Death of England: Delroy

Roy Williams, Clint Dyer

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350229594
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Teatro britannico

Me jumping out of the van, was the beginning of a very bad day for me. I just didn't know it, but I was going to know it, in about four minutes, I was going to know, fer trut. 2020. Delroy is arrested on his way to the hospital. Filled with anger and grief, he recalls the moments and relationships that gave him hope before his life was irrevocably changed. Written in response to their play Death of England, Death of England: Delroy is a new standalone work by Clint Dyer and Roy Williams, which follows a Black working-class man searching for truth and confronting his relationship with
White Britain. This edition was published to coincide with the world premiere of Death of England: Delroy, at the National Theatre in 2020. The production was the first play to reopen the theatre following the Coronavirus pandemic.

Scene One

Front Room

Delroy stands laughing loudly with a Guinness in his hand. He is clearly drunk.

Delroy It was as if things weren’t bad enough. It was the punch in Punch and Judy, the real in surreal . . . I mean, like I didn’t know, understand, get, how twisted, corked, mash-up life can be already. They was gonna take my dignity too . . . my dignity, man . . . but I wasn’t gonna let him know that.

Wasn’t gonna give him, them, the pleasure. Though to be fair he was nice . . . well as you can be in the circumstances, considering. I mean like, he would never have known the size of the crater on my heart.

He’s got as shit a job as mine I guess. So maybe I should just enjoy the fact I had a white man doing a Kaepernick. I am guessing everyone knows what I’m on about? Colin Kaepernick. You’d have to be the biggest tosser in the world not to know, right. You’d have to have your head so stuck up your privilege not to know, you’d need Nelson Mandela to rise from the dead and twerk, naked, on the finish line at Ascot to actually see black people exist. So he’s kneeling there . . . in front of me . . . and he’s telling me, showing me, explaining how I’m gonna have to manage this shit. But even though it was killing me . . . all I’m thinking of really is her . . . her, who is she? Where is she? Is she ok? but I have to engage . . . but I keep drifting off . . . thinking about her . . . wanting to hold her, smell her . . . then he’s says the words ‘breach’.

Man You’ll be in breach.

Delroy And my mind whip pans to his will.

I’ll breach?

Man Yeah and that can . . . well that’s like, you’re fucked! They could bang you up for that.

Delroy I nodded like a schoolboy being a chastised by his headmaster. He could see my ego sliding off under the door. So in an effort to lighten the mood he asked

Man What do you do?

Delroy I paused to try and work out if he was the right kind of person to tell. Noticing my reticence, he looked down to my ankle and clicked it in place thoughtfully and then asked.

Man Alright, what’s the funniest thing about your job?

Delroy And I just go into one . . . must be the nerves, the anger, the shame . . . yeah the utter shame of it all . . .

The surprise

I say as he stands up and plugs me into the wall.

The surprise . . . yeah, the surprise . . . I think people fink, they’re kinda untouchable, well not untouchable just . . . just that it won’t go ‘that’ wrong for ’em. Well, until we bailiffs rattle their cage . . . yeah, bruv, I used to come in and shatter that shit good.

He laughs his infectious laugh fully again.

Cheez . . . the look on the their faces . . . it’s like all the muscles in their face just give up . . . like some hundred-year-old man’s scrotum, all lifeless and southbound.

He goes for his bag and starts packing his stuff up but keeping eye contact with me, like he’s fully engaged, interested, when he must’ve been dying for me to shut the fuck up.

He giggles childishly.

Every time same shit, like it’s some kinda ‘surprise’. They haven’t paid! The rent, the mortgage or whatever, they ain’t paid! So where’s the fucking surprise.

Cracks me up.

Posh Man GET OUT!

Working-Class Woman Leave me stuff alone.

Delroy This student said my favourite. Stood there . . . this guy, made a grunge attire look well dressed he did.

Student HOW DARE YOU!

Delroy That’s my favourite . . . he ain’t paid his bills and I’m the scum. ‘How dare you!’ Jokes, man.

He drinks down the last of the Guinness and opens another.

Then . . . he wants my sympathy . . . I mean what the actual fuck . . . I was like Mate, I’m a black man. Of West Indian descent, claiming some kinda Britishness . . . on the account of the fact that I was born here and my grandparents was born in a British colony that ‘reach inna England’ with a British passport in the fifties, and had learnt all the British values there, of not giving a shit about anybody! Part from their kin . . . I’m a product of this country!

Student Come on ‘man’ you could help me. We could ‘keep it on a downlow’.

Delroy I said to him, Boss man, you’re tripping.

He’s got his coat on now, this tagman fellow, and he’s holding the door knob hinting desperately at me that he wants to talk . . . but I don’t wanna hear what he’s got say . . . I don’t wanna hear the truth of what he has to say so I carry on.

He laughs taking a large swig of Guinness.

Here’s the rub . . . if there are no evictions, I don’t get paid and I need to get paid or I’m not a good member of society, right?

That’s capitalism ain’t it? Or consumerism . . . one of the two . . . someone has to pay for me to live rich . . . that’s British values, no? . . . all this.

Michael We’re in it together.

Delroy Dat’s what Michael . . . my mate Michael gives it.

Michael We’re in it together, Delroy.

Delroy laughs.

Delroy He says, white guy.

I’ve known him since school. My best friend to be honest . . . but it’s been on the ropes . . . the friendship . . . he mugged me right off a while back and, well, they hated me doing this job, goes against . . . well . . . I’m not sure but . . . I was like ‘I’m British!’ . . . all we do is clap, pull down a few statues and discuss.

Bout their looking at me for sympathy, who’s Michael to think I should have sympathy. I’m like, ‘Get de fuck out of de yard!’

Man It takes about a hour and half to charge.

He says, not taking a breath in case I start popping off again. But I’m on a roll.

Delroy And my daughter! She was born eight weeks ago, and I ain’t even seen her. They’ve made no effort to make things right . . .

It came like vomit from deep inside me, unannounced and visceral as fuck.

None of them! No effort! . . . they didn’t even come to court!

Man I gotta go, mate . . .

Delroy His knitted brow making it clear he’d got the arse with me now.

Man Remember if it bleeps you’re in breach . . . so you’ve got to keep it charged . . . right?

Delroy I nodded again like the schoolboy from before.

Man Charge it every day . . . right.

Delroy And with dat . . . he was gone like some CIA operative . . . all he needed was a plume of smoke and I would have thought I’d imagined it. I looked down at it . . . my tag, my fucking tag and laughed.

He laughs loudly. He takes a big swig.

To be honest though I never gave a fuck who it was we evicted, black, white, Indian, Chinese . . . European . . . though that’s white still though, right? . . . sometimes I find that shit funny too . . . Whites hating whites cos they got a different accent . . . funny bwoy . . . when they know, unlike us, blacks, if they breed here, their kids will be considered more English then me! Who’s got generations of Britishness but that’s being British innit . . . well that’s what works for most of us apart from that lot . . . the Kumbaya lot who just love to march, while singing and partying.

He laughs, mimicking them.

Thinking that it can make changes, jokers . . . love to travel that lot, think they’re better than us for it too . . . fuck dat, staying right here, earning my corn, get a nice car, lickle flat, big flat-screen TV...