ACT 1: SCENE 3
The moon shone palely on the town of Pantoland. On the cobwebbed chandeliers of the abandoned palace, on the dustsheeted glass coffin and spinning wheel of the Pantoland museum and on the ramshackle hovel on Penniless Lane. The moonlight brought a serenity to the world, and everything was still and quiet. Too quiet. The midnight silence was suddenly shattered by the apparent sound of a dragon suffering from asthma. Slowly the sheets on the washing lines, the sails on the merchant ships and most peoples curtains were drawn in the general direction of Penniless Lane. There was a pause, followed by the sound not unlike that of Zeus attempting to blow out a particularly difficult candle. The clouds shifted a little. The little bells on the pumpkin carriage tinkled quietly in the museum. Mayor Naize swatted the palace curtains as they fluttered about his face, muttered to himself and instinctively reached over to the cold, empty side of the bed. Mrs Trellis was snoring.
Inside the hovel, the windows rattled, the tiles shook and the walls groaned with every thunderous snore, while Hansel and Gretel slept peacefully, top to tail in a tiny bed in the attic. Large amounts of cotton wool protruded from each youngster's ears. They had given up putting their heads under their pillows since Hansel had awoken to the sight of a tiny, butterfly winged woman tugging desperately at one of his front teeth and cursing like a sailor every time it refused to budge.
They are the picture of innocence, the young man and woman snoozing with their feet in each others faces. They're like children although they are in their early adulthood, even with the burdens of poverty and loss overshadowing them. So optimistic, so willing to believe in magic that they never had chance to witness. This is how Pantoland used to be. This is how Pantoland ought to be. I drift past them for now. Our heroes must rest. Sliding through the attic floorboards I come upon a large woman in a flannelette night-dress and mud pack. The blanket is pulled up to her stubbled chin, revealing large, hairy, painted toes at the other end of the bed. Although her face contorts ludicrously with each over-enthusiastic snore, the slices of cucumber perches on her eyes never fall out of place. Curlers poke from beneath a mopcap with disturbingly little hair curled up in them.
I sink beside her as she sleeps and pause a moment. This is wrong. The heroes are not ready yet. Panto must play itself out, not...
I feel the hot heavy electricity from that witch's wand from here. It crackles in her fingertips and black eyes. It is stronger than The Rules. It will write new Rules, create a new right and wrong. And I must obey.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
There was a tinkle of silver against glass.
"Speech!"
Mrs Trellis removed her veil and tossed her long, honey coloured hair lightly into shape. The glorious sunlight beamed through the crystal champagne flutes, casting a hundred tiny rainbows on the ivory tablecloths. She smiled sweetly at the other end of the table where her son, her big strong Hansel was still hitting his glass with his spoon. He looked so handsome in his suit and, she noted, had actually bothered to shave for once. The teaspoon was suddenly taken off him by Gretel. Beautiful Gretel, in a blue satin gown and a crown of flowers. Beautiful Gretel, who had put on weight, she was sure, and her hair was longer, and it looked as though she might be wearing some make-up. Gretel waved, and Mrs Trellis waved a slim, feminine hand back, before resting it on the arm of her new husband. The Mayor gazed at his bride nervously and removed his top hat, sitting it on the table next to her veil. His forehead was sweaty, the way it always was when he had to make a speech. She gently wiped it with a napkin and kissed his nose.
"Knock 'em dead, Mister Mayor".
He grinned gratefully at her. and returned the kiss.
"I intend to, Missis Mayor."
Mayor Naize rose, gazed into the sunlight at the gathered population of Pantoland, coughed, then began his speech in the clearest, most confident voice they'd ever heard.
"Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking..."
"What beautiful dreams you have, Mrs Trellis."
Mrs Trellis' head whipped round to see the androgynous, white robed stranger at her other side.
"If only dreams still came true."
A thousand bursts of laughter suddenly filled the banqueting hall. Mrs Trellis gazed about her, wildly. The Mayor had just cracked a joke. One of those jokes that she always thought was terribly funny but seemed to go down like a lead balloon with his audiences. Nobody appeared to notice the figure beside her, luminous, ethereal, slightly translucent. The laughter echoed away.
"Who are you? Wh... what are you?"
"You know me Mrs Trellis. I am Jack Anory, the Will O'The Wisp, the all seeing eye..."
"The Narrator?"
"Yes."
"I... we... it was thought that you were dead. Or gone away. Or something."
"No."
"So Panto is alive again?"
"It always was, in a way."
"But I thought that the narrator wasn't supposed to meet the characters. It's just supposed to tell the story, not get involved."
"I know. You see, Mrs Trellis, the rules have changed. I am here... to help."
"But that's madness!"
"Is it? Or is it just different?"
Mrs Trellis' immaculate forehead furrowed a little in a perplexed frown.
"Well, I suppose everything's been different since... you know."
"Quite."
"You're here to help."
"Yes."
"Help with what?"
"If only dreams still came true."
A thousand bursts of laughter suddenly filled the banqueting hall. Mrs Trellis gazed about her, wildly. The Mayor had just cracked a joke. One of those jokes that she always thought was terribly funny but seemed to go down like a lead balloon with his audiences.
"If only dreams still came true."
A thousand bursts of laughter suddenly filled the banqueting hall. Mrs Trellis gazed about her, wildly. The Mayor had just cracked a joke. One of those jokes that she always thought was terribly funny but seemed to go down like a lead balloon with his audiences.
"If only dreams..."
And suddenly they weren't laughing at the Mayor's joke any more. They were laughing at her, their eyes full of hate. Laughing and pointing at her. Mrs Trellis put her large, coarse hand to her face and felt the stubble on her chin. Hot tears stung her eyes. She looked down and saw the broad chest, the unconvincing bosom, the knobbly, hairy knees bulging hideously through her wedding dress. She tried to catch her breath but snorted loudly through the tears. Desperately, she looked to her family. Across the empty table Hansel and Gretel, ragged and unwashed, scowled back at her. And on the chair next to her... nothing. Nothing but a sweaty top hat lying forlornly on its side. She turned back to the narrator.
"Don't take this away from me. I know that dreams can't come true any more, but please don't take them from me. They're all I have. Them and the kids. That's all."
"If you listen carefully, Mrs Trellis, you can make this dream come true. You'll never have to wake up to a sickening reality ever again."
"What are you talking about?"
"You've always believed that the quickest way to a man's heart is through his stomach, right?"
"Right."
"Well, that's true. In a way."
"How do you mean?"
"There's still some magic left over in Pantoland, Mrs Trellis. And I can tell you how to use it."
They looked at one another in silence for a moment.
"There is a certain type of mushroom, that grows only in the Western Woods. If they are picked in exactly the right way, and a woman makes a soup out of them for the man she truly loves, then he will fall as desperately in love with her as she is with him, and they will live Happily Ever After."
"Hold on there." Mrs Trellis wiped her tears away with a gargantuan spotted hanky an d blew her nose with great aplomb. "The Western Woods are haunted. Everybody knows that. They say a wicked witch still lives there. Some people even say that it was her who..."
"Who do you think it was who enchanted the mushrooms?"
"Oh."
"Happy Ever After never came cheap, Mrs Trellis."
Mrs Trellis looked back at her knobbly knees again.
"These mushrooms need to be picked at twilight, by a beautiful maiden and a virtuous young man."
"Well, neither of those is me."
"But your children..."
"Well Gretel's hardly Miss Pantoland and Hansel... could you call him virtuous? I mean I suppose he's never done anything really wrong...
"How old did you say they were again?"
Nineteen. They both are.
"Height? Weight?"
Mrs Trellis shrugged.
"Gretel's probably about 5'2" and a slip of a lass, Hansel's just over six foot and probably getting on for 14 stone by now...
Her voice trailed off in bemusement as the narrator quickly checked a timetable of sorts in a large and shabby black book.
"They'll do. Send them out this evening, Mrs Trellis. The sooner the better!"
"I say, but isn't it awfully dangerous?"
But suddenly the hall was bright and happy again.
("If only dreams still came true")
Mrs Trellis' soprano laugh tinkled as she was spun around in her son's arms, her tiny, graceful feet only skimming the marble dancefloor.
("If only dreams...")
Hansel released her tangoed away with his sister, and she found herself pressed tightly against the cool solidness of the Mayor's gold chain of office. He hadn't wanted to wear it, but she'd insisted.
("If only... if only... if only...")
She kissed her husband's cheek as they danced around and around and laughed and laughed and laughed.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
The sun rose, and Mrs Trellis and her children awoke to toil and starve as they did every day.
And, as usual, at about midday, Mrs Trellis went to a field, leaned against the rickety fence and offered a cigarette to a cow.
"I shouldn't, you know," said the cow.
"Neither should I, Daisy," replied Mrs Trellis, lighting up, "but it's only one a day. And it gives us girls time to catch up."
"Oh, come on," said another voice from the cow's stomach, "I'm gasping."
"All right then," said the cow's head. Daisy leaned over, sucked the cigarette out of Mrs Trellis' open palm and swallowed it whole.
"Ta," said Daisy's stomach.
Her front half leaned against the fence.
"So. How's things, Mrs T?"
"Strange." Mrs Trellis flicked a little ash from her cigarette. "I could use some advice to be honest. I can't talk to Gretel about it and besides her, you're the cleverest person I know."
Daisy's head snorted a laugh. A thin line of grey smoke had started to rise from her middle.
"Things have come to a pretty pass when the second most intelligent person in Pantoland is a cow who's back half is trying to give her front half lung cancer."
"Hypocrite," muttered the stomach, "she's all high and mighty when it comes to my smoking but the tables are turned when there's a drink to be had..."
"Anyhoo," continued the head, "what's on your mind?"
Mrs Trellis took another drag. "I had this dream last night..."
"...you should've seen her putting those beers away last night, Mrs T. Getting sick's no picnic when you've got five tummies, I can tell you..."
"Sush!" hissed Daisy's head. "Go on, Mrs Trellis. What was it, a nightmare?"
"Yes and no." Mrs Trellis blew her smoke away from the cow. "But it wasn't that. It was just so real."
"What was it about?" asked both ends.
"It was about me and the kids. And the Mayor. And then the narrator showed up."
"The narrator?" frowned Daisy's head, "that's pretty serious. Nobody ever even thinks about the narrator unless..."
"...unless there's a Pantomime happening" finished the backside.
"You don't think that we're in a Pantomime again, do you? After all these years?"
"Well," pondered Daisy's head, "you're a pauper, practically stony broke and you're in love with... well, Naize isn't King but he's the closest we have to one these days. So the conditions are right. What did the narrator say?"
"That's what I'm worried about," said Mrs Trellis, "it told me I had to send Hansel and Gretel into the haunted woods."
"I see," sighed Daisy's stomach, "and naturally you're worried."
"I don't want to send my kids out there, Daisy. It's so dangerous."
"You can't have a resolution without conflict, Mrs T," replied the head, "the Panto has to have a story and the story has to have excitement. You can't expect to live Happily Ever After if you don't face the possibility of losing everything. It's classic Pantomime."
"Look," added the back end, "whether it was a dream or not, if the narrator tells you to do something you're wisest to do it. Unless you're a villain, which you're not. You're poor. And honest. The narrator loves people like you. Pantomime loves people like you."
"But making my kids a part of it is just so selfish. I can't do it to them."
"Imagine what Panto coming back would do for all of us." Daisy's head leaned towards her. "Turning your back on it, now that's selfish."
Mrs Trellis gazed at the cow for a moment, then at the distant Western Woods, then the dilapidated palace. Her eyes narrowed. She dropped the remains of her cigarette and ground out the embers with her boot. "You're right," she said, "I was a fool to stop believing in Pantomime. The narrator will have its story. And we'll live Happily Ever After. All of us."
She walked away from the fence. There was the soft hiss of a burning cigarette against flesh.
"Ow!" grumbled Daisy's head. "Watch where you swing that thing, Fag-ash Lil."
"Oh shut up, you old Lush," replied her bum.
A message was sent to the Mayoral office to say that Mrs Trellis would be unavailable for dinner that evening, but had something very special lined up for tea the next day. As the afternoon wore on, the markets began packing away their wares and tossing spoilt produce in the direction of the slums of Penniless Lane as they did at the end of every day. The Trellises weren't there to sift through rotten cabbages and stale loaves that day, however. Mrs Trellis was having a quiet and serious talk with her children.
And as the sun began to dip under the horizon, blushing the sky and casting crazy shadows amongst the trees, a large lad and a wiry girl carrying a wicker basket jumped the fence sectioning off the Western Woods and disappeared into its murky green darkness.