SCENE TWO

SCENE TWO

Night. The only light is from a ‘scented’-type candle by the bed.

Hilary is kneeling silently at the side of her bed, saying her prayers. She is wearing only a T-shirt, which is long enough for modesty.

Spike pushes open the door, letting in more light. He enters with a mug in each hand. He is barefoot, wearing a girly wrap-over negligee too small for him, showing bare calves. Seeing Hilary at her prayers, he is dumbfounded. He hesitates, not sure what to do. He decides to leave and make a later entrance, but Hilary suddenly relaxes, stands up and gets into the crumpled bed, unbothered by seeing Spike.

The clothes they have taken off are untidily ‘anywhere’.

Spike Sorry.

Hilary What (about)?

Spike Were you praying?

Hilary Yes.

Spike Sorry if I came in at the wrong moment.

Hilary I was saying my prayers, I wasn’t putting in my dentures. (Accepting the mug.) Thanks.

Spike I’m glad you did that after, not before.

Hilary I feel the same way about what you’re wearing.

They each take a sip and wordlessly exchange mugs. Spike gets into bed beside her.

Spike You’re lovely. It was lovely. Afterwards, you said – muttered really, did you know? – you said, ‘Thank you.’ ‘Thank you’. I thought that was so... You don’t have to say thank you.

Hilary Actually, I wasn’t talking to you.

Spike Oh. Sorry.

So... so you, as it were, pray to God, then?

Hilary Yes.

Spike Do you pray every night?

Hilary Yes. Usually before I get into bed.

Spike Oh.

Does it work?

Hilary Yes.

Spike (interested) You find prayer works?

Hilary Yes.

Spike What, every time?

Hilary Yes. Every time I say my prayers I feel better.

Spike Oh, works, right. Psychological.

Hilary Wow, Spike, I never thought of that, missed it completely, shit, that explains it. (Wagging her hand in front of his face.) Hello, hello. When I clap my hands you will wake up and find you’re in bed with a student, wearing a negligee.

Spike Lucky me. Better than when? What do you pray for?

Hilary Forgiveness.

Spike Forgiveness? I thought it was me who should be doing that. What you need to pray for is getting into the Krohl Institute. How does God feel about your model of Nature–Nurture Convergence in Egoistic and Altruistic Parent–Offspring Behaviour? Does he think you’re on the right lines?

Hilary I tell you what, Spike, if I were up for a back-and-forth about God, I’d rather not have it with an arsehole. Where we were –

She turns on her bedside light.

– was, you were supposed to be checking the maths for me.

Spike To tell you the truth, I feel a bit thrown now. I wasn’t expecting to deal with a rival hypothesis.

Hilary That’s not what I said. I’m not thrown by sharing an ancestor with a grunting chimpanzee – evolution by natural selection, bring it on – it’s only that millions of years later the chimp is still grunting and you’re using words like hypothesis, so I’m wondering if there’s something they left out. It’s nothing for you to be bothered by.

Spike (roused) If not me, who? I’m Darwin. I’m Mendel. I’m Crick and Watson. I stand for all the science that’s taught. We’ve scraped you clean of gibberish, we’ve taken you to bits and put you back together from the atoms upwards so you understand how you work and how everything around you works. We’ve accounted for every particle in the universe except for dark matter, and we’re working on that. And here you are on your knees to what? To who? You might as well pray to Peter Rabbit.

Hilary Explain consciousness.

Spike Apart from consciousness. (Silly voice.) ‘Explain consciousness.’ There’s no baby, there’s only bathwater. (Getting angrier.) I’ve got nothing personal against God, except the usual, but I expected better from you. When did your mind turn into a party balloon? You made it nearly to the end of the journey, give it a few more years and we’ll have gravity wrapped in with the other forces, and there’ll be nothing for science to do except collect new beetles – well, I don’t believe that entirely, in fact I’m so disgusted I’ve started talking bollocks.

Hilary Explain consciousness.

Impatiently, Spike takes her finger and holds it to the flame of the candle for a moment before she snatches it away with a little gasp.

Spike Flame – finger – brain; brain – finger – ouch. Consciousness.

Hilary Brilliant. Now do sorrow.

Spike groans.

You think you’ve done pain. If you wired me up you could track the signal, zip-zip. If you put my brain in a scanner you could locate the activity. Ping! Pain! Now do sorrow. How do I feel sorrow?

Spike Do you feel sorrow?

Hilary Yes.

Spike I’m making you sad?

Hilary Not everything is about you, Spike.

Spike Right.

He gets out of bed and goes to sit at the table, where there is a laptop. He opens the laptop and taps keys.

Hilary Scaredy-cat! You can explain the mechanics. You should work in a garage. (Garage voice.) ‘It’s yer big end’s gone, mate. Does it hurt when I do this?’, and answer came there none, because it’s a bloody car!

Spike ignores her, studies the computer screen thoughtfully, scrolling.

I don’t go looking for an argument with science. Tell me my DNA is seventy per cent banana, and I think, well, fine, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Hilary. But with consciousness – with the mind–body problem – the God idea shoves itself to the front like a doctor at the scene of an accident, because when you come right down to it, the body is made of things, and things don’t have thoughts. Bananas aren’t thinking, ‘Hey, seven eights is fifty-six’, or ‘I’m not the king of Spain’, and when you take a banana to bits you can see why.

Spike Don’t publish till you hear back from the Krohl.

Hilary ( persisting) Same with brains. The mind is extra.

Spike The human brain, for its size, is the most complex –

Hilary does her boredom collapse.

Hilary – object on the planet, in the galaxy, the universe – forget it, Spike, I’ve got the T-shirt. If organising enough components the right way is all it takes, maybe a thermostat is a kiddie-step towards being conscious –

Spike (Maybe.)

Hilary – which is what I’m reading. Did you say maybe?

Spike I don’t see anything obviously wrong with that.

Hilary You believe a thermostat has consciousness potential, but you find God a bit of a stretch?

Spike (tapping) Uh-huh, but you should stick with God – your way with an equation would need his collaboration.

Hilary laughs, giving up.

Hilary That’s what you’re here for. God can only do so much. I put in for six research slots in industry, plus Imperial for the hell of it and the Krohl for sheer cheek, and only the Krohl has offered me an interview.

Spike The Krohl didn’t know about your maths.

Hilary I’m not even doing what I’d call brain science.

Spike You must be. Seeing as it’s the Krohl Institute for Brain Science. Which means neurobio, neuropsycho, neuro-everything, plus its own gym, organic vegetables and free pilates, I’m told, all paid for by a squillionaire with a Master’s in biophysics who decided to try hedge-funding... which raises the interesting question: is Krohl an altruist or an egoist? (Garage voice.) ‘What you’ve got here is a wonky co-variance, miss.’

Hilary hurriedly gets out of bed and goes to look over his shoulder.

Hilary (worried) What’s wrong with it?

Spike The model works okay for behaviour one-on-one in an idealised sort of way, think Raphael’s Madonna and Child, which I personally call ‘Woman Maximising Gene Survival’, but it won’t generalise, because you haven’t allowed for future offspring, and if they have different fathers, you’ll need to differentiate –

Hilary Can you fix it by Wednesday?

Spike (garage voice) ‘Do my best, miss, but I’ll have to strip her right down to get at it.’ (Normal voice.) And that’s just the customer.

He reaches behind him. She swipes his hand away.

Hilary Can you?

Spike Also, it’s not good science to call mother love a virtue, or even mother love.

Hilary You don’t think mother love is a virtue?

Spike You don’t call it a virtue, because at root its virtue consists in its utility.

Hilary Utility. Mother love?

Spike Genetically selected behaviour to maximise –

Hilary Spike, do you know anyone who believes that, really and truly?

Spike I don’t know anyone who doesn’t believe it. Parental behaviour. Hard-wired when we were roaming the savannah in small groups of hunter-gatherers. Mother and baby are in a cost-benefit competition. Have you ever seen a newborn infant screaming to be fed? – the anger – the noise – the face... ! The kid is laying it on, and it probably started in the womb.

Hilary (flaring up) Oh, probably! The kid doesn’t know up from down but it knows to maximise the survival of its genes! And Mummy’s genes are working out the odds of their survival in the baby, against her chances of having more kids. It’s a cost-benefit competition, and the genes, unlike some of us, can do the maths, is that right?

Spike Well –

Hilary Just shut up!

Pause.

Spike It’s not personal.

Pause.

Obviously, genes have no intentions, it’s as if ; it’s a metaphor.

Hilary A metaphor for what?

Spike A reflex. A survival reflex.

Hilary Genes don’t have a survival problem, Spike, they’re genes. They’re little tiny things, like, I don’t know, molecules! Metaphorically, genes want to hop the next train before the train they’re on conks out, ‘as if ’ they know life has a value that extinction doesn’t have, but the science has no underneath, it’s tortoises all the way down. I agree with you, Spike. Virtue is not science. You can’t get an ought out of an is. Morality is not science. So there must be something else, which isn’t science. Which science isn’t. What is it?

Spike Wait.

He brings the bucket-sized bin from under the table, places it in Hilary’s hands and stands back.

Moral rules are the stable strategy evolved by millions of years of jockeying between humans in real-life situations like the game of prisoner’s dilemma.

The bin is Spike’s ‘joke’. Hilary humours him. She pretends to retch into the bin.

(Solicitously.) That’s right. Better out than in.

Hilary straightens up with the bin over her head. She stands there like that.

You don’t like the idea that you’re nothing else but an animal. It’s conceit. You’re an animal. Get over it.

She doesn’t answer. Spike watches her. She doesn’t do anything. After a while he realises she is crying inside the bin.

Hilly...

She starts to bawl inside the bin. Concerned, he goes round the table to her.

What?!

Aware that he is close, she moves away from him a little, sobbing loudly. Spike waits for her to subside. Finally, she takes the bin off her head and puts it under the table.

What happened?

Hilary Nothing happened. I’m okay, Spike.

Spike Of course you are. It’ll be fine.

Hilary Oh, that. Forget that.

She closes the laptop.

(Laughs.) I need a miracle.

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