Mosquitoes Read online

  KAREN. I have always had a healthy interest in intercourse.

  HENRI. But of course.

  KAREN. I could still menstruate if I felt inclined.

  ALICE. oui… oui, je comprends… oui. Oui, merci. Au revoir.

  ALICE hangs up.

  HENRI. What did they say?

  ALICE. They won’t do anything. We have to wait twenty-four hours before they’ll even register him as missing. What did you want to tell me?

  HENRI. It can wait. Sit. Breathe now, I make you some coffee.

  HENRI goes out.

  ALICE. Luke it’s me again. I’m sorry, I just, we’re all very, we’re sitting up here and it’s very late. I’m sure you’re, I’m sure you are but. I love you.

  As ALICE talks, KAREN tries to reach the bathroom but wets herself. She is embarrassed, and tries to clean it up without being seen by ALICE. JENNY enters, unkempt, in HENRI’s coat.

  KAREN. Jenny.

  JENNY. It’s okay.

  ALICE. Oh Mum…

  KAREN whispers in JENNY’s ear.

  JENNY. It’s alright. Go and get changed.

  ALICE. For God’s sakes…

  KAREN. Grow up Alice. Only a bit of piss.

  KAREN exits. JENNY quickly cleans up the urine.

  ALICE. She did that in the control room today. Had to tie my jacket round her waist.

  JENNY. It happens.

  ALICE. I thought it was the excitement. Have you taken her to the doctor?

  JENNY. No, I thought I’d use my magic crystals to heal her. Why, do you think it’s not working?

  ALICE lets out a deep breath.

  I’ve tried to take her. She won’t go.

  ALICE. Why not?

  JENNY. Dunno. You know what she’s like.

  ALICE. Well you have to make her.

  JENNY. Do I? You know you can be there if you want

  ALICE. You know I would, but

  JENNY. but you think your work’s more important

  ALICE. what?

  JENNY. can’t stand to be near us, minute you finished your degree you were on a plane to Massachusetts.

  ALICE. For my PhD, sorry can we not, / right now because

  JENNY. England has PhDs too, and don’t, that’s not, because the moment you finished that you came over here.

  ALICE. I was in love.

  JENNY. With a fucking headcase.

  ALICE starts to cry.

  Yeah that’s it. Cry. That’s really helpful. You’re only doing it so Mum’ll come in and take your side.

  ALICE. I’m forty-three!

  JENNY. I’m not crying. I buried my daughter six weeks ago I’m not crying.

  HENRI runs in, sees JENNY. Sees ALICE’s distress.

  HENRI. What are you doing here? What did she say?

  ALICE. Why’s she wearing your coat?

  JENNY takes off the coat. Underneath there is a large black stain down her clothes.

  HENRI. We have more than your problems to deal with, yes? Luke is missing.

  JENNY. What?

  ALICE. He didn’t come back here? You didn’t see him?

  JENNY. No.

  ALICE. No, just because, you were here all day, you’re sure you didn’t?

  ,

  Jen? Please, / because

  JENNY. Yeah. I mean. No, I’m sure I didn’t

  KAREN enters.

  ALICE. You’re sure? You have to think, because I’m just trying to work out what could’ve happened, to make him react / like

  JENNY. I didn’t see him. I wasn’t here. I went to the Jardin Anglais.

  ALICE. Did you?

  JENNY. Yeah and then I was with Henri, / so

  ALICE. Why were you with Henri?

  KAREN. Are we thinking it’s drugs?

  ALICE. No we are not thinking that – (To HENRI.) what is she talking about?

  KAREN. He’s a teenager dear.

  ALICE. He doesn’t even drink, can someone / please explain?

  KAREN. If he did he wouldn’t tell you. He thinks his father is working for some sort of secret agency, did you know that?

  JENNY. Mum, / stop it.

  ALICE. Henri?

  HENRI. It is her business to tell you, not mine.

  KAREN. I think he might be slightly unusual.

  JENNY. Go to bed Mum!

  KAREN. You see Henri? You see how I’m treated by these girls, it’s degrading, you wouldn’t do it to a dog.

  HENRI laughs, hollow. Turns to KAREN, with chivalry.

  HENRI. But it’s late, no? We are all upset. Come, go and sit down, I will bring you some tea.

  KAREN. Some civility! At last, yes, thank you Henri, it takes a Frenchman doesn’t it? It seems it takes a Frenchman!

  HENRI ushers KAREN out of the room. When she is gone, to JENNY:

  HENRI. You owe me fifty Francs, okay! For the ambulance and also for my coat, for the dry cleaning, okay? / I am so serious, I will not pay for the honour of watching you masturbate, I will not pay for this!

  ALICE. What? Could someone please

  HENRI. She calls me to a bar to give me some big theatre show, she takes pills, she wants me to sit with her, she wants an audience yes? She wants an audience to tell her speech to, she wets my phone, she scares the shit from me, she… I hold her hand in the ambulance, I tell her of my dark times, to comfort her… this is a personal okay? A precious, but I tell it to her, then I take her to the hospital and all the way she screams at me that I will go to Hell.

  HENRI is nearly in tears but they are now subsumed by rage again.

  Insupportable! Insupportable!

  (To ALICE.) I used to think the only unkind thing about you was the way you talked of your sister. Now I know what a nice portrait you make of her, I mean this, I mean this absolutely, there is something wrong with you

  ALICE. *Henri

  HENRI. *in your brain, and I am sorry for your sadness Jenny but when I look at you, I don’t see a woman, I see a terrible thing, a toxic thing like a cloud like a gas a black gas and it affects all of us you know, that’s what – you affect us too okay! That’s what you must understand! You affect all of us!

  ALICE. Okay, I think you should leave.

  HENRI. You think that I…?

  ALICE. Yes, I think you’ve been drinking and it would be better for you / and for all of us actually if you went home.

  HENRI. I haven’t been drinking. I haven’t been drinking, one mouth of a beer! One mouth of a beer because of her, because she –

  ALICE. She’s lost her daughter, please, just go.

  HENRI tries to touch ALICE.

  HENRI. Alice, please –

  ALICE. No. You don’t speak to her like that, I’m sorry but you do not speak to her / like that.

  HENRI. Fine. Fine, I take to your mother her tea and then I go home to be sane. The pair of you… the pair of you.

  HENRI snatches his coat, exits. Pause. ALICE looks at JENNY.

  JENNY. It’s not his fault.

  ALICE. I know it’s not his fault!

  JENNY. I asked him not to tell you.

  ALICE. Why?

  JENNY. I dunno. I tried to fuck him.

  ALICE. Well that’s not

  JENNY. I know

  ALICE. that’s not okay!

  JENNY. no, I know, I do regret that.

  ALICE. well are you are you are you alright?

  JENNY. I’m okay. They made me drink charcoal. Like a drink made of charcoal, was disgusting.

  Then I found out it was gonna cost me two hundred Francs to stay the night in hospital. I said, what happens next? They said, you’ll throw up. I said, right, well I can do that for nothing at home.

  So I called a taxi, walked out. Vommed in the car park.

  Two hundred Francs. What’s wrong with this country?

  ALICE is in tears.

  Are you cross with me?

  ALICE. No, I’m not cross with you.

  JENNY. Look at me and say you’re not cross with me.

  ALICE looks at her
.

  ALICE. I’m not cross with you.

  KAREN enters, distressed, in her nightgown.

  KAREN. Where’s Henri?

  ALICE. He’s gone, Mum.

  KAREN. He promised me a hot drink.

  JENNY. It’s in your hand.

  KAREN looks at the mug. Back at JENNY.

  KAREN. I know what this is about you know. No one tells me anything but I worked it out, it’s about that poor man.

  JENNY. Go to bed, Miss Marple.

  KAREN. Do you know what I wish, I wish he’d just killed himself. At least then you could get on with things.

  JENNY marches over to KAREN and knocks the tea out of her hand, vicious.

  You spilt my tea!

  JENNY. You go to bed!

  KAREN. My tea that Henri made me!

  JENNY. ME AND ALICE ARE TALKING NOW.

  KAREN. Shouting at me! I’m not, I should have won a / Nobel Prize!

  JENNY’s heard this a thousand times, on autopilot.

  JENNY. ‘Nobel Prize’.

  KAREN. It isn’t bloody funny! Your father didn’t allow for anomalies, he got that prize for the anomaly I saw! He didn’t have the rigour and that’s the truth of it but that’s effing Cambridge for you, I was just the grammar-school tart, even after we were married, the way he spoke to me, ‘Karen dear, there is a difference between skipper and crew, even if the cabin boy spots the iceberg’ – my God! If it wasn’t for the pair of you, my concern you shouldn’t come from a broken home, I would have divorced him! Like that!

  JENNY. You did divorce him!

  KAREN. But at a much later date!

  JENNY. This isn’t about you!

  KAREN. I am the head of this family. My grandson is missing, and you send me to bed, like a child, like an infant, well I won’t have it, I want us to have a have a, a, a… an… an

  JENNY. Orgy. Scrabble / tournament.

  KAREN. mature conversation, stop it. Stop it you stupid girl.

  JENNY. I’m not stupid, / don’t

  KAREN. Yes you are, you’re a silly woman. You’re a silly, wicked woman.

  JENNY. Oh, shut up Mum.

  KAREN. You wicked wicked girl!

  KAREN suddenly yanks JENNY’s hand, drags JENNY to her.

  JENNY. Alice, help me! Child abuse! She’s so strong!

  KAREN lays JENNY across her lap, holds her there. Pulls down JENNY’s trousers and knickers and smacks her repeatedly. JENNY cannot believe this is happening but refuses to let her mother see any weakness in her.

  KAREN. You stupid stubborn girl!

  JENNY. Oh, yeah, little to the left! Come on, put your back / into it!

  ALICE. Mum, stop it!

  ALICE tries to stop KAREN, KAREN elbows her away.

  KAREN. Think you’re so clever, I told you, I told you, / Mike told you, you don’t listen you never listen

  KAREN keeps smacking JENNY. JENNY tries to rear up, but KAREN grabs JENNY by the hair and yanks her head down again. JENNY cries out in pain.

  That poor little / creature

  ALICE. Mum, stop

  JENNY. Allie she’s / hurting me

  KAREN. Pig-headed and ignorant, you’ve always / been like it

  ALICE. Mum, stop it!

  KAREN. that poor little / creature

  JENNY. Mum please, please Mum / please Mum

  KAREN. poor little sweet little

  KAREN throws JENNY from her.

  THAT POOR DEAR SWEET LITTLE THING.

  KAREN exits. JENNY staggers to her feet, lurches, retching and suddenly throws up. An eruption of charcoal. An explosion of dark matter. The sound of a black hole.

  ALICE. Jenny? Oh my God. Oh my God, are / you

  JENNY wipes her mouth. Tries to smile.

  JENNY. It’s alright. I’m alright.

  ALICE starts to cry. They crawl towards each other, hold each other.

  We’re alright. Jenny’s here. Jenny’s got you. Jenny’s got you. Shhh shh shh. Shh shh shh. Shhh shh shhh… Jenny’s got you now…

  JENNY kisses ALICE on the head. It leaves a black smear, as the Higgs Field appears around them. A shimmering fog. It gets brighter and brighter till it hurts our eyes. ALICE and

  JENNY disappear in its intensity. JENNY’s ‘shhh’s turn into static, and then a humming of mosquitoes, that grows and grows, until:

  Sudden black.

  Interval.

  ACT THREE

  THE BOSON

  The stage is clear except for a puddle of JENNY’s black bile. THE BOSON enters with a mop and bucket and starts to mop it up. As his speech goes on, we become aware his mopping is only making the puddle larger and larger.

  THE BOSON. There are five ways for the world to end.

  Spoiler alert.

  One. The Big Crunch. As you know, the universe is expanding but – sorry am I going too fast?

  Fine, in case you didn’t know: the universe is expanding (why didn’t you know that? seriously, read a book some time) but anyway let’s say that the elastic snaps the worm turns and eventually it begins to contract, getting smaller hotter denser, a double decker wrapper in the microwave, till it’s basically just a, just a very compact inferno, so that’s one, okay, two, the Big Freeze, does what it says on the, HEAT DEATH, everything becomes same temperature, the universe is now uniformly cold, dead and empty and nothing interesting ever happens again, number three, the Big Change, dark energy keeps growing, pulling the universe apart, till one day a bubble of lower energy shows up, expands at the speed of light, rewriting the rules of chemistry and destroying humans, planets, stars, et cetera, in at number four, if the amount of dark energy increases too fast we might get a Big Rip, which is, you know, pretty much what it, have you seen Star Trek? kind of like that, atoms shatter and the Earth (understandably) explodes, and by the way no offence, no offence, but it’s unlikely that any of you are able to understand any of this in except in the most rudimentary terms. Most of you probably don’t even know whether any of this is true or not

  He pauses. Shields his eyes, scrutinising the front few rows, double-checking.

  yeah. No. That’s okay. That’s okay. You’re doing your best, and the thing is, it feels true doesn’t it? The idea that all of this will end in a catastrophe over which we have no power, that’s a given, that is a familiar and strangely comforting fact, be it fire, ice, cosmic menopause, atomic obliteration, or a contagion perhaps, a virus spreading too fast for us to control, an ice floe melting too quickly, a shortage of food, a war over water, a bad day on the golf course for a sociopath with access to the nuclear codes, or for example, for example number five, one day you’re at home cooking this soup I mean not from scratch or anything but you know you got that carton open so you’re feeling pretty fucking pleased with yourself and as it starts to bubble you become aware your blood has been replaced by battery acid and this is, yeah it’s a disturbing thought but it’s a familiar one, you’ve had this thought before, many times actually but you’ve always been able to receive it with a kind of like a healthy skepticism, the way you think about crop circles or the charitable gestures of millionaires and but what’s different today is that you can no longer tell the difference between this piece of information and any other piece of information, it arrives in your brain in the same font as any other fact: that is a toaster the kettle is metal you live in geneva taekwondo is an olympic sport angelica huston speaks fluent french the human immunodeficiency virus cannot be spread by mosquitoes anthrax is a disease aeschynite is a mineral your heart is a pump for battery acid you are cooking soup for your son your son is eight your son is upstairs in bed with a cold and that’s when you realise somehow the seal of your body has broken and this acid this acid is no longer contained by your skin veins arteries flesh it’s leaching through the pads of your fingers it’s in your saliva the moisture in your eyes sweat on your back neck a wetness a taste in your burning corroding contaminating everything you black smears on the spoon on the bowl you’ve put on a tray to take to your son who is
eight who is upstairs in bed with a cold with a temperature with a fever caused by a rot and suddenly you understand you are the rot you are the disease and then there is a sound like a click like the click of a catch of suitcase and there is relief there is relief because there is order now, whatever else, there is order and so you turn off the gas and leaving your coat and your wallet and your mobile phone behind you, you walk out of the

  He picks up the corner of the pool of black, whisks it away in one movement and exits, with his mop and bucket.

  From the clean earth beneath it, a clock made of flowers grows.

  THE JARDIN ANGLAIS

  Five days later. LUKE, in the Jardin Anglais, by Lake Geneva. He’s on the floor, he’s been knocked down, in shock. Behind him, the clock made of flowers.

  NATALIE stands a way off, screaming at someone, off.

  NATALIE. Fuck off piece of shit fucking kill you! Are you alright? Did he hurt you?

  LUKE. Took / my.

  NATALIE. What?

  LUKE. Took my coat.

  NATALIE. Fucking prick. You’re alright though?

  LUKE. What do you want Natalie?

  NATALIE. You could actually be a bit polite you know. I think he had a knife. If I hadn’t been / here

  LUKE. He didn’t have a knife.

  NATALIE. No I think he did you know.

  LUKE. He didn’t.

  NATALIE. Sorry but how you could see that curled up on the floor crying?

  LUKE. Why are you following me?

  NATALIE. ’Scuse me, other way round.

  LUKE. No.

  NATALIE. Shut up, no, I saw you. Outside Celeste’s. Outside school.

  LUKE. Wasn’t me.

  NATALIE. Weird. Looked a lot like you. This person. So after school I followed This Person and This Person came here to the Jardin Anglais, and then This Person got like, assaulted and I like, rescued him, so unless this is like a parallel universe you are That Person so don’t even like bother lying to me okay? By the way I’m not being nasty but you stink.

  Pause.

  Where’ve you been?

  LUKE. This lorry driver picked me up. Drove me to Frankfurt. Then another one took me to Ravensbrück

  NATALIE. Shut up.

  LUKE. Yeah it was, it was… frightening, I got a bus back to Berlin then a train then another train, took for ever. Germany’s really big, which I mean I knew that before but only like, theoretically.