Two Brothers

Hannie Rayson

• Publisher: Currency Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781921428678
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Teatro

The Benedict brothers are on opposite sides of the political divide. Eggs is the Minister for Home Security and prime minister-in-waiting. Tom is a refugee advocate and the head of a charitable foundation. The brothers have a relationship based on affection and respect. And in the jumble of family life they have managed to accommodate their ideological differences. But then an Indonesian fishing boat packed with refugees goes down in the Indian Ocean on Christmas Day. Two hundred and fifty people drown, and one man survives. Two Brothers is a story about what happens when two powerful, passionate and socially committed brothers encounter deadly conflict.

ACT ONE

PROLOGUE

Friday night, 8.30 pm. The remote seaside weekender of the Benedict family. The cliff-top house is in darkness. A savage wind is blowing off the sea.

HAZEM is asleep on the couch.

Tyres on gravel. A sweep of headlights casts shadows. Footsteps on the gravel. The external light switches on automatically, casting an eerie light in the room. There is the sound of the key in the door. It opens.

As EGGS reaches for the light switch, HAZEM leaps up. EGGS shouts out in terror and strikes out at HAZEM. The men tumble and flail. Their bodies smash against furniture. A vase smashes to the ground. EGGS overpowers him. EGGS punches him over and over with a hellish fury; blows to the face and gut. HAZEM collapses.

EGGS seizes a fishing knife. He is winded and bleeding. HAZEM stirs. EGGS lunges at him pointing the knife.

HAZEM: You!

EGGS: Christ!

HAZEM: You kill my family. Finish the job.

HAZEM struggles and is overpowered again.

EGGS: How the hell did you get in?

HAZEM: You murdered my wife. My children.

There is another struggle.

EGGS: Jesus!

HAZEM: Murderer!

EGGS menaces him with the knife at his throat.

I want the people to know.

EGGS: And how will the people know, my friend? Nobody’s watching.

HAZEM lunges. EGGS drives the knife into HAZEM’s belly. He folds over and falls to the floor.

EGGS stares at the body in horror. He paces around and around the body. He holds his hand out to it, in case it jumps up. As though he is trying to make a point but can’t think what it is.

He begins to hit himself with odd repetitive gestures and mounting aggression.

Get up! Get up! Get up! Get up!

He screams and kicks him.

Do you hear me?! Get up!

He is kicking him repeatedly.

What are you doing here? This is my house. This is your fault. You come here and you try and kill people. [Pause.] Whoa. Bleeding. So much bleeding. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on. Here. Here. Here. Here.

He runs off and returns with a tea towel which he scrunches into a ball and pushes tentatively into the wound. Then he springs back and starts to clap his hands together in big spastic claps.

Nope, nope, nope.

He begins to retch and then vomits over the back of the couch. Eventually spent, he reaches for his mobile phone and his composure.

[Into the mobile] Jamie? What time is it? Eight-thirty. Okay. Look, I’m at the beach house now. How far away are you? No listen, we have a situation.

Outside, it is dark and raining.

SCENE ONE

Three months earlier.

The rain transforms into applause. The elegant and urbane EGGS BENEDICT addresses The Melbourne Club. He is fifty-three, bow-tied and nursing a fine glass of red.

EGGS: Thank you. I have three abiding memories of that night—almost ten years ago now—when you first welcomed me to The Club, as a new member. The first is the splendid curried sausages. Which I’ve been enjoying ever since.

Laughter. Applause.

The second is the ’93 Barkers Hill Cab Sav—which we’ve laid on again tonight. [He takes a drink.] Magnificent.

Gentle laughter. ‘Hear, hear.’ Applause.

TOM enters, carrying red wine in a very ordinary wine glass.

TOM: Thank you, comrades. Last time I addressed the Coburg Branch of the ALP we met in the Edinburgh Arms. I could hardly hear myself speak over the bloody pokies. But this is a very classy act. Good tucker. And Barkers Hill Cab Sav. [He takes a drink, with the same appreciation displayed by EGGS.] Lovely.

EGGS: And my third memory is that reprobate Welsford, over there. After pudding, I watched him simultaneously smoke a cigarette, two pipes and an enormous cigar. Dismayed to see you’re still with us, Welly.

Laughter. Applause.

TOM: Well, comrades. The conservative jackals are tearing apart every great social reform of the past hundred years. And you know why they’re being so ruthless? It’s revenge—for the crap time they had at uni in the seventies. They know that we had the best parties and got the best girls.

Laughter. Applause.

EGGS: My friends, thank you for joining me for this little soiree tonight—to celebrate my fifth anniversary as Minister for Home Security.

Applause.

The elegant MRS FI BENEDICT rises to the applause. It is Speech Night at an exclusive Melbourne girls’ school.

FI: Thank you, Headmistress. Many of you girls will know me through my husband—the Minister for H...