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igenlodeI'm still not especially happy about the confrontation with the Phantom in this hypothetical new story: the big idea was supposed to be that the henchmen try to chloroform Gustave instead of Raoul, much to both men's fury, thus rendering the boy conveniently unconscious so that the issue of his paternity can be argued outside his hearing while disposing of the chloroform so that it can't be used on Raoul. Also, Raoul has experience of dealing with travel-sickness and Gustave is going to be pretty sick when he wakes up, to the Phantom's inadvertant dismay and revulsion. Raoul gets beaten up, to Gustave's horror, but threatens that the Phantom will have to kill him to stop him coming back with the force of the law behind him -- and promises Gustave that if he doesn't 'rescue' him then it will mean that he has been murdered. But given that he has been lying to the boy about why Christine isn't with them, or at least evading the question, what happens when Gustave realises that they are leaving his mother behind?
Raoul would have been more impressed by the 'Christine wants her son' card if the Phantom had played it earlier, rather than going the 'He's mine!' route. The Phantom tells him that Christine was in bliss when she finished singing and fell into his arms; Raoul realises that he had subconsciously hoped all along that she would react to his offer to relinquish any claim to her by coming after him herself, and suffers an unreasonable revulsion of feeling at the idea that she actually took him at his word! When Gustave demands that she be rescued too, he wouldn't even if he could...
Gustave of course has no reason to show anything but fear and hate for the Phantom, and it is his rejection that ultimately sways matters. But I need to get the Phantom convincingly into this mindset somehow...
Father, what's an adulteress?
Cut back to future writing letter again. Christine's face dances across the page: older, as he saw her last. Boy comes in to announce that the brake has arrived for his luggage; memories of another announcement a few weeks/months ago. Walking into parlour to find that it is Christine there. The Phantom is dead and she has returned to France to be a war nurse.
Hostility; quarrel. He had divorced her, though the Phantom never married her (N.B. you couldn't remarry after divorce in New York, though probably not relevant!) She was singing for him as Christine Daaé, notorious as divorced Viscountess de Chagny: scandal, impact on Gustave. (How much belongs here, how much under Gustave's section?)
Christine wrote letters to Gustave; Raoul suppressed them unread until the boy was fifteen and deemed old enough to cope. She is furious and tells him outright that the Phantom was indeed Gustave's father: "the child you stole was never even yours". And she had told Gustave that in the letters. Raoul naturally shocked and furious -- and the idea of telling that to a ten-year-old! So that's why the boy has been so distant and withdrawn since reading them...
And Raoul wrote to Christine -- twice. She never got those either; it seems Raoul was not the only one suppressing correspondence.
They part, hurt and angry. Does he have a name? Yes, but you will never know it.
We need to work in Christine's surprise at Raoul's continued wealth and the story of the fortune won on board somehow in the beginning of this scene, though Raoul probably thinks most of it rather than confiding in her; he is ashamed. Footman Hänsl whom she used to know was forced to leave at start of the war because of certain incidents; tries to picture the boy he knew shooting at French soldiers somewhere :-(
Despair for Raoul alone in his study. Gustave comes in. "Father"; he tries to see the truth of Christine's accusations in the boy's face. "She came back" -- an outcry. She came back after so much waiting, and he let her go.
Gustave calls him "Father" again, understanding that Raoul too now finally knows.
Back to writing the letter: the word "Gustave" black on the page where he broke off and the ink has dried. "Yours, with regret, always"; a quick covering note scribbled to Gustave. The footman comes in again and he turns to leave, handing him the letter to be given to the young Vicomte if he should happen not to come back. "He will know what to do with it."
Christine's PoV for final section I think.
She is meeting Gustave at a café in wartime Paris; streets full of troops and she is worried about recognising her own son. In nurse's uniform? Mourning band? He in uniform or still civilian black? She has the newspaper clipping sent by Gustave in her pocket, a simple listing of Raoul's name among the dead. (Second Battle of Champagne?)
I only got your telegram two days ago; she has missed the burial service (N.B. there wouldn't have been any body anyway)
Anger between Gustave and Christine; so he told you the worst about me? He never spoke of you at all.
Do you know what it was like to learn the meaning of the word adultery from your schoolfellows at the age of ten? He was eleven before he realised that other people's newspapers didn't have holes in where her name used to be. Her rooms were kept locked, but he used to hear movements and weeping there late at night, and believed that it was her. In the spring when he was twelve he found and stole the key from Raoul's desk and found them untouched inside... but when he opened the wardrobe door, her clothes were alive with moths. He screamed with horror, like a small child, until Raoul came. That night he screamed again in his dreams, and Raoul wrapped him in a blanket and spent the night holding him in front of the study fire; a man should not have to do that for his twelve-year-old son. After that the rooms were stripped bare and everything was burned.
He never spoke of you at all: there was an echoing agony of silence in our lives where you should have been.
You didn't get that gift of words from him...
She asks about his 'stepmother'/'stepmothers' -- are you fishing for scandal? A look of cynical understanding that had no place on a face of his age.
Christine never asked for any of this, she was gven no choice, and her life in America was hell and heaven -- the more of one, the more of the other. Until you have fallen in love you have no right to judge me.
And if I do get a girl -- what will our children be like? Will our daughters be grotesques? Will our sons suffer insane rage?
And hadn't she lived with the same shamefaced fear herself, these last few years? Oh, my dear...
Forgive me, I didn't bring you here to quarrel with you; and that sudden unhappy boyish yielding was all Raoul.
The letter.
Perhaps you will never read these words; I am selfish enough to hope not. I want to believe that there is still a chance to make things right. But if you are reading them then I will never see you again, and perhaps that is just as well.
There were times when I lashed out wanting to hurt you to ease my own pain, and that is an ugly thing to admit. But only in the moment. I never wanted your life to be damaged and twisted with mine as it has been. For a long time I blamed it all on Him, but that was not true, was it? For me it has always been only you, but for you it was harder. He hurt you so much I could never understand how he claimed to love you, but now I have seen that in myself.
I see you in every young couple on the street with her head upon his shoulder, and feel my arm around your waist. That stone where you stumbled the first day we walked together -- I see it every time I cross the street at that spot, and I think of you. I see you in every turn of the head, in every singing line of poetry from your son. Gustave. In my life everything reminds me of you, and yet you are nowhere in it... and perhaps that makes it no very great loss after all.
There is no glory in death in this war. If you are reading this, then by now you will know: will have seen things no woman should see, no man should be asked to witness. But it makes the conflicts in our lives seem so small in comparison. If we both come through this then we will be different people. I pray to God that we do, that these words will be burnt and and that we can start again.
But if not... I don't want to grieve you, Christine. Just let me love you a little. Now, when it makes no difference.
Yours, in regret. Always. Raoul.
A sharp constriction; words crumpled in her hand, smoothed out. Gustave's concerned look. "He had no *right*--"
Her son, a kind, concerned stranger. And the echo of that old, eternal cry of abandonment: you had no right, no right to make me love you and then to go away. (This is what she means; he has no right to manipulate her like this and make his death hurt. But I'm not sure she can say it in those words...)
I still need an ending for Christine and Gustave. And can I still call it "Two Letters" or something along those lines, as intended, now that I have the additional plot device of the missing letters in the middle? I think probably not.
Raoul would have been more impressed by the 'Christine wants her son' card if the Phantom had played it earlier, rather than going the 'He's mine!' route. The Phantom tells him that Christine was in bliss when she finished singing and fell into his arms; Raoul realises that he had subconsciously hoped all along that she would react to his offer to relinquish any claim to her by coming after him herself, and suffers an unreasonable revulsion of feeling at the idea that she actually took him at his word! When Gustave demands that she be rescued too, he wouldn't even if he could...
Gustave of course has no reason to show anything but fear and hate for the Phantom, and it is his rejection that ultimately sways matters. But I need to get the Phantom convincingly into this mindset somehow...
Father, what's an adulteress?
Cut back to future writing letter again. Christine's face dances across the page: older, as he saw her last. Boy comes in to announce that the brake has arrived for his luggage; memories of another announcement a few weeks/months ago. Walking into parlour to find that it is Christine there. The Phantom is dead and she has returned to France to be a war nurse.
Hostility; quarrel. He had divorced her, though the Phantom never married her (N.B. you couldn't remarry after divorce in New York, though probably not relevant!) She was singing for him as Christine Daaé, notorious as divorced Viscountess de Chagny: scandal, impact on Gustave. (How much belongs here, how much under Gustave's section?)
Christine wrote letters to Gustave; Raoul suppressed them unread until the boy was fifteen and deemed old enough to cope. She is furious and tells him outright that the Phantom was indeed Gustave's father: "the child you stole was never even yours". And she had told Gustave that in the letters. Raoul naturally shocked and furious -- and the idea of telling that to a ten-year-old! So that's why the boy has been so distant and withdrawn since reading them...
And Raoul wrote to Christine -- twice. She never got those either; it seems Raoul was not the only one suppressing correspondence.
They part, hurt and angry. Does he have a name? Yes, but you will never know it.
We need to work in Christine's surprise at Raoul's continued wealth and the story of the fortune won on board somehow in the beginning of this scene, though Raoul probably thinks most of it rather than confiding in her; he is ashamed. Footman Hänsl whom she used to know was forced to leave at start of the war because of certain incidents; tries to picture the boy he knew shooting at French soldiers somewhere :-(
Despair for Raoul alone in his study. Gustave comes in. "Father"; he tries to see the truth of Christine's accusations in the boy's face. "She came back" -- an outcry. She came back after so much waiting, and he let her go.
Gustave calls him "Father" again, understanding that Raoul too now finally knows.
Back to writing the letter: the word "Gustave" black on the page where he broke off and the ink has dried. "Yours, with regret, always"; a quick covering note scribbled to Gustave. The footman comes in again and he turns to leave, handing him the letter to be given to the young Vicomte if he should happen not to come back. "He will know what to do with it."
Christine's PoV for final section I think.
She is meeting Gustave at a café in wartime Paris; streets full of troops and she is worried about recognising her own son. In nurse's uniform? Mourning band? He in uniform or still civilian black? She has the newspaper clipping sent by Gustave in her pocket, a simple listing of Raoul's name among the dead. (Second Battle of Champagne?)
I only got your telegram two days ago; she has missed the burial service (N.B. there wouldn't have been any body anyway)
Anger between Gustave and Christine; so he told you the worst about me? He never spoke of you at all.
Do you know what it was like to learn the meaning of the word adultery from your schoolfellows at the age of ten? He was eleven before he realised that other people's newspapers didn't have holes in where her name used to be. Her rooms were kept locked, but he used to hear movements and weeping there late at night, and believed that it was her. In the spring when he was twelve he found and stole the key from Raoul's desk and found them untouched inside... but when he opened the wardrobe door, her clothes were alive with moths. He screamed with horror, like a small child, until Raoul came. That night he screamed again in his dreams, and Raoul wrapped him in a blanket and spent the night holding him in front of the study fire; a man should not have to do that for his twelve-year-old son. After that the rooms were stripped bare and everything was burned.
He never spoke of you at all: there was an echoing agony of silence in our lives where you should have been.
You didn't get that gift of words from him...
She asks about his 'stepmother'/'stepmothers' -- are you fishing for scandal? A look of cynical understanding that had no place on a face of his age.
Christine never asked for any of this, she was gven no choice, and her life in America was hell and heaven -- the more of one, the more of the other. Until you have fallen in love you have no right to judge me.
And if I do get a girl -- what will our children be like? Will our daughters be grotesques? Will our sons suffer insane rage?
And hadn't she lived with the same shamefaced fear herself, these last few years? Oh, my dear...
Forgive me, I didn't bring you here to quarrel with you; and that sudden unhappy boyish yielding was all Raoul.
The letter.
Perhaps you will never read these words; I am selfish enough to hope not. I want to believe that there is still a chance to make things right. But if you are reading them then I will never see you again, and perhaps that is just as well.
There were times when I lashed out wanting to hurt you to ease my own pain, and that is an ugly thing to admit. But only in the moment. I never wanted your life to be damaged and twisted with mine as it has been. For a long time I blamed it all on Him, but that was not true, was it? For me it has always been only you, but for you it was harder. He hurt you so much I could never understand how he claimed to love you, but now I have seen that in myself.
I see you in every young couple on the street with her head upon his shoulder, and feel my arm around your waist. That stone where you stumbled the first day we walked together -- I see it every time I cross the street at that spot, and I think of you. I see you in every turn of the head, in every singing line of poetry from your son. Gustave. In my life everything reminds me of you, and yet you are nowhere in it... and perhaps that makes it no very great loss after all.
There is no glory in death in this war. If you are reading this, then by now you will know: will have seen things no woman should see, no man should be asked to witness. But it makes the conflicts in our lives seem so small in comparison. If we both come through this then we will be different people. I pray to God that we do, that these words will be burnt and and that we can start again.
But if not... I don't want to grieve you, Christine. Just let me love you a little. Now, when it makes no difference.
Yours, in regret. Always. Raoul.
A sharp constriction; words crumpled in her hand, smoothed out. Gustave's concerned look. "He had no *right*--"
Her son, a kind, concerned stranger. And the echo of that old, eternal cry of abandonment: you had no right, no right to make me love you and then to go away. (This is what she means; he has no right to manipulate her like this and make his death hurt. But I'm not sure she can say it in those words...)
I still need an ending for Christine and Gustave. And can I still call it "Two Letters" or something along those lines, as intended, now that I have the additional plot device of the missing letters in the middle? I think probably not.