In December 1951, Jacquetta extended her creative repertoire with a play, a verse drama called "Two Sides of the Mirror", which was broadcast on the BBC’s Third Programme in December, 1951.

This was not her first outing into theatre. During the autumn of 1951, Jack had an idea which would allow the pair to collaborate in public, professionally at least.

He conceived the idea for the play "Dragon's Mouth" while in New York watching a performance of George Bernard Shaw’s ‘Don Juan in Hell’. It was produced by Charles Laughton, and performed as experimental theatre, on a stage lacking all the usual sets, costumes, make-up or lighting. Instead the actors wore evening dress and simply read the parts. Jack was determined to write his own experimental play, produced by Laughton, and excitedly shared the idea with Jacquetta when they met up in New York; she had been lecturing in America.

Priestley’s idea was for a dramatic quartet, the actors representing Jung’s four functions of sensation and intellect. These were themes with which he had been grappling for a some time in an attempt to explain, at least to himself, his intense attraction to Jacquetta, and hers to him. This was a real collaboration, Jack and Jacquetta not only sharing the writing of the parts, but having one male and one female apiece. This confounded some critics who presumed Jack had written Matthew, the successful businessman, and Stuart, the academic; with Jacquetta writing Nina, the celebrity fashion maven, and Harriet, the personnel manager. The division was in fact of personality types; Jack writing the voices of intuition and emotion, and Jacquetta those of sensation and intellect. The action takes place on a luxury yacht, where the four are cruising the West Indies. The yacht is anchored in a cove – the ‘Dragon’s Mouth’ – of the title, and the plot centres around the knowledge that one of them is going to die. The tension arises from the blood tests taken from the four after a deadly virus breaks out on the yacht. The interplay between the four develops during the course of the play, highlighting their personality traits, as they wait for the test result brought to them from the shore.

The first stage direction sets the tone:

‘The four performers come on together, either with house-lights on or with house-lights down but all spots on. After bowing to the applause they seat themselves before their respective microphones. Then a recorded voice, with a deep, weighty, impersonal tone, comes through the speakers’.

Jack wrote the prologue, and Jacquetta the epilogue. Knowing the reality of their situation, and the pretence to the world, make these every bit as interesting as the play:

Priestley begins with a pre-amble about the performance which inspired the piece:'One of Shaw's most difficult scenes, containing some of the longest speeches he ever wrote, was playing here like a house on fire. The performers in evening clothes, pretending to read and using no scenery, costume, make-up, stage lighting, created a feeling of freshness, zest, attach, to which the audience immediately responded...I found myself losing interest in the play I had come to New York to do. Here was something new and exciting...there might be here the beginning of a new and powerful form of writing, producing, acting'.

And then he describes the his finding of 'a most valuable and distinguished collaborator'; the dramatic irony being that JH and Jack had been involved for four years.

'It was after one of the performances at the Century Theatre that I ran into Mrs Jacquetta Hawkes, then returning from visits to Harvard and Yale. She had felt much the same as I had done about this production of Don Juan in Hell, and when I told her that I believed there was somewhere here the basis of a new form of dramatic writing, she was in enthusiastic agreement. So I invited her to collaborate with me. As an old hand in the theatre, I could supply the purely dramatic ideas, the framework and construction, while she could lend to our joint enterprise those gifts, so original, intelligent, deeply poetic, that had shone in A Land.

He confessed that he did not know if her 'strong clean prose' would work on the stage. But here were none of the feared arguments 'and indeed most of the speeches that have aroused the enthusiasm of Dragon's Mouth audiences were hers and not mine' (ix) '...it does remain, I think, an unusually successful example of collaboration between two writers with very different temperaments, backgrounds, manners and styles'.

The had work began 'hard and fast' back in London, after Christmas, 1951, the pair dividing the four characters, one male one female each. 'Some critics have been caught out by this unexpected division...'.

The use of modern technology - mikes and amplified sound - was integral - 'the anchoring of each character to his or her mike, only making a move away from them to heighten the scene, was an essential part of the production'. (xi)

‘I am an impatient man, always have been and now, it seems, always will be’ explained Priestley, and so the play went swiftly into production. Audiences were not large, but there was a favourable response. ’The dramatic experiment succeeded: we fired a shot into the dark and - ping! - there was the target'.

'Radio has robbed people of oratory… here is a new form that combines both debate and oratory, while setting them both, as I believe it should, it a dramatic framework...What is new is the use of cunningly amplified sound, which recent developments have made possible'.

'So here then is something to set against the vast standardisation and monopolisation of Television'. Ironically, both he and Jacquetta would be involved in television soon enough.

Jacquetta’s epilogue, more academic, again places the drama in is contemporary context: 'Ours is a generation which has had visual images poured upon it from cinema, television and the illustrated press; which they instruments of mass communication have flooded with language used either lifelessly or with actual degradation'.

And she returned her collaborator’s compliments: 'Had the use of language in Dragon’s Mouth been very much better than it is, it still would not have held an audience for two hours without Mr.Priestley's practiced dramatic craftsmanship'.

Jacquetta gives a background to the play’s Jungian inspiration, and the character's weaknesses as second half develops: 'One could say this weakness explains why Stuart’s intellect has made him no more than a rather arid scholar, why Matthew the powerful intuitive, is a business man and not a great artist, and why Harriet has frustrated the very quality of feeling that she has in excess'. Nina, 'the sensationalist...holds to her unambitious claim abundantly to have enjoyed her life through the exercise of her senses'.

Stuart was revealed to the audience in his precise and detailed descriptive speeches; Nina through her scenes and other sensuous experiences vividly recalled; Harriet in emotionally charged memories of her youth; Matthew in an oratorial expression of his intuitive understanding of life. And not least in their emotional mis-matches: in Stuart's persistent and fruitless interest in Nina; Harriet's old and now slightly embittered love for Matthew, and Matthew's power over them all'. Jacquetta concludes her epilogue with a sting: 'With few exceptions, we have been praised by those whose praise we value and abused by those whose abuse we can wear among our laurels'.

Matching the characters to people in the couple’s life at the time is an interesting exercise with the aid of hindsight. Matthew’s remark: ‘A man like me needs a woman like Nina to complete him…’ certainly sounds like Jack on Jacquetta.

Certainly, Diana Collins suggests that Nina, ‘draws the characters together, sets them in context and in balance. She speaks for both Jung and Jacquetta...

‘Her speech is profoundly autobiographical: 'I have grown fat on experience, my senses have gone out and in like bees bringing home nectar. I have joined myself with the whole world, sharing its darkness as well as its light. . . . Matthew said there must be conflict: I would go so far as to glory in the clash of opposites.'

The play was first staged in England, and Jack produced it. With Dulcie Gray as Nina, Michael Denison played Stuart, Norman Wooland, Matthew and Rosamond John, Harriet. Jack and Jacquetta were persuaded to pose next to each other in the cast photograph; Jacquetta looking decidedly tense with her wedding-ringed hand on Jack’s hip; Jack looking only marginally less strained.

Dragon’s Mouth went on tour ands ran for seven weeks in London to some good reviews, especially for Dulcie Gray’s Nina.

That collaboration over, the couple had less excuse to meet publicly; they later worked together on one more play, The White Countess, which was less successful. They began to take more risks. The atmosphere at Jack’s family home, Brooke Hill, on the Isle of Wight was strained, Jack was foul-tempered and Jane developed psychosomatic illnesses, or was elsewhere. Eventually Jack invited Jacquetta to stay at the house, Jacquetta accepted, possibly an odd move for someone so sensitive to atmospheres. But at least they began to discover what their life could be like together.

But Jack’s frequent emotional oscillations must have concerned Jacquetta. She was by now used to being alone in London, and longing to be properly with Jack, who counterpointed his longing for her with a declaration that he wanted no more domestic ties.

While Jack remained undecided, Jacquetta had to get on with her domestic business. Nicolas was sent to Bryanston boarding-school, where Jack’s son Tom, attended. Tom, now 18, was just leaving for national service.

Jacquetta spoke openly about her divorce with her good friend Diana Collins, who detailed the events as her friend recalled tham in "Time and the Priestleys". According to this account, Jack's wife, Jane, had decided to take matters into her own hands; not least she had fallen in love herself. In 1952 she finally asked Jack for a divorce, so that she could marry David Bannerman, an old friend and admirer, and a distinguished ornithologist.

As Diana put it, this bombshell came just before Dragon’s Mouth opened, thus complicating further the pretence of the ‘professional’ collaboration. Jack and Jacquetta were due to be entertaining Michael Denison and his wife at Brooke Hill; as the party started out from London, Jack told them his wife had left her for “a bird man”. He had suggested Jane take wharever furniture he wanted, and they walked into a largely empty house. What could have been a terrible moment of mixed emotion turned into a huge release of tension for Jack. The icing on the cake appeared to be an invitation for Jack to go on a three-week lecture tour to Japan, on which Jacquetta would accompany him.

But Christopher, although aware that Jacquetta was close to Jack Priestley, was still left in the dark about any impending divorce. The forthcoming trip to Japan upset him. This time the Hawkes family pulled together; one can only imagine what his mother said at the time. His father, C.P., was not only a barrister but a divorce and probate lawyer and so Christopher thought only to follow his expert advice. Adultery was a very complicated business at that time; it had to be proved but without ‘collusion, connivance or condonation’. If Christopher was determined to go ahead with divorce, which he conceded seemed the only option, he had to get a letter from Jack explaining why Jacquetta had to accompany him to Japan. Jack was reluctant but could not refuse; if he did not write, he would look guilty, but what could he say in a letter? Despite years of adultery, he was essentially a man of principle and felt he could not lie. Jacquetta did not understand what the letter was for, but encouraged him to write it: ‘Surely it can’t do any harm, since they seem to want it so badly’, she explained to Diana.

It was a difficult return from Japan, and an equally awkward Christmas. On Boxing Day Jacquetta asked Christopher for a divorce so that she could marry Jack. Perhaps her insensitive timing was a moment of panic; Jane was about to divorce, and it could be that Jacquetta felt she had to act quickly or risk losing the moment – or Jack.

Christopher was deeply upset; he had never stopped loving his wife. Jacquetta felt 'most horribly sad, and kept weeping'. She repaid Christopher’s faithfulness throughout the years by agreeing to take the blame for the divorce and allowing to be named as co-respondent in a night of contrived adultery at the Hotel Scribe in Paris. Diana Collins wrote: ‘When lawyers went to the Scribe for evidence the manager refused to supply it, declaring that 'the English Monsieur must have his pleasure'. However, the lawyers produced something sufficiently convincing for a judge.

Howver, the divorce was turning messy. On 6 June 1953, Jack's letter to Christopher was produced in court, and the judge then proceeded to attack Jack as 'a writer of fiction', asserting that he had written the letter 'in a deliberate and cunning attempt to deceive Professor Hawkes as to his conduct'.. He proclaimed: `I think Mr Priestley mean and contemptible,'. The judge's remarks were splashed all over the newspapers, and did Jack considerable personal harm, but he could not do anything about it. Christopher's lawyers had advised him to sue Jack for heavy damages, but he refused. Jack was wealthy, and he had already made a generous financial arrangement with Jane. As her new husband, David Bannerman had very little money, Jack supported both of them.

While waiting on Paddington station for his train back to Oxford, Christopher wrote to Nicolas: ‘All went smoothly and without fuss except that, at the end, the judge made a little speech saying how 'mean and contemptible' (I just quote his words) he thought Jack's conduct had been. I do regret this, especially as it will be reported in the papers, and will give pain to Mummy. I hope you will be able to see this thing, now as before, in fair perspective. The Court has given justice, but the real judge of human conduct is a higher authority than we can know.’

Neither Christopher nor his father had anticipated the consequences of the letter. Christopher’s biographer, Diana Webster, writes:

‘He destroyed the letter shortly after the divorce, feeling a mixture of anger and remorse. . . . His way of dealing with emotional problems was to dig the biggest hole he could, shovel in as much heavy material as he could lay his hands on, and build an impregnable fortress on the top of it. In some respects this was a product of his upbringing; but it was also his only defence against any assault on his surprisingly delicate, emotional nature. . . . I know that he was deeply ashamed of the hurt this action caused, but what was left of his pride refused to let him admit it.’

Jacquetta immediately wrote to Nicolas, by his own admission at that time a naive fifteen-year-old: 'I am afraid the case went as horribly as it could on Friday. I do hope you won't have been made to suffer for it in any way. The judge took it upon himself to say things about Jack which were absolutely unjust' . She wrote to him again:`I hope you have had no serious repercussions from the beastly divorce publicity. . . . Several legal people have written to Jack saying how scandalous the judge's behaviour was, but of course, that doesn't help with the public - please let me know about this, because I've been much worried for you and have heard nothing.'

Jacquetta wrote to her son a third time, after he had seen the word "adultery" in a Times newspaper report of the divorce: ‘ I am very sorry if you felt anything was kept from you. I had no intention of it .... as far as what the judge said about Jack I can assure you it was absolutely unjust. It is too long and complicated a business to explain on paper, but I will if you like when we meet. I am glad to say we have neither of us had any critical letters, while Jack has had a good many sympathetic ones. Also another legal chap has written to a law journal to protest at the judge’s action of blackguarding someone who could not make any defence. Still, it's no good going on like this I know: I only hope that you'll be tolerant. Wisdom is very hard to come by.

Diana Collins, highly regarded on moral matters, delivered her own judgement in hindsight: ‘'Fair perspective', 'tolerance' and 'wisdom’ seem rather a lot to expect or hope from a vulnerable sixteen-year-old.

After the emotional disruption of the divorce, Jacquetta returned to work. She had been recently appointed the co-editor of a major and highly ambitious UNESCO publication on the human and cultural origins. She was unwittingly embarking on what would be a ten-year project that would test all her knowledge of archaeology, not least of its science. And in the dense file of paperwork related to this History of Mankind in the UNESCO archive in Paris, one item stands out; it is a news-cutting account of Jacquetta and Christopher’s divorce case.

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