There is applause at the end of the first night in Cape Town, and laughter during the show. Then there are cognac cocktails and family members I've not seen for years and one of my interviewers from the radio telling me about his mother's death and hugs and friends and more cocktails and more laughter and tears and friends of Kate's I've never met before introducing themselves and my knowing their names and what they did with Kate - as if I had met them - and more hugs...... it's like any other evening in the bar after a performance of Sometimes I Laugh Like My Sister, this opening night at Artscape.... with added cognac cocktails. Did I mention them?
I am, as ever, amazed I have got through the show and delighted that anyone wants to approach me at all, let alone to hug, ask questions, tell me their story, to cry and thank me. In the interests of balance (I know I don't need to be balanced, but I have a small leaning towards it) not everyone approaches me, some just thank me on their way out, others avoid me entirely - as with the rest of life, what Bartelt and I have done here is not for everyone, but the reaction to the show, especially tonight, is rather overwhelming for me, largely due to the high stakes and my uncharacteristically nervous state.
And the week continues in this vein. All of the front of house staff who look after us so well - they and the security guys really are fabulous - come to the show in turn, and each has a story of loss. Not just loss, but violent loss. None of these folk are white, they are all black or coloured and so, by and large, are likely to live in tougher areas where there is always more crime and more violence.
For one, the phone rang and a voice said that her son was dead. She thought it was a crank call and hung up. The voice called back, repeated its preposterous message: which son, she says, she has two - a son and a son-in-law. Her son is dead, says the voice, the police officer. She tells Martin, she tells me her story, the details. I would never have guessed such a gentle, polite, neat woman in her sixties could contain such a story... which is stupid, I know. She wants to tell me that they shot her son in the groin. I pass this detail on because it is in these details that I find we are most alone. The hideous detail alienates the listener, if it is true and not a fabrication, if the person experiencing it is standing right in front of you. And she is very keen to tell me that she has kept his clothes as well. She has an air of bemusement about it, as if she wonders why she has done that, but hearing my story, that I still have Kate's clothes in my flat, she says she can confess to me and we are able to share a moment of camaraderie in our bemusement.
Neither of us has any explanation for so many of the things we have done; we have, to quote Dylan, just kept on keeping on. Sometimes other people without an experience like ours have a very clear idea of exactly what we should and should not be doing, and they tell us. Their ignorance brings the kind of clarity we dream of... which is not to say they are right. They are just lucky to know so much still when we have found we know less and less with each passing day. Why not keep the clothes, make a show, refuse to get out of bed ever again? I can only have the vaguest stab at the reasons for any of it.
And yet, and yet, on that first night these stories had flowed with the cognac cocktails, people in nice outfits, chat about all kinds of things. You just cannot tell how people will react, how they will express themselves, and you cannot tell from someone's exterior what stories they cradle in their guts.
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