lady croom: Mr Noakes!
noakes: Your ladyship -
lady croom: What have you done to me!
noakes: Everything is satisfactory, I assure you. A little behind, to be sure, but my dam will be repaired within the month -
lady croom: (Banging the table) Hush!
(In the silence, the steam engine thumps in the distance.) Can you hear, Mr Noakes?
noakes: (Pleased and proud) The Improved Newcomen steam pump - the only one in England!
lady croom: That is what I object to. If everybody had his own I would bear my portion of the agony without complaint. But to have been singled out by the only Improved Newcomen steam pump in England, this is hard, sir, this is not to be borne.
noakes: Your lady-
lady croom: And for what? My lake is drained to a ditch for no purpose I can understand, unless it be that snipe and curlew have deserted three counties so that they may be shot in our swamp. What you painted as forest is a mean plantation, your greenery is mud, your waterfall is wet mud, and your mount is an opencast mine for the mud that was lacking in the dell. (Pointing through the window.) What is that cowshed?
noakes: The hermitage, my lady?
lady croom: It is a cowshed.
noakes: Madam, it is, I assure you, a very habitable cottage,
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properly founded and drained, two rooms and a closet under
a slate roof and a stone chimney -lady croom: And who is to live in it? noakes: Why, the hermit. lady croom: Where is he? noakes: Madam? lady croom: You surely do not supply a hermitage without a
hermit? noakes: Indeed, madam-lady croom: Come, come, Mr Noakes. If I am promised a
fountain I expect it to come with water. What hermits do you
have? noakes: I have no hermits, my lady. lady croom: Not one? I am speechless. noakes: I am sure a hermit can be found. One could advertise. lady croom: Advertise? noakes: In the newspapers. lady croom: But surely a hermit who takes a newspaper is not a
hermit in whom one can have complete confidence. noakes: I do not know what to suggest, my lady. Septimus: Is there room for a piano? noakes: (Baffled) A piano? lady croom: We are intruding here - this will not do, Mr
Hodge. Evidently, nothing is being learned. (To noakes)
Come along, sir! thomasina: Mr Noakes - bad news from Paris! noakes: Is it the Emperor Napoleon? THOMASINA: No. (She tears the page off her drawing blocky with her
'diagram' on it.) It concerns your heat engine. Improve it as
you will, you can never get out of it what you put in. It
repays eleven pence in the shilling at most. The penny is for
this author's thoughts.
(She gives the diagram to SEPTIMUS who looks at it.) noakes: (Baffled again) Thank you, my lady.
(noakes goes out into the garden.) lady croom: (To Septimus) Do you understand her? Septimus: No. lady croom: Then this business is over. I was married at
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seventeen. Ce soir ilfaut qu'on parlefrangais,je te demande, Thomasina, as a courtesy to the Count. Wear your green velvet, please, I will send Briggs to do your hair. Sixteen and eleven months . . .! (She follows noakes out of view.)
thomasina: Lord Byron was with a lady?
Septimus: Yes.
thomasina: Huh!
(Now Septimus retrieves his book from thomasina. He turns the pages, and also continues to study Thomasina3s diagram. He strokes the tortoise absently as he reads, thomasina takes up pencil and paper and starts to draw Septimus with Plautus.)
Septimus: Why does it mean Mr Noakes's engine pays eleven pence in the shilling? Where does he say it?
thomasina: Nowhere. I noticed it by the way. I cannot remember now.
Septimus: Nor is he interested by determinism -
thomasina: Oh . .. yes. Newton's equations go forwards and backwards, they do not care which way. But the heat equation cares very much, it goes only one way. That is the reason Mr Noakes's engine cannot give the power to drive Mr Noakes's engine.
Septimus: Everybody knows that.
thomasina: Yes, Septimus, they know it about engines!
SEPTIMUS: (Pause. He looks at his watch.) A quarter to twelve. For your essay this week, explicate your diagram.
thomasina: I cannot. I do not know the mathematics.
Septimus: Without mathematics, then.
(thomasina has continued to draw. She tears the top page from her drawing pad and gives it to SEPTIMUS.)
thomasina: There. I have made a drawing of you and Plautus.
SEPTIMUS: (Looking at it) Excellent likeness. Not so good of me. (thomasina laughs, and leaves the room. AUGUSTUS appears at the garden door. His manner cautious and diffident. SEPTIMUS does not notice him for a moment. SEPTIMUS gathers his papers together.)
Augustus: Sir .. .
Septimus: My lord . . . ?
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AUGUSTUS: I gave you offence, sir, and I am sorry for it. Septimus: I took none, my lord, but you are kind to mention it. Augustus: I would like to ask you a question, Mr Hodge.
(Pause.) You have an elder brother, I dare say, being a
Septimus? Septimus: Yes, my lord. He lives in London. He is the editor of
a newspaper, the Piccadilly Recreation. (Pause.) Was that
your question?
(AUGUSTUS, evidently embarrassed about something, picks up
the drawing of Septimus.) Augustus: No. Oh ... it is you? ... I would like to keep it.
(Septimus inclines his head in assent.) There are things a
fellow cannot ask his friends. Carnal things. My sister has
told me ... my sister believes such things as I cannot, I
assure you, bring myself to repeat. Septimus: You must not repeat them, then. The walk between
here and dinner will suffice to put us straight, if we stroll by
the garden. It is an easy business. And then I must rely on
you to correct your sister's state of ignorance.
(A commotion is heard outside - Bernard's loud voice in a sort
of agony.) Bernard: (outside the door) Oh no - no - no - oh, bloody hell! -Augustus: Thank you, Mr Hodge, I will.
(Taking the drawing with him, Augustus allows himself to be
shown out through the garden door, and SEPTIMUS follows him.
BERNARD enters the room, through the door HANNAH left by. VALENTINE comes in with him, leaving the door open and they are followed by HANNAH who is holding the 'garden book'.)
Bernard: Oh, no - no -
hannah: I'm sorry, Bernard.
Bernard: Fucked by a dahlia! Do you think? Is it open and shut? Am I fucked? What does it really amount to? When all's said and done? Am I fucked? What do you think, Valentine? Tell me the truth.
valentine: You're fucked.
Bernard: Oh God! Does it mean that?
hannah: Yes, Bernard, it does.
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Bernard: I'm not sure. Show me where it says. I want to see it. No - read it - no, wait. . .
(Bernard sits at the table. He prepares to listen as though listening were an oriental art.) Right.
HANNAH: (Reading) 'October ist, 1810. Today under the direction of Mr Noakes, a parterre was dug on the south lawn and will be a handsome show next year, a consolation for the picturesque catastrophe of the second and third distances. The dahlia having propagated under glass with no ill effect from the sea voyage, is named by Captain Brice 'Charity' for his bride, though the honour properly belongs to the husband who exchanged beds with my dahlia, and an English summer for everlasting night in the Indies.' (Pause.)
Bernard: Well it's so round the houses, isn't it? Who's to say what it means?
hannah: (Patiently) It means that Ezra Chater of the Sidley Park connection is the same Chater who described a dwarf dahlia in Martinique in 1810 and died there, of a monkey bite.
Bernard: (Wildly) Ezra wasn't a botanist! He was a poet!
hannah: He was not much of either, but he was both.