Part 6 - The Excesses Of Youth
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.
