A monologue from the play by Christine Evans
Algy is a dreamy young boy who has run away from his violent father, Bill. He has taken shelter with the Dog Lady, who hoards dogs and takes Algy in as a pet.
Here, Algy justifies his dad’s actions to the Dog Lady, who only intermittently listens.
What begins as a straightforward explanation moves toward Algy’s own need to untangle for himself the complex knot of love and abuse that ties him to his father — and to work out what to do next.
Algy (eleven)
He just wants me to be strong like him. It’s training. It’s for my own good. He doesn’t want me to get soft. (Beat.)
It’s not so bad. I can sleep on my stomach after. I count to a hundred when he does it, it stops hurting after about thirty.
That’s a good trick I learned. It’s best not to hold your breath. You can breathe out when the belt comes down, and if you breathe really fast you can sometimes get dizzy and faint, and he stops then.
Once I fainted when I was up to forty, he was really worried about me. Are you all right Son, he said and he put his arms all round me, Jesus Son, wake up, come on Son, I’m just trying to help you, please please Jesus. . . .
I held my breath and everything was perfect, so perfect like on a seesaw and you balance exactly, your feet are off the ground and you feel like you never ever have to come down.
But it always tips and you get heavy again. And you wish and wish you could stay in the air with the sky under your legs and everything . . .
but the more you wish the heavier you get — I think if I was a unicorn I could balance there forever. I wouldn’t wish ’cause that makes you heavy.
I would be white as amnesia and when people saw me I would just look at them, not angry or happy but just . . . looking
. . . And they would slow down — like they were walking through water — And they’d feel all sweet inside and when they blinked I’d disappear.
That’s what unicorns do. They disappear. And they wouldn’t remember me but they would keep that sweet feeling inside them. (Beat.)
He put his arms around me you know. I can still feel his arms all round me like water. He’s really strong.
I can’t feel him belting me, only breathing and counting but I can feel his arms round me. Is that amnesia?
But I did have to breathe in the end, and so he knew I was awake, just pretending — and then he was so angry, more angry than before.
(Beat. Quietly.) He’s really angry now.
