by Ben Musgrave
I just want you to know that any information you have, it’s all safe, we’re not going to do anything.
DEREK
I don’t know anything.
PETER
Sure.
DEREK
I don’t want another attack.
PETER
That’s not what we’re about, Derek.
We don’t want violence.
Now, if you wanna talk to ’em, be friends with ’em, that’s your prerogative, it’s a free country.
DEREK
I don’t
PETER
But honestly
Be careful, brother.
It breaks my heart to see a clever kid like you in a pickle.
Cos you are in a pickle aren’t you?
I know you’re worried about her. But that’s good.
It shows you have a heart.
(Approvingly.) Derek, you’ve got a heart in you.
(To VINCENT.) He cares for all God’s creatures, don’t he, Vince?
I hope you were never a cunt to him.
VINCENT
No!
PETER
(To DEREK, of VINCENT.) Was he a cunt?
VINCENT
I wasn’t, was I?
DEREK
No, you were alright.
PETER
That girl, Lydia… She’s still sending Vince dirty letters, talking about how she wants him inside her.
Pretty saucy material, actually.
X-rated.
On the news… they’re not telling us what’s happening.
They’re keeping it quiet.
But it’s going fucking nuts all over Essex, Kent, Cambridgeshire.
They’re everywhere.
They’re crawling out of the cracks in the earth
Like cockroaches, like earwigs
They’re coming out of the sea.
They’re dangerous.
And they make us feel like shit.
They make us feel like we lack something.
That we don’t know how to feel.
That we should feel something different.
Pause.
Your feelings are your feelings, Derek.
They are only true.
They are only honest
And God will forgive you.
Pause.
Will you help us?
More and more young people are joining.
You won’t be alone.
Girls, too.
Pause. DEREK nods. PETER comes and embraces him.
We’ll love you, Derek.
We’ll love you, as one of us.
Come and find us, tomorrow.
At The Lion.
Two o’clock.
We’ve got plans, mate.
Pause. PETER and VINCENT exit by the track.
Pause. DEREK watches them go.
He takes VINCENT’s shirt off. He examines his body.
From the sea-path, SARAH enters.
DEREK turns to her.
DEREK
How much of that did you hear?
Pause. All of it.
SARAH
We know all about Peter…
We know what he does.
His son… contracted it.
He chucked him out, even though…
Well, he had his own story.
And he went off the rails.
And into fights, drugs.
He used to drive a truck down the A12, picking up girls along the way.
He was lost.
The League turned him.
Pause.
I need to talk about Lydia.
I don’t really want you anywhere near us, but it seems I have no choice,
It’s too dangerous, here.
There’s something happening.
There’s chatter.
I’m concerned.
We were supposed to be moving her today.
But she’s gone downhill.
She’s become very ill.
She isn’t responding to the treatment.
I don’t think she can go on much longer
Pause.
She’s been playing your CD.
The same song over and over.
Pause.
You’re a good boy I think, struggling all your life, not knowing what’s it all about.
Even that first time I saw you, I knew you had courage.
I think it’s been growing inside you.
Since that last time.
Blooming.
I can see you shining, Derek.
I can see it in you.
And you can be reborn.
Pause.
Come to her.
DEREK
What can I do?
I can’t do a thing.
I’m hopeless.
SARAH
Tell her she’s alright.
Just tell her she’s alright.
DEREK
Why?
SARAH
If you don’t, I think she’ll die.
Scene Four
The Miracle
SARAH’s cottage, that night. LYDIA is in a chair. The moon is full.
LYDIA is listening to a wonderful song from between 1994 and 1997. She looks very ill.
There are a few lit candles on the table.
DEREK and SARAH have just entered.
LYDIA is paler, thinner. DEREK approaches.
LYDIA
I like this song.
DEREK
Yeah?
LYDIA
It’s good.
I used to listen to this song in the car.
Pause.
My dad used to play it.
Pause.
He ‘liked his music’.
DEREK
Sarah asked me to come.
LYDIA
Sarah should leave me alone.
SARAH
Sarah wants you to live.
LYDIA
Sarah’s just embarrassing.
Pause.
SARAH leaves DEREK and LYDIA alone.
Pause. LYDIA turns the music off.
You shouldn’t have come.
You come to laugh at me?
Stare at me again.
DEREK
No.
LYDIA
Then what?
DEREK looks at her.
DEREK
I don’t know.
LYDIA
Stare at my mark?
DEREK
No.
LYDIA
You should get out of here before you get infected.
DEREK
You won’t infect me.
Pause.
LYDIA
But you fear it?
Pause.
How could you betray me?
Pause.
It keeps going round and round my head.
How could you?
I thought you had such courage.
DEREK
No.
LYDIA
No, no courage.
DEREK
I’ve never had any.
I’m no good.
I’m hardly a person at all.
I’m not right, I’m… despicable.
He struggles with this.
I know that now.
And if there’s anything good to come out of this it’s that it’s set me straight.
Pause.
When you came
I found myself full of dreams.
LYDIA
About what?
DEREK
About you.
And about who I might become.
Pause.
I liked you.
Not just the being beautiful and that, but
But the way you looked for the sea.
And the way you sank into the water, like you didn’t mind the cold.
And the way you seemed to love this place.
And the way something seemed to change inside me.
And you didn’t la
ugh at me.
You didn’t make me feel stupid for having those dreams.
Pause.
And I felt very strongly that life was beginning
LYDIA
And then I fucked that up
DEREK
No, I
LYDIA
You overheard me, didn’t you?
DEREK
It doesn’t matter.
LYDIA
Everything I try.
DEREK
You were just being young.
LYDIA
Nasty.
DEREK
It’s okay.
LYDIA
So typical of me.
DEREK
It’s okay.
LYDIA
Everything I touch.
DEREK places his hand on the place where her mark is.
DEREK
It’s just this.
It’s not you.
There is something inside me too.
And it’s not me.
Pause. He keeps his hand there.
LYDIA
I know.
Pause.
Did you really like me?
DEREK
I still like you.
LYDIA
How?
DEREK
Of course I do.
Pause.
LYDIA
(Of the mark.) Even with this?
DEREK
Yes.
Can I see it?
Pause.
It’s alright, it won’t do me harm.
Pause. She reveals the mark.
It’s okay.
Pause. DEREK touches it.
It’s okay.
It is what it is.
There’s no harm.
Pause.
See.
Pause. She closes her eyes. He closes his eyes.
It’s just normal.
We’re just normal.
We can just be normal.
Beat. She gets up.
She plays some music from DEREK’s CD.
They listen to it.
Pause.
LYDIA
I read your story.
DEREK
What story?
LYDIA
The one about the trawlerman.
You remember you gave it to me?
When we first met?
DEREK
Oh yes.
LYDIA
I loved it.
DEREK
Did you?
LYDIA
I thought it was wonderful.
I felt like you’d really understood his feelings.
Like you’d got under his skin.
It was gorgeous.
DEREK
Thank you.
Pause.
LYDIA
Before Sussex.
I was at a dance academy in London.
We felt very free there, all of us.
Every day we had to have courage.
To be and feel how we wanted to be.
To touch others
To understand the bodies of others.
It wasn’t wrong, it was lovely.
I felt that I was discovering things every day.
SARAH enters, with a slim medical bag.
There was a boy called Robbie, and he was my… particular friend.
I was fifteen and he was seventeen, and I had sex with him.
Before the panic.
Before it emerged.
We weren’t careful enough.
I was on the pill.
I didn’t know that he’d slept with other girls before me!
We were just young!
Then he got very ill and died.
And other people at the academy.
And then I got very ill.
And my parents
Couldn’t handle it.
And started to reject me.
And wouldn’t come near me.
And wouldn’t hug me.
And that’s when it was born inside me.
Pause. She struggles with it.
And one day they were gone.
On a business trip, they said.
And they put me in a hospital.
And they didn’t come.
And when the hospital made enquiries
It turned out my mother and father had left the country.
Pause.
Will you go swimming again, Derek?
DEREK
Yeah.
Pause. She takes his hand. SARAH takes a syringe from her bag.
LYDIA
It’s time for my medicine.
LYDIA nods her head.
Then SARAH injects LYDIA. Beat. SARAH recites the liturgy.
SARAH
You’ve got your heart.
You’ve got your heart.
You’ve got your blood.
You’ve got your blood.
You’ve got your wings.
You know the way.
Pause. SARAH goes back inside. LYDIA and DEREK. The sea. The quiet.
SARAH re-enters, with a bottle of wine, and some crisp wine glasses. The bottle is already half-drunk, with a cork in it. She looks at them, nervously.
Can I join you?
Pause. Yes.
Only half a bottle, but there it is.
It’s English wine.
She pours them a glass of wine, and hands it round.
This wine was made in the year it first appeared.
I’m no expert but I’m told it was a very good year.
Sorry, am I being embarrassing?
They drink together.
Do you like it, Derek?
Pause.
DEREK
Yes, I do.
SARAH
You can taste elderflower.
Pause. The sea. The wine.
I used to live in London. I used to be a nurse at the Royal Free.
My husband was a surgeon. He was on the front line.
One day he became very sick, one of the first to bloom.
To be perfectly honest, I don’t know for sure how he got it.
He died. And then I got it too.
And of course they didn’t let me keep my job.
And my friends were afraid to come close to me.
To touch me.
And I began to waste, and fall apart.
And I hated myself.
I wanted to see my family.
This was before the London cordon.