Other people's oil act 2

Scene 1 Killing fields

Scene opens from darkness, Sound FX army-truck. Afternoon, hot day, Nigeria, Africa. To get the effect of the truck I simply envisioned two or three pallets on their sides painted dark brown leant against camouflage canvas, the rest suggested by lights and movement of the characters. The characters look hot. This can be shown by sweat on their clothes, African light combat uniforms, browns, blues and greens and khaki trousers. Vasoline can do for sweat on the face and water applied with a damp sponge. Rifles are carried by three of the four men. Before this scene starts there has obviously been a lot of macho bravado e.g. sick jokes being told, exploits and immature sex stories told reminiscent of  laughter as Jack is half way through telling a sick story.

Jack De'Ath: (Very loud and obnoxious.)…It hurt like hell. She was bloody tight; you know what I'm talking about kid? (Looks at young Sonny.)

Sonny, not sure and not sure he wants to hear the story, shrugs his shoulders.

 Virgin (Pause) no one parted your piles yet then.

The others laugh

(Standing to demonstrate what was happening in his sex life.) So tight I thought the bitch must have been a virgin. Saw the blood. Then the bleeding pain starts. The bitch had only gone and split my cock open. Serves mi right for not using a fucking Johnny (Turns on Sonny) Oh yeah that's something men have if you were wondering what a 'cock' was. (Aside) Probably sucked enough.

Uniform2: (The stupid one) Ha, Ha, the little pumper. (Points to his feet) Big feet, big dick.

Sonny: (Half under his breath) You're the biggest fucking dick I know, so it must be true.

Dovetailed the following speeches and actions. Uniform2 goes to hit Sonny.

Captain: Well said, that man. Shut you up Watkins. Stop that, it… (Stops Uniform2 hitting Sonny and throws Uniform2 onto the floor.)

Jack De'Ath: Does anyone want to hear the end of this? Watch it! (as Uniform1 pushes past him to make room for the flight.) Stop it, not here.

Uniform2: I'm going to kill that tub of lard, I'll kick your arse off this truck. (He goes for Sonny again.)

A push and shove melee goes on for a few moments.

Captain: I TOLD YOU STOP IT. THAT'S AN ORDER. Everyone shut up.

Time passes

Sonny: It was a small prison. We must do this run four or five time a week.

Captain shakes his head at the men who are bursting to tell Sonny something.

We must take twenty prisoners a week, at least. Eight today, twelve on Tuesday and it's only Friday, where do they put them all? (Pause)

Captain: They must get sent on to the prison at Lagos.

Jack De'Ath: (Can't contain himself any longer.) Doesn't he know?

Captain: Shut it.

Jack De'Ath: But…

Captain: Shut up.

Jack: They shoot them - fucking execute them.

Captain: Can't you keep your fucking big mouth shut for once?

Sonny: (In disbelief.) Is that true or are you just making one of your sick jokes?

Is it true?

Captain: The world’s not a nice place, son.

Sorry: Is that yes?

Captain nods

I suppose they have trials, and after all even though they're hungry, they're still bandits. I expect the women and children are sent up to one of the villages somewhere. I saw them working the fields, putting in the drainage ditches…

Uniform1: Why would they need drainage ditches you fucking dick? It never fucking rains.

Jack: I hear tell they leave the women with their arses stuck out, keeps the screws happy.

Uniform2: Sick bastard.

Sonny: (In shock of recognition.) The children, they must let the children go to orphanages.

Uniform2: (Sick laughter.) They give them to the juju men. Virgin sacrifices. So you'd better watch your arse, or did you get off with Black Velvet?

Sonny: We must have delivered a hundred prisoners in the last seven weeks: children, mothers with babies, old men. Shot?

Uniform1: And Velvet…

Sonny: Velvet? (In a fit of madness and realisation he runs to the front of the truck and bangs on the canvas screaming.) Stop this fucking truck, now!

Sound FX breaks of truck on dirt road. Sonny rushes to the back of the truck to jump out. Captain Fish tries to stop him.

Captain: Where the fuck do you think you're going?

Sonny: Back there.

Captain: It's not our war.

Sonny: That can't be the answer. (Jumps out of the back of the canvas)

Jack: Let him go. (to Sonny) Watch out for the seals, they run the fucking country. (Holds up three fingers.)

Lights start to go down.

Captain: You'd better get back to base. Three days or else you're in jankers. Here catch this, you'll need it to kill the snakes and others (He throws him a pistol.)

Light fade.

Scene 2a Sonny talks about his attack.

Sonny: (out to the audience) I must have run for miles. Thinking to myself the prison would be just around the next corner and it was, eventually. The place so quiet, it worried me. I walked straight up to the Gates, one hand holding the gun. I hammered away until one of the guards opened up a window. He was grinning with his big smile. (As the guard, speaking bad English.) "I know you’d come see me, English man, sailor boy, but she's gone, you did not save her, so they're nothing for you here now, this is our country. You go home English man, sailor boy – Go home and tell them only death is here – he slammed shut the Window.

It was then I saw coming out of the sun a familiar shape, it wasn't a person but a machine, a trench digger, in the field. I could just make out the transfer of a Union Jack on the shovel arm. I began to make my way towards it, I pulled on my gun, unsure, the sun shining in my face, crossing newly dug ground, it was hard going, then I slipped and I fell, a hand grabbed my arm. Out of terror I shot. Another body came towards me. I shot again. They seemed to be everywhere - bang! Bang! Bang! Then I stopped cold. There she was. Black Velvet looking up at me, yet without eyes. I reached out. She was cold - dead.

 Pause

'Hello English man, sailor boy, you make good executioner yes, but these bodies already killed.' The prison guard was looking down at me – I was sat on what looked like a pile of a hundred bodies. He pulled me out of the hole 'You black girl lady friend. She killed. I not kill your black girl lady friend. Your friend do killing her. Now you need to clean.' 'then me be gentle. I hide you from my boss man,' he said, and marched back to the prison at the point of a rifle.

Scene 3 - Café

In a small Italian café, music playing quietly in the background. Two women meet - Jill and a military intelligence officer, who looks around nervously, unsure if she should be there or not. Coffees have been ordered but the officer doesn't seem to want to drink hers.

Jill: It was good of you to come, I didn't think you would.

Mother: Received your letter on the twenty-second of last month. What do you mean by it? You're playing with fire. They read everything you know.

Jill: I felt strongly that something had to be done, she was your relation…

Mother: Quiet!

Jill: I'm part of a group looking for proof, we just want the truth to be known, and let the government know they can't get away with that kind of thing.

Mother: They're not the government, they might pay the wages but they are a law unto themselves. She might have been a relative but she was getting in the way. They wanted the information and got it. Now I must go.

Jill: Stay. (pause) They break into your aunt's house, then she's found dead. We want to know why and how. We have a right.

Mother: I said quiet. (pause, thinking) What are you going to do if you find out the answer? Bring down the government? We've had three different Prime Ministers since then. They won't have told them anything and what are you anyway, C.N.D, socialists, anarchists – communists? Worse still, without policy…

Jill tries to protest but Mother carries on talking.

If you're right, and that's if, what are you going to do get the Government to shut down all of MI5, MI6, if they exist? Those people have got their fingers in so many pies. There would be a coup or revolution. Then who would keep an eye on the Irish problem? The police? You? Me?

Jill tries to speak.

Just drop it.

Jill tries to speak.

    Drop it!

Jill: (Forces out what she is going to say)You mean to tell me you don't care about the truth, don't care about your own auntie's murder?

Mother: Yes to both, that's why I'm interested in not getting any more people killed. Hilda Murrel's name stood for peace (pause, sigh) Every day we're at war, you don't see it, there are no sides, no one group is right.

Jill: How do you mean?

Mother: If you were to break into the Prime Minister's office or even Chancellor of the Exchequer to look for the proof you need, to find this mythical thing you call truth (Jill tries to interrupt) and the equipment you used to break in was financed by this group of yours. Now say one of them died from a heart attack from seeing you. Who's in the right?  My aunt’s death was unfortunate, but to keep their secrets they would have you killed. It might not be them directly but a word in the wrong ear at the right time and that would be it. Peace begins by the first man - person - laying down their gun. Stop the war then sort out the mess that's left. My auntie died in a war and I resigned my commission.

Jill: I don't understand, you've got to fight for what is right, surely.

Mother: Have you heard of poplar trees?

Jill: Yes, why?

Mother: The poplar trees are dying out. Being pushed out by foreign trees. So in order to save them a man buys three of them and grows them in his back garden. After twenty years they grow very tall and looking magnificent. However they cast a shadow over the neighbour’s garden. He grew rare orchids, but without the sun, they didn't grow. Now the question is, who has the greater right?

     -(more)- Mother tells Jill about "Cells" in MI5, also a warning that she might be 'run' by the Covenant of the Third seal, who are trying to kill her or Sonny, or make her kill sonny. She tells her about the Manchurian candidates, assassins that don't know they are, working under the MK ultra system and that she must never read Catcher in the rye. She tells Jill about Sonny being the son of a psychopathic murderer but doesn't know it.

Jill: (She stands into a spotlight) It was finished, there were no real answers but I'd known nothing else for so long. I wasn't going to return to the party, what could I tell them? I knew then, I had to finish with Sonny before we killed each other. I'd been in an institution of one kind or another all my life. Even love was an institution. It was a long time until I understood her words. I looked out the window people started to become just people, they were neither one group nor another, no one was wrong no one was right.

I watched her as she walked down through the bus station. She was much older then I imagined. She was looking in the shop windows. I noticed her shoulders starting to shake and her head lowered. It looked like she was crying – or maybe she was laughing – at that distance it was difficult to say for sure. I will use these memories to lay down my ghosts. I left the book on the table. (She leaves.)

The waiter enters and picks up the book, Catcher in the Rye and flick through it. He changes into a madman, brings out his biro pen and stabs at the chair where the Mother sat and then where Jill sat, then changes back into the waiter, takes the tip and walks away. Lights fade. Music begins to play, to be interrupted rudely by a very loud explosion, almost knocking the room sideways, and flashpots.

Scene 5 the man from uncle D.S.S.

This is the follow up to scene 3 Act 1, nothing seems the same any more as Sonny's world takes a turn for the weird. The scene opens with a DSS man pushing a top loading washing machine onto the stage which happens to be his motor car.

Frost: (Welsh accent crossed with 'Clint Eastwood' in Dragnet style.) Time twelve-o-twenty two, Saturday, the eighth. The name is Frost, Glen Frost. I work out of Cardiff. I work for the Department of Social Security, Fraud division. (Pause.) I follow people – I’m following target 'A' in target vehicle… err…'B'. Find target vehicle 'B' broken down. I pull over and lift my hood, (Lifts the lid.) I work alone, (pause) government cut backs. Suspect 'A' is approaching, caution is advised at all times.

Sound FX fighter jet flies overhead loudly. Enter sonny.

Sonny: You've broken down too.

Frost: I know son, - it's – it's - the car, isn't it.

Mother: (off) STOP WALKING WITH 'Y BOTTOM STICKING OUT! IT LOOKS AWFUL.

Sonny: RIGHT okay mother – Mothers, who'd have them, hey?

Frost: Why would you need to know that, hey son? 

Sonny: What do y’ mean?

Frost: (Aside) Rule one hundred and two, never tell the suspect your movements. (Back to Sonny) I'm afraid that is also classified information. Where you heading?

Sonny: Well - I'm going to a 'Naval College' reunion in Hull, of all places, should have been there at noon but…

Frost: Place and time of arrival? Damn, no…err…I mean…err…

Sonny: What? Well I don't know now the car’s broken down.

Frost: How convenient. (Aside) Tricky one here. He's been through this before, it's obvious.

Sonny: Sorry? (looking around) Look is there somebody there? (He looks around)

Frost: Yes-NO-do you need a lift to anywhere? Maybe to a 'job of work', or are you laughing at my mule. My mule doesn't like being laughed at. (Pats the washing machine.)

Sonny: (Blank.) Eh?

Frost looks towards the washing machine.

(Pats the washing machine) Really – nice mule. No I don't work I'm on the sick and I thought your ‘car’ had broken down?

Frost: (Aside) Damn he's on to me. (To Sonny) Even if I did work for the D.S.S. Fraud Squad, I wouldn't be able convey that information to you, (Realising what he has said) damn! Damn!

Sonny: What the bloody-hell are you going on about? (Pause) Look, Do - you - need - ME - to – ring the breakdown service for you? Yes or No?

Frost: No, this is a government car, we don't have breakdowns.

Sonny: (Aside.) That's what my mother said, 'we don't have break downs,' is she working for the government?

Frost: Do you know the sort of person you are? Do you know how easy it would be to bring this country to is knees.

Sonny: Yes…

Frost: (Shocked…) N…Yes? Half a dozen well place bombs placed around Briton’s eight or nine oil and petrol supply depose, boom, boom, boom. On it’s knees, it’s it.

Sonny: Why bombs… get the people to bereave something that is… or isn’t true.  Then blockade ‘em…

Sound FX Car horn blows

    (Back to Frost.) Look, mi mother wants me. I'm going. (Shakes his head and starts to walk away.)

Exit sonny.

Frost: (Shouting) It would never work, boy, BOMBS IT IS BOY! (Pulls out a mobile phone, bleeps erratically when dialling.) Suspect 'A's target vehicle 'B' broken down. Suspect 'A' gone to vehicle, female driver needs assistance on M66 junctions 28, 29. Will follow on foot if necessary. I think target 'A' suspects something. May need to change cover story. And that's the big numbers. (Pause while listening) What do you mean? I am speaking properly. (Shuts down phone) Amateurs! (He does some karate moves) Highly trained, isn't it.

Scene 6 Prison

The room is a prison cell, in mostly darkness. There are only small chinks of light. Actors seem to be in complete darkness. There are a few makeshift beds – the sort of thing you might expect in a Medieval dungeon. In the cell already are three prisoners: an older version of Mother and Father and a version of Jill – she could be American, Australian or European (ie different from how she is throughout the rest of the play). If possible smells of sulphur and shit permeate the set. A shirt covers a corner of the room to conceal a makeshift toilet. Jill is trying to keep herself a little bit tidy. She moves scraps of bones and food towards the side of the cell door, and steps on cockroaches. Her face is more oily than dirty. A makeshift headscarf covers her ears to keep out the insects. She has no personal items. She wears a skirt with a drawstring hem to keep things from crawling up her legs and old shoes with no socks.

On one wall hangs a bucket of drinking water.

 The two old folk have given up trying. They used to be white farmers – probably politically right-wing and getting back all the grief they gave out. The prison guards are very militant, swept along with the new world order, and killing off the old one on the way. It’s taking just that bit longer than they’d thought. Guard 1 is a sadistic rapist and a bully. Guard 2 is moderate in comparison but still caught up in the…of it all.

Sonny is thrown violently into the sell.

Guard 1: (evil) You - screwed now – you good fuck sailor boy.

Guard 2: (Good. To guard 1, looking concerned) Brother - he western. He friends kill us.

Guard 1: He will not know own name when we finish.

Sonny falls to the floor in shock. Jill comes over to protect him from the guards.

Jill: Piss off you bastards! (she aims a kick at them) Just piss off! (The guards push her away, laughing)

Guard 1: We come back for you, show you, fucking crazy bitch. (he aims to kick her but is stopped by guard 2)

Guard 2: (to Jill) You gotta be careful missy – him crazy.

Jill: (defiantly) Him ‘botty boy’

Guard 1 goes to hit her.

Guard 2: Leave! (pushes him out the door)

Guard 1: (off) I get you bitch! Fuck you bitch!

Jill stands Sonny up and walks him to her bed.

Jill: (to Sonny) He’s raped you, yes?

Sonny looks blank, too shocked to speak. She lays down with him,

LightsFX fade

She is taken away when Sonny falls asleep. He can no longer protect her. When she is returned she has been raped and beaten up. She is shocked and disturbed. She knows that the guard will come for her again. She begs Sonny to do something to stop her terror.

Jill: Hold me. I need to be held.

Sonny tentatively puts his arms around her. They lay back onto the makeshift bed. Without many more words they make love, without undressing. Lights go down on Jill and Sonny. Lights up on old folk.

Father: ((as old man)over next.) When you are old the smell of a man is different, he smells of old age. We smell old. When I was young we used to make love. My smell was so perfect - a blue aura would rise from both our bodies. Young lovers shine with the blue aura, so bright in space you see the blueness of the planet. As we get older it turns to red – red of blood, sores, / inflammation…

Mother: We women are the oceans, the sea, the rain. We are the water – men are the dry and dusty places. We roam free over barren areas, dusty planes, lost worlds.

Father: Where is the loneliness? Loneliness is the cloud crossing that same plane forty degrees to the horizon to the zenith point of all beginnings, out of time we scream inside, yell, fall, smell…

Mother: The eighth dream is the future, the last dream of sleep. I dreamed I was killed, my head was filled with strange visual noise which began to turn into a point of light no wider than my finger, lining up, shooting through my forehead. I knew I was on my journey to heaven.

Father: I dreamed I died in the gas chambers. The whole of the after-life for me was constant twilight – the richest purple you’d ever seen. You could never see quite what you were doing. You could not read by any light, look upon any painting. In this twilight sadness reigned – it was never quite time to sleep or to wake. You could never trust a friend, as you could never see his face, and all beauty was lost.

Mother: No my love, true beauty is only found in the dark.

Father: And old men smell different.

Lights up on Sonny and Jill.

Sonny: Oh god yes!

Jill: Ooh!

Sonny quickly moves away from her and cowers in a corner, feeling guilty about what he has just done.

Jill: Do you love me? Say that you love me.

Sonny puts his hands on his head.

Jill: Say that you love me.

Sonny: I…I…I don’t know. I needed something gentle. I needed to be a man loving a woman. I went too far.

Jill: Love me. (jumps up and pushes Sonny)

Sonny: Here and now, yes.

Jill: They’re going to kill me. Touch me. I know they’re going to kill me - they killed my friend. They took her away. When she returned she lived for three days, just there, and they left her a week after that.

Sonny: I’ve never loved.

Jill: When you sleep – that’s the time they’ll take me.

Sonny: I’ll never sleep.

Scene 7  Rerun

This is one scene that is played straight. Sounds of Africa can be heard. In the darkness continuing from last scene, shots ring out, flashing at different parts of the stage and possibly auditorium. No longer are the audience safe in their seats, but locked into a battle not of their making. (A medic rushes in to help a young woman out of the auditorium who thinks she may have been hit by one of the stray bullets, the audience will be reassured.) We are in the cellar of a bar. This time the two actors are wearing civilian clothing. The two drop from a height into the light. They are in a cellar.

Sonny: They let me out. What you doing here?

Jack: I’m doing my job. You’ve been AWOL for a month.

Sonny: I was a prisoner of war. They gave me these and let me out.(he tugs at his clothes)

Jack: So that's why you're dressed like VSO. Who do you think you are, James Bond? You're spying.

Sonny: Shut up, just shut up…

Jack: Why! Have they bugged the place?  Have I got a microphone up my backside? (Starts to leap and jump around.) SPY! SPY! SPY! Nobody gives a shit, nobody can hear us, we’re in the middle of the kill-zone…

Soldiers voices outside the window.  Sound FX gunshots ring out.

    …Shit I've been shot. (Turns and falls to the floor)

Sonny: (Momentarily freezes.) What the hell - shot where? How? Oh shit, we're going to die. Oh god why the hell am I here? You can't be fucking shot.

Jack: They're c-coming, you have to kill me. They want what's in my head.

Sonny: Why?

Jack: It's your – duty. That's why they’ve let you out of jail – to kill me. You’re the contact?

Sonny: (Realisation) No, you’ve got it wrong. They’ve got it wrong.

Jack: You know what they do when they take you prisoner as a spy? Either side. You’ll end up in the same graves. Their arms were hacked off well before they were killed. Most were left to bleed to death in the pits.

Sonny: I know this – I was there, but I’m not going to kill you.

Jack: (wheezing, losing life) It's bigger than us. (pauses and wheezes) We're supplying them guns…

Sonny: (more realisations.) Which side – the enemy?

Jack: (fading faster now) Right, (breathes) wrong…(coughs) both sides… start a war… both sides kill each other… we move in and grab the lot. Nobody left to stop us taking the oil. (Coughing and laughing. He loads a bullet into the gun.) Harm neither the oil - nor the wine, (breathes) tell the world I've worked it all out. Just look at the ant - it can live its life with just 32 instructions. (pauses) Kill me…now.

Sound outside the door.

Sonny: I still don't hate you, you're just a victim…

Jack: Come here. (Coughing) They give you a reason (Grabs Sonny's jacket.) We arrested Black Velvet; she was arrested for spying for the bandits. They knew that you loved her (coughs) I shot her.

Sonny: No you didn't. (Tries to stop Jack’s bleeding.)

Jack: Don't! (pushes him away) – Leave me! (Puts his gun into Sonny's hand) here!

Sonny: No. (Does not take gun.)

Jack: I would have shot you too. I didn’t need a reason after what you told her. But they wanted you alive, they knew that you would need a reason to kill me, if it came to this. (Laughing. Shoots Sonny in the lower leg.) She begged for mercy, I shot her through the eyes. I squeezed the fucking trigger, myself.

Sonny shocked in pain limps to the ground. Jack slides the gun over to Sonny, Sonny picks up the gun, but is he going to kill Jack? Gunshot then Pause. Spotlight up on Doorway. Jack is dead.

Guard. (Walks over to Jack and kicks the body.) He dead. - Englishman Sailor boy, you beautiful ass mine. Once more. (He lowers the gun and starts to unbuckle his trouser belt.)

 Sonny: (Looking at the gun) No. (he shoots the Guard dead, one shot. Goes and sits head in hands and starts to cry.)

Light fades on Sonny then on the two dead men before going down to blackout.

Scene 5 – Prologue Father scene

He talks to the now dead mother character.

Father:  You silly woman I knew you'd die of smoking but to die of breast cancer just STUPID!

Son enters dressed in part combat gear, looking very miserable.

Father: Hello son.

Sonny: Hi dad.

Father: Have they caught them yet?

Sonny: No dad. Probably never will now. I have to leave. I’ll play dead a few years.

Father: They'll come for you?

Sonny: Yes dad.

Father: No (laughs and taps the soil off his spade.) Sleeping with the sheep.

Sonny: No, I understand.

Father: (Gives Sonny the Marshall star.) Read. It belonged to your great, great, grandfather. He was a US Marshall.

Sonny: R, six, fifty-six. What?

Father: Revelations of St. John the divine. Chapter six, verses five and six.  And when I opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say “come and see”. And I beheld, and lo a black horse, and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand. And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, “A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and 'see' thou hurt not the oil and the wine”. (Pause.) That's the code of the Covenant of Third Seal…

Sonny: An underground organisation dedicated to the forced bringing about of the apocalypse. By that they mean, the uncovering of the true nature of the human state. They're funding comes from the making shady deals, the buying and selling of grain and commodities to non-aliened and third world countries…

Father: But are dedicated to the running the perfect society.

Sonny: By controlling the human spirit? A society based on an inversion. No (long pause) No.

Father: The more intelligent you are, the more chance of madness you have.

Sonny: Well there not much chance with me then.

Father: Some thinkers have seen the world for what it is and killed themselves. I wrote a poem once; in it was the answer to everything. Showed it to a friend. He didn't get it but started pointing out all the faults. It seems that they're only my answers to everything, and because I didn’t reach him – I had nothing to say

Sonny: Will you end it all? The world I mean?

Father: No - Not yet. Where will you live?

Sonny: Not here, I'll just drop out of sight. People might see me from time to time on the moors, but then when the pain stops that will be the end for me.

Father: That girl, Jill, you were going with, will she be hurt?

Sonny: No, dad, she died in the bomb, remember? The one in Manchester?

Father: Didn't know.

Sonny: She wouldn't love me dad, I would have given her everything she wanted. She doesn't feel anything. Maybe one day when we are all dead she have no one to collect and there might be a chance with her - but she won't even care. She won’t see me then. She says she doesn't feel loneliness, she doesn't really feel at all. The stupid thing is she might pity me for loving her but she's the monster and ‘I’ pity her.

Father: She, she loved you?

Sonny: Yes.

Father: Were you very hurt, son?

Sonny: No, 'she' was Third Seal…

Father: No. (Smiles and pauses.) You were jealousy. Normal reaction. Don't beat yourself up about it. Just means that you care for her, and don't want to see her hurt.

Sonny: Yes. That's why she won’t let me see her, because I hurt her.

Father: Those drugs they gave you do you still…? You know.

Sonny: Hallucinations, yes.

Father: I took a risk with your mother, the organisation weren't happy but she was so beautiful, a town girl; single mum…

Sonny: I was…?

Father: Yes son - she was never really happy on a farm.  I think she loved me, just didn't like me very much but what I got in return was worth the risk. I still pine for that woman.

Father: Me too.

Music plays out – Nat King Cole's 'When I Fall In Love – it will be for ever!'. Lights fade out.

End play.