JELKA ( READING ) :

My Dear Fritzy:

Just a line. We leave next week for St Moritz. Sweet one, I think constantly of you. We have one tremendous interest – your work. I’d make every sacrifice toward it for you, even if it meant losing you, my sweet love. I am so sorry about the last time we met. I acted badly. I will not ask your forgiveness ( you should not ask for mine ), just your understanding. Promise me you won’t worry? Pin your faith to me and you are sure to win. I want to see your dear eyes lose that troubled look – and they will in time. Don’t forget my ‘moustache’ will you, how could you, and don’t think it small – it means something to me now, even if I couldn’t put it into words. I should think you would understand that after I had first loved you like that. I love you with all my heart, you are the only friend in whom I trust, and the only one who means anything to me.

Give my regards to Miss Rosen when you return from Norway. I do know her of course, and met her once – bought two of her paintings – although she will probably not remember me. But she is a fine woman and no doubt best suited to you, but how I long to see you again. Take care, and I have given my husband an ultimatum about Tuesdays. Perhaps your leg really is a result of too much Champagne. Time moves on, Fritz.

Your own Claire.

Jelka puts the letter back in a pocket. THE MUSIC FADES

JELKA ( WHISPERING TO DELIUS ) : Who was Claire, Fred?

DELIUS : Hmm?

ELGAR : Jelka?

Enter Hildegarde.

JELKA : Yes, Hilde?

HILDEGARDE : Madam, there is a young woman at the door. ( Pause. )

JELKA : Yes?

HILDEGARDE : She wishes to see Mister Delius.

Pause.

JELKA : Tell her we are sorry but Mister Delius is not well, that he is sleeping and cannot be disturbed. Tell her that.

HILDEGARDE : Yes, madam.

Hildegarde exits. Jelka looks at Delius.

JELKA : Why, Fred? Why do you still do this to me? You sit there dreaming your life away. I still have to face this world…

ELGAR : Jelka?

Hildegarde enters.

JELKA : Yes, Hilde?

HILDEGARDE : She has gone, madam, but asks that you give this letter to Mister Delius.

Hildegarde hands Jelka a letter. Jelka looks at it, then puts it with the other one.

JELKA : Thank you, Hilde.

Hildegarde exits.

ELGAR : I say, are you alright, Jelka?

JELKA : Yes… fine.

ELGAR : Is Fred asleep?

JELKA : Yes. He sinks easily into sleep now.

ELGAR : You are a brave woman, Jelka. I’m not at all sure I could have coped with Alice had she been in a similar state. Not at all sure.

JELKA : One does. Love is a very strange beast don’t you think. There may be many reasons why one shouldn’t love someone, very positive reasons why one should hate.

ELGAR : They are too close perhaps – love and hate. Too close to separate?

JELKA : No. Love is all powerful, it can never be escaped, not completely. Oh, you may think it has gone, but no, it can creep back and attack, and if you’re not careful, destroy.

ELGAR : Escape? Destroy?

JELKA : I was not careful you see.

ELGAR : Escape has obviously been on your mind?

JELKA : Recently? Oh yes. I look at Fred now and see a wreck of a man, where once he was so agile and powerful. Now look at him, asleep and dribbling like a baby. Blind and paralysed.

ELGAR : Do you see that as some sort of punishment for the…

JELKA : Excesses of youth? Now come on, Edward. I don’t think any of us can deny that as young people we dipped our toes into the pot of excess, that is the privilege the young are given. It is only when one is young that one has the energy surely.

ELGAR : And it is when we are young that we often lack the courage to act on the impulse of love.

JELKA : Or are deprived the ability to act.

ELGAR : That is where the courage is required…

JELKA : Fred was unlucky. He could not deprive himself of love. He most certainly did not lack courage in that department. Women were drawn to him, he to them. ( PAUSE ) He was just unlucky… so was I.

ELGAR : It is…

JELKA : Syphilis? Yes. ( Pause ) He may have caught it in America, at least that is the excuse we most often use, when we talk about it at all. I suppose it puts a distance between us and the cause, turns it into an inevitability – the infliction of the new world upon the old - that it is the fault of society and not the individual. Useful at times I can assure you. But we don’t have much to do with society, and most people think Fred is suffering from one of many ailments old men succumb to. Best left at that I think. And Fred won’t have anything to do with doctors, considers them all to be charlatans.

Pause

ELGAR : Do you think marriage a worthy institution? You and Fred have been married many years.

JELKA : Worthy? They have been thirty devoted years…

Delius awakens

DELIUS : Thirty six, surely.

JELKA : We lived together for six years before marrying, remember?

DELIUS : Of course. How stupid of me. ( To Elgar ) Over the brush. What do you make of that, Edward?

ELGAR : I don’t know. This is certainly not Worcestershire. That would have been frowned upon in Broadheath I can assure you.

JELKA : As you say, this is not Worcestershire, it is France, but believe me things are no different, not in reality, they just appear so on the surface. And Germany is very much like Worcestershire. Is that not so, Fred?

DELIUS : Indeed. And Yorkshire too. But it goes on, people live together, people have children outside of marriage. It is only when religion gets its grubby little fingers into the pie that things go wrong – then one is either ostracised, and you become an outsider, or you conform, and forever have to live it down - conformity and punishment side by side forever.

ELGAR : But society does require that people conform. Where would we be without conformity? Anarchy. George has just come back from Russia and he was saying…

DELIUS : But hasn’t Russia been in a state of anarchy since the revolution, a complete breakdown…

ELGAR : But surely, Russia is now one of the most stable and organised states on earth, and example to us all of state control blending with a caring attitude towards its people…

DELIUS : But millions died from starvation in the civil war.

Russia
ELGAR : Oh dear, what did George say? Yes. “Death is inevitable when a country is wracked by change. That Russia is a beacon to us all, and no religion to stop the progress.” Although I have to say I do believe religion has been a useful break on the excesses of the state in the past.

DELIUS : I fear not, not really. Religion often was the state.

JELKA : Men! Talk! It is the women who have to face the wrath of it all. It is the women who are shamed. It is the women who give birth, whether in or out of marriage. It is invariably the man who walks away. The woman is left quite literally holding the baby.

DELIUS : Jelka…

JELKA : I was brought up with the concept of sin, Fred, it cannot easily be shaken off.

Pause

DELIUS : Do you believe in the idea of sin, Edward?

ELGAR : I sometimes feel I should.

Pause.

JELKA : How long have you been a widower?

ELGAR : Thirteen years.

JELKA : Do you miss her?

DELIUS : Jelka?

ELGAR : My chick? My little swan? Oh, every day, every hour, every minute…

JELKA : And just the one child?

ELGAR : Hmm? Just the one, Carice. Married now. Mrs Blake.

JELKA : Grandchildren?

ELGAR : No. But I remember clearly the day Carice was born - a beautiful summer’s day, August the… ? Damn, I can never remember. ( PAUSE ) I have my dogs now.

JELKA : Edward…

ELGAR : But talking about babies reminds me of a story George told me once. There’s this fellow in Ayot – that’s where George lives – decent chap apparently, whose wife was rushed into the local cottage hospital to have a baby. I have to say I don’t know much about these things. Anyway, after several hours of not hearing anything the man is understandably concerned, so he decides to telephone the hospital. Now, at that time, Ayot only had 3 telephones – George’s, the hospital, and the cricket club. Well, this man is a keen cricketer, first class all-rounder in fact, and naturally he’s a member of the cricket club. Now, in his anxiety he gets the numbers mixed-up and telephones the cricket club instead of the hospital. Well you would don’t you think? And he hadn’t bothered to go round to the hospital, they don’t like the place cluttered-up with expectant fathers. As I say, he calls the hospital on the telephone, or so he thinks. When the call is answered the man naturally asks the state of play, as you would, to be told ( ELGAR LAUGHS ) there are seven out with three to go, and the last one out was a… was a duck! Last one out was a duck. A duck. Do you see?

Laughter from Elgar.

ELGAR : Damn good story don’t you think? George swears it’s true. The postman told him only the other morning.

Jelka looks at Elgar.

JELKA : Ducks?

DELIUS : That means no-one has scored any runs, Jelka.

JELKA : Oh. But what has that to do with babies?

ELGAR : Hmm? Joe didn’t understand either.

Pause

JELKA : My sister has had many babies. ( PAUSE ) All grown-up now of course. We must invite them down soon, Fred.

DELIUS : There really isn’t room, Jelka.

ELGAR : Dogs are much easier to entertain. I wish you would join me one day. Lunch is not to be missed. I have both dogs bibbed-and-tuckered, and they sit at the table along with everyone else, plates of sausages and mash put in front of ‘em by Dick. I tell you Marco looks every inch like Augustus John. Lunch ain’t to be missed. Ain’t for the squeamish either! There’s this shop in Leamington Spa makes the finest bangers in creation…

DELIUS : Do you ever dream about your wife, Edward?

ELGAR : Hmm?

DELIUS : Your wife? Do you dream of her?

ELGAR : Alice? Can’t say I do. ( PAUSE, then to Delius ) Do you dream much, old chap?

DELIUS : Oh, all the time.

ELGAR : Where are they, where are your dreams set?

DELIUS : Florida mostly, the orange plantations at Solana Grove. ( PAUSE ) And those nights in Jacksonville. And there’s old Albert Anderson, the plantation foreman, telling me off about the bad influences of Jacksonville and how I ought to go to church more often…

Delius becomes Albert…

DELIUS ( AS ALBERT ) : Time an’ time I tell Mister Delius he ought to go to church, I don’t care which, ‘cos the Lord He don’t know no denomination. Just like he don’t know color. But Mister Delius he pay no mind, he just tinkered with that piana. But, I tell you it was a happy place. And he never wanted the staff to wait on him or nothing‘, an’ we had to call him Fred, althoughs we hardly ever did – an’ he cook all his own meals. And the music. I ain’t never heard anything like it. He used to like to hear me sing to him, oh, I disremember what I sang, I reckon hymns mostly. He was the kindest man, never allow anyone to badmouth us, and there was plenty who tried.

DELIUS : I did go to church. I’d never heard music like it before.

Pause.

ELGAR : George was telling me the other weekend that it’s always Janey Morris, William Morris’s wife, in his dreams, never May, and it was May he was in love with you know. But no, always her mother Janey. One minute she’s at the dining table with William - he’s talking, talking, talking, and Janey, dear sweet Janey, not saying a word, seldom looking up from her plate, but that face. And later he’d find himself in her bed and she’d be naked, walking across the room toward him, and he’d be unable to take his eyes off her pubic hair - a mass of black rich succulent growth apparently. ( Elgar is suddenly aware of Jelka.) Madam Delius, I do beg your pardon…

DELIUS : ( LAUGHING ) : A bit like a man’s moustache.

Jelka gets up and walks around.

JELKA : I think a woman’s character can often be determined from her genital hair. Bushy and voluminous in growth may suggest an outwardness of spirit, of sensuality, but perhaps of few words? A thin wisp may denote in some a certain narrowness of spirit and emotion, and perhaps a certain tendency towards vociferousness? Take my own for instance…

Jelka begins to to raise her skirts.

ELGAR : Madam Delius! I really don’t know.

Jelka now laughs.

JELKA : A man’s moustache can certainly be seen as an outward sign of a man’s sexuality. I also understand one can determine the size, and shape, of a man’s part from his thumb, the right one I believe. Have you heard about that, Sir Edward?

Elgar looks at his right thumb. There is a smile on Jelka’s face.

JELKA : I think it a great pity that men are far too often deprived the advantage of seeing a woman’s pubic hair until it is too late…

ELGAR : I wonder what Freud might make of your theory?

Pause with laughter.

JELKA : And what do you dream of, Edward?

ELGAR : Me? Well, I have a recurring dream.

DELIUS : Any pubic hair, old man?

ELGAR : Hmm? No! The dream starts outside an old, unoccupied house.

JELKA : Obviously sexual.

ELGAR : Really? But as I say the dream starts outside an old unoccupied house. The gardens are overgrown, but in the distance one can see the blue knuckles of the Malvern Hills…

DELIUS : Blue knuckles, very poetic. Although I would liken them more to breasts…

ELGAR : Fred! I shall refuse to go on.

DELIUS : Sorry, Edward.

ELGAR : Well, some chums dare me to go in, to climb in through a broken window… they keep taunting me about the horrors I shall find inside – that an old woman had been murdered in the house, and naturally the place is haunted.

DELIUS : Very Richmal Crompton. Jelka, do read those Just William stories to me again tonight. Sorry, Edward.

ELGAR : Naturally I climb through the window, a bit like Alice In Wonderland. I know, but there you are. Inside it’s just an old crumbling house. Quite empty… except for the attic.

Elgar pauses.

DELIUS : Well?

ELGAR : Jelka, may I have another glass of Champagne?

JELKA : Of course, of course, how rude of me.

Jelka pours champagne. Elgar drinks slowly. The other look on.

DELIUS : For God’s sake, Edward.

ELGAR : A pianola.

Go To Part 7.