Raymondo

Annie Siddons

• Publisher: Oberon Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781783198955
• eBook ISBN: 9781783198986
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Raymondo and his brother Sparky have been locked in the cellar underneath their house for six years. An accident involving a pigeon enables their escape. But do the brothers have the requisite skills to survive a haphazard and cruel world? A play for one actor. Raymondo is a story of brotherhood, loss, incarceration, escape, survival, desire, art and resilience. It is a story about the shittiness of others, the kindness of others and Love. Simply told by a woman with a microphone and an atmospheric live score of guitars, loops and keyboard, Raymondo is a raw, dark, funny and tender lyrical narrative that will sear through your defences straight to your heart.

Chapter One

A room full of vintage lamps. A Casiotone keyboard on one side, and a guitar station complete with guitarist, loop pedals etc on the other. In the middle, a microphone.

ANNIE takes the mic.

Raymondo theme tune.

Raymondo and his little brother Sparky were locked in a cellar underneath their house by their mother when Raymondo was nine and Sparky was one.

The cellar had a tiny milky window from which the boys could observe the swollen ankles and sensible shoes of passing commuters. It had a menagerie of spiders, earwigs and flies. Twice daily, there would be a knock at the door, and Raymondo’s mother’s maid, a sullen and utterly unimaginative woman called Mercedes, would bring to the boys a lettuce-based meal on a tray. Twice weekly, the bucket into which Raymondo and Sparky evacuated their bowels and emptied their bladders was emptied by that same culpable maid, who never once thought about whether what she was doing was OK.

It was a tiny and attenuated life, mitigated only slightly by the finding of a small supply of Vintage Playboy magazines in the corner. Raymondo tried. He tried so hard. He was someone who made an effort. So he read the articles in the magazines to Sparky in every conceivable accent and voice – and tried to structure his brother’s day with a sense of improvement and joy.

But after six folorn years of striving and effort, Raymondo came to the end of his rope, sighed, and sat down. He’s so young, Raymondo, he’s only fifteen years old, and yet already the worst of ideas has entered his mind – how to leave this vale of tears forever, taking Sparky with him. This is a challenging idea, because the cellar, although dark and insalubrious, contains no convenient sharp edges, nor any other means of self-destruction.

PIGEON theme.

At this point, three stories above him, another being is about to journey from this life to the next.

It’s a pigeon – not endowed with an excess of intelligence – who’s got itself stuck in the yang to the cellar’s yin, the bright, glass-scintillating penthouse in which Raymondo and Sparky’s mother likes to lounge on a buckskin chaise, dipping sourdough bread into oil. Finding no obvious point of exit from this shimmering palace of ostentation, the pigeon tries the application of force over reason, smashes into one of the thirty-six windows, and promptly expires, adding a much needed splash of scarlet to Raymondo’s mother’s neutral colour scheme.

A timely gust of wind scatters the pigeon into the chimney and a serendipitous hole in the pipes sends it pell-mell down into the cellar, where it lands with a dull thud, right at the very feet of suicidal Raymondo and his weak-chested brother Sparky.

EMBERS music.

In Raymondo’s soul, the embers of the will to life are still feebly glowing, although if this were a computer game he’d be on his last pumping little red heart and rapidly running out of time. Still there’s something, in the metallic tang of the pigeon’s blood, the softness of the feathers, and the fact that something has HAPPENED to change the unrelenting sameness of their days, that offers Sparky and Raymondo a tiny glimmer of hope.

In the olden golden days, before Daddy died and when Mummy was happy, Mummy used to sew. She had a real talent for it, and she made Raymondo an amazing appliqué quilt for his bed, depicting his favourite characters, Woundman and Shirley, and the Boy Who Raised His Arm. So now Raymondo, having fashioned a needle from one of the pigeon’s bones, closes his eyes and remembers the action of Mummy’s smooth white arm as she used to sew, and, with his, skinny, sinewy arm, begins to copy it. The process is really frustrating. The feathers don’t always do what Raymondo’s mind wants them to do and the thread, which Raymondo has pulled from his aged cardigan, keeps coming out from the bone needle, so that Sparky, with his tinier and more nimble fingers, has to keep rethreading it. Sometimes Raymondo feels disheartened, and always he’s not entirely sure what he’s doing, but the vision he has impels him to carry on.

And seventy-two hours later, Raymondo, his fingers calloused and sore, turns to Sparky, presents his handiwork and says

‘Sparky. It’s finished.’

So What is it, this act of needlework and determination? What is this garment that Raymondo’s mashed his fingers to create?

It’s a cape.

CAPE theme.

You’re probably thinking that this is some kind of a superheroic narrative and that this cape’s gonna have some kind of incredible powers that are going to solve all the boys’ prob – Well it’s not. It isn’t.

But that’s not to say that the cape is not phenomenal because it is. It’s just – subtle. What the cape does is this: It makes you feel

OK.

Now the palpable absence of anything remotely OK in the lives of either Sparky or Raymondo means that the OK afforded by the cape is a big fucking deal. And this OK allows a tiny shift in their perception that’s like a minute but audacious breeze entering an airless room, and by the time Mercedes comes with their slop they’re bubbling over with an unfamiliar feeling:

Optimism.

‘Why you lookin at me so funny?’ says Mercedes when she comes with their slop. ‘And what’s that ’orrible looking feathery thing?’

‘Oh this, Mercedes’ says Raymondo, ‘is something I just finished making. Please. Put it on.’

Raymondo and Sparky watch anxiously as Mercedes puts the cape on. They scour her impassive face for signs of a shift.

‘Mercedes’

‘Yes’

‘We’d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• About the Author
• Contents
• Foreword
• Thanks
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
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