Strictly My Husband: It's funny, it's romantic and it's got dancing - what's not to love!

by Tracy Bloom

  ‘It’s all right, no need to thank me. I know it’s you who always organises our holidays and Christmas – which you always moan about, what with the relatives and the ball-ache of presents and whatnot, so I thought I’d take it all off your hands and plan us a trip which will get us away from our nearest and dearest at Crimbo. Including my mother. Am I a genius or what?’

  Hannah raised her gaze from the floral print of the duvet as a million different thoughts and emotions washed over her. Feelings she hadn’t known she had engulfed her in response to what Jerry was proposing: six weeks alone with her husband, away from here. She knew she just couldn’t stomach it. She looked at her husband, praying that the right reaction to his announcement lay somewhere inside her. She scrutinised his face, searching for the trigger that would spark a sense of joy in this moment. But it didn’t come. She felt nothing but the slow cold realisation that by booking this trip Jerry had inadvertently prompted in Hannah the knowledge that the prospect of six weeks on holiday with her husband depressed her to the bone – and that was something she couldn’t ignore.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Tom

  ‘Utter carnage back there,’ declared Amy, plopping herself down next to Tom on the newly built outdoor stage. She pulled her scarf more tightly around her neck and blew on her hands.

  Tom glanced up from where he was attempting to make notes on his script whilst a small army of builders clattered around him, desperately trying to add the finishing touches before the first dress rehearsal was due to start in an hour. Tom couldn’t feel the ends of his fingers owing to the chilly October air but he didn’t care. They were going to do an outdoor show and the cold was something they would all have to get used to.

  ‘What’s up with them?’ Tom asked Amy. ‘When I used to perform in the Halloween show we’d have been grateful for a dressing room at all. I remember I had a peg with my name Sellotaped on it in the gents toilets . . . and I appreciated it.’

  ‘I think some of them would rather have the gents than the kitchen of an old burger-bar unit. The girls are moaning it stinks of chip fat and it’s making them feel sick, whilst the blokes are saying it makes them hungry and can they send someone for McDonald’s.’

  ‘The youth of today,’ said Tom, shaking his head. ‘Never happy. You look different,’ he added, squinting at her.

  ‘It’s the make-up,’ she replied.

  ‘Right.’ He could see it now: the almost childlike application of blue/green eye shadow and pink lipstick. ‘Unlike you?’ he said and then broke out into a broad grin. ‘You fancy someone?’ he asked, nudging her.

  ‘Fuck off,’ she replied, going instantly pink.

  ‘You do, don’t you?’ he continued, his eyes wide.

  Amy went pinker and looked away.

  ‘Who is it?’ he demanded.

  ‘No one,’ she replied.

  ‘It’s Nathan, isn’t it? I’ve noticed that he looks at you funny.’

  ‘Fuck off. He looks at everyone funny, he’s got a lazy eye.’

  ‘Has he?’

  ‘Of course he has. Don’t you notice anything?’ she shrieked at him.

  ‘Ooh,’ said Tom, shrinking back. He’d made Amy mad. She was more tetchy than usual today. ‘Calm down. Can’t say I’ve ever looked into his eyes. But clearly you have.’

  Amy blinked back at him and if he didn’t know her better he’d have said she was borderline teary. Amy never got emotional. She must have it really bad with this Nathan. She looked away and sniffed loudly.

  ‘Look,’ he said, regretting taking the piss. ‘If I can help at all to get you two guys together, then you only have to ask. What if I tell him he’s got to come in for extra rehearsal and then leave you to it? To rehearse him. Or whatever you want to do to him.’

  Amy was staring back at him looking grim. This was not good. He needed Amy on side. She was his right-hand man and he couldn’t function without her.

  ‘I bet Carly would help you with your make-up,’ he continued. ‘She can put it on in the car at the same time as rehearsing her solos at the top of her voice whilst we’re driving down the main road. It’s true, I’ve seen her do it. I bet she’d give you some tips. I’ll ask her if you want?’

  ‘You really are an utter twat,’ declared Amy. She wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and smeared the pink gloss across her face.

  Tom reached into his pocket and offered her a handkerchief.

  She grabbed at it, rubbing furiously around her lips and chin. ‘Has it gone?’ she demanded.

  He nodded, not daring to speak.

  She stuffed the hanky back into her coat pocket. Tom daren’t point out that the handkerchief was in fact his.

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  ‘We’re screwed, aren’t we, if this show doesn’t work?’ Amy eventually said.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Entertainments will be no more. I’ll be back selling candy floss and you’ – she turned to look at him – ‘they’ll offer you a job in recruitment or training or something. Ask you to do your best to make the numpties who operate the rides and the losers who sell the burgers to be “entertainers” in everything they do. And they won’t say they’re getting rid of the Entertainment Department, they’ll say they are expanding it to encompass every single employee because everyone who works at a theme park should be an entertainer whilst making everyone who actually is an entertainer redundant.’

  Tom didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Am I right?’ demanded Amy.

  ‘I’m not sure but the prospects are not good,’ said Tom.

  She frowned. ‘I want you to know you were the best boss I ever had,’ she said.

  ‘Whoa,’ said Tom. ‘We’re not sunk yet. Phillip said if we get great satisfaction scores and enough people watching then we survive.’

  Amy looked at him, and then glanced over her shoulder towards the makeshift changing room behind them.

  ‘Like I said,’ she said. ‘Utter carnage. That’s not a cast, it’s a crèche.’

  As if on cue a young lad dressed in the bottom half of a dormouse costume came running out on stage.

  ‘Tom,’ he screamed. ‘Wayne is pretending to shag the Queen of Hearts whilst wearing my mouse-head, and I need to get into character. How am I supposed to find my inner dormouse if all I can picture is my character shagging an old queen?’

  Tom glanced over to Amy. ‘I think we’d both better get back there,’ he said.

  ‘And sort this pile of shit out,’ said Amy with a massive sigh, heaving herself up.

  Carnage actually didn’t do justice to the scene that greeted Tom as he thrust open the door to the men’s makeshift dressing room in one half of the restaurant kitchen. A tarot card and a happy families card were rehearsing their dance steps on top of a stainless-steel prep table, making the most hideous din with their shoes. The beheaded dormouse was screaming at the top of his voice whilst chasing Tweedledum around the table.

  ‘Stop shagging in my mouse-head!’

  Men in various states of dress were crowded around the one mirror that had been provided by the Costume Department. They were all trying to apply make-up in the way that a small child would paint a picture, with massive over-confidence but little skill. There was much pushing and shoving and contortion of bodies with one poor chap resorting to lying on the floor to procure a small area of mirror right at the bottom.

  The worst sight of all, however, was the two young lads still in their civvies and smoking roll-ups, sniggering as they took it in turns to peep though a tiny slit in the dust sheet that had been draped across in the room in a desperate attempt to achieve separation between the male and female members of the cast.

  Amy plucked a giant saucepan off one of the shelves and banged it hard down on the stainless-steel counter, causing the two rehearsing cards to leap off in fright and the rest of the males to turn in silent shock.

  Amy nodded to Tom.

  ‘Oh, right, yes,’ he said
, coughing to give himself time to gather his thoughts.

  ‘You are a shambles,’ shouted Amy at the top of her voice.

  Tom stared at her in awe.

  ‘Go on,’ she said, nudging him.

  ‘Amy’s right,’ he declared. Amy put the large saucepan upturned at his feet and nodded at it. He stepped on to it and surveyed his audience. By now faces from next door in the girls’ dressing room were appearing through the gaps in the curtains.

  ‘Call yourselves professionals?’ he continued. ‘What is this? Amateur dramatics night?’

  ‘Feels like it,’ mumbled someone. ‘Nothing like the smell of chip fat to make you realise you’ve made it to the big time.’

  ‘Do you think it gets any better?’ he demanded, turning round to address the general area of where the mumbling came from. There was silence. ‘Well, do you?’ he demanded again.

  ‘I’d like to think that Benedict Cumberbatch isn’t distracted by fried food when he’s preparing his Hamlet,’ piped up the headless dormouse.

  ‘Do you want to know the difference between you and Benedict Cumberbatch?’ Tom asked the defiant mouse.

  ‘About four stone,’ offered Tweedledum. He was still wearing the dormouse’s head.

  ‘Fuck off and give me my head back,’ said the dormouse, turning on him and scrabbling at his head.

  ‘The difference’ – Tom spoke loudly over the din until the dormouse fell silent – ‘is that Benedict wouldn’t give a damn about what his dressing room is like. It’s irrelevant. None of this matters,’ he said, waving his arms around so much he nearly fell off his saucepan. ‘All that matters is what happens out there.’ He pointed to the stage. ‘All that matters is what your audience sees, not what you see. Put your energies, your emotions, your feelings out there on the stage, not in here. Now grow up the lot of you and let’s stop wasting our time with petty quibbles about backstage. You are professionals. I know that in this room is the potential for the most amazing show this park has ever seen. So start acting like it. Anything to add, Amy?’

  Amy was staring up at him with her mouth open as if in a trance.

  ‘Actually there is,’ she said, giving herself a little shake and then legging herself up on to the stainless-steel table. She had grabbed a cane from the tarot card. ‘You’ve got big dreams,’ she said, slowly rotating herself round so she could address the entire cast, pointing her cane. ‘You want fame? Well, fame costs and right here is where you start paying’ – she slammed the end of the cane down on the counter – ‘in sweat. And I wanna see sweat!’ She slammed the cane down again. ‘Do you understand?’ she demanded at the top of her voice.

  ‘Hell yeah,’ came a cry from Carly, peering between the curtains.

  ‘Hell yeah,’ everyone chanted back to her.

  ‘You heard Tom,’ continued Amy. ‘Energy, emotions and feelings are required on that stage in five minutes, fully dressed and made up. Now go!’

  Tom heard the dormouse mumbling behind his back about his inability to sweat in a temperature of just five degrees as he held his hand up to help Amy down from her makeshift stage.

  ‘Impressive,’ he said, nodding to her.

  ‘Just thought they needed a few more words of encouragement,’ she replied. ‘For fuck’s sake, Richard,’ she shouted over Tom’s shoulder, ‘the tights go over your underwear not underneath them. A zombie would hardly be seen sporting Mickey Mouse pants, would he?’

  She pushed past Tom to go and rectify any other wardrobe malfunctions.

  Tom blew out his cheeks. He’d better go back out to the front and prepare for what he suspected would still be an appalling first dress rehearsal. He just needed to pass on a couple of notes to Carly though, if he could find her. He walked over to the flimsy divide and peered round the corner asking the nearest person if everyone was decent so he could go in.

  ‘Tom wants to come in,’ shouted Jessy, a stalwart member of the department. ‘Has anyone still got their tits out?’

  ‘I’ll check, shall I?’ Tom heard a male voice shout back. ‘No, don’t worry, girls, it will be my pleasure.’

  What the hell, thought Tom. Was that who he thought it was? He pulled the curtain back sharply and searched the room.

  ‘Jerry!’ he exclaimed. ‘What are you doing back here? You shouldn’t be in the girls’ dressing room.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, darling,’ said Jessy, touching his shoulder. ‘He’s fine. We don’t mind Jerry being here, do we, girls?’

  ‘No,’ came back a chorus of approval.

  ‘He’s been really helpful,’ added Jessy. ‘Look, he’s put all these mirrors up and proper lights. He and Will have been a godsend.’

  Tom looked over to the back wall where Jessy was pointing. In contrast to the chaos of the men’s dressing room the ladies’ area was organised and calm. A row of mirrors had been attached to a blank wall and his brother was halfway up a ladder attaching a string of high-powered lights above them.

  Jerry came ambling up to him grinning like an overweight married man who’d just spent the last half-hour in a room with semi-naked women.

  He went to embrace Tom and hissed in his ear. ‘Time of my fucking life. I want your job. You get to spend time with this?’ He cast his arm around the room as various girls looked up and smiled and waved at him.

  ‘That isn’t why I do this job,’ Tom hissed back.

  ‘Well, it should be. Might stop you being so fucking miserable about it half the time.’

  ‘Why are you here exactly?’ asked Tom impatiently. He didn’t really have time to deal with Jerry’s adolescent behaviour just now.

  ‘Carly called me,’ said Jerry with a shrug. ‘Said the show couldn’t possibly go on without decent mirrors and lighting for these adorable women to get ready in front of. How could I refuse? They were damsels in distress in hardly any clothes. I had no choice but to come running to their aid. And guess what? They’re all really grateful. They keep calling me their hero. Especially that one over there. The brunette with the extremely long legs. What’s her name? I’ll be her hero any day of the week, I tell you.’

  ‘Must I remind you that you are married?’ said Tom.

  ‘Am I?’ Jerry suddenly frowned.

  ‘Yes,’ urged Tom. ‘Remember? To Hannah? I didn’t waste all that money on a stag do for you to throw it away on someone half your age.’

  ‘We stayed in a caravan in Blackpool,’ said Jerry.

  ‘It was a lot of money back then.’

  ‘If I remarried I’d have a stag do in Vegas,’ said Jerry wistfully.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Tom. ‘You’re not getting remarried.’

  Jerry turned to him looking uncharacteristically sad. Jerry’s pint was always half full. Typically Jerry didn’t know what half empty meant.

  ‘So what do you make of this?’ he asked. ‘I come home with a seven-foot-long inflatable crocodile from the pub—’

  ‘And Hannah wants a divorce? Understandable,’ interrupted Tom.

  ‘It was a surprise,’ continued Jerry. ‘I’ve booked us a round-the-world trip including a week on my brother’s vineyard in Australia and do you know what she said?’

  ‘Get that enormous waste of space out of my sight?’

  ‘The crocodile had come to a sticky end having dive-bombed off the landing at that point.’

  ‘I meant you!’

  ‘Cheers. I’m trying to have a conversation here, buddy.’

  ‘OK,’ said Tom, looking at his watch. The cast had now had well over their allotted five minutes to get ready. ‘So what did she say?’

  ‘She said, and I quote, “I’ll think about it.” What in heaven’s name is that all about? I’m offering to take her to the ends of the earth and back and she needs to think about it. You’d think I’d offered to replace the hoover. I don’t get it, Tom. There was nothing. Not a hint of a smile, or glimmer of excitement. What do I have to do to make my wife look like she’s pleased she married me?’

 
‘She’s probably chuffed to bits. Just not showing it.’

  ‘Oh, she’ll be worrying about the cost, I know she will. She doesn’t know how to sit back and enjoy what we’ve achieved. What’s the point of working like a dog when you don’t get to make the most of the rewards? If only she’d just live a little, let go, have some fun. What’s wrong with that, I ask you?’

  ‘I have to say that Laura is no barrel of laughs either at the moment,’ said Tom. ‘She’s very short with me. I must have done something wrong but I’ve no idea what it is.’

  ‘Do you think it’s the menopause?’ asked Jerry.

  ‘They’re not old enough for that yet, are they?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Jerry shrugged. ‘Not even sure what the menopause is, to be honest. Do you know? Do you think we should know?’

  ‘Something to do with hormones, I think.’ Tom shook his head. ‘Not really sure though, I have to admit.’

  ‘Are you allowed to travel if you’re going through the menopause? Perhaps that’s why she doesn’t want to go to Australia. She can’t because of too many hormones or something? Shall I ask her if she’s got too many hormones?’

  Tom looked at Jerry. ‘Somehow that doesn’t feel like a question that it would be wise to ask.’

  ‘Shall I ask her if she’s menopausal then?’

  ‘Again, Jerry, I’d steer clear if I were you. Perhaps she’s pregnant? Have you thought about that?’

  ‘Bah. There’s no chance of that. To be honest it’s partly why I booked this holiday, get her away from that bloody dog. The damn thing is ruining my love life.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ asked Tom.

  ‘It sleeps in the corner of the room and if I make one move, just one, it growls. I’m not kidding. It’s like trying to have sex whilst your mother’s listening.’

  ‘My mother’s listened to you having sex?’

  Jerry paused.

  ‘Possibly,’ he said eventually.

  ‘What!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘When?’

  ‘When we went to your mum’s caravan when we were eighteen and I brought those girls back with us on the Friday night, do you remember?’