Lacrimae Rerum: A Play in One Act in memory of John Callaghan, chorister, organist, father of a nation

Characters in the Play

• E.J. O'Curry A bachelor farmer in West Clare

• Sean Curtin A frequent visitor from America

• Father Michael Callaghan A parish priest

• Lourda Kearney A widowed publican

• The cremated remains of Margaret Mary O'Hara In an angel-shaped urn

Setting

The West Clare Peninsula of Ireland: the narrow land between the North Atlantic and the River Shannon Estuary. It is the first day of April and Thursday morning in Holy Week in the first year of the second decade of the new millennium.

Scene 1

The interior of Lourda Kearney's "The Lighthouse" pub on the seafront in the estuarial village of Kilbaha. The walls are whitewashed plaster, the windows small. A dark wooden bar occupies stage right. An open-hearth fireplace is opposite the bar. Tables and sugan chairs flank the fireplace. The walls hold a GAA calendar, the maize and blue flag of County Clare, photos of the Pope, Bill Clinton, and the local football team. A widescreen TV hovers over the bar in the corner. The deep window ledges are littered with newspapers and books.

Though it is early in the twenty-first century, the interior suggests an earlier, simpler time. The floor is flagstone, the ceiling is low and beamed. A wrought iron chandelier with candles hangs in the middle.

E.J. O'Curry, bachelor and chastitute, a small farmer in his mid-seventies, enters the pub warily from the back door, downstage left. He walks across the room on tiptoes, opens the curtains drawn at the windows, draws a glass of whiskey from upturned bottles behind the bar, places a banknote on the cash register. Takes a sup. With a candle lighter, he lights two of the candles in the chandelier. He mutters bits of Latin to himself. The main door (upstage center) is still locked, the pub not yet open for business. E.J. rummages among the old newspapers for something with which to rekindle the fire. He talks to himself: "You'll make water before you cross water, said Mrs. Morrissey years ago," bits of speeches and poems, "when you are old and grey and full of sleep," lines from old tunes, "the hare and the rabbit are plain to be seen" . . . He is accustomed to being his only company. He sets a small fire in the fireplace. The wind is up and howling. It is a spring morning, Holy Thursday.

A face appears briefly outside the small window upstage right. Startled, E.J. opens the main door. A man enters carrying a canvas sack with two looped handles and something shapely and weighty inside of it.

E.J.

By cripes, is that you, Sean? You gave me a start.

Sean.

God Bless all here!

E.J.

The living and the dead . . . ! And no one here but me to greet ye!

Sean.

And those with a boot in either side! Where's Lourda?

E.J.

Faith, that's me, Sean. Half rake and half cadaver! No sign of her, though I hear stirring upstairs.

Sean.

God knows you're early at your post, E.J.?

E.J.

What have I but my few days in town? Sundays after Mass, Tuesdays the mart, and Thursdays the pension. I've been to the post office for the stipendium. Is it not my duty to circulate the currency for the betterment of the economy? Dosh in the till and on its way to Brussels. The pint in the pisser and out to sea. Sure, I'm the one they're only passing through.

Sean.

Just passing through life, that's all we're doing, said the westerns years ago, God be good to them.

E.J.

Isn't it just so, Sean. And we the westerns now. You're welcome to this part of the country!

Sean.

And I'm the glad man to be here.

E.J.

Sit in there by the fire. You'd be perished after the long journey. Cripes but the weather is very broken. I wondered if you'd be back...