In my case, all I felt was a sense of profound depression and boredom. Eventually the dialogue even began to repeat itself, with one refrain in particular cropping up time and time again:
Well, this same farrago went on for another hour and a half, without any interval and by now the sun had set and the moon had risen. Most of the audience had simply got up and left by this point, and were probably demanding refunds at the box office.
I would have left too, but for the natural, outside event that accompanied the play. I imagine that this performance had been carefully scheduled by the auteur behind New Quests for Nothing to coincide with the phenomenon. I hadn’t known of it in advance, and indeed, I cannot say I saw the event reported in the press thereafter, but it certainly occurred. I am convinced I did not imagine it.
A lunar eclipse was taking place and gradually the moon turned blood-red as it passed through the Earth’s shadow.
During this event the actors fell to their knees, arms raised aloft, and started chanting gibberish.
I watched for another five minutes and then left just as the eclipse began to finish. I had no idea whether or not the play continued, but I didn’t want to see it through until the end. Nor did I want to have to run the risk, afterwards, of having to speak to Celia Waters about it. As I have said, there was scarcely anyone now left in the audience, and there was a chance she may have noticed me sitting there, having kept my promise to attend.
I returned to London the next day, having cut short my trip. My cousin in Sennen Cove advised me, some weeks later, that the play had been pulled after that one performance and had caused something of a rumpus locally as an obvious attempt at a publicity stunt. Eventually, the actors had to be physically removed from the stage by the management, for they carried on with the thing even when the theatre was completely empty.
Another play was hastily scheduled at short notice by the Minack to fill the gap; something by Alan Ayckbourn I believe.
I never heard anything further about New Quests for Nothing or “Doctor Prozess” over the years. Though for some reason I half-expected it to turn up again at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival.
But I did encounter Celia Waters again, twenty years after the events I’ve already described.
By now I had long since left the play publishing business and taken up employment in another field altogether, working for a small property development agency situated in north London. One of our clients, who owned a number of derelict properties in Cornwall, but who lived in London, contacted us for a feasibility study on the erection of three new houses on a place about a mile or so from Sennen that had been, during the 1970s and 1980s, a “surf village” called “Skewjack.” People would bus over from it to the sandy beach at Sennen Cove. The place had been closed for decades, although a cottage on the site was still occupied and was rented out to a tenant who also acted as nominal caretaker for the grounds. No maintenance duties were required, but simply an on-site presence to keep the chalets and other buildings free from the likes of squatters or arsonists.
I hadn’t been down to that part of Cornwall since that last trip, twenty years earlier. My cousin had emigrated to Australia six months after my visit, having met, fallen in love with, and hastily married a young woman from Sydney who had been on holiday in this country.
After arriving in Penzance (the last leg of the journey as interminable as I remembered it to be), I took a cab from the station in order to reach the remains of Skewjack surf village. We were almost at Land’s End before it turned left off the A30 into a lane. One more left turn, then ahead for a few hundred yards and the vehicle parked at my destination. I told the driver to wait for me. I didn’t think my business there would take more than twenty minutes at most to conclude. This was simply a preliminary evaluation.
I had telephoned ahead and the occupant of the cottage came out to meet me as soon as he heard the taxi pull up outside.
He was a man in his early thirties, quite tall, very thin, with long blond hair and a goatee. Back in the doorway of the cottage I could see his partner, a woman around a decade younger than he was. She was red-headed and looked like something out of a Rossetti painting. From the way they dressed, the two of them struck me as arts and crafts types, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn they made a living selling pottery or jewelry to tourists at Penzance market.
“Brian Kelsey,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.”
He stuck out a hand and I shook it.
“I won’t keep you long,” I said. “I just need a quick look around.”
“Redeveloping the old place are they? Been like this for ages now I reckon,” he said.
“Possibly. I imagine it wouldn’t happen for another year, if ever,” I said.
“Don’t bother me and my girlfriend if they do,” he said. “We’re off to St Ives in a few months. Make more money up that way we will, I daresay.”
“What do you do?”
“Sculptures, small ones. Heads mostly. Hand crafted. Want to see? Have a cup of tea beforehand?”
I shook my head.
“Wish I had the time, I really do. But as you can see I’ve got the taxi waiting and this is all a bit of a rush. Can you just show me around the grounds quickly?”
He looked at me steadily. It wasn’t an unfriendly stare, but I could tell he didn’t really like what I’d just said.
“Oh yes, I see, you’re a busy man. Well, let’s get on with it then.”
He set off and I followed.
What was left of Skewjack surf village only covered a few acres.
Its series of holiday cabins, shop, reception, and bar/discotheque were all half-derelict and the pathways and grounds overgrown with weeds and brambles. Some of the roofs had collapsed into the cabins and mold had taken over the interiors. The drained, kidney-shaped swimming pool was choked with rubbish.
It seemed to me that the first thing would be to get a quote as to the cost of demolishing the buildings and clearing the whole area. I was making mental calculations when Brian Kelsey said: “Got some tenants here, you know. In the cabin right just over there, behind the old reception building.”
“Tenants? What tenants?” I said.
He grinned sheepishly.
“Four old tramps. I warned them off at first, but they kept corning back.”
“You mean squatters?”
“Call them what you want. Anyway, they never did anyone any harm. They mind their own business so I ended up leaving them alone. Live and let live. Turns out all my predecessors did likewise the same as I did in the end,” he said.
I didn’t reply.
“Let’s go and take a peek. It’s quite a show, believe me. Why not see if they’re at home?” he said.
I followed him as he rounded the reception area building and onto a path beaten through the brambles.
After several yards we stood outside a lone cabin. Its exterior paintwork depicting multi-colored sun-rays was peeling away. The entrance door hung off its hinges. There was a single dusty window, half-covered with a filthy curtain that was little more than a rag.