by Dawn French
‘Hmm, if I’m honest, Rosie, that hasn’t made me feel any better …’
They share a laugh. At last. Thank God.
‘Oh, Kemble. You silly bloke.’ She kisses him.
‘I know. I’m a jerk.’
‘Yes. You are. A massive jerk.’
‘More. More. More insults … keep ’em comin,’ he half-jokes.
‘Don’t start all that again. This is it, babe. The start of your new chapter. It ain’t going to be easy, but at least you know exactly what you have to do. You’ve got to mend all of this, piece by piece. Then you’ve got to live an honest, real life. You big gay!’
‘Don’t. I can’t cope with that yet … I’m not 100 per cent gay anyway, I don’t think … Oh shit … I don’t know … I haven’t … y’know … tried. That. Yet …’
‘Well, get a move on pal, life goes on happening while you’re hiding away.’
‘I know.’
‘And don’t worry. I’m not taking it personally, but let’s face it, I’ve just been majorly gayed.’ She stands up and holds her arms out, proudly displaying her lovely chubby body to him, and sings, ‘My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard … Honey little did I realize you was chasin’ those boys …! C’mere, give us a hug. Then get lost. I need sleep … and no more of this craziness. Christ. I’m knackered.’
He stands up and gathers her into his arms, both of them still naked. Whilst he holds her close, he whispers, ‘Thank you, Rosie’ in her ear.
‘S’OK. It’s going to be fine.’
As they break away from eachother, they instantly become a bit embarrassed and aware of their nudity, as if the lights are suddenly on. Which, in a way, they are.
Beehive
When the family return from their Boston visit, the apartment buzzes back into life again. The Queen Bee Glenn resumes her primary purpose, which is to exist, to appear to be in charge, and to be well-groomed. She is well-serviced by all the other bees who pay close attention to her every need, which in Glenn’s case means leaving her be for the most part. They all know on some level that it’s the joining-in she finds irksome, so they happily, willingly, relieve her of that burden. This means Glenn spends a good part of the day at her writing desk, penning thank-yous and invites and writing donation cheques for the many deserving charities and projects she is involved with. Sometimes she wonders if all this worthy effort will ever make her feel good? So far it has only served to make her feel charitable, which she experiences as a satisfying duty, and nothing more. She is fulfilling her quota of considerate.
She is being perceived as compassionate enough.
She is falling into line.
Correct.
The drones and worker bees go about their business. On the roof, Rosie and the twins are helping Teddy to plant up two beautiful young lime trees. The last of the gardening budget has been spent on them, but Teddy is determined to grow the fruit in abundance, to use in his Mojiteddies. It’s hot, heavy work and all four of them are sweaty and dirty.
As they pat in the last of the nitrogen-rich fertilizer to the pots around the base of the sapling trees, Teddy announces, ‘OK guys, nearly done. Good work. And y’know what? I’m gonna name these two little fellas, because that’ll help us to remember to water them. So this one is Red and this one is … Deborah.’
‘Eh? What?’ exclaims Three, upset.
‘Just checking if you were concentrating … he he, of course this one is Three.’
‘Mine’s the tallest,’ says Red, boasting.
‘Mine’s got more leaves,’ says Three, smugly.
‘Now listen, chaps,’ says Rosie, encouraging them to concentrate. ‘What are the four most important things to remember about these beautiful trees? What do you need to do to keep them flourishing?’
‘Um,’ Three puts his hand up, a school habit. ‘I know, water them regularly, like Teds said. But not too much.’
‘Yep. Enough, but don’t saturate. That’s right. And …?’
Teddy knows, and can’t resist joining in like a fellow junior, ‘Yeah, and fertilizer every three months.’
‘Yep. And …? Red …?’
He screws his face up trying to remember. They’ve been talking about this all morning. ‘Umm. Can’t remember …’ he says, bashing his head to jog his memory.
‘S’OK,’ reassures Rosie, ‘try to think what we talked about, plants are like people really … we need water, we need food, we need …’
‘Sunshine!’ shouts Red, suddenly remembering.
‘Yes,’ Rosie agrees, ‘sunshine’s great for light and for warmth, isn’t it? Plants and humans need both. I reckon. Yes, that’s it.’
Teddy jabs her in the ribs, ‘You’ve forgotten the other thing. All plants and humans need …’
‘What? Have I? What?’ she says, smiling.
‘Drainage! Boys, if we might demonstrate to the lady … our very own pipe system …?’
With that, Teddy walks to the other side of the roof, where the wall to the water tower is, and he unzips his flies, followed by the two boys who copy him.
‘No! Boys. Stop! Really, stop!’ she shouts at them through her chuckles. She shields her eyes and turns away as she realizes they are all indeed about to pee against the wall. ‘Stop it! It’s revolting! Ha ha ha …’
As Rosie turns, she sees Glenn standing in the doorway to the roof. She has appeared wraith-like, at exactly the wrong moment. Of course.
‘Commendable as these attributes may be, might I suggest …’ her voice cuts through the air like a knife, and succeeds in cutting off the pee-flow of Teddy and Three instantly. Like taps. Off. Just like that. Sadly, Red drank a full can of forbidden Dr Pepper earlier, and now has the steady unrelenting stream of a small carthorse, which he is helpless to stop. Glenn continues despite this. ‘Might I suggest … a little less irrigation and a tad more study wouldn’t go amiss. This is really fairly base, Miss Kitto. Disappointing.’ She turns and leaves. A loaded pause.
Rosie looks back at the boys. Teddy and Three are zipping themselves up, suitably admonished, but Red still can’t stop. He is turned away but the noise is unmistakable, he is still gushing. Rosie is relieved and delighted to see that they are all stifling giggles, until Glenn is well out of earshot, when they let go and laugh their heads off, including the alarmingly prolific urinator himself. Thank goodness, she thinks, they no longer seem too scared of the Queen Bee. Perhaps they are learning, with practice, to dodge her sting?
And still, Red wees on … longer than any human should be able to … so Rosie says, ‘Actually, a round of applause, I think for the world’s longest pee. Gents, I give you Red Wilder-Bingham, and his remarkable hose!’
They clap and cheer, and Red attempts to tip his invisible hat, and bow his acknowledgement, but ends up peeing on his shoes in the clumsy process, which propels them all into gales of unbridled, uncontrollable hilarity. Rosie has to hold her sides as she gets a stitch. Now this is the kind of pain she doesn’t mind at all …
A few floors down in the beehive, Thomas is busy in his office, attempting the first few brushstrokes onto a small canvas he has bought and propped up on an easel. He has a ‘Paint Your First Portrait’ manual leaning on his desk, and his eyes dart between the book and the canvas. He has mixed up the oil paints onto a small wooden board, and he has five various-sized brushes waiting on the lip of the easel. He has selected a thin one to start with, and he tentatively mixes a red and a white to make the fleshy colour he wants to use for the woman’s face he is going to paint. He jabs it onto the canvas, stands back, and immediately regrets his vigour. Now he quickly turns to the chapter in the manual, headed ‘How to Correct Your Mistakes …’
Elsewhere in the beehive, worker bee Iva is sneaking into the storage cupboard at the back of the kitchen in order to skype her daughter before she goes to bed. Iva doesn’t like to annoy Mrs W. B. by making private calls during work hours, but her home in Poland is six hours ahead of here, so it’s very difficult to find a tim
e that doesn’t overlap. If she sneaks a little call in in the afternoon, she can sometimes hear how her daughter’s day has been, and she can be like a normal mum, just catching up, lovely and ordinary, chit chat about school and friends, and the shoes her daughter wants, and how well she can dance like Beyoncé. Iva can be an effective, loving, close-at-hand mum, not a stranger who’s four and a half thousand miles away. She crouches on the floor, dials the number, and soon, there’s the face of her darling daughter two inches from her own. They kiss the phone cameras either end to say hello as they always do, but this time, the young girl seems restless. She babbles away excitedly that she hopes it’s OK, but her friend Blanka has come round to see the new kitten, so she can’t speak now, sorry Mum, is that OK? Of course it’s OK, Iva tells her, go and be with your friend and we will speak tomorrow. Thanks Mum! … and blip, she’s gone. Two minutes of her. Normal. Heartbreaking. Iva sighs, turns off her phone and returns to the kitchen, where she will cook supper for somebody else’s children, so that her child will have a better future.
A few hours later in the den, Thomas stands by a huge widescreen TV. He switches the remote and it springs to life. The Yankees are playing, and Granpop wants to watch it with his boys. The coffee table is piled high with potato chips, dips, corndogs and hot nachos. The floor is strewn with newspapers and magazines, and in the centre of the circle of mess, are Teddy and the twins on the big leather sofa. Red and Three are nursing sodas, while Thomas offers Teddy a cold beer to drink from the bottle. The windows are open, and there is the distant sound of the same pre-match TV coverage coming from other open windows, carried on the gentle breeze. The excitement is palpable. New York is watching.
The twins are having their very first experience of watching an important game with Thomas. Little do they realize just how loud and passionate it’s about to get. They will witness an explosive Thomas they haven’t seen before, as he unleashes his passion for the team he has been so loyal to for so long. And thus, their nascent dedication to the same tribe will be fostered and inherited starting right now. The band of brotherhood expands to include them. The clan gains momentum. Their shared blood unites them, their lineage denotes their mob, and together, they would and could form a barbarian horde against all detractors and rivals. They are the Wilder-Binghams. They will sing, they will grunt, they will shout, they will rage, they will celebrate, and they will cry together in the pursuit of their devotion to nine men in tight leggings wielding a bat and hurling a ball. The testosterone saturates the air.
Thomas settles in next to Teddy with his own beer, all ready for the game to start. As they watch the pre-match shenanigans and endless advertisements, a nervous Kemble appears and lingers in the doorway, wondering if he is welcome or not.
‘Hey Dad,’ say the twins.
‘Hey guys’, he replies.
Thomas looks up at his son and smiles a welcome. They have shared games together before, but quite a long time ago now. Teddy can’t hide his annoyance with his father, so he chooses not to say a word. Kemble appears to have passed the son test, and failed the father test. Better than nothing. He takes a deep breath and steps a bit further into the room. Thomas has seen Teddy’s subtle rejection, and he holds out a bottle of beer to Kemble. Kemble takes it, and remains standing by the door to drink it. He’s not quite in the room yet, but this will do for now. He’s watching the game with his father and with his sons. He is present, and he’s part of the gang. Slowly, slowly catchee monkey.
Times Square
In the service entrance doorway of McDonald’s, with the bright lights of the electronic billboards flickering all around them, Rosie, Three and Red are fiddling about, getting the last bits of their costumes on. The whole point of this exercise is to make some cash, so Rosie has refused to spend money hiring costumes, and anyway, she explained to the boys that it was good to do a bit of sewing: they’d find it useful in the future. Three asked her exactly when they might find sewing a useful skill? Rosie faltered, then reminded them that they would always be glad to know how to take up trousers and sew on buttons. They utterly believed her, although she had to admit to herself that in all probability, these youngsters would take after their tall father and taller grandfather, and will never have to take a single pair of trousers up in their lives. Buttons though, are different. Everyone should learn how to sew on a button. With any luck, a sizable fortune, some slap-up dinners in expensive restaurants and consequently, an ever-expanding girth, then the twins may well have to replace plenty of pinged-off shirt and trouser buttons in their prosperous long lives.
Whatever the benefits, they have had a fairly stressful head-scratching time measuring out and cutting up some of Thomas’s old shirts and trousers to make their outfits. The colours are right, stones and burgundies and muted earthy tones. Red wears a brown shirt and maroon trousers which are looser than he wants. He made his droopy hat from some old pantyhose of Granma’s, stuffed with cotton wool, and he has a big belt of Granpop’s round his middle. Three is wearing browny-orange leggings borrowed from Rosie, and for the shirt, he has adapted one of Granpop’s pyjama tops. He cut and sewed the sleeves to be much smaller and he tucked the collar inside. He too, has a big belt round his middle, which is stuffed with a cushion to give him a paunch. He has covered a floppy wizard’s hat from Halloween in cloth from a sludgy old tracksuit of Granpop’s. Each of them attach a Christmas Santa beard to their ears, and put their slippers on, and they are ready. Rosie has had to be inventive, she has wrapped a yellow tablecloth around her middle to make a long skirt, and she has pulled apart a blue dress to put it back together as an upper bodice with puffy little sleeves. The high white collar at the back is made from a white shirt of Thomas’s, with wires attached to make it stand up from the neck. She has scooped up her hair, and placed a big red bow slap bang in the middle on the top, bold as you like, pure Disney. She stands up straight and looks at the boys. Bless them, they have tried so hard. Frankly, they all look a bit shoddy, but Rosie secretly thinks they may make even more cash due to the convincingly maladjusted and rather pathetic collective appearance. They just might elicit the sympathy dollar.
‘So remember lads, if anyone asks, we are Snow White’s Older Redhead Sister, and the Two Forgotten Dwarfs …?’
‘Greedy,’ Three says, patting his big tum.
‘And Farty,’ says Red, and he christens himself with a tiny, strained parp, to demonstrate.
Rosie says, ‘Thank you for that. Very classy … Not! OK, here we go … try to look suitably impoverished …’
They wander out into the bustling crowds of Times Square and are immediately surrounded by various other panhandling costumed characters – a couple of Elmos, a Hello Kitty, two Minnie Mice, a Spider-Man, a Super Mario and three Statues of Liberty, all hustling aggressively for the attention of the tourists to have their photos taken, and receive tips in exchange for the privilege.
Rosie has a basket of apples on her arm and starts to draw attention to her motley crew by shouting ‘Apples! Free apples! Poisoned apples!’ which, on reflection, she thinks might not have been the best selling technique, but certainly does pull some focus.
One small child starts to cry and grabs her father’s hand, sobbing, ‘Daddy! I don’t want a poison apple from that scary, ugly lady!’ as they rush off.
‘Shut up Rosie, you’re frightening people,’ Three mutters
‘OK! OK!’ Rosie agrees, and tries an American accent, and a sweeter line of squeaky-voiced persuasion, ‘Hello folks, wanna take a picture with me and my two height-challenged chums?’ Absolutely no-one responds. Either people push roughly past them, or give them an extra wide berth. Rosie whispers at the boys, ‘You need to sing, that’ll help …’
‘What?! Sing what?’
‘Sing the mine-digging song, you know the one … dig, dig, dig, that one …’ she encourages them.
‘Really?!’ moans Three.
‘Yes!’
Red pleads under his breath, ‘Someone please kill
me.’
‘Hey people!’ Rosie shouts brazenly, to anyone who will listen, ‘Wanna hear my little guys sing their favourite tune?’
No-one does. People just stare, perplexed.
She starts them off, ‘One, two, three, four … Heigh Ho! …’
The boys fall in reluctantly and give it a half-hearted go, ‘We dig did dig dig dig dig dig dig dig the whole day through …’ they sing.
‘Louder,’ she prompts.
‘To dig dig dig dig dig dig dig is what we like to do …’
Their feeble attempt is fairly painful but the sound and sight of themselves sets them all off giggling helplessly, which makes the singing virtually impossible. After a few minutes, two Elmos and a Hello Kitty sidle over. The Elmos are very tall and not a little intimidating, and they stand directly in front of the twins, obscuring everyone’s view of them. The twins are immediately uncomfortable.
In her high-pitched, best Snow White voice, Rosie says, ‘Hey, Elmo, can you trot on, please, mind out.’
She is immediately confronted by a hostile Hello Kitty in a swingy neon pink dress, with her hands on her hips.
‘Listen lady, you need to vacate,’ Hello Kitty seethes quietly. ‘This is our patch,’ comes from inside the giant white head. Shockingly, the voice is that of a man. How incongruous is this monstrosity with her cutesy face and glittery pink bow?
Rosie responds loudly, ‘How lovely to talk to you, Miss Hello Kitty, especially since you don’t appear to have a mouth …’ then she lowers her voice, ‘but you do appear, remarkably, to have a dick.’ She reaches out for the boys, and raises her voice again, ‘I think you’ll find, Miss Hello, that since the parading of lovely fun characters like us ALL here, is not licensed or regulated by the city in any way, EVERYONE is welcome to join in, WHEREVER they wish, so thank you for your interest, and now perhaps you would like to move along …?’