SYNOPSIS:

For many cultures it is the heart, rather than the brain, that is the seat of all emotion. The Egyptians discarded the brain, carefully preserved the major organs in canopic jars, but left the heart intact and in place. It was considered the seat of the soul and, as such, would eventually be weighed against the feather of Ma’at. What happens to you if you have another man’s heart? Do you also have another man’s soul or just his nightmare and his dream of love? Ashley Brett, a brilliant scientist and inventor, was named after the drip in ‘Gone with the Wind’ and it was that naming that set his life along a course he did not really want. A life as sombre as a painting by Velasquez. He wanted a wife who loved him, a happy family – he wanted to be normal - and yet he remained living in his back story. Never breaking out of the unhappy childhood that surrounds him like a chrysalis; living in a strange kind of poverty - rich but never spending money; the boy who turned his bedroom into a laboratory so that he could look after his sick mother and who still works and sleeps there never noticing how run-down and dismal it is. And so he plods towards the end of life, unloved by the woman who only married him for his money and now wants out. A wife whose only desire is that he would die in his sleep. His only friend is Gladys, the middle-aged spinster who runs his company, no-nonsense, Gladys, who is most definitely not in love with him. Then Ashley’s miserable, lonely old heart is ripped out and replaced with one that belonged to the kindest man in the world. Along with his last two memories: his murder - by someone dressed as a werewolf - and his overwhelming desire for a beautiful woman. A woman who, Ashley feels, would not look twice at him. Now divorced and living in an equally dismal mansion flat, Ashley fights the dead man’s influence. He does not want to change; he wants to finish working on the artificial heart. Perhaps only a man who has never truly experienced love could believe that the heart was just a mechanical pump; and a man who has known love would still search for it. But he cannot work. It is as if he has forgotten everything. Finally, plagued by the nightmares of the other man’s death, Ashley decides that he must seek out the woman, discover the identity of the person whose heart he now carries, find out who killed him and bring that person to justice. He finally meets, Viola, the woman in his dream but feels that he is being constantly compared with the dead man, not realising that, as the dead man tries to insert himself into Ashley’s body, Ashley exhibits more and more of his traits. However, his investigations provoke the murderer into action and rather than a psychological struggle with a personality who simply wants to change him, Ashley is stalked by a man who wants to kill him. The murderer, Freddie, gains entry to the flat and interferes with Ashley anti-rejection drugs. Ashley is being cared for by a young secretary, Jackie, who he almost considers as a daughter. One night the murder, dressed as a werewolf, enters the flat and attempts to kill him. Then Jackie returns from the late-night chemist. Jackie, the daughter of an award-winning make up artist specialising in horror films, is the one person who is not afraid of a man in a werewolf mask. But a girl with one leg is no match for a fit, young man and it is Ashley, who finally screws up enough courage to save Jackie. After this Ashley formally adopts Jackie. He now has a daughter. Viola invites him to spend some time in North Africa, but Ashley is afraid that she is simply looking for the dead man in him and he would rather be alone than know that he is only loved because he has another man’s heart. Eventually, Ashley gives in to the heart. He takes the fine clothes, and the antiques. The ceiling rose in the sitting room which has up to now been empty, as has the ceiling rose in his laboratory, now has a fine chandelier. Light has come into his life. But Gladys, now happily in a relationship with Viola’s brother, will not give up on Ashley. She puts him in the car and drives him to Somerset, leaving him at the front door. He asks Viola if she loved the dead man, she tells him that not only did she not love him, but that she could never have married him for he would never have given her any peace. Viola leads him into the conservatory, a place full of colour and light, like a painting by Matisse. It is only now that Ashley finds out that she is an artist for she is painting a portrait of Portia playing Portia. It is sombre and dark, a painting by Velasquez – it is Ashley’s old life contrasted with the new. Ashley picks a flower, gets down on one knee and asks Viola to marry him. She says yes, and lays him on the sofa to rest. All of a sudden the pain that had been with him since the transplant ceases. He is happy and he has what he always wanted. He stares at the flower and asks her what it is called. Viola Tricolour, better known to Shakespeare as Hearts ease. The happiness suddenly frees his brain. He contemplates the flower, leans back and says, very quietly, “stem cells”.