Remember Ronald Ryan Read online

  Lights up on RYAN.

  RYAN: Everyone in my life is coming through! Who’s next?

  GUARD: Your father’s here, Ron.

  RYAN’S FATHER enters.

  RYAN: What have you got to say for yourself?

  RYAN’S FATHER: I came to speak of galahs.

  RYAN: You cared more about them than us.

  RYAN’S FATHER: They were more interesting.

  RYAN: Dirt floor, no electricity, no father. Good on you, Dad!

  RYAN’S FATHER: You can’t be good at everything, son.

  RYAN: Don’t depress me. I’ve got enough to think about. Why were you weak? Why did you abnegate the possibility of hero? You shot through on us.

  RYAN’S FATHER: I’m not a hero. Neither are you. Probably nobody is.

  RYAN: All you did was pull dead kangaroos out of water channels.

  RYAN’S FATHER: Wasn’t a bad job.

  RYAN: You were happy with the galahs, weren’t you, Dad? Up at Balranald.

  RYAN’S FATHER: They were things I understood. Who can understand justice? Can I sit down, Ron?

  RYAN: I had your job. I was the father. I provided. I protected. I looked after. What a shack we grew up in. Always a hundred-degree heat. Flies and mozzies! Mum always howling. You on the bottle in the bushes. It wasn’t funny. What are you laughing about? What makes you laugh?

  RYAN’S FATHER: Nothing.

  RYAN: The law took my sisters to a hospice. You just took off.

  RYAN’S FATHER: Don’t judge me, Ronald. There’s not much time. Let me look at you.

  RYAN: Do you love me?

  RYAN’S FATHER: Why did I have you? Why were you born? Have you got a quid?

  RYAN: Piss off.

  His FATHER exits.

  Parasite! You weren’t staunch either. God. It’s hard to love people!

  Three cells up from RYAN in H Division lies his fellow escapee PETER WALKER, who has not seen RYAN since their arrival back at Pentridge after the flight. Over a year since RYAN and WALKER have looked at one another or spoken a word. WALKER frets for his mate’s life.

  WALKER: [alone at the opposite end of the stage] A whole year since I’ve seen you. A year! Just a few seconds and I could’ve said goodbye. That’s all I wanted. We weren’t mates, we were thrown together in a sort of storm. I feel so sorry for you. You aren’t the worst man. Probably no-one is. How can there be a worst man?

  But you never stood over anyone. You never got rough. You hated all that. When we got back I knew the screws would cut you up. They had to because of Hodson. You were staunch. If the government can hang us and get away with it. Who’s sane and who’s insane? You’ve made your peace. I know you have. The priest didn’t do much. You did it yourself. It’s your bad luck. Bolte’s good luck. He’ll win the vote because of you. The only one to have a go at him was Brian Dixon. A courageous footballer who got sent to Coventry for it. What a great crew they are. Who can you look up to?

  He bows his head and weeps alone in his cell.

  Tomorrow, Ronnie boy, tomorrow you’re on your Pat Malone! Every single crim is getting moved out of D Division. You’ll be the only one in it. They like to stick it into you, don’t they? But they can’t do much. Anyway, you said you couldn’t do any more can.

  You’re better off in heaven. Wish I was with you. I’m so sorry for you. Twenty years since the last hanging in Victoria. Why have they got it in for you? Why? Why you? Do you know? Why not me too!

  Lights go gradually down inside Walker’s cell.

  GUARD: Your old mum, Ron. Hello, darling… let me take your coat.

  CECELIA RYAN enters the condemned cell.

  RYAN: Mum. How is this possible?

  CECELIA: We’re all part of each other. You said that. You believe that.

  The old woman stands next to RYAN in the condemned cell.

  RYAN: Mum, look at you.

  CECELIA: How can I? It’s very hard to see yourself. Look at you! You look terrible!

  RYAN: You’re all done-up. You look lovely. Unreal! Sweet ghost!

  CECELIA: I wanted to look lovely for you. All done-up! You’re a good boy, really. I’ve been trying hard for you. They want to do it. They are determined about it, Ronnie darling. I’ve been at the convent and no-one will see me.

  RYAN: Who shouted you all the razzamatazz?

  CECELIA: The Sisters at the convent. Not stingy, are they? They know how to lash out. It was special, they said.

  RYAN: Your hair’s so nice. I’ve always wanted to…

  CECELIA: What have you always wanted to do? Tell me, darling.

  RYAN: Smell your hair. Just smell your scalp. My mother’s head.

  CECELIA: I never brought you anything. I am forgetful!

  RYAN: Bit of bad luck, isn’t it? That’s all.

  CECELIA: Probably not, in the end. Just how it goes. It was nice going down Collins Street. The atmosphere here is similar to the tram. It’s the best thing that could happen. You’ll be no more trouble to Mr Grindlay. He likes you, you know, Ron. I’d better go. The Premier wouldn’t see me. God will.

  RYAN laughs. CECELIA is gone out of light. Light comes up on GUARD HODSON, sitting on the bunk.

  How are you, George?

  HODSON: Dead.

  Light out on HODSON.

  The condemned cell. Some GUARDS listening to late-night music. KEN LEONARD, a deathwatch officer, enters with a tray of breakfast.

  LEONARD: Ryan… Ryan… look what you get.

  RYAN: Bit of a waste.

  The FIRST GUARD offers a glass of whiskey.

  I don’t mind if I do. Cheers.

  LEONARD: [offering a pair of fresh white underpants] Put ’em on, Ryan. So you don’t disgrace yourself.

  RYAN puts on the underpants.

  RYAN: [to LEONARD] You can’t keep secrets in here.

  LEONARD: How do you mean?

  RYAN: I was sorry to hear about your mother, Ken.

  LEONARD: This is hardly the right time to talk about that, Ron.

  RYAN: Listen, I know I am going in the lime pit.

  RYAN puts out his smoke and returns to the condemned cell.

  Execution scene. Governor Grindlay’s office.

  GOVERNOR FRASER: It’s five to eight, Mr Grindlay, sir. Five to.

  GRINDLAY: I know, Mr Fraser. I know the time. Five to. Show the press in. Fourteen reporters. Make them hand in their invites. No smoking, no tape recorders. That wouldn’t be cricket. Tell them to stand to attention.

  Conservatively dressed REPORTERS enter, in sixties’ gear and with notebooks. They stand to watch. FATHER JOHN BROSNAN sits with RYAN in the condemned cell.

  FATHER JOHN: How do you feel, Ron?

  RYAN: Not bad for a young bloke. What are you up to?

  GOVERNOR FRASER: I think the Sheriff goes into the condemned cell before me, then I go after you; is that correct, Mr Grindlay? Him, then you, then me, with Ron in the middle? Is that the right etiquette? It’s been a long while.

  FATHER JOHN: Would you like me to say a Mass for you, Ron?

  RYAN: Go for your life.

  RYAN composes himself as FATHER JOHN whispers the Mass, the Latin Mass for the soul of RYAN.

  GOVERNOR FRASER: Here’s the hangman. Mr Hangman, this is Mr Ian Grindlay, the Governor of Pentridge Prison.

  GRINDLAY: How do you do?

  HANGMAN: Not bad.

  The HANGMAN wears motorcycle goggles, tweed coat and rubber boots.

  FATHER JOHN: Ian Grindlay wants a word with you, Ron.

  GRINDLAY: I am so sorry, Ron. So sorry about all of this.

  RYAN: [shaking hands] I am sorry for you, Mr Grindlay. That it had to be. You were good to me. I liked you. I’ve been praying pretty hard for you, too. Been a lot of prayers lately, all round lately.

  GRINDLAY: It seems such a pity to carry a man to the gallows.

  FATHER JOHN: Oh, don’t worry about that. We’re being carried by a man of unbelievable strength.

  The HANGMAN bounds around setting the exe
cution scene. He sets the noose in place. The trap he checks with the lever. He consults the book of weights and measures. He adjusts his motorcycle goggles. The SHERIFF, HANGMAN, GOVERNOR GRINDLAY, GOVERNOR FRASER and RONALD RYAN are moving slowly to the gallows. FATHER JOHN looks away, refusing to watch. A sheet is drawn over the scaffold, only RYAN’s head and shoulders are visible now. Four JOURNALISTS scribble their descriptions. As RYAN steps up to the rope, he smiles down at FATHER JOHN. The HANGMAN binds RYAN’s legs with a strap and handcuffs, his hands behind his back. It is five steps that RYAN takes to the noose.

  RYAN: [to FATHER JOHN] Thank you so much. No matter how long you live, always remember you were ordained for me. [To HANGMAN] God bless you. Make it quick.

  The HANGMAN roughly tugs the noose around RYAN’s neck. In doing so, RYAN’s neck is tugged roughly, rendering him slightly off balance. RYAN has to hobble to the noose. Eight loud and sombre bells ring out slowly, taking an age to reverberate. The trapdoor opens efficiently. RYAN sails through it in a second. FATHER JOHN is immediately under the corpse, administering extreme unction, rubbing the salve into RYAN’s wrists after a GUARD has uncuffed them for the last rites to be read. The body is carted out on a stretcher.

  FATHER JOHN: Postea dicit:

  V. Adjiutorium nostrum in mormine Domini

  R. Qui fecit caelum et terram

  V. Dorminus vobiscum

  R. Et cum spiritu tuo.

  Oremus.

  Introeat, Domine Iesu Christe, domum hanc sub nostrae humilitatis ingressue, aeterna felcitas, divina prosperitan, serena laetitia, caritas fuctuosa, sanitas sempiterna: effugiat ex hoc loco accessus daemonem: adsint Angeli pacis, domumque hanc deserat omnis maligna discordia. Magnifica, Domine, super nos nomen sanctum tuum; et bene et dic nostrae conversationi: sancitifica nostrae humilitatis ingressum, qui sanctus et qui pius es, et permanes cum Patre et Spiritu Sancto in saecula saeculorum.

  R. Amen

  Oremus, et deprecemur Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, ut benedicendo bene et dicat hoc tabernacalum, et omnes habitantes in eo, et det eis Angelum bonum custodem, et faciat eos sibi servire ad considerandum mirabilia de lege sua: avertat ab eis amnes contrarias potestates: eripiat eos ab omni formidine, et ab omni perturbatione, ac sans in hoc tabernaculo custodire disnetur: Qui vivit et regnat in saecula saeculorum.

  R. Amen.

  Oremus.

  Exaudi nos, Domine, sancte Pater, omnipotens, aeterne Deus: et mittere digneris sanctum Angelum tuum de caelis, qui custodiat, foveat, protegat, visitet atque defendat amnes habitantes in hoc habitaculo. Per Christum Dominum nostrum.

  R. Amen.

  We have viewed this above a large dark green canvas. Blackout.

  Weak light up on the scene of the gallows at D Division. Two Pentridge GUARDS mopping up blood and urine into a gully trap.

  FIRST GUARD: You can see the sense in it, can’t you?

  SECOND GUARD: How do you mean?

  FIRST GUARD: Stringing him up over the gully trap.

  SECOND GUARD: Oh, yeah. Easier to hose the shit and piss out.

  FIRST GUARD: And blood. Don’t forget the blood.

  SECOND GUARD: Oh, yeah. Blood. Was there any blood?

  FIRST GUARD: What do you think that is? Red paint?

  SECOND GUARD: Oh, now I see blood! I see it now, alright.

  FIRST GUARD: It just makes sense to hang them over a gully trap, that’s all I’m saying.

  SECOND GUARD: Wouldn’t they always think of that?

  FIRST GUARD: All over in a second. All that fuss.

  SECOND GUARD: For a petty crim like him?

  FIRST GUARD: Nothing much to remember, is there?

  SECOND GUARD: About what?

  FIRST GUARD: About a man.

  SECOND GUARD: A man like him, you mean?

  FIRST GUARD: Yeah. Nothing much to remember about someone like him.

  SECOND GUARD: He’s different.

  FIRST GUARD: Is he?

  SECOND GUARD: People will remember him.

  FIRST GUARD: What makes you say that?

  SECOND GUARD: Remember what they did to him.

  FIRST GUARD: Hanged him like a dog. Is that what they’ll remember about him?

  SECOND GUARD: He had a history. He lived. He was a man. Married man.

  FIRST GUARD: That’s his history, isn’t it? He had three kids, didn’t he?

  SECOND GUARD: Girls. Three young girls. Three sisters and a sick old mum.

  FIRST GUARD: What if he shot Hodson?

  SECOND GUARD: There was something about him. That’s all I’m saying.

  FIRST GUARD: Did you ever see him? Or speak to him?

  SECOND GUARD: No.

  FIRST GUARD: Then what is there to remember? A petty crim who stole hundreds of motormowers and kept them in a warehouse.

  SECOND GUARD: He was kind.

  The two GUARDS complete their duties, put the mops and buckets away.

  Governor Grindlay’s office. After the hanging we see GOVERNOR GRINDLAY sitting stunned in his tiny cramped office.

  GRINDLAY: Something there was good in him. But not burglary. No-one can sanctify him. Nothing can resurrect him. Christ forgive him. I see him most nights when I pray for him. The spit of his mother. A pathological hatred of authority. Why were we friends? So different. I watched him go through. I was standing from here to where you are. I could’ve touched his shoulder. I had him body-searched when he came back from Sydney. My people wanted to fix him up for shooting Hodson. I said when he hangs he will be as clean as that. And he was. Not a mark on him when he was hanged. Clean as a whistle. Clean soul inside him. I pray for you, Ron. Someone has to. You and George. I knew you both. Remember Ronald Ryan.

  GRINDLAY closes his eyes in earnest prayer. Blackout.

  ‘Cool Water’ returns for the curtain call.

  THE END

  CHARACTER

  RONALD RYAN

  SETTING

  The condemned cell, Coburg Prison.

  The set is the condemned cell at Coburg Prison on 2nd February 1967.

  It is filth itself with rusty barbed wire surrounding the dusty louvres of its solitary window.

  RYAN, sometimes but not for very long, gets up on his stretcher bed and peers through it.

  He is garbed in disillusioning harsh pants and horrid top with printed black arrows.

  He looks positively ghoulish.

  His hair is his only vanity and this he oils and brooms with a busted plastic blue comb.

  He is preparing to either be hanged or liberated at eight the next morning.

  On a grotesque desk he keeps a dusty copy of the Catholic Bible.

  And a few prison-issue envelopes for his correspondence.

  He has a razor with which to shave.

  He has a stick of broken shaving cream.

  He has 100 minutes to live.

  He is feverishly pacing and then feverishly still as a stone.

  Lights up as RYAN fronts the audience.

  He is precisely like a river current which has stopped.

  One lace on his exhausted gymnasium shoes is untied.

  He is very close to the audience, on edge as well as nonchalant.

  Hundred minutes left so don’t walk out on me my darlings

  You are the beloved ones remember

  You turned up to see me hang or walk relatively free

  There is no harm but the harm

  The hours one of those just stepped in to see me

  An hour it was who liberated me and listened to me with such care

  The hour sat down and leant his chin on his other arm

  Like an obedient child

  Like an obedient bird

  Like an old longing in my home

  Which is D Division

  Last night the earth stopped and I began to breathe simultaneously

  Thank you David Copperfield

  What am I saying?

  The first Coburg tram has just rumbled over Sydney Road

  The first baby just got
born not far from Jordan my home

  I want to travel to Jordan and do time with my redeemer Christ Almighty

  Who shall forgive me for murder as He knew more than I about how that felt

  They hanged the thing they couldn’t understand

  They pinned him up personally on the bloodstained board

  The one person who could’ve helped

  Not just me but all of the bickering butcher-heads of the world

  The ones who run the program and ruin the result

  The ones who tip scorn far in

  Tip it right in the writers and thinkers who make Stalin look left-wing and alternative

  We are ruled by reactionaries who failed kindergarten

  Illiterate Premiers

  Poisonous parsons

  Evil architects such as the parasites who designed this jail in windy Coburg

  Where the wind goes to die and all the fairies commit suicide in their filmy fashion

  I’m a fairy telling you

  Besides I heard what I’m saying already whispered by children in Bell Street

  So it must be true

  Last night they shifted every single criminal out of D Division just to let me have it

  Just to stick it up me

  That I’d have no fellow murderer to speak to or joke with

  I was all alone in D Division

  With merely the ghost of myself to talk to

  And bot a smoke from

  And thieve his last match therefore and inhale a last gasp of throat cancer on the house

  We sat thus my mortal ghost and my heavenly shade and we laughed a great deal

  And I was for a time frightened I’d drown my Catholic Bible

  Leant to me by the old Salvation Army bird who comes here each day without fail

  And she reads from it to my one working ear canal

  But I don’t take it in much as I’d like to take the lessons in in sin

  I’m a sinner and they have convinced me of that solemn fact by George

  George Hodson

  I’ll do you

  I’ll be you

  They’re hanging me because we were good friends in here

  Where’s your English accent now you need it George?

  Give it away Ryan you haven’t got a chance

  Give it away and come back to me and they’ll give you life and not swing you

  Swing you for murdering poor old me!