We see Mikey. He is hunched over his phone.
Mikey.
Mikey (under his breath, staring at the phone) Come on!
Come on!
If you’d been watching, say twenty minutes before.
You’d have seen Mikey vault over Tony’s wall and enter his shed.
A Grindr message sound. *
— Hey!
Yes! Hey. Sorry bout that.
Got cut off.
— Yeah, thought you’d left me there, mate.
No! I mean – (Deleting and retyping.) Yeah, sorry.
— What you doing?
Eh …
Reading.
No one says reading. No one’s reading. No one reads.
— Like an actual book? With sentences?
Yeah. Haha.
Gone. Gone. Lost him.
It was pretty cool. 1984.
— I love that one. Feels like we’re living it.
Yeah. My mum’s like the thought police.
— (Laughing tears emoji.)
He gets my jokes.
— How old you?
Should he come clean?
…
Nah.
Eighteen.
— Cool. You’re hot btw. Where’s the pic from?
…
Argentina.
And he’s back.
And the chat.
Never been like this before.
An actual person. Funny and sweet and …
— So, do you wanna meet?
Shit.
Tony Something not right.
In the sunny September light, Tony can see in the shed.
A sort of glow.
Then gone.
How about next week?
— Have to be tonight. I’m off to uni on Monday.
Nervous.
(Mouthing to the phone.) I love you.
Okay.
— You got wheels?
Yeah. Two … that would do.
— Town?
There’s a nice pub. Called The Bell. In Wortwell.
— What time?
Nine?
— See you there.
Tony What the hell are you doing?
Mikey Shit.
Tony.
What was he doing, crouched on the floor? Sweaty paw hiding his phone.
Alone.
Oh …
Tony Michael. Were you …?
Mikey No.
Get up. Just get away.
Tony Because I know it’s hard for young people today with … well, with the pressures of … the body.
Oh God.
Mikey No. Really, Mr Grieves, I just needed –
Your internet.
Tony What?
Mikey My mum … sometimes she forgets to pay the bill.
And you know they turned the mast off on the hill.
So … I hook on to yours sometimes.
Actually you should probably change your password.
Not that it’s wrong, but ‘password’ itself, it’s just not that strong.
…
I suppose I should …
Scrabbles to get up.
And that’s when Tony sees on the shelf above.
A cardboard box.
And peeking out the statue he’d always loved. His mother’s Virgin and Child.
Almost in slow mo. Tony can see what’s about to happen.
The boy not right. Something gone.
Dead leg.
Reaches out to hang on to something.
Grabs the shelf which due to maybe not being the best DIY job in the world.
Pivots. The box and statue hurled.
Mary, flying headlong, hits the roof.
Which might’ve been proof of a God as she stayed intact.
But then in fact ricocheted off, hit a wall and smashed to pieces after all.
Silence.
The sound of nothing really.
Actually there was the sound of a goose flying over.
Back when he was ten, Tony once came down to find his mum sitting in her favourite chair. Talking to the air. The statue in hand. A song. Was it a song she sang?
We hear music of St Agathus.
He’d watched this woman, strange to him somehow.
Was it even his mum?
He’s lost.
Mikey Mr Grieves, I’m sorry.
Tony Get out!
Now!
In the silence Tony feels this sort of …
Well, something like a darkness start to rise. Start to choke …
And then he spies. There. On the floor.
He picks up a parchment.
Had it been there before?
No. Old. Had been hidden in the statue.
And something goes off in Tony’s head.
This sort of tinkling bell far away. The sort of sound that dreams are made of.
Because this is the sort of thing, Tony knows, that happens at the start of Indiana Jones.
* Grindr is a geo-social dating application for gay, bi, queer and trans people. It has a very specific message sound.