The Torrents

Oriel Gray

• Publisher: Currency Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781760620165
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Drama
• Index: Literature

The gold rush is beginning to wane in Koolgalla and the editors of the Koolgalla Argus must decide between protecting old interests and investing in the future. But when the new editorial assistant, JG Milford, arrives and it turns out the 'J' stands for Jenny, she creates havoc.%##CHAR13##%%##CHAR13##%A forgotten classic, The Torrents won the 1955 Best Play award alongside Summer of the Seventeenth Doll but the play never had the same impact. Perhaps it was ahead of its time. Currency is proud to republish a work whose themes of media chauvinism, environmental destruction and corruption are chillingly relevant today.

ACT ONE

SCENE ONE

The office of the Koolgalla Argus. The larger part of the set is occupied by an all-purpose room. It is in a dreadful muddle—on the small table downstage right, there are several green baize boxes, bursting at their sides, spilling blocks on to the floor. There is a scratched and bow-legged desk with a typewriter of the period, and a collection of newspaper files. There is also a filing cabinet, and a branching Victorian-type hat-rack... empty at the moment. A door marked ‘PRIVATE’ leads into Rufus Torrent’s office… a small area (preferably on a slightly higher level), furnished with an imposing desk and swivel chair... (all we can see of it).

Except for the dust and the untidiness, the impression of the set is warm and light—windows look down on the main street of Koolgalla.

On one wall is a dusty glass case carrying a plaster cast of a nugget—the first great find in the district. There is also a calendar, which displays—amid a quantity of scrollwork—a picture resembling the ‘Stag at Bay’, and the beginning of the year ‘189-’ (the last digit torn off). There is also a picture of Queen Victoria—to which has been added a long, curly moustache.

As the curtain rises, CHRISTY—old, gnomish, fantastic—is perched on the desk upstage, spinning a yarn to BERNIE, who is sixteen, gauche, with a puppy charm. The feeling of the scene is that of the schoolroom picture of the old sailor telling stories to young Raleigh and Frobisher...

CHRISTY: [this is pure showmanship] O’ course, we all knew there was goin’ to be trouble—there had to be. ‘By Grundy’, says Jim Stephens to me… he was a mate of mine, little feller with a wall eye… ’nuther feller I knew had a piebald gelding with an eye the very spit of Jim’s.

BERNIE: [anxious to get on with the story] And then Jim Stephens said to you—

CHRISTY: Eh? Oh yes—‘By Grundy’, he says, ‘if the red coats take the Reform League lying down, we’ll be able to use ’em for doormats!’ O’ course, we knew they wouldn’t, but—‘Let ’em come’, we said!

BERNIE: [awed and believing] And you really knew Peter Lalor, Christy?

CHRISTY: [with a light laugh] Knew ’im? Well as I know you, young Bernie! ‘Christy’, he used to say, ‘Christy, you’re only the size of half a man, but by Grundy, you’re worth ten!’ He had a quaint way of expressing himself—Irish he was, y’know like his Nibs…

Thumbing a gesture towards the door marked ‘PRIVATE’.

BERNIE: And were you there when they took—the Oath?

CHRISTY: Was I there? By Grundy, I… well, I wasn’t exactly there, because I was called away on business that day, but there was—oh, now, how many would it be… a thousand say—or maybe eight hundred…

BERNIE: Five hundred, Christy…

CHRISTY: As I was saying—five hundred…

BERNIE: [softly: he knows it by heart and he lives it as he speaks] Five hundred armed diggers then assembled, and Peter Lalor was on the stump, holding with his left hand the muzzle of his rifle. A gesture of his right hand signified what he meant when he said, ‘It is my duty now to swear you in’.

JOCK MACDONALD appears in the doorway—a man of fifty, very hard and stringy, a sharp voice, a Scots accent, a shrewd, competent fair-minded man. He watches and listens, half annoyed, half amused. CHRISTY and BERNIE are quite unaware of him.

Lalor now knelt, with head uncovered, and with the right hand pointing to the standard, exclaimed in a firm measured tone.

JOCK: Get those proofs pulled up!

CHRISTY and BERNIE both jump. CHRISTY gets down from the desk. BERNIE looks shamefaced.

When I tell you to do a job, Bernie, I trust you—I don’t expect to have to be calling you every ten minutes, like a mother with a bairn in leading-strings. Now we’re waiting for those proofs, and they’re no’ pulled yet, and the third page can’t be locked up until they are.

BERNIE: I’m sorry, Mr MacDonald, but Christy began to tell me…

JOCK: [sternly] How old are you, Bernie?

BERNIE: Nearly sixteen.

JOCK: Old enough to be working—old enough to take responsibility.

BERNIE: I’ve been hard at it since early this morning, Mr MacDonald.

JOCK: If you don’t like it, my lad, get your mother’s washing up dish and star...