Mud

Robert Holman

• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9781788502320
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Teatro britannico

'Stagnant. It's stagnant. Seen more life in a dead rabbit.'

A group of lonely people converge on the North Yorkshire moors, in Robert Holman's first full-length play.

George, recently retired and grieving for his wife, has come on holiday to fish. Harold, son of the local squire, has come to shoot. Alan and Pauline have come to escape prying eyes.

Hopes, dreams and fears play out in a Beckettian landscape as RAF fighter planes tear across the sky.

Robert Holman's play Mud was first performed at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in August 1974 under the title Taking Stock.

A moor. To the left, the ground rises to form a small hill. Upon this hill stands a dying tree. Right, at the bottom of the hill, is an area of marsh, a patch of waterlogged ground such as is found in numerous places on any moor.

The ground is rough and barren, covered sparsely in yellow scorched grass, moss and weeds. Only one or two small clumps of purple heather look at all fresh and alive. The ground is stony, especially up the sides of the hill.

Scene One

August the first. A very hot sunny day. In the distance the sound of birds. An aeroplane flies loudly over. The birds are scared and squawk more loudly as they take to the air. GEORGE HARDCASTLE enters. He watches the aeroplane as it flies off into the distance.

GEORGE is sixty-five. He wears a dark brown suit and tie. A pause. GEORGE puts his hands on his hips and surveys the scene. He takes a deep breath, smiles. A pause. He puts down his carrier bag and fishing rod and stands for a moment in silence. Again he takes a deep breath. A pause. He starts to touch his toes.

GEORGE (touches). Hup. (Touches.) Hup. (Touches.) Hup. (In succession.) One, two, three, four. (Stops, out of breath.)

A pause. He looks around to see if anybody is looking and then goes down into a sprinter’s starting position.

On your marks. Get set. Go!

At the same time as he says ‘Go!’ there is a bang from a shotgun. GEORGE runs a few yards and again stops out of breath. He takes a deep breath.

No use me trying to stand on my head.

He takes a paperback fishing book from his pocket.

P for perch. (He opens the book, reads.) – drift float fishing!

A pause.

The method is self-explanatory!

GEORGE is bafffled. He puts his book away and starts to make the necessary preparations for fishing. This is simple, all he has to do is take a slice of bread from his carrier bag and attach a small piece of it to the hook. The rod is already fitted with a fishing line.

While he is doing this, HAROLD PIKE is heard singing in the distance.

HAROLD (off). I was born and bred on Yorkshire’s soil

For thirty-one years I’ve learnt to toil

For my father who’s squire,

He hunts on the moor

And he owns all the land in the valley.

When the August sun shines hot and high

I shoot at birds as they flutter in the sky –

HAROLD enters. He is thirty-one, wears very smart working clothes, fawn trousers, tweed jacket. He carries a shotgun. In his hand he has a dead rabbit. He wears dark glasses.

GEORGE casts his line into the marsh.

You a fisherman?

GEORGE. Yes, I’m a fisherman.

HAROLD. Nice. An expert fisherman?

GEORGE. Wouldn’t say expert. Never been after the big ones, sharks and things like that.

HAROLD. No?

GEORGE. A hobby. Inland fishing. Perch. Prefer the inland waters, never much fancied braving the mid-Atlantic in a rowing boat. Too rough. Leave that to trawlers.

HAROLD. Couldn’t land a three-hundred-pound killer shark?

GEORGE (smiling). Don’t think I could. (He settles back to fish.)

A pause. HAROLD walks on.

HAROLD. You’ll as likely catch a shark in there as a perch.

GEORGE. Oh?

HAROLD. In fact be lucky if you land a rusting old beer can. (He looks into the marsh.) Did once chuck an old McEwan’s Export can in there. Filled it with tiny pebbles to make it sink. Stagnant. It’s stagnant.

GEORGE. Don’t think so.

HAROLD. Know so. Seen more life in a dead rabbit.

GEORGE. Oh.

HAROLD. Beer cans and dead sheep, that’s all there is in there. That’s all.

GEORGE. Well –

A pause. HAROLD walks up the hill.

HAROLD. You’re not bothered?

GEORGE (brightly). It’s the sport that’s important, not the catch. The open air. Catching a fish would be a perk, I can do without perks. (He pulls gently on the line with his fingers.) Landed rainbow trout by the hundred once. From a beck.

HAROLD. Oh?

GEORGE. With a fly. Not here.

HAROLD. No?

GEORGE. Scotland. The north.

HAROLD. Yes?

GEORGE. By the hundred. Great big things, about that size. (He holds his hands two feet apart.)

HAROLD. You’ll be telling me next about the one that got away.

A pause.

When motor vehicles have run them over, damaged them, killed them, hurl them in there. Dead sheep. Get rid of them. Usually stinks on a hot day like this, rotten blood.

GEORGE. Oh.

HAROLD (he licks his finger, holds it in the air). Wind’s blowing from the east today.

GEORGE. Like to feel the open air when I’m fishing. (He looks up.) Watch the clouds chasing in the sky.

HAROLD (he uses his gun as a shooting-stick and sits on it). They say when the wind blows from the east on the first day of August we’ll have storms by the first day of September.

GEORGE. Earth beneath my feet.

HAROLD. If they’re not too bad we send them to the hunt to feed to the hounds. Dead sheep.

A pause.

GEORGE. You fish?

HAROLD jumps up. He holds his gun as if about to shoot.

HAROLD. I shoot! BANG. Rabbits. Anything! Find blowing little animals to bits very relaxing. When I was a boy I used to drown kittens. Would do it in the bath. Used to hold them under with the end of one of my toy battleships. (Getting very excited he starts to move the gun from side to side.) Taught this dog we had to catch rats. Called her Ratter. A pedigree spaniel. Used to wait, crouched by the haystack, Ratter on lead, saliva dripping from her chops, waiting. Father taught me. Slip the lead, Ratter’d get one in her mouth, crush it in her jaws. Bloody great brown rat dead in her mouth.

A pause.

Break a leg i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Contents
• Introduction
• Original Production
• Mud
• About the Author
• Copyright and Performing Information