T walks onstage, sits down on the park bench and lights up a cigarette.
M: I didn’t know you smoked.
T: I don’t.
M: Me neither.
M pulls out a large pack of cigarettes and lights one with ease. She may pull it out of the pack with her lips.
M: You didn’t stick around long.
T: Neither did you.
M: Point.
They both take a drag. Silence ensues.
M: He looks good today.
T: Always did look good in makeup.
M: First time he’s been quiet in his life.
Silence.
M: Nice to see so many people.
Silence.
M: I didn’t know that they would come, such short notice.
T: Not really.
M: I suppose so.
Silence. Tristan finishes his cigarette, and butts it out on the ground.
T: I’m going back in.
M: Tristan?
Tristan turns and looks at her.
M: I’m sorry.
T: So am I.
He walks back inside. M finishes and butts out her cigarette. The lights change so that M is in a spotlight.
M: Andrew David Francis was born on the fourteenth of February, 1983. He was a happy child, always playing with everyone and trying new things. Once, when he was only 5 years old, he accidentally kicked another child at his playgroup in the leg. He was so upset that he cried for hours. He was inconsolable. He only stopped crying once he’d held an icepack to Matty’s leg for fifteen minutes. We had to wrap it in so many teatowels that none of the cold got through. He didn’t care. He took care of his friends, even then.
The lights come back up. M sits back in her seat and lights up another cigarette.. Tristan comes out.
T: You should go back inside. Everyone’s missing you.
M: I will. Once I’m finished.
T: It’s okay, you know.
Tristan lights up again.
T: He would have hated me smoking like ths.
M: You and me both.
Silence.
M: I only quit because I was pregnant with him, you know.
Silence.
M: He hated smoking ever since then. Tried to get his father to quit. Knew the QuitLine off by heart.
T: (Laughs) That never changed. Every now and again we would be out somewhere, partying or dancing or something and I would go out for one and he would look at me and be so disappointed.
Silence.
T: It never changed.
Silence.
T: He didn’t want to die, I guess. Didn’t want anyone to die. Not from something they’d done.
M: Funny that.
Silence. M butts out her cigarette and stands.
M: I’m going back in.
T: I’ll be back in soon.
M walks offstage. Lights change so that Tristan is in a spotlight.
T: I knew that something was wrong. From the first moment that we met. It was a club, dark and smelly and hot. He didn’t try to sleaze onto me, he didn’t try to sleep with me, he just chatted to me, like nothing was in the air. I was attracted to him right away, from the first moment. He was a gorgeous guy. Blonde hair, brown eyes, this smile that just made you melt. Well, it made me melt, anyway. It took two months until we were properly going out. Even then, we weren’t, you know, doing it. I thought that there was something wrong with me, that I was ugly or something, and he took me in his arms and held me, and told me that there was nothing that he wanted more than to be with me, properly with me, to be moving inside me. That I was the most beautiful, sexy, amazing guy that he’d ever met. He told me that to be with me would kill me. Just the same as it was killing him. He was dying. From the first moment that I met him. From before that. From one stupid moment, six months before, when he’d had amazing sex with a guy he didn’t know, and was too drunk to remember to put a condom on him. He always smiled when he said that. Amazing sex, it was. Really amazing. The best he’d ever had. And he never saw him again, never got to tell him that he was dying, that they both were dying. A slow death, marked by Combivir and Retrovir and Videx and Lopinavir. He never looked like he was dying, not until that day when he turned to me and said to me ‘Let’s go to the hospital. It’s time to leave home.’ He never came home after that.
The lights come up. M walks onstage. She is a little drunk.
M: You’re still out here! I though you would have come in. All your friends are in there.
T: Yeah, they are. I just can’t. I will.
M: I know.
Silence.
M: I’m here, right? You know that?
T: Yeah, you are now. That means something, I guess.
M: What? What the fuck do you mean? I was there every day of his fucking life.
T: Yeah, but not of his death.
M: I would’ve been. If you’d told me.
Silence.
T: He asked me not to. He didn’t want you to drop everything and fly across the country to look after him.
M: I would’ve.
T: I know. So did he.
Silence. M lights up. Tristan takes out a cigarette and M lights it for him.
M: I wish I’d been here, you know? He kept calling me, and telling me all about his life, his perfect life with you and his friends. He sounded so happy. He never told me that he was sick. He never asked for me. You never asked for me. You could have. You could have asked.
T: He wouldn’t let me.
M: Since when have you done what he said?
Silence.
T: I’m sorry, for what it’s worth.
M: Don’t be. You did what he wanted. He wanted me to be happy, for me not to worry. That’s enough.
T: I’m still sorry.
M: I know.
Silence. T butts out and goes offstage.
M: Andrew told me that he liked boys when he was seventeen. He’d come home for a visit, just a week, and he sat me down in my bedroom. You know, he never actually told me that he was gay. ‘Mum,’ he said. ‘I think I might be bi,’ he said. He was worried that I would take it badly, that I would hate him. I loved him just the same. I was scared, of course, that something bad might happen to him, that he might get sick, or hurt, or something. I guess I was right, in the end. I met some of his friends one night, when I went to see him. They were all lovely, very intelligent, very thoughtful, very nice people. I found out later that they were all gay, every one of them. I didn’t really mind so much after then. He would be okay, I thought, hanging around with people like that. He was sensible, and he had sensible friends. He’d meet someone through his friends, he wouldn’t do the silly things that I’d heard about on the TV or on the news. He was smarter than that. He did meet someone through his friends. He was sensible, he didn’t do the smart things. He was smarter than that. I guess being smart doesn’t stop accidents from happening, hey?
Silence falls again. T walks back in and sits down. He is visibly upset.
T: It wasn’t me. I hope that you know that. It was before he knew me. He made a mistake.
T breaks off, shaken.
M: When did he tell you?
T: About a year ago. Just before he converted. Three months after we met.
M: Are you… Did you… Are you sick?
T: We didn’t, not before that. And we nearly didn’t after, but I loved him. So we did. And we were careful. And I’m not.
M: Thank God
T: Yeah, if you like.
Silence
M: I’m sorry I yelled. It’s been hard. On us all. You especially. I shouldn’t have yelled.
She gets up and walks to the door.
M: You coming?
T: Soon. I’ll be there soon.
M leaves. Spotlight on T.
T: There was a moment, just one moment when I realised that we weren’t going to be okay. Andrew had been taken to hospital, with some bug that sat in his lungs and wouldn’t come out, and he couldn’t breather properly. They gave him all these drugs that knocked him for six, but finally he could breathe again, without the mask, and I walked in that morning and he was sat up in bed, laughing and joking and flirting with the nurses, and the doctors, and the woman in the bed across the room. I walked in, and eventually everyone left, and I sat down on the bed and he pulled me to him and we lay there with my head in his shoulder, smelling him and feeling him and loving him and he pulled back, just enough that I raised my head, and do you know what he said? Scary shit, that’s what he said. ‘I think I should call Mum.’ he said. ‘I think it’s time to tell her.’ Once he’d made the phone call, she found what hospital he was at and was there constantly, when he didn’t kick her out. We would never be alone again, properly alone, until he died.
He leans forward.
T: There’s nothing worse than seeing the man you love give up on life.
M emerges from the side of the stage, hearing the last comment.
M: He didn’t give up, you know.
T: He did. I watched him, every day, fight a little less.
M: He wasn’t giving up. He told me once that it was a ‘tactical retreat.’ That to save the people around him, he was going to do the brave thing. And go.
T rounds on her.
T: And you knew this? You knew that he was doing that? That’s the fucking stupidest thing I ever heard!
M: He did it for you.
T: I didn’t want him to do anything for me. Except live, that’s all I wanted him to do for me. That’s all I ever asked him to do for me!
M: He couldn’t do that. He would have lived maybe another few months. It was starting in his brain. You would have stayed and looked after him and killed yourself over him and he wouldn’t have been there. He wouldn’t have been my beautiful boy any more. He didn’t want that for you. He wanted you to remember him properly. As a man, proud and strong. He didn’t want you to think any less of him.
T: I never could.
Silence
T: I don’t know how to survive without him.
Silence
M: I don’t know how to mourn for him. You’re not supposed to bury your children.
Silence
T: I wish I could have showed him how much I loved him.
M: You did. Every day.
Silence
M: Got a smoke? I’m all out.
T hands her a cigarette, and relights one for himself.
T: I’m all out.
M: Shall we? I’ll quit tomorrow.
T: Yeah, me too.
They walk off together, the opposite side of the stage.