Mosquitoes Read online

  NATALIE. HEY LUKE I WANT 2 SUCK YOUR FREAKY COCK YUM YUM

  Pause.

  oh my god sorry I’m at Celeste’s I left my laptop for like one second to go to the toilet, we made vodka jelly she’s so wasted!!!!!

  LUKE. oh. Cool. Ha ha

  hey have you seen the one where the three year old explains Stars Wars? Here’s / the

  NATALIE. Heloise says your mum’s gonna make a black hole

  A faint hum of mosquitoes.

  LUKE. what?

  NATALIE. seriously it’s on the news

  LUKE. where?

  NATALIE. BBC website. And the New York Times. It says the machine they’re building will make black holes that eat the earth

  LUKE. yeah well at least she’s not evicting poor people from their houses. Joke.

  NATALIE. yeah I know my mum says my dad is the banal face of evil but he still pays for all her shit so

  LUKE. ha. does his office use microsoft windows?

  NATALIE. why

  LUKE. be easy then

  NATALIE. what would?

  LUKE. put a virus in their operating system. Shut them down for a week

  NATALIE. shut up

  ,

  seriously?

  LUKE. yeah. If you want

  NATALIE. Heloise says you’re chatting shit

  LUKE. why are you even talking to Heloise about it she doesn’t know what the fuck she’s talking about she had to take year 8 twice and she thinks techno is good music why would i say i could do it if i couldn’t do it i can do it in like three days

  …

  Natalie did you get my last message?

  …

  …

  hey Natalie, you there?

  The humming grows.

  …

  …

  hey Natalie. Are u ok?

  …

  I’m not being nasty but it’s actually really rude just to completely not reply to messages from someone when they delete delete delete delete delete delete delete

  …

  dear Natalie. I hope you are well. I’ve been really busy so sorry if I’ve missed any messages from you. Just wondered if you could check something for me? I’m on irregular verbs in the future tense, how do you say, ‘I will be back at 4 p.m.?’

  Pause.

  NATALIE. Je serai de retour à seize heures

  LUKE. hey! How are you, thanks so much, that’s what I thought, what about ‘Next summer, she will go to the French Riviera’?

  NATALIE. L’été prochain, elle ira sur la Côte d’Azur

  LUKE. ‘We will have three children’

  NATALIE. Nous aurons trois enfants

  LUKE. ‘You will be safe and sound’

  NATALIE. Vous serez sains et saufs

  The humming grows oppressively loud.

  LUKE. thanks you’re a lifesaver. I’m back at school on Monday. I was thinking we / could

  NATALIE. sorry can’t chat now. Stefan and Heloise and Celeste and me are going to see Ratatouille

  Pause.

  LUKE. cool. seen it already. it’s shit, by the way I finished that thing.

  I could do it today only I need to get into your dad’s email and you probably don’t know his password

  Pause.

  Natalie?

  The mosquitoes hum. Loud and oppressive. ALICE enters, coat, suitcase.

  VACUUM

  ALICE talks but we can’t hear what she’s saying, until…

  LUKE takes his headphones off. The humming cuts.

  ALICE. love.

  LUKE. What?

  ALICE. Auntie Jenny sends her love.

  LUKE. Has she got bowel cancer?

  ALICE. What? No.

  LUKE. No just you said it was an emergency so

  ALICE. An emotional emergency not a medical. She’s fine. Amy’s fine. She’s nearly crawling now. Jenny was just a bit frightened darling.

  LUKE. ’Kay well I’m frightened too. I’m frightened about people who fly from Switzerland to Luton just cos their sister’s a retard. / You left the light on in your room again so.

  ALICE. We don’t use that word, I was rushing to catch the plane.

  LUKE. Fine, you’ll be dead by the time the coal runs out so you probably don’t give a shit.

  ALICE. I do give a. I do.

  LUKE. It’s going to use more electricity than the whole of Geneva, you know that?

  ALICE. What is?

  LUKE. Your machine. Your experiment, and it’s going to make a black hole

  ALICE laughs.

  ALICE. The possibility of us making a black hole is one tenth of a millionth billionth billionth of one per cent.

  ,

  LUKE. Right. So you’re saying there is a chance?

  ALICE. What’s happened? What’s the matter?

  LUKE. Why do you always pretend like you don’t know? I’ve told you, like repeatedly, I hate that fucking school.

  ALICE. Don’t swear at me. Please do not swear at me, / I don’t like it.

  LUKE. Jenny swears at you, Jenny swears / at you like, constantly and

  ALICE. Well Auntie Jenny is not someone you need to be imitating.

  LUKE. You think she’s stupid.

  ALICE. No, I / never

  LUKE. You said she was epically thick.

  ALICE. No, what / I said was

  LUKE. You said it was incredible she managed to put her shoes on in the morning.

  ALICE. That’s enough.

  LUKE. Please tell me we don’t have to go there for Christmas this year.

  ALICE. Not this year, no.

  LUKE thanks the heavens.

  I mean they’ll probably come here.

  LUKE. You’re not serious.

  ALICE. Don’t you want to meet your cousin?

  LUKE. Yeah but you can’t put a baby on a plane.

  ALICE. You can. Of course you can, that age, a baby’s very portable, I got you a Toblerone from duty-free.

  She takes the Toblerone from her bag and gives it to him.

  LUKE. Sorry, what did you want?

  ALICE. Just to. Say hello.

  LUKE. Hello.

  ALICE. Hello.

  LUKE. Hello.

  ALICE. Hello.

  ,

  Why don’t I / just

  LUKE. Goodbye.

  LUKE puts his headphones on.

  ALICE. have a bit of a tidy in here

  LUKE. I don’t want you touching my stuff, goodbye.

  ALICE. it’s a bit, / the plates and the food it’s a bit unhygienic and it smells a little it smells a bit

  LUKE. it’s my stuff I don’t want you going through my stuff, I’ve asked you politely / Alice.

  ALICE. it smells a bit like death sweetheart!

  She laughs.

  Sorry but. There is a smell – Luke can you take the headphones off.

  ,

  Take the headphones off please Luke.

  ,

  Take the headphones off please.

  She reaches for them, he bats her away. Pause.

  I know you can hear me. I wanted to show you something.

  ALICE takes her laptop out of her bag and starts it up.

  So we can’t start testing for the Higgs until the LHC starts up. But what we know already, is what it will look like if it is there.

  She looks for a response, doesn’t get one, ploughs on.

  Okay so we use the ATLAS software to convert the data into ‘objects’ and you can use those objects to reconstruct particles which I know it sounds very complicated but then you use those particles to make an algorithm, / which

  LUKE. I see.

  ALICE. and then you can make a sound a track of sound! Sorry?

  LUKE takes the headphones off.

  LUKE. I said I see.

  ALICE. I knew you’d. This is how NASA listens to the Sun. The programme we bought. For your birthday. There’s a competition, I thought you might

  LUKE. I have exams.

  ALICE. yes but for fun. You don’t play m
e your music any more.

  LUKE. You don’t shave your armpits. Embarrassing. Just don’t come to school if you’re / going to whatever just forget it.

  ALICE. Luke.

  ,

  The competition is you take the samples and remix, that’s the, isn’t it, you remix the sounds into a track, a musical track. I think you’d be absolutely brilliant at it, and there’s a prize.

  LUKE. What’s the prize?

  ALICE. I’m not sure. But there definitely is one.

  ALICE clicks on her laptop. A sample plays. A strange, beautiful, metallic sound.

  That’s the sound of a Higgs jet decaying.

  They listen.

  LUKE. If you find it, d’you think he’ll come back?

  A long pause.

  ALICE. No. No I don’t.

  LUKE. But he worked on it. He worked on it for / like

  ALICE. I know but – it’s a bit difficult to.

  Pause.

  LUKE. What?

  ALICE. No, it’s. He thought, he had begun to think that when we discovered the Higgs potential, it would demonstrate that the universe is inherently unstable and destined to fall apart.

  ,

  LUKE. Do you think that?

  ALICE. It’s not something I worry about, no. It wouldn’t happen for billions of years. And what we’re talking about, a vacuum bubble, expanding at the speed of light, you’d never even know about it.

  LUKE. Why?

  ALICE. Well. Because you’d be dead.

  ,

  LUKE. Oh well that’s alright then.

  She laughs. He laughs.

  ALICE. He was just like that. He could be quite bleak and, I mean, he thought a lot about how the universe could end! You’re not like that at all.

  LUKE. What does that mean?

  ALICE. What?

  LUKE. Why would you say that, ‘you’re not like that’?

  ALICE. Because you’re not.

  Pause. LUKE goes back to his laptop. Puts his headphones on.

  You’re so clever. I wish you wanted to create things, not destroy them.

  THE BOSON enters and watches them.

  The sound of vast building works.

  Over this, a baby’s cry, growing in volume.

  ACT TWO

  REPEATEDLY, AND AT REGULAR INTERVALS

  One year later. Geneva, September 2008. JENNY, now forty-one, in her coat. Her case at her feet. Her stomach flat. ALICE, now forty-three, sits. Emo music is playing at volume offstage.

  JENNY. I’m on the aisle. I said to Mum, go on the aisle because of her legs but she wanted the window so I’m on the aisle, that’s how I can see him. Long black shirt. Baggy black trousers. Little… hat. And what gets my attention is he’s not doing anything. Hasn’t got a book, not watching TV, he’s just staring. Straight ahead.

  ALICE. Frightened to fly probably. Luke! Can you turn it down please?

  The music goes off. Over the following, JENNY unzips her case, takes out a duty-free carton of cigarettes, takes one pack out, takes a cigarette out of that and lights it.

  JENNY. This is what I’m thinking only then: he checks his watch. He checks his watch repeatedly and at regular intervals. Then he goes up the back to the loo. And what I notice is he takes his passport with him.

  LUKE, now seventeen, enters with mugs of tea, gives them to JENNY and ALICE.

  ALICE. Thanks darling.

  LUKE. You can’t smoke in the apartment.

  ALICE. It’s alright, / just this once.

  JENNY. And a minute later (thanks Al) he comes / back so I

  LUKE. So we just breathe that in do we?

  ALICE. Luke, please / don’t.

  JENNY. So I get up to use the toilet and –

  LUKE coughs, pointed. JENNY throws her cigarette in her mug.

  So I get up to use the toilet, well. The toilet now has an out-of-order sign on it which okay fine but: this chap’s been up there a minute before me, right? So my question is: who put that sign up? And why, so this is when I say to Mum, Mum look at this guy, he’s a bit odd. And she agrees he is a bit odd. And this is when the second man gets up and goes to the back. I’m a bag of snakes, so I find the stewardess and I (quietly) I say to her there is a man, a pair of men, and I tell her about the checking the watch, and the not watching television, and half of me’s thinking, she’s going to laugh, and half of me’s thinking ‘we’re all going to die’. But you know what Alice?

  ,

  You know what Alice?

  ALICE. What?

  JENNY. She thanked me. She said ‘thank you madam, we depend on the vigilance of our customers’.

  LUKE. Were they Asian?

  JENNY. That isn’t the point the / point is

  LUKE. But were they?

  ALICE. Luke, pack it in.

  JENNY. I’d rather be a racist than die in a plane crash.

  ALICE. Jen, it’s okay. What you’ve been through is enough to –

  JENNY. And what I’m thinking now is okay it’s me it’s worst-case scenario Jenny and ha ha let’s all laugh and call her a bigot.

  But I watched that stewardess as we landed.

  She was white as a sheet.

  ,

  (To LUKE.) I bought you a Toblerone.

  JENNY takes a big Toblerone from her bag. Gives it to LUKE.

  ALICE. A Toblerone! Jen that’s so, say thank you to Auntie Jenny.

  LUKE. Thank you to Auntie Jenny.

  JENNY. Give your mad old aunt a kiss then.

  LUKE looks at ALICE. She gives him daggers. LUKE goes to JENNY. Pecks her cheek. JENNY grabs him and holds him tightly. LUKE wriggles, she lets go.

  (To ALICE.) Got you something too. Didn’t forget you.

  She goes back to her suitcase, takes two bottles of red wine out.

  ALICE. You didn’t have / to

  She takes four more bottles out. She takes a bottle of vodka out.

  JENNY. Yeah well so cheap duty-free, false economy not to really.

  She takes out a bottle of Crème de Menthe.

  ALICE. What’s that?

  JENNY. Crème de Menthe. Was on offer. Got a free glass with it. Could have a little one now if you like. See the day in.

  ALICE. It’s 8 a.m.

  JENNY. I know it’s 8 a.m. I was joking wasn’t I. Do you think you actually have to tell me that, ‘it’s 8 a.m.’, is that something you think you actually have to, Jesus Alice, because it turns out I am not actually you know, Oliver fucking Reed so.

  KAREN (off). Alice. Do you have such a thing as a padded hanger?

  ALICE exits. JENNY looks at LUKE. Sniffs.

  JENNY. Don’t take this the wrong way but your mum’s a patronising bitch sometimes.

  She takes a swig. Offers it to LUKE. He shakes his head.

  What’s this boyfriend like then?

  LUKE. I don’t know.

  JENNY. You don’t know! What, big handsome French man comes round every day and you look the other way! No, it’s difficult though isn’t it? But you want your mum to be happy, don’t you? I was hoping you’d come over with her for the, for the, you know for the funeral.

  LUKE. I don’t fly.

  JENNY. No I know, very sensible! I just thought. You might regret it. Not saying goodbye. Properly, I’m not having a go.

  ,

  D’you remember when we came for Christmas? D’you remember playing with her on the blue rug?

  LUKE. Yeah.

  JENNY. You remember it do you? You remember her?

  LUKE. Yeah.

  JENNY. Yeah you were such a help, I can’t tell you, honestly, you were brilliant, doing that thing, with the sock. Making her laugh. You’ll be a lovely daddy.

  LUKE. I’m not having kids.

  JENNY. Well not yet I hope!

  LUKE. The earth’s already overpopulated. By the time I’m sixty there’ll be nine billion people. Most of them will starve to death.

  JENNY. Ooh, cheerful! You sound like your dad.

  LUKE. Do I?

&nbs
p; JENNY. Yeah. Yeah, anyway, you don’t mind giving Granny Karen your bed for a few days do you?

  LUKE. A bit.

  JENNY. Ooh, an honest man, I like that!

  LUKE. Where’s Uncle Mike?

  JENNY. Uncle Mike’s taking some time, sweetheart.

  LUKE. Has he left you?

  JENNY. No! Listen to this one, ‘has he – ’, no, he’s just taking some time. Bit of R and R!

  LUKE. Away from you?

  JENNY. We’re taking some time apart, thank you nosy parker.

  LUKE. But whose decision was it?

  JENNY. Joint, it was a joint decision. Shall we have a bit of that Toblerone, I had my breakfast at 5 a.m.

  LUKE. Is it because of Amy?

  JENNY. Just fuck off Luke.

  ALICE enters, helping KAREN, who walks on a frame.

  KAREN. Did she tell you? I told her to leave those poor men alone but would she listen? Scared that poor stewardess half to death.

  LUKE makes to exit.

  ALICE. Where are you going?

  LUKE. Um, school?

  KAREN. I saw them at passport control. They were taken to a small room.

  ALICE. Well say goodbye.

  KAREN. A small room.

  LUKE. ’Kay, bye.

  ALICE. Wish me luck.

  LUKE. Good luck.

  LUKE exits. JENNY lights a cigarette.

  KAREN. And it’ll go on their records you know. Every time they fly from now on it’ll be cavity searches and small rooms. I don’t know how I raised such a fearful creature.

  ALICE. Okay Mum. That’s enough.

  HENRI enters. JENNY clocks him. KAREN doesn’t.

  KAREN. Handsome they were. Omar Sharif handsome.

  JENNY. Shut up Mum.

  JENNY stares at HENRI.

  Bon jour.

  ALICE. Um, this is Henri.

  HENRI. Hello. Welcome to Geneva. (To KAREN.) You must be Alice’s sister, I think.

  As he kisses her on each cheek, KAREN screams with laughter, hits him playfully.

  KAREN. Oh, don’t!

  He turns to JENNY.

  HENRI. And this is the famous Granny Karen, yes?

  JENNY stares back.

  JENNY. Is this sposed to be charming? That what you’re going for, charm? ‘Hello. Nice to meet you.’ That’s what people usually start with.

  He is suddenly serious, holds her hands.

  HENRI. Jenny forgive me. I am so sorry for your suffering. You have been in our prayers.

  He embraces her. Warm. Kind. JENNY doesn’t know what to do with it.

  (To ALICE.) Your son put my toothbrush in the toilet again.