The Peach Season

Debra Oswald

• Publisher: Currency Press
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781921429644
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

After the murder of her husband, Celia has shut herself and her 16-year-old daughter Zoë away, toiling on a peach farm in the middle of nowhere. The arrival of two young people to help during picking season heralds the beginning of the end for Celia's safe existence.Her daughter falls in love with enigmatic, erratic Kieran, but when the relationship is threatened, they run away together. The safe, perhaps smothering, world that Celia has created unravels; her paranoia and insecurities amplified to full volume. Playing out alongside her fear, we see the increasingly degrading and dangerous lifestyle that the two elopers have fallen into.The Peach Season is a powerful, salutary tale showing what it's like to be a young person desperate for independence, but also, crucially, what it's like to be a parent during the painful process of letting children fly the nest.

ACT ONE

SCENE ONE

A stone-fruit farm. Summer.

Trees heavy with fruit. Palettes of packing boxes in a yard which is flanked by a house and sheds.

CELIA enters with her arms full of peaches. She is in her early forties, energetic, warm.

CELIA: Have you seen these Red Havens?! Luscious. Dead-on ready to pick. A day over, if anything.

She gently releases the armload of fruit into a box. We realise she is speaking to DOROTHY.

DOROTHY is in her seventies, with a Hungarian accent. She wears an assortment of vibrantly patterned clothes and a mass of long grey hair. She can wander between scenes—sometimes in the scene herself, sometimes addressing the audience.

DOROTHY: [to the audience] Before we begin this story, let me say: you can’t put the blame to anyone for what happened. Good people. Trying to avoid the necessary losses.

CELIA: Zoe fell asleep after lunch.

DOROTHY: Ah.

CELIA: I won’t wake her up now. She might as well sleep while I work out what to do. [She grabs a peach from the box and inhales its scent. She laughs.] Can you believe this? Best season for five years and the bloody fruit’s going to rot on the trees.

CELIA throws herself into work, hauling stuff around.

Sixteen-year-old ZOE appears, unseen by CELIA, and watches from a hiding spot.

DOROTHY: [to the audience] Sometimes all you can do is sit back and watch people make mistakes. The instant a person loves a person or a thing, they face the risk of losing that person or thing.

JOE enters, taking off his suit coat and rolling up his shirt sleeves. He’s about forty.

CELIA: Joe! Hi. Want a cold drink on this stinking day?

JOE: Nah, I’m fine, thanks.

DOROTHY: He’s driven in his airconditioned car from his airconditioned office.

JOE: How are you, Mum?

JOE gives DOROTHY a kiss on both cheeks.

DOROTHY: Why do you come out here to check on me? I’m okay.

JOE: I’m here to maybe do Celia a favour. Are you still needing pickers?

CELIA: Desperately. Roy’s whole mob of pickers have buggered off nobody knows where.

JOE signals to someone offstage. KIERAN and SHEENA enter.

JOE: I might’ve found you a couple of people.

CELIA watches them approach. KIERAN is eighteen, ebullient, hyper, gauche, but winning. SHEENA, in her mid-twenties, has a tough, sharp-tongued manner, awkward and wary.

CELIA: You know them?

JOE: No. They were at the garage in town. Car broken down.

CELIA: [smiling heartily] G’day. I’m Celia.

SHEENA: Oh, uh, Sheena and this is—

KIERAN: Kieran. Celia? Celia? Hi. This place is so mad. The trees right down to the road—You grew all those?

CELIA: Yeah.

KIERAN: Mad. All this excellent fruit.

KIERAN grins at CELIA who can’t help smiling back.

CELIA: Oh, this is Joe’s mum, Dorothy.

SHEENA nods hello.

Dorothy handles the fruit grading and packing for us at this time of year.

DOROTHY: [dancing her hands in the air] The sharpest eyes and softest hands available in the fruit bowl of south-western New South Wales.

KIERAN laughs, appreciating DOROTHY. While SHEENA and CELIA talk, KIERAN bounces around looking at the peaches with delighted curiosity.

SHEENA: Heard you might have some work going.

CELIA: Yeah.

SHEENA: Well, we need to earn some money as quickly as we can so—umm—

CELIA: Any experience picking stone fruit?

SHEENA shakes her head.

Any kind of fruit?

SHEENA: None.

CELIA: Okay. That’s teachable. That’s doable. When your car’s fixed, you’ll have transport out here from town every day?

SHEENA: Uh, no, we don’t get the car back ’til we earn the money to pay for the parts.

CELIA: Right… It’s just we’re not set up to have pickers stay on the place.

JOE draws CELIA aside for a whispered conference.

JOE: They’re pretty desperate, I reckon. Any chance they could camp on the property?

CELIA: I don’t like the idea of people—strangers—staying out here. I decided years ago not to go that way.

JOE: Yep, fair enough. If you don’t feel comfortable about it, I’ll find them somewhere else to—

SHEENA: Look, um, if it’s all a big hassle, y’know, don’t worry. We’ll piss off and—

CELIA: No. Don’t piss off. I’ve got twenty thousand peaches that have to be picked before they rot. I need hard workers in a hurry.

SHEENA: I need two thousand bucks in a hurry.

CELIA looks at SHEENA, sizing her up.

CELIA: See that shack? It’s primitive. And filthy. Hasn’t been used for fifteen years.

SHEENA: Primitive is oka...