Summer of the Seventeenth Doll

Ray Lawler

• Publisher: Currency Press
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781921428616
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

Ray Lawler's revised script (2012) of his (and Australia's) most famous play, in which two larrikin cane cutters and their women awaken to middle-age. The impact of The Doll cannot be overstated. Its success both here and abroad was quickly recognised as a defining moment in Australian theatre history.Also available in The Doll Trilogy.

ACT TWO

SCENE ONE

Late on New Year’s Eve. A hot, velvety summer night, the French windows and the front door of the Leech house stand wide open in the hope of catching any stray breeze. Throughout this scene, at appropriate intervals, the various sounds of New Year’s Eve revels are distantly audible. At present we are aware of these in the lost, long drawn-out cries of children engaged in some street lamp activity.

Within the house, in the sweat-reflecting lighting of the sitting room, ROO and OLIVE are seated at the table, playing a spaced-out game of cards that has little interest for either of them. OLIVE, languidly shuffling the cards, is wearing an old house dress and slippers; ROO, although scrubbed and showered after a heavy day’s work, has on a nondescript shirt and drab, worn trousers. He is sitting sideways to the table, his legs stretched out and his feet propped up on one of the chairs. BARNEY is lying full-length on the chaise longue, finishing off the writing of a letter with laborious concentration. He is dressed in crumpled holiday clothes that have seen him through a long day’s drinking, and he has come through this indulgence to a state of gritty sobriety and restless boredom.

PEARL is comfortably ensconced in a chair, busy with a piece of knitting. She is wearing a bright print frock with a dominant note of red in its colouring—her identification with life on the spree. Unlike the others in the room, she is relaxed and very much at ease. Indeed, PEARL has blossomed, from the tentative, suspicious attitude she had earlier, she has graduated to an assurance that is a little offensive in its complacency. She pauses at the end of a line of knitting, to smile at the faint calls of the children’s neighbourhood game.

PEARL: Hear those kids? We used to play that. ‘Charlie Over the Water’ it’s called. You must know it, Ol? Don’t suppose you boys do—no, more a city game. Needs a good back street… Ah, listen, there they go: ‘Charlie over the water, Charlie over the sea, Charlie broke the teapot, and blamed it on to me’… Funny, isn’t it? Things that you remember? Thirteen years of age, the boys were always pickin’ me to go out in the middle, ‘Charlie Over the Water’. I used to think because I was a decent runner, and whoever’s in the middle got to do a lot of chasin’ around. But then somebody spoiled it for me— girl named Cissie Lonigan. Said the boys picked me because I was developin’ early, and they liked to have me running up and down so they could watch me jiggle. Don’t know whether I was madder at the boys or Cissie Lonigan. [Securing her knitting] There, need more wool. [Looking around] All very quiet? [She stretches herself, to address BARNEY.] How’s that letter going? Put in what I said ’bout having her trained for dressmakin’?

BARNEY: Give over, will you? Reckon I was mad.

PEARL: Got a daughter, then you ought to take an interest. ‘Dear Dot, here’s the usual, hope you’re both well.’ Hardly call that having a family.

BARNEY: [shoving the letter into an envelope] I don’t have a family, what I got is— [A sudden vicious slap at his bare arm] Oh, those bloody mossies. Never stop.

ROO: It’s them ferns on the verandah. Full of ’em.

OLIVE: [activating the card game] I call trumps.

BARNEY rises and tosses his letter aside, seeking some diversion.

BARNEY: No no, look—forget the cards. Let’s get away out of it, uh? Go down the beach, or somewhere?

PEARL: Not the beach, anywhere but the—too late to be goin’ out now, anyway. After eleven o’clock.

BARNEY: New Year’s Eve? How late’s that? Even the nippers are still runnin’ the streets.

OLIVE: All very well for you. You haven’t done a day’s work. Spades.

BARNEY: Not as though any of us are gunna sleep, a night like this. [Scratching his mosquito-bitten arm] Might as well be down there as stewin’ here, gettin’ eaten alive.

PEARL: Never known such a gad-about. Honestly. Always wanting to be goin’ out somewhere.

BARNEY: Isn’t only me. What about Olive?

OLIVE: I’m playing cards.

BARNEY: [approaching the table] Other times it used to be you dragged us down to the beach on hot summer nights. [Leaning on the back of her chair, distracting her from the game] What about that midnight when we hired the old bloke with the cab to take us all down to Altona? Landed home half past seven in the mornin’. Didn’t worry about havin’ to work all day then.

PEARL: Oh, don’t go on, Barney. Can’t you see no-one wants to go out? Roo is tired.

ROO: [jerked out of his lethargy] Me? I’m not tired. Who said I was—? [He tosses his cards on the table and removes his feet from the chair, to sit bolt upright.] I’ll go anywhere you want me.

OLIVE: [sharply, in his defence] Not a matter of being tired. Just not in the mood. If it wasn’t New Year’s Eve, I’d be in bed right now.

BARNEY: Okay, okay. But we’re gunna have to do somethin’ till twelve o’clock. Can’t just sit around.

PEARL: I know. [Picking up her knitting] You can let me try this sleeve on you.

BARNEY: Oh, Gawd.

PEARL: Give me some idea—

BARNEY: Won’t...