Land's End

About the show

Land's End, Cornwall. A remote old cliff-top house, rocked by equinoctial gales. It belongs to explorer and hunter, Hector Galbraith, who is away in Africa. His charwoman, the macabre Mrs Newsome, warns her favourite, Hector's daughter Valentine, 20, a student home from Oxford, that her mother Judith (who has been out shooting) is having an affair with her visitor, the writer Hugh Gifford. Valentine, a hard virginal individualist, devoted to her father and hostile to Gifford, is indignant. Her brother Vernon, 19, a student home from Cambridge, is indifferent to bourgeois morality; he is a Communist, dislikes his father, and finds Hugh charming. Judith has grown estranged from her husband since he pressured their elder son, Ivor, into an Amazon expedition, in which Ivor died. Relations between mother and daughter are also strained. Now Mrs Newsome confides in Valentine: she has written to the absent master, and the latter has just returned secretly to England to surprise the adulterous pair. He is on his way to Cornwall. She persuades Valentine not to tell the others. (End of Act One.) That evening, while Valentine and Vernon are in Penzance at a dance and the two lovers are alone in the gale-buffeted house (the scene never changes from this cluttered claustrophobic drawing-room), Galbraith walks in. After amusing himself by toying with the trapped lovers, he takes control of his house, downing brandy, throwing open the windows, brandishing a revolver, telling Judith she is starting for Africa with him (a plane is standing by at Lympne aerodrome), and giving Gifford five minutes to get out. Judith and Hugh refuse to separate. Galbraith locks Judith out of the room, tosses a second revolver at Hugh, and reminds him of the rules of duelling. If Hugh is killed, he is told, his petrol-drenched motor will be rolled off the cliff road with his body inside. Galbraith counts to three. Hugh, a veteran of the Western Front, fires well wide, in the honourable Turgenev tradition. Galbraith levels his revolver for the kill. A shotgun barrel is seen at the window. Judith blasts Galbraith. The shaken lovers hurriedly discuss their options, and decide that, as no one is likely to have seen Hector arrive, they should dispose of him as he had planned to dispose of Hugh. They drag his body out. (End of Act Two.) An hour and a half later the pair return from the deed, to clean up bloodstains. Just in time: Valentine and Vernon come back early from the dance, full of news: a car has gone over the cliff and is still burning in the cove! Vernon tells how he clambered down and managed to poke some burnt luggage out of the wreck. The luggage is examined: it contains an African death-mask. The distraught Valentine now realises who the victim of the "accident" was, and confesses she knew her father was coming home. Judith and Hugh feign shock. By ill luck, Valentine sees in the grate a tell-tale Russian cigarette stub, discarded by Hector before the duel – and recognises its significance. She confronts her mother. Judith, finding evasion impossible, confesses to killing her husband in defence of Hugh. Valentine, near-hysterical, decides she must call the police. Judith and Hugh try to dissuade her, as does Vernon. All three argue that concealment is possible, but that confession will be catastrophic. Valentine is anguished and torn. At that moment Mrs Newsome and a grizzled fisherman arrive, to ask if everyone is all right (the latter had seen the fire and gone straight to the Galbraiths' housekeeper). Valentine, sickened by Mrs Newsome's meddling, sends her packing, and picks up the telephone to call the police. To the end, we do not know what she will tell them.