The Hostage, Brendan Behan

• Act One
• The action of the play takes place in an old house in Dublin that has seen better days.
• MEG. Do you think they will hang him?
• MEG. Do you know what he said? 'As a soldier of the Irish Republic, I will die smiling.'
• PAT. Don't have me use a coarse explanation, you silly old bitch. This is nineteen-sixty, and the days of heroes are over this forty years past. Long over, finished and done with. The IRA and the War of Independence are as dead as the Charleston.
• MEG. The old cause is never dead. 'Till Ireland shall be free from the centre to the sea. Hurrah for liberty, says the Shan Van Vocht.'
• MONSEWER. Patrick -- preparations.
• PAT. Everything's ready for the guest.
• MONSEWER. Yes. An English laddie to be captured on the Border.
• MEG. Do you see the wad he has on him?
• MONSEWER (in great confidence). Patrick, I trust we may rely on the lads in the billet if anything should go wrong tonight?
• MONSEWER. At a time like this, we should refuse to use the English language altogether.
• MEG. Most people wouldn't know what he was saying, surely.
• PAT (to the audience). Pig-eye! He's just done six months for robbery with violence. 'Till the end of his days.' If he doesn't pay his rent, he'll reach the end of his days sooner than he expects.
• PAT. It's French for 'mister,' isn't it?
• PAT. That was the day we got captured. We could have got out of it, but Monsewer is terrible strict and honest. You see, he's an Englishman.
• MEG. His father was a bishop.
• PAT. Yes, he had every class of comfort, mixed with dukes, marquises, earls and lords.
• PAT. Because they work. An Anglo-Irishman only works at riding horses, drinking whisky and reading double-meaning books in Irish at Trinity College.
• PAT. We had the victory -- till they signed that curse-of-God treaty in London. They sold the six counties to England and Irishmen were forced to swear an oath of allegiance to the British Crown.
• PAT. It wasn't the end of the story. Some of us wouldn't accept the treaty. We went on fighting, but we were beat. Monsewer was loyal to the old cause and I was loyal to Monsewer. So when the fighting was done we came back to this old house.
• PAT. Hiding hunted Republicans was all very well, but it didn't pay the rent, so in the end we had to take in all sorts of scruffy lumpers to make the place pay.
• MEG. You had me to help you! The curse of God meet and melt you and your rotten lousy leg. You had me to help you, indeed! If I'm a whore itself, sure I'm a true patriot.
• RIO RITA. Three hours he's had her in there, and the noises, it's disgusting. It's all very well you laughing, but it doesn't say much for the rest of us girls in the house.
• MISS GILCHRIST. Save your souls, my brothers, my sisters, save your souls. One more sinner saved today. Jesus lives.
• MEG. You take anything you can get like a good many more round here. You've been three hours up in his room.
• MEG. You can stuff them up your cathedral.
• MULLEADY. Mr Pat, Mr Pat, she has no right to be in there all morning washing her aspidistra. I only wanted to was my shirt. (He recovers his dignity.) All this fuss about Miss Gilcrest. She merely came to talk religion to me.
• TERESA. Oh no, sir, he looks respectable.
• PAT. Well, someone's coming to stay here and you'll bring him his meals. Now, if you don't tell a living sinner about it, you can stay here for the rest of your life.
• MEG. Yes, a whore with a heart of gold. At least, that's what you'd say if you were drunk enough.
• OFFICER. You'll have to get that cellar cleared; it's an escape route.
• OFFICER. Here's a list of your instructions; it's in triplicate, one for you, one for me and one for HQ. When you've read and digested them, append your signature and destroy your copy. Do you have the Gaelic?
• OFFICER. Rent book, please.
• OFFICER. Today the movement is purged of the old dross. It has found it's spiritual strength.
• OFFICER. And lost your leg, they tell me.
• PAT. More than that. You wouldn't recall, I suppose, the time in County Kerry when the agricultural labourers took over five thousand acres of land from Lord Tralee?
• PAT. I was. Court-martialled in my absence, sentenced to death in my absence. So I said, right, you can shoot me -- in my absence.
• OFFICER. I was told to come here. They must have known what I was coming to. You can understand their reasons for choosing it, the police would never believe we'd use this place. At least you can't be an informer.
• PAT. Then you'd better get it before your man arrives, or I'll throw the lot of you, prisoner and escort, out -- shun!
• RIO RITA. It's about the boy in Belfast Jail. They've refused a reprieve.
• COLLETTE (repeats the news item from the radio and is echoed by MULLEADY, ROPEEN, RIO RITA and TERESA). 'Early today a young British soldier was captured as he was coming out of a dance hall in Armagh by the IRA. He was put into the back of a car and was last seen speeding towards the border. All troops have been alerted...'
• MULLEADY. It was the Pall Mall Gazette in 1919.
• MULLEADY. She may have been, but all that time I was in prison. It broke my poor mother's heart.
• MEG. Did you half-inch something?
• MONSEWER. It doesn't make me unhappy. It makes me proud; proud to know that the old cause is not dead yet, and that there are young men willing and ready to go out and die for Ireland.
• MONSEWER. I would give anything to stand in that young man's place tomorrow morning. For Ireland's sake I would hang crucified in the town square.
• TERESA. I think he's an old idiot.
• TERESA. A girl of eighteen knows more than a boy of eighteen.
• MEG. You could easy do that. That poor young man, he gave no love to any, except to Ireland, and instead of breaking his heart for a girl, it was about the Cause he was breaking it.
• SOLDIER. Don't stop. I like dancing.
• (The SOLDIER walks slowly up into the room, then turns and sings.)
• ALL. There's no place on earth like the world,
  That's straight up and take it from me.
• Act Two
• Later in the same day. The SOLDIER is confined in the room.
• SOLDIER. Psst!
• SOLDIER. Any chance of a cigarette?
• SOLDIER. You know, the red-headed one -- the one we saw first. Bit of all right.
• COLETTE. Five minutes -- upstairs -- I won't charge you.
• TERESA. Yes, it's your tea -- sure you must be starving. Your belly must be stuck to your back with hunger.
• SOLDIER. Leslie. What's yours?
• TERESA. I'll get you twenty. You've a long night ahead of you.
• TERESA. I was just going to give him his cigarettes, sir.
• OFFICER. That's enough. Get along with you, girl. About your business.
• PAT. She'd do nothing to bring the police here. And as far as helping him get away, she's all for keeping him here. They're getting along very well, those two.
• OFFICER. At this moment the hearts of all true Irishmen are beating for us, fighting as we are to save the Belfast martyr, and all you can think about is money.
• PAT. Nine years, in all.
• PAT. The Irish patriots in along with you.
• MEG. They're marching to the GPO over the boy that's being hung in the Belfast Jail.
• MISS GILCHRIST. Is this the English boy? May I give him a little gift?
• PAT. I had three. I was bashed, booted and bayoneted in Arbourhill Barracks.
• SOLDIER. I'm not jeering. I feel sorry for the poor bloke, but that noise won't help him, will it?
• SOLDIER. And what about the Irish in London? Thousands of them. Nobody's doing anything to them. We just let them drink their way through it. That's London for you. That's where we should be, down the 'dilly on a Saturday night.
• TERESA. I'm no Dubliner.
• SOLDIER. I ain't got none.
• MONSEWER. Patrick, is this the English laddie?
• MONSEWER (sings). I remember in September,
  When the final stumps were drawn,
  And the shouts of crowds now silent,
  And the boys to tea were gone.
• OFFICER. Patrick, get that old idiot out of here.
• OFFICER. Keep your mouth shut and no harm will come to you. Have you got everything you want?
• SOLDIER. You can come out now.
• TERESA. Yes, you've a long night ahead of you, and so has he.
• TERESA. A sort of sheet, you know.
• SOLDIER. Will you give me a picture of yourself, Teresa?
• TERESA. It's a medal. It's for you, Leslie.
• SOLDIER. I will if you put it on.
• TERESA (to the audience). Shall we?
• OFFICER. You can't go in there. Security forbids it.
• MEG. And mine was the parish priest.
• MEG. I only wanted to see him in a temporal way.
• MEG. Like here in Russell Street, right next to the place where I was born, the British turned a tank and fired shells into people's homes.
• MEG. Old men and women, the bedridden and the cripples, and mothers with their infants.
• MEG. Would you like to hear some more? Then listen.
• OFFICER. Too anti-Irish, you mean. Bejasus, wait till we get him back home. We'll give him what-for for making fun of the Movement.
• PAT. Stop it a minute. Hey, Leslie, have you seen this?
• SOLDIER. Shut up, this is serious. 'In a statement today delivered to all newspaper offices and press agencies... He has been taken as a hostage... If... executed... the IRA declare that Private Leslie Alan Williams will be shot as a reprisal.' Does it really mean they're going to shoot me?
• SOLDIER. Surely one of you would let me go? (They all move backwards away from him, leaving him alone in the room. They disappear.) Well, you crowd of bleeding -- Hey, Kate, give us some music. (He sings.)
  ...
  I love my dear old Notting Hill, wherever I may roam,
  But I wish the Irish and the niggers and the wogs,
  Were kicked out and sent back home.
• Act Three
• MISS GILCHRIST. And how did you lose your poor left foot, Mr Pat?
• PAT. What the hell difference does it make, left or right? There were good men lost on both sides.
• MEG. You lost the use of it, I know that.
• PAT. Shut up! I lost my leg. Did I or did I not? And these white-faced loons with their berets and trench coats and teetotal badges have no right to call themselves members of the IRA.
• MEG. Go and get a mass said for yourself. The only love you ever had you kept for Mother Ireland and for leaving honest employment.
• PAT (to LESLIE). If you must sing, sing something cheerful.
• MISS GILCHRIST. I strove to save him, together we wrestled against the devil, but here I feel is a soul worth the saving.
• PAT. I'll tell you what you've done. Some time ago there was a famine in this country and people were dying all over the place. Well, your Queen Victoria, or whatever her bloody name was, sent five pounds to the famine fund and at the same time she sent five pounds to the Battersea Dogs' Home so no one could accuse her of having rebel sympathies.
• SOLDIER. Well, you can't shoot a prisoner of war.
• PAT. Bluff. Haven't you everything you could wish for? A bottle of stout, a new girlfriend bringing you every class of comfort?
• MEG. When the boy's dead, what good would it be to croak this one? It wouldn't bring the other back to life now, would it?
• PAT. You could sing that if you had an air to it. Leslie, pop out and get us twelve of stout. Go on -- just out there and around the corner -- Go on -- you can't miss it. Tell 'em it's for me.
• VOLUNTEER. I caught the prisoner, sir, trying to escape.
• RIO RITA. Shut up, Meg Dillon, you're just bigoted.
• SOLDIER. Eh, just before you go, don't think you've taken me for a complete bloody fool, will you? All this tea and beer lark: you even obliged with that. (Indicating the bed.)
• TERESA. I wasn't pretending.
• TERESA. I'm not an informer.
• SOLDIER. If you thought -- I'm a hostage. You know what that means? What's the point of taking a hostage if you don't intend to do him in?
• SOLDIER. If I get away, will you come and see me in Armagh?
• MISS GILCHRIST. Oh, you don't recognize me, Leslie? It's me with my hair done nice.
• What is actually happening is that MULLEADY has informed on PAT and MONSEWER and has brought the police to rescue LESLIE. He has involved RIO RITA and PRINCESS GRACE in his schemes and they have corrupted his morals. The RUSSIAN has been a police spy all along. The police are now attacking the house and MULLEADY and RIO RITA are guiding them.
• MEG. Shut up or I'll plug you, and your informer bitch when she comes in.
• PAT. I'm running.
• PAT. I'm halting.
• TERESA (offstage). Run, Leslie, run.
• PAT. He's dead. Take his identification disc.
• TERESA. Leslie, my love. A thousand blessings go with you.
• PAT. Don't cry. Teresa. It's no one's fault. Nobody meant to kill him.
• TERESA. It wasn't the Belfast Jail or the Six Counties that was troubling you, but your lost youth and your crippled leg. He died in a strange land, and at home he had no one. I'll never forget you, Leslie, till the end of time.
• ALL. The bells of hell,
  Go ting-a-ling-a-ling,
  For you but not for him,
  O death, where is thy sting-a-ling-a-ling!
  Or grave thy victory.