Ann-Marie MacDonald - Belle Moral - A Natural History

VICTOR. Her “offspring”?

DR REID. What I propose is standard laboratory procedure. Painless, humane –

VICTOR. Hers and who else’s? Yours? The puppy’s?

DR REID. You’re a disgrace.

FLORA. You’re a disgrace! And so am I, we’ve had no right –

DR REID. I have a duty! Pearl, I would not harm her in any way, why should I wish to? She is a gift.

FLORA. Ramsay forbade you to touch another hair on her head.

DR REID [furious] . Ramsay wanted to drown it!

FLORA. If that’s true, it only shows he didna want the poor creature to suffer.

DR REID. He didn’t want his pride to suffer! Ask Young Farleigh. Ramsay told him to put it in a sack and throw it into the sea. [blazing] I saved it! It’s mine!

A beat . THE CREATURE awakens. Sits up. It is a young woman . DR REID draws back . PEARL approaches .

PEARL. What is your name?

DR REID. It doesn’t have a name.

PEARL. Speak, child.

FLORA. She canna speak, pet.

PEARL. What is your name?

A beat .

YOUNG WOMAN. Claire.

A beat .

PEARL. I think you’d better leave now, Doctor.

DR REID. Pearl –

PEARL [calm]. Get out of my house.

DR REID takes his medical bag and exits . PEARL smooths the hair from CLAIRE’S face, to reveal a tall red canine ear. She strokes it . VICTOR picks up the tartan shawl, buries his face in it and inhales .

Did Mother go mad, Flora?

FLORA. No, pet. She was just terribly, terribly sad. She walked into the sea.

Scene 6 The Drawing Room

Four months later . MR ABBOTT waits, briefcase in hand . YOUNG FARLEIGH is asleep in the chair under the worn tartan shawl , PUPPY tucked by his side. The family portrait hangs once more over the mantle piece, the space between PEARL and VICTOR now revealed to contain an infant with the ears of a puppy . ABBOTT squints at the portrait . PEARL enters. Her hair is down, her flowing garments anticipate Vanessa Bell, and are particularly generous about the midriff .

PEARL. Ah, Mr Abbott.

ABBOTT. Good afternoon, Miss MacIsaac.

PEARL. Have you brought the documents?

ABBOTT. I have, Miss. [a beat] If you will permit me to say so, Miss MacIsaac, you are looking particularly well this afternoon.

PEARL. Thank you, Mr Abbott, I’m feeling particularly well.

ABBOTT. I had the good luck to attend a lecture yesterday evening, and have taken the liberty of bringing you a transcript which I venture to hope may excite your interest. [Hands her a sheaf of paper.]

PEARL [reading]. “Fossils of All Kinds, Digested into a Method Suitable to Their Mutual Relation and Affinity”.

She kisses MR ABBOTT. It’s a long kiss .

Mr Abbott, would you consent to be in a photograph?

ABBOTT [speechless] .

PEARL. Good. Please join Auntie Flora in the conservatory.

He bows and exits, blindly. The clock strikes three . PEARL turns toward the entrance, expectant . DR REID enters .

DR REID. Hello, Pearl.

PEARL. Hello, Doctor. Thank you for coming.

DR REID [slight bow] .

PEARL. Dr Reid, I have something of a delicate nature to tell you; and something of vital import, for which I must ask –

DR REID. Don’t ask. There is no need. My dear, I have already forgiven you. I am a doctor; I, of all men, ought to have been unsurprised by your reaction that fearful night. It is I who am at fault for having allowed these several months to pass in silence, but I have been much in demand abroad — nay, ‘tisn’t only that; I confess my pride was wounded. Still, when I received your invitation to call today, any trace of rancour melted away, so let us speak no more of it.

A beat .

PEARL. I’m pregnant.

A beat . VICTOR enters carrying PEARL’S camera with its hood and tripod. He wears a velvet cape and vest, a ruffled shirt and tight pants. He deposits the equipment, exits . DR REID notices the family portrait . VICTOR returns with CLAIRE by the hand. She is dressed as a cowgirl, with holsters and six-guns. Her hair is up, displaying her ear to advantage . VICTOR positions her on the couch and sets up the camera . DR REID stares . PEARL is pleasant and business-like .

[ to DR REID] So you see, it throws a bit of a wrench into the inheritance.

DR REID. I beg your pardon?

PEARL. Father’s will. Bars me from bearing children.

DR REID. Pearl, dearest. Do you not recall, you yourself had the presence of mind to diagnose your condition. I sought, mistakenly I now see, to shield you from the truth, but the fact is, the power of repressed emotions has exacted a psychosomatic toll –

PEARL. — my womb is in revolt against the proviso of my father’s will –

DR REID. — such that your pregnancy is, in reality–

PEARL. Hysterical.

DR REID. Yes.

PEARL. No. At least not any more. Whatever was ailing me — hysterical, fantastical, or perfectly logical — it was certainly a conception of my mind, but I can assure you such is no longer the case.

A beat .

DR REID. You mean to say …? Victor, at this juncture it would behoove a gentleman to leave a lady alone with her physician.

VICTOR. Ay, it would.

He plunks down on the couch next to CLAIRE. They eat shortbread and watch .

DR REID. My dear, who has done this to you? I’ll have him clapped in irons.

PEARL. I really can’t say, Doctor.

A beat .

DR REID. How many men have there been?

PEARL. Need there have been any?

DR REID. Well how, otherwise, do you explain your pregnancy?

VICTOR. A lady needn’t explain.

PEARL. No, but I shall. Perhaps it is parthenogenic.

DR REID. Human asexual reproduction? Impossible.

PEARL. “Man can believe the impossible, but man can never believe the improbable.”

VICTOR. Who said that? The pope?

PEARL. Oscar Wilde.

DR REID. Apart from a rare species of lizard, parthenogenic reproduction in multi-celled creatures is confined to the class of worms and religious myth.

PEARL. Perhaps I have diversified successfully.

VICTOR. She was down winkling on the shore when she met a fellow with great tall ears and a long snout. Loaded with baked goods, he was.

PEARL. Victor dreamt I was impregnated by a psychopomp.

DR REID. You claim to have had congress with the Egyptian God of the underworld?

VICTOR. Not only that, she cured my phobia.

PEARL. I merely ventured that Victor, via his fits, may have subconsciously registered a warning: to wit, if we refuse to acknowledge kinship, not only with the mythic dog, but with all matter; if we resist the central truth of evolution –

DR REID. I am a child of the Enlightenment, I resist nothing that is rational, I believe in evolution, along with the rest of the civilized world.

PEARL. The civilized world behaves least as if it did believe. For all our scientific pieties, we still organize our societies as though we alone had been created in the image of a god in whom we profess no longer to believe. We have slain our brother, Abel, and who was he? Did he walk on two legs, or four? Did he creep, or swim, or fly? If we fail to recognize our true nature, we shall conduct our lives according to criteria that are divorced from matter — from our mother — Earth. If we behave as gods — warring, feasting and plundering — then, like gods, are we doomed to disappear in a twilight of our own making? Perhaps Victor was no more “hysterical” than Cassandra when she prophesied the fall of Troy. Lucky for her she didn’t live today, she’d be walking about short of a uterus by now.