Miriam Eighteen years old. A sixth form student. Morton's daughter.
Morton A linguist working in the University sector. Father to Miriam. Mid-to-late 50s.
LOCATION
A room somewhere (unspecified)
Basic Plot Outline
The play centres on an Oxford academic meeting his 18 year old daughter for the first time. MORTON was unaware of his daughter’s existence until just a few days before their meeting and is clearly nervous. Despite the tensions which are evident, he nonetheless wants to participate in her life. MIRIAM doesn't share his optimism and sees the meeting as a chance to draw a line under their association. Approx running time: 35 - 45 mins.
September 2018
As the lights go up, MIRIAM is stood downstage left. Enter MORTON, upstage right. He is somewhat tentative in his approach, glancing warily towards the young girl he has recently discovered is his daughter. MIRIAM is far less guarded, carrying with her an air of grievance.
MORTON: You must be Miriam?
MIRIAM: You must be…..(scornfully) ‘dad?’
MORTON: Difficult to know where to start. (a slight pause) Look, Miriam, I need to make some sort of opening pitch. Just to get the thing framed as it should be framed. (a slight pause) I didn’t know. I really didn’t know.
MIRIAM: (in a casual but off-hand way) Huh-huh.
MORTON: I realise you have to take that on trust. (a slight pause) We could all do with an explanation. I just hope you’ll value what I have to say.
MIRIAM: (acidly) Well, now you’re finally here, maybe we can do some Jazz Hands thing together. Now, you’ve put me straight.
MORTON: I mean what I say.
MIRIAM: (retorting abruptly) I’m clear on what you say. You’ve said it more than once.
PAUSE
MORTON: I’m stood here wondering why she would do such a thing. (contd).
PAUSE
MORTON: (contd). Regrets I’ve known, but never one like this. I was oblivious. I didn’t know that you existed even…..that I had a daughter out there.
MIRIAM: You seem a nervous type. Are you a nervous type? You seemed quite nervous on the phone as well.
MORTON: Not normally. I’m not that keen on talking down a phone. I don’t have much of a telephone manner.
MIRIAM: (with casual sarcasm) Ah, well, that explains it then.
MORTON: I couldn’t be a nervous type and carry off the job I do. The like of conference platforms, keynote speeches…..
MIRIAM: (cutting him off abruptly) I didn’t ask about your job.
MORTON: (a slight pause) I’m getting more noise than signal right now, but that’s okay. (contd).
PAUSE
MORTON: (contd). Look, I don’t blame you for invalidating my…..regard for you, for us…..at what is this late stage. But, you know, you can’t blame me for wanting to claw back some of what I’ve missed along the way.
MIRIAM: ‘Along the way’ is eighteen years!
MORTON: I know full well how long it is. Miriam, I’m with you on this. I’m as churned up as you are…..I’m…..I’m lost in the screwiness of it all. So, I’m not fobbing you off with some excuse. (he waits for a response but all she does is stare at him). I’m here to make amends where possible. If you will grant me some way of tethering the story – to make sure you understand all parts of it…..and to know I’m not the thing percolating up through your…..imagination. I’m as real and as confused as you are – as hurt. I don’t want you unpicking all my good intentions.
MIRIAM: (coldly) Your good intentions count for nothing here. Say what you have to and go.
MORTON: I want to reason with the daughter who – until two days ago – I never knew I had. I’d love to get to know you properly. There is a privilege to knowing someone well. I’d like to know you as a parent should…..the ‘youness’ of you…..and not this other Miriam – the one radiating such contempt.
MIRIAM: You blanked her.
MORTON: No, I didn’t blank her. Why did she say that?
MIRIAM: She didn’t say that. I’m saying it.
MORTON eventually gets tired of his good intentions being trashed. He tries to prompt some new more flexible approach from her side.
MORTON eventually gets tired of his good intentions being trashed. He tries to prompt some new more flexible approach from her side.
MORTON: Look, Miriam, your mother and I were in a relationship that soured. It’s not worth looking down a microscope at something so ubiquitous or commonplace – whatever the word is. (contd).
PAUSE
MORTON: (contd). What are you thinking?
MIRIAM: I’m thinking of that word ‘relationship.’ I’m happy knowing I was not conceived in error.
MORTON: (protesting) Miriam…..
MIRIAM: Or that I wasn’t conjured from some episode involving alcohol.
MORTON: Don’t say that.
MIRIAM: All’s well that ends well. There was – Thank God – no choice encounter…..on the way back from the pub…..a Friday night tear-up…..a quickie…..under the stars…..next to the bin enclosure.
MORTON: For God’s sake, put away the images!
MIRIAM is ungrudging in her attitude towards him and discounts his version of events at every turn. She pushes him on every little detail, registering her contempt along the way.
MIRIAM: You didn’t chase her up at all – to write and ask her how she was. If she was coping well.
MIRIAM: ‘Upset?’ That’s exactly the sort of word a man would use. As if she was to cling to some lost hope like in a Hollywood film. Why, as a woman does she have to bolt herself to some extravagant display. What if she was hiding what she felt?
MIRIAM starts to make much broader, gender-based criticisms. But MORTON tries to place her accusations in a more meaningful context but his protestations go unheard.
MIRIAM is ungrudging in her attitude towards him and discounts his version of events at every turn. She pushes him on every little detail, registering her contempt along the way.
MIRIAM: You didn’t chase her up at all – to write and ask her how she was. If she was coping well.
MORTON: (with irritation) I’ve told you what she said to me. I’ve told you how she wanted it. She didn’t leave much room for ambiguity.
MIRIAM: You should have trusted more to your own instincts.
MORTON: Again: I was doing what she wanted.
MIRIAM: She was not in any fit state to be ignored.
MORTON: What do you know? You weren’t even there. (the remark causes them to hesitate slightly) This is all speculative nonsense.
MIRIAM: You failed her!
MORTON: (annoyed) I followed her instructions to the letter. I didn’t fail her.
MIRIAM: No. You failed her.
MORTON: (a slight pause) Where will this get you? She wanted room and I gave her that.
MIRIAM: You lived with her for eighteen months and then you blanked her.
MORTON: It doesn’t work like that in the real world.
MIRIAM: You mean it doesn’t work like that in your world. Where was your compassion?
MORTON: We won’t get anywhere if you fixate on this one point so much. I’ve told you what she said.
MIRIAM: How can you be so comfortable with what you put her through?
MORTON: Comfortable? Look, she was not exhibiting the least sign of – I don’t know – upset.
MIRIAM starts to make much broader, gender-based criticisms. But MORTON tries to place her accusations in a more meaningful context but his protestations go unheard.
MIRIAM: (fiercely) My mother needed your support! And you absconded with her future and your own because of some ridiculous job! You did, you voided that relationship quite happily. For Man Stuff! Money, status, all the dross you think is so important. Instead of what was reasonable, you took to being selfish. Like a man, to being selfish by default. I ask: where is the warmth in what you did? You tell me all this, and what am I supposed to think? You battened down to some agreement which – when looked at – only seems perverse; which any person with an ounce of sense would probably discount. (a slight pause) You should have written to her. Just that one small act would have meant so much.
MORTON: I took her at her word. She asked me not to write and I respected her wish. It suited her. It suited me. It was a fresh start for us both.
MIRIAM: What ‘fresh start?’ She was pregnant.
MORTON: (angrily) Then ask her what she was about in leading everyone astray? In keeping schtum? (a slight pause) A revelation like that shoved down a phone line. Do me a favour. What sort of person slices through another person’s life in such a morbid way?
MIRIAM: She isn’t like that.
MORTON: Then why call me now? Why keep it hid for so long? Why would you do such a thing? (contd).
PAUSE
MORTON: (contd). Your mother has behaved despicably. She’s disfigured your life, she’s disfigured mine. Is that not worth a modicum of scrutiny?
MIRIAM: Say what you want, you never once provided for me – clothed and fed me in the way she did, on very little money. I’ll never blame my mother for this.
PAUSE
MORTON: My obligations as a parent only work if I get told stuff. I can’t be answerable if I don’t know the things I should. Face it: she hid you from me.
MIRIAM conjures an image of her father as a duplicitous and career-obsessed individual – as somebody who only wants to act out his responsibilities towards her. She rejects his version of events and the scenario he paints of doing right by her. Once more, she reaches for much broader and provocative gender-based criticisms to make her point.
MIRIAM: To do what? Find another workaround? Show up at weekends for a bit of pram-pushing? All the way around some mini-lake? Ice-cream at the kiosk? That’s you and all your tribe. Finessing your week, but not in such a way as to detract from your career. We wouldn’t want that, would we? Making of your obligation, just another durable lie. Your flesh-and-blood, your daughter stitched up in a lie; a fiction you can just about stand. I’ve nailed you, haven’t I? It’s what you know is true. Your ‘obligations’ so-called are never meaningful…..only meaningful enough. You’ve conjured a scenario – the most convenient that you can dream up – where you are just a part-time dad; where she’d do all the bothersome stuff, while you’d be off…..honing your life narrative, buffing up your career like a man should. In that scenario of yours, what am I then? I’ll tell you what I am: I’m just another tightly ordered part of this man’s world of yours. My mother – and at the last, me – chained to some desperate excuse.
MORTON: All this bile of yours – she’s boxed you in with all this stuff.
MORTON’S makes a tongue-in-cheek remark as to any political beliefs she might have. It ignites another heated affirmation, this time as to the world she and others of her generation will inherit and which has been denuded in a way she characterises as ‘selfish.’
MORTON: What are your politics? You’re not part of some monstrous chia-seed munching cult, are you?
MIRIAM: I’m under thirty, so my politics are not like some kit-car you get through the post. My politics are handed to me ready-made. The fact that I will probably never live in my own home; the fact that I will never have the pension you will have – that I will work for longer and have less at the end of it. The fact that I will enter the workplace with a debt of sixty-thousand pounds around my neck.
MORTON: I didn’t vote for any of that stuff.
MIRIAM: You stand there asking me about my politics. You ask me that one question in a way that is so unashamedly, provocatively glib! When you have interposed on my existence – on my opportunities. You and all your peers, propping up the harm you’ve done with these lamentable excuses! You that have so much already…..a house, a mortgage, all your schooling funded to the hilt and from way back, higher education that was free…..and at the end, a job that pays enough. What you and all the others have left in your wake is abominable. Forty years of Free Market economics and for what? For this? Don’t come to me with all your odious excuses! Generation Selfish is what you are!
MORTON: Well, that’s a bit no-nonsense. It only had the one fault of its being rather misdirected. Believe me, I’m with you on all this stuff.
MIRIAM: Yeah, down with the kids, are we?
CURTAIN
MORTON: (a slight pause) Miriam, I’d love to participate in your life.
MIRIAM: It’s too late for that.
MORTON: Not any way too late. Give me a chance.
MIRIAM: No.
MORTON: Your perception of me isn’t really sound.
MIRIAM: Sound enough.
MORTON: I said I didn’t know of your existence and it’s true. I wish she’d told me. It would have changed so much. Achieving what I have would not seem at the end so meaningless. I wouldn’t feel so lost. No more being cooped up on a conference platform hearing my name and wondering what the hell my name and me were doing in Nebraska. For all that stuff to be upended; have what you took for your existence poured away – and happily so. And why? Because the child you always wanted is waiting at home. She’s seven-years-old and she wants a pinata She wants a pinata from the market and a hefty coloured stick to beat it with. You promised her and if you have to cut your speech in half to get her it, that’s what you’ll do. You see, I’d have another person’s journey filling up my head. My daughter Miriam, my little girl, my only one.
PAUSE
MORTON: (contd). I have a property in Jericho. Why don’t you drop by one day next week?
MIRIAM: (coldly) I won’t be coming to your house. (relenting somewhat) I’ll meet you where it suits me…..in town…..on a day that I can manage.
MORTON: (heartened) Well, that’s good. I’d like that. (a slight pause) I’d better go. I’d shake your hand but that would be overdoing it, probably. (contd).
SHE OFFERS HIM HER HAND
MORTON: (gently shaking her hand) I’m glad that this has happened. And I’m glad we talked. And I look forward to the day you set when we can do the same again.
MIRIAM: Goodbye.
MORTON: Goodbye for now, I hope. In German, that would be auf wiedersehen.
MIRIAM: No, we’re family. We’d say tschuss.
MORTON: Well, tschuss.
MIRIAM: Tschuss, dad.
LIGHTS DOWN
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