31 Plays in 31 Days, #20 - "In Her Eyes"

[breakinglight11]

This is very slapped together for the purposes of the challenge, but I like the idea that this moment happened. This scene grew out of a line Bernie made me cut for being too vulgar in Mrs. Hawking V: Mrs. Frost. In that piece, Mrs. Frost points out to Nathaniel exactly why his resemblance to his late uncle is so difficult for his aunt to deal with, as a way of mentally breaking him down. Originally she does it in a much grosser way, so it didn't really fit our PG-13 style. However, it occurred to me that Nathaniel might on his own, based on what she told him, draw the specific conclusion she originally said to him in so many words. Especially since I wanted to show him carrying a lot of trauma leftover from what Frost did to him, I think he's been mulling on everything pretty seriously.

In part VI, Clara and Nathaniel make reference to this ongoing struggle, as seen in Day #4 - "Not Sleeping". I think this conversation below is the first time it directly came up between them, and what happens onstage in part VI is built on the ground work of it. And it let me use the idea I had to cut from part VI while still assuming the idea's banging around in Nathaniel's head.



Day #20 - “In Her Eyes”
From Mrs. Hawking
By Phoebe Roberts
~~~

London, England, 1886

NATHANIEL HAWKING, Mrs. Hawking’s nephew and apprentice, early thirties
CLARA HAWKING, a society lady, his wife, mid thirties
~~~

(NATHANIEL is passed out in the chair in his study, a brandy glass on the floor beside him. CLARA enters.)

CLARA: Nathaniel! There you are.

(She shakes him and he groans awake.)

NATHANIEL: Clara? Oh, heavens.

CLARA: You didn’t come to bed last night.

(She finds the glass.)

CLARA: Were you drinking?

NATHANIEL: All night. Until it all went dark.

CLARA: My God, Nathaniel, why?

NATHANIEL: Things Frost told me. I can’t get them out of my head.

CLARA: Oh, darling.

(She holds him.)

CLARA: You told me what happened. What she did. But… you never told me what she said to you.

NATHANIEL: Things about me— who I am. And about Aunt and Uncle.

CLARA: She’s a liar, Nathaniel.

NATHANIEL: Not in everything. Not in this.

CLARA: Love, what do you mean? What did she say?

NATHANIEL: That every time Aunt Victoria looks at me, she sees the face of the man who raped her.

CLARA: What?

NATHANIEL: Just so. That’s who I am in her eyes.

CLARA: No. No.

NATHANIEL: It’s true, Clara. I look just like him. Anyone can see that.

CLARA: No, not— I mean… for God’s sake, the Colonel loved her. They may have been miserable together, but he’d never have hurt her.

NATHANIEL: They were wed for twenty years against her will. There’s nothing else to call it.

(CLARA takes that in, shocked.)

CLARA: I never… I never thought about it like that.

NATHANIEL: Nor I. Not until Frost. And so I never thought what it might be like for her. Just why she never wanted to know me, or have me around.

CLARA: That… that isn’t your burden to bear. That’s not on you.

NATHANIEL: What isn’t? That my aunt probably knows what I look like when I have it off?

CLARA: My God, Nathaniel!

NATHANIEL: Dear Christ, how can she bear to look at me?

CLARA: Because you have been different! You have… heard her, and been there for her, and understood what she needed. You are not him.

NATHANIEL: I loved him so much. Sometimes, I thought… more than my own father.

CLARA: I know.

NATHANIEL: And that’s who he was. That’s what I tried to be, for the whole of my life.

CLARA: It’s not so simple.

NATHANIEL: That doesn’t make it right. I don’t know what to do with it. That’s the man who made me who I am today.

CLARA: And you are a good man. So it couldn’t have been all wrong. You must move on with what good he gave you.

NATHANIEL: I know.

CLARA: Give it time. We'll move through.

(She holds him.)