Leaving Home, Of the Fields, Lately, and Salt-Water Moon

Three Mercer Plays

David French

• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9780887849084
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Teatro canadese

David French's award-winning plays Leaving Home, Of the Fields, Lately and Salt-Water Moon are available for the first time in a special one-volume edition, with an introduction by Albert Schultz.Set in the 1950s, Leaving Home tells the story of the Mercers, a Newfoundland family who have emigrated to the mainland and lost all sense of their place in the world. In Of the Fields, Lately, the emotionally charged sequel to Leaving Home, young Ben Mercer returns home after being gone for two years and confronts the family he left behind. Salt-Water Moon was written later than the other two plays but tells the earlier story of the courtship of Jacob and Mary Mercer in Newfoundland.Leaving Home was named one of the 100 Most Influential Canadian Books by the Literary Review of Canada. Of the Fields, Lately won the Chalmers Award in 1973, and Salt-Water Moon won the Canadian Authors Association Award for Drama, the Dora Mavor Moore Award for Best New Play, and the Hollywood Drama-Logue Critics' Award.

OF THE FIELDS, LATELY

For all fathers and sons

Of the Fields, Lately was first performed on September 29, 1973, at the Tarragon Theatre, Toronto, with the following cast:

BEN MERCER Tim Henry

JACOB MERCER Sean Sullivan

MARY MERCER Florence Paterson

WIFF ROACH Sandy Webster

Directed by Bill Glassco

Of the Fields, Lately was revived in Toronto on June 25, 2009, by the Soulpepper Theatre Company at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts with the following cast:

BEN MERCER Jeff Lillico

JACOB MERCER Kenneth Welsh

MARY MERCER Diane D’Aquila

WIFF ROACH Eric Peterson

Directed by Ted Dykstra

As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.

PSALM 103, 15–16

CHARACTERS

Jacob Mercer
Mary Mercer
Ben Mercer
Wiff Roach

SCENE

A house in Toronto, January 1961.

ACT ONE
Scene One: Early Sunday evening
Scene Two: Two hours later

ACT TWO
Scene One: Monday morning
Scene Two: Early Monday evening

ACT ONE

SCENE ONE

Limbo. Light up on BEN.

BEN (to the audience) It takes many incidents to build a wall between two men, brick by brick. Sometimes you’re not aware of the building of the wall, and sometimes you are, though not always strong enough or willing enough to kick it down. It starts very early, as it did with my father and me, very early. And it becomes a pattern that is hard to break until the wall is made of sound brick and mortar, as strong as any my father ever built. Time would not level it. Only death.

I don’t know if my father ever remembered one such incident. He never spoke of it to me, but I often thought it was the emotional cornerstone of the wall between us.

Light up on JACOB.

JACOB It was summer, 1952, and I had just come home from work, later than usual. It was going on nine in the evening, and as I stepped in the door, Mary said to me, “Ain’t tonight the night Ben’s team plays for the championship?”

BEN He rushed out the door and down to the schoolyard, the first game he had ever come to, and my mother put his supper in the oven, for later . . . I hadn’t reminded my father of the game. I was afraid he’d show up and embarrass me. Twelve years old, and ashamed of my old man. Ashamed of his dialect, his dirty overalls, his bruised fingers with the fingernails lined with dirt, his teeth yellow as old ivory. Most of all, his lunch pail, that symbol of the working man. No, I wanted a doctor for a father. A lawyer. At least a fireman. Not a carpenter. That wasn’t good enough . . . And at home my mother sat down to darn his socks and watch the oven . . . I remember stepping up to bat. The game was tied; it was the last of the ninth, with no one on base. Then I saw him sitting on the bench along third base. He grinned and waved, and gestured to the man beside him.

JACOB (at the game) That’s my son.

BEN But I pretended not to see him. I turned to face the pitcher. And angry at myself, I swung hard on the first pitch, there was a hollow crack, and the ball shot low over the shortstop’s head for a double. Our next batter bunted and I made third. He was only a few feet away now, my father.

JACOB Ben! Ben! Over here! Ben!

BEN But I still refused to acknowledge him. Instead, I stared hard at the catcher, pretending concentration. And when the next pitch bounced between the catcher’s legs and into home screen, I slid home to win the game.

JACOB His teammates pounced on him and hefted him up on their shoulders and lugged him around the infield. A hero.

BEN And there he was, jumping up and down, showing his teeth, excited as hell.

JACOB “Ben!” I shouted my level best. “Ben!” And I seen him look my way . . . and then look off . . . (Light fades slowly on JACOB.)

BEN And as the crowd broke up and our team stampeded out of the schoolyard, cleats clicking and scraping blue sparks on the sidewalk, I looked back once through the wire fence and saw my father still sitting on the now-empty bench, alone, slumped over a little, staring at the cinders between his feet, just staring . . . I don’t know how long he stayed there, maybe till dark, but I do know he never again came down to see me play. At home that night he never mentioned the game or being there. He just went to bed unusually early . . .

A hymn begins: “Abide with Me,” softly at first as BEN turns and walks into the kitchen, removes his shirt, and drops it into the bushel basket beside the ironing board. The light has been slowly fading, and the hymn rising in volume as the light fades to black, then comes up onstage.

The stage is divided into two rooms: living room and kitchen. In addition there is a hallway with the front door offstage. A staircase leads up from the hallway to the second floor, to the bedrooms and bathroom, all unseen.

The kitchen contains an ironing board, a small arborite table and four chairs, a stove, fridge, cupboards over the sink containing dishes, a wall telephone, a calendar and kitchen prayer. There is also a back door leading off the kitchen and a window.

The living room contains a bay window, a knick-knack cabinet, chesterfield and armchair, TV and radio. There are various family photographs around the room.

It is a few minutes past seven, Sunday evening, January 1961.

JACOB sits on the chesterfield in the living room, listening with a preoccupied look to the hymn which comes from a nearby radio. He wears casual clothes.

MARY is in the kitchen, ironing. She sings along with the hymn. There is a bushel basket of clothing on the floor beside the ironing board, and now and then she helps herself to a shirt or blouse, irons and folds it. She wears black.

MARY Remember that time Dot and me was crossing Water Street with Ben in the carriage? You and Wiff was behind.

JACOB looks up and turns down the radio.

The streetcar had stopped to let us cross, and that old car shot out from behind it and took the carriage right out of our hands.

JACOB Can still hear the t’ump. And you screaming like a teakettle.

MARY Poor Dot. She fainted dead away. T’ought he was killed for sure. Remember that?

JACOB A wonder he wasn’t, the way the carriage was all squashed up.

MARY A miracle she called it. Suppose it was . . . (pause)

JACOB He hardly said hello, Mary . . .

MARY What?

JACOB Two years away, and he hardly gives me a glance.

MARY Well, give him time, he just got in. Besides, you wasn’t much better, the way you kept your distance.

JACOB Not so much as a handshake . . .

MARY Perhaps if you’d put your hand out first . . .

JACOB Yes, and have him chop it off. (He rise...