me.

JACKIE. Rabbits!

JACKIE springs up with the air gun and fires.

Did I get one?

POLLY. Don’t know, I –

JACKIE. Did, I did, I got one!

She runs off as –

LADY COOPER (seventy-one years) and SYLVIA MEINSTER (fifty-two years) enter. LADY COOPER has American in her voice, tempered by years in England. SYLVIA speaks English cut-glass.

SYLVIA. That young woman’s got a gun!

LADY COOPER. Yes, interesting.

SYLVIA. If she is poaching I will telephone the police.

LADY COOPER. She’s having a bit of fun.

SYLVIA. With a firearm?

LADY COOPER. Air rifle.

SYLVIA. It’s disgraceful, floozies from the town, disporting themselves in the grounds. Leaving rubbish in the bushes, men.

LADY COOPER. They leave men in the bushes? Well! Hang ’em up on the fences, as we do with stoats and the like. Scare off all this male wildlife.

SYLVIA. I’m speaking figuratively.

LADY COOPER. Sylvia, I know you care so much for me, the house, the estate. But I don’t mind people picnicking. It must be horrible down in the town.

SYLVIA. But one does hear of – excesses, bad behaviour.

LADY COOPER. They are getting bombed.

SYLVIA. That is no excuse for displays of drink and wantoness.

LADY COOPER. Sylvia, what a stickler you are.

SYLVIA. War is a great opportunity for self-discipl...