Mosquitoes Read online

  LUKE. Yes. But

  JENNY. Course she is, pretty, happy, lots of mates, lovely young cervix, sunny day like this, probably off the park after school, shopping centre, have a… slush puppie or whatever with her lovely young cervix, and then she opens her locker and there’s you. Boom, shitting on her peace of mind with a brand-new horrible fucking thing that might happen to her. Did she ask for that? No. So what you’ve done there is basically infected her. She’s a teenage girl, she’s got enough worries, trust me, and there’s you dropping another one on her, out of the blue, drive by, here you go love, chew on that. Lie in bed at night thinking about that, googling that, worrying about that, I mean fair play to her honestly. I’d want to smack you one too.

  LUKE. It wasn’t her, she didn’t, it was / Stefan

  JENNY. Because honestly? That’s weird. A leaflet, that’s objectively just a very weird thing to, and I’m not saying this to be nasty, it’s not your fault, what does your mum say, ‘be yourself’? Know why she does that? Cos she has no idea what else to say to you. Cos it scares her, you being like this. Cos honestly, you’re so like your dad it’s not even funny. You are, you’re the spit, the stuff comes out your mouth. So there’s that, maybe you can’t help behaving like a fruit-loop, but if you can, and I would say, you know, have a good go at it, cos if you can, you should knock it on the head sharpish cos otherwise, honestly, I don’t see you having a very happy life. Sweetheart.

  ,

  That’s it, that’s me done. I’m only saying this to help you, let’s forget about it now. Have a cup of tea.

  She lights a cigarette.

  LUKE. Go outside! You want to smoke, go outside, it’s not rocket science.

  JENNY. You want to try one? I won’t tell.

  LUKE smashes his foot into the sofa.

  LUKE. No I don’t want to get cancer, thank you!

  JENNY. You’re showing off now. Give me a hug

  LUKE. Um, no thanks. I don’t / think so

  JENNY. suit yourself.

  LUKE. don’t think I want a hug with a murderer actually.

  ,

  Sorry. I didn’t. That came out

  JENNY. No. Glad. Thanks. Thank you. Actually. Does my head in, Mum and Alice acting like, why can’t they say it?

  The social worker, she basically said it, why can’t any of you, walking round like I’ve got BO and no one wants to tell me. What are they afraid of?

  LUKE. Really?

  JENNY. Yeah.

  LUKE. I think they’re afraid you might kill yourself.

  Pause.

  JENNY. Is your birthday the 12th or the 22nd?

  LUKE. The 22nd.

  JENNY types four digits into ALICE’s phone, the code works.

  JENNY. Cheers.

  THE FEMALE CANCERS

  5 p.m. An empty beer garden in Geneva. JENNY with a beer. HENRI with a water.

  HENRI. Perhaps we should wait inside?

  JENNY. She’ll see us. She’s just held up at work. Probably unifying the universe as we speak! ‘Hurry up Universe! I have to meet my boyfriend!’, I can’t get my head round it can you?

  HENRI. She is a very extraordinary woman. What they achieved today. Incroyable. You must be very proud of her.

  JENNY shrugs. A pause. HENRI checks his phone.

  JENNY. No but the thing that really gets me is this thing this Higgs thing.

  HENRI. Boson.

  JENNY. Yeah cos it’s just, it’s you know. Hypothesis! Their ideas didn’t work so they invented some particle to solve it well sorry we can all do that, my marriage isn’t working because we don’t have a cappuccino machine I mean fuck off right! And maybe I haven’t got a PhD but I help people. You know, and I am good at my job.

  HENRI. Sorry, what is your job?

  JENNY laughs.

  JENNY. Alice didn’t? Okay. This… is a phone, okay so I’m ringing you.

  She hands him an imaginary phone. He takes it, confused.

  Briiing briiing it’s ringing!

  HENRI. Oh, okay – (Picks up the pretend phone.) Hello?

  JENNY. Hello madam.

  HENRI. Oh. (Higher voice.) Hello!

  JENNY laughs.

  JENNY. I’m calling today madam to ask if you’re concerned about the female cancers? I’m talking here about breast cancer, ovarian cancer, vaginal cancer. Did you know madam, you’re likely to contract one of these cancers in your lifetime? And if that does happen, have you considered the effect it may have on your income and your ability to keep up loan repayments?

  HENRI (high voice). Do you have a cure?

  JENNY. No. But for just ten pounds a month, you can rest safe in the knowledge that when cancer strikes, you’ll be provided for by our unique FemPlan Policy. Is that something you’d be interested in?

  HENRI (high voice). Oh, yes.

  JENNY. That’s great madam, thanks for giving me your valuable time today. If you stay on the line, one of my colleagues will take your details.

  JENNY hangs up her pretend phone. HENRI follows.

  See. I just sold a man insurance against vaginal cancer. I’m fucking great at my job. What do you do?

  HENRI. Alice didn’t?

  JENNY. We just call you The Quaker. That’s how you met, right?

  HENRI. Yes, it was at the Quaker House.

  JENNY. I went to one of them once. Was fucking boring. All these people sitting in silence, waiting for something to happen. Left after about two minutes.

  HENRI. So you are not a Quaker too?

  JENNY. No. Going straight to Hell me. Do not pass Go! Do not collect two hundred pounds! She only became one when she got married, that did my head in too, the scientist who believes in God! Sorry, what did you say you did?

  HENRI. I’m a scientist.

  JENNY. Taxi!

  They laugh.

  HENRI. There’s a lot of us in Geneva. The odds are against you. I work for the World Health Organisation. I’m a research entomologist, I develop insecticides. Avicides, bactericides, organophosphates, miticides, virucides, obviously and the new kid on the block, paldoxins. Very exciting the paldoxin, I’m sorry, this is boring?

  JENNY. A bit. No, I’m joking, go on.

  HENRI. Okay, so for example, malaria? This is a big problem. The mosquito, the tiny fragile creature you can kill with your thumb, she is responsible for more deaths than any other animal. For a time we have good results with DDT. Spray it on crops, spray it on houses. It prevents the disease spreading.

  JENNY. Job done.

  HENRI. Well, no. Because the young learn, they build resistance.

  JENNY. The young are stronger.

  HENRI. Eventually the insecticides stop working.

  JENNY. Got to kill the old instead. The old are a danger. The old are in the grip of fear. Every year you live you get more afraid.

  HENRI. So instead, you target the mosquito at the point in its life cycle that it actually becomes dangerous. It is beautiful, do you not think?

  JENNY. Kill the old and save the young! It’s brilliant. It’s, that’s brilliant.

  JENNY puts a hand on his leg.

  HENRI. Perhaps we should wait inside?

  JENNY takes her hand away. Lights a cigarette.

  JENNY. Listen, what about the poor old mosquito?

  HENRI. People are dying. In horrible, painful ways people are dying in Africa, and India.

  JENNY. Yeah but there’s loads of them to start with.

  HENRI. Loads of what?

  JENNY. Africans. And Indians. We live on an overpopulated planet.

  HENRI. Sorry, what is your…?

  JENNY. What I’m saying is, you lose a few here, lose a few there… is that really a bad thing, like… statistically?

  HENRI. That is a very brutal… I find what you say very offensive.

  JENNY. Okay. And you’re not scared of some poor brown people dying. You’re scared of not having a purpose. Of being, obsolescent.

  HENRI. Obsolescent?

  JENNY. You’re bad as fucking
plumbers, just making work for yourself. What are they spending on this collider thing, six million euros?

  HENRI. Billion.

  JENNY. Fuck off. Six billion? For something that you can’t see and might not be there in the first place? Okay so there you go. Tons of stuff you could do with six billion euros. You’re so worried about Africans, give them six billion euros, / bet they’d

  HENRI. The work we are doing will improve the lives / of

  JENNY. Yeah but it’s like when your gran gives you a birthday present isn’t it, you’d rather just have the cash

  HENRI. Alice is very late.

  JENNY. fucking scientists! Listen, I met this woman. Back home, in England

  HENRI. I hope something has not happened to her.

  JENNY. ah, that’s nice. Anyway, this woman had a little girl, and one day, when the girl was a baby, this woman reads this story. In the paper. And it says that a scientist has discovered that this vaccine, this INJECTION, the same injection that her little girl is due to have the very next week, he says that this injection is a DANGER. That could cause the BRAIN of their little girl to go wrong. You know. Go a bit Rain Man. A bit special bus. A bit, like if they made a film of her life, the actress that played her would definitely get an Oscar.

  And on the one hand, that might make her a musical genius.

  But on the other hand they’ve no room for a piano.

  ,

  HENRI. Jenny, I know, you don’t have / to

  JENNY. No but wait, this is the good bit, but so this woman Puts Her Foot Down. She Puts Her Foot Down hard, says no way is my girl getting that shit pumped into her. Which is weird cos she’s quite a nervous sort – only she had the fear in her see. And the fear made her strong.

  And so the little girl never gets that injection.

  And eighteen months later the woman finds her little girl is covered in red spots. And the spots are followed by pneumonia, and the pneumonia is followed by a coma and the coma is followed by

  followed by this, her mother, meeting me in a bar a bit worse for wear and also having taken smoking up again in quite a big way, and I say to her, no offence but you look like shit sweetheart.

  and she says my heart is broken and I want to die.

  and I say I’m sorry to hear that. How can I help?

  and she says you can’t help. Because it’s done, I did it and I can never undo it. And I tell her not to be daft because it wasn’t, it wasn’t just her fault, and she says okay. Okay well if you get the scientist who wrote the report, and you get all the journalists who reported the report, and if you get the Prime Minister, who said the report was right, and if you get all the women on the internet who went on like they knew what they were talking about, even though they knew fuck all, if you get all those people, and put them against a wall, and shoot them in the head one by one then, then I might not feel so fucking lonely for a fucking minute.

  Measles Mumps and Rubella. Sounds like a pack of lawyers doesn’t it?

  Pause.

  HENRI. Jenny, it is so kind of you to wait with / me but

  JENNY. What, am I boring you! I am, I’m boring you to death aren’t I! S’alright, bore myself most of the time

  HENRI. Alice is coming soon?

  JENNY. no. I don’t think so. I found her mobile, I sent the text. We had a fight. I won’t speak to her until she apologises.

  HENRI. For what?

  JENNY. Have you been listening to anything I’ve said?

  JENNY takes off her sweater. She wears a low-cut top. HENRI looks at her.

  HENRI. Why did you want to meet me?

  JENNY. I want her to feel stupid. I want something to happen to her that she’ll never be able to understand.

  HENRI. Her husband walked out on her. He disappeared. But you still have a husband, I think? So there you are. You win.

  JENNY. Mike left, he’s staying with his mother. Irene. Fucking poison in a tracksuit, wouldn’t talk to me at the funeral.

  She’s done a number on Mike, I tell you. He said he’s going to sue me. I don’t think he can do that, can he?

  HENRI. I don’t think so, no.

  JENNY. I don’t care. I’m not going home. I’m going on holiday. Somewhere hot where they serve English food. Mike always made us go to Scotland. Bird-watching. Fucking pac-a-macs and thirteen hours in a car.

  HENRI. Jenny.

  JENNY. We saw an eagle once, that was good. Mike started crying he was so happy. Dick.

  HENRI. This is not healthy behaviour.

  JENNY. When eagles have two chicks, the older one terrorises the younger one until it dies of its wounds.

  HENRI. You should not have brought me here like this, Alice / will be

  JENNY. I’m a weak force. She’s a strong one. She finds everything easy and I find everything hard. I hate her.

  JENNY kisses HENRI. HENRI pushes her off.

  HENRI. I definitely think I will go now.

  JENNY kisses him again, he pushes her away, harder.

  Stop it, you don’t want this.

  JENNY. We don’t have to tell her.

  HENRI. But I think that you would. I think the point would be to tell her.

  JENNY. Yes, probably. I’m not wearing any pants.

  HENRI. Neither am I.

  JENNY. Shut up.

  HENRI. I have a yeast infection. My testicles have to breathe.

  JENNY. That’s disgusting. Shall we go to a hotel or to your place?

  HENRI. Does this usually work?

  JENNY. Yes.

  HENRI. Really?

  JENNY. Englishmen aren’t very complicated.

  HENRI. Well, I am Swiss. I must go now.

  JENNY. Where? To one of your ‘meetings’?

  HENRI. Probably, yes.

  JENNY. Alice told me.

  HENRI. It isn’t a secret, it isn’t a shame –

  JENNY. Should be. You’re French aren’t you?

  HENRI. No, I am Swiss.

  JENNY. Imagine being French and not allowed a drink.

  HENRI. I am Swiss.

  JENNY. Can’t you just have a little one? Let’s go back to yours and have a little one.

  JENNY reaches for his crotch, HENRI bats her hand away.

  HENRI. No Jenny, let’s go inside and make love there, on the floor of the bar, and other men will hold you down and take a turn and then because at last the dreadful thing you have waited for your whole life will finally have happened, you will at last be happy.

  JENNY. I already have that thing, my daughter is dead you fucking prick.

  HENRI. Yes but that was your fault not the universe’s!

  HENRI exits. As JENNY talks she takes out a bottle of paracetemol and shakes a handful out. Takes them with her beer.

  JENNY. I’ll tell her anyway. I’ll say you rang the house and asked to meet me and touched my leg and told me I was more beautiful and she’ll cry and I and I, I’ll make her tea and we’ll talk about how shit you all are, men, how much the same and and and after we’ll be stronger, we’ll be a fucking fortress and you you you you’ll never get in again because we’re blood, we’re blood, and you’re just some guy with yeast on his balls.

  She shakes out another handful, begins to take these. HENRI returns. Gathered.

  HENRI. Jenny. I should not have spoken like this. This is

  Jenny. I would like to apologise. I was

  He sees the pills. The effort with which she is swallowing.

  what / are you

  JENNY. It’s okay. Don’t, because honestly / it’s okay

  He moves towards her, alarmed, she crams more pills into her mouth, swallows them.

  HENRI. You are not serious? This is, no. It is a joke, yes?

  JENNY shakes her head, takes a drink of beer, struggling to swallow the pills.

  C’est une blague, you are a soap opera! This is not a real, this is not what a real person does! No, I – no, this is, you are monstrous.

  What did you take? What / did you take?

  JENNY.
it doesn’t matter

  She reaches for the pills again.

  HENRI. Stop it!

  He grabs the bottle.

  Mais elle est malade.

  JENNY. yeah, I know, sorry.

  HENRI takes out his phone, dials.

  HENRI. Is okay, I call the ambulance –

  JENNY. Yeah, I’m really sorry, but don’t, / don’t do that

  JENNY grabs his phone and drops it in the glass of water.

  HENRI. Jenny! Putain, mais quel conne!

  JENNY. Don’t call anyone, I don’t want anyone called.

  HENRI runs off, shouting.

  Au secours! Lâche-moi! mon amie fait une tentative de suicide, appelez les secours! Lâche-moi!

  HENRI returns.

  Will you just hold my hand? Please, because I’ll just go to sleep in a bit.

  She drinks from the carafe.

  HENRI. What? No! No, no, no, no, no, no hors de question, we take you to the hospital!

  JENNY grabs at him again.

  Let go. Let go!

  JENNY. Please though.

  HENRI wrenches himself free.

  HENRI. Your disease is not terminal, Jenny. Je reviens tout de suite, je reviens!

  HENRI runs out.

  JENNY. Honestly. It’s alright. Please. I do know, I do realise this is a really horrible thing to do to you. I do feel bad about it but you must be able to understand Henri. I think if you were really honest you’d understand, because logically, I mean scientifically

  this is just. Darwin. Isn’t it?

  Sudden black.

  JENNY’S HERE

  ALICE’s house. Later. ALICE on the phone, pacing in the background. HENRI watching ALICE. KAREN watching HENRI.

  KAREN. I had relations with a Frenchman once. In Cambridge. He drove a mobile cheese van door to door.

  HENRI. This is after Alice’s father died?

  KAREN. Alice’s father was sticking his carbon nanotube into every female research assistant on the rota. Wasn’t a week went by I didn’t find some pudding in a pencil skirt trying to roll down her girdle in a hurry.

  ALICE enters, on the phone.

  ALICE.…Oui… oui… non, il a dix-sept ans…

  HENRI gets up to go to ALICE.

  KAREN. I’m not dried up. I am not some fleshless nothing.

  ALICE.…il y a environ cinq heures… Je sais mais… Oui je le sais… il a eu un problème, a l’école et… oui mais il est vingt-deux heures…