by Jo Brand
People laughed as their tension eased slightly, even though the joke wasn’t very good.
‘My friend’s boyfriend hits her,’ said Flower, ‘and sometimes she doesn’t even deserve it because the dinner’s quite nice. Fair enough if the gravy’s lumpy, eh?’
Confusion was the main effect of this statement on the audience although the stag-night group continued to cheer.
‘The funny thing is,’ said Flower, ‘we — that is, my friend Martha and I — thought the best way to deal with it might be to kill him.’ The audience laughed cheerily and then laughed harder as Flower pulled out her gun.
‘I know you think this is a replica,’ she said, ‘but look.’ She pointed the gun at the ceiling and fired and some plaster exploded and crashed down. A low murmur heralded the beginnings of audience panic.
Flower realised that Billy, Ted, Martha, Sarah and Charlie were in front of her, looking constipated facially, but their body language conveyed the message they might be incontinent at any time.
‘Come on,’ said Charlie, in the tones of a hostage negotiator. ‘Give us the gun. You’re off your face, love.’
‘No, you get up here, Charlie,’ said Flower, pointing the gun right at him. ‘I want to talk to you … and the others too.’ She motioned to Martha, Ted, Billy and Sarah to join Charlie and they shuffled up, hearts beating fast. The audience members couldn’t quite make up their minds whether to rush out in a panic, screaming their heads off in case this disturbed hippy shot them, or stay and watch what was essentially the fascinating dénouement of a friendship crisis. Flower wasn’t bothered either way. Her intention was to resolve her life, not keep an audience watching her only because of the threat of a bullet through the head. Consequently, the nervous ones dropped to their hands and knees and made their way quietly out of the door at the back, several of them choosing to phone newspapers and TV stations on the way and all of them forgetting that the police might be more appropriate.
Luckily, the manager of the club had walked to the office and called the police who began to put together an operation that would maybe have flushed out some IRA terrorists but was slightly over the top for a pissed-up hippy woman full of amphetamine.
‘Right,’ said Flower, her words being picked up by some floor microphones which were used for the improvisation show on a Wednesday night. ‘Seeing as we’re all here, we might as well sort out a few things and then we can all go home and get on with our lives. Comprende?’
Charlie winced. Flower would never use a word like that if she was sober.
‘Flower,’ he started.
‘Shut up!’ shouted Flower. ‘You’re always …‘ she searched for the right word’… heckling me. In a nice way, sure, but it amounts to the same thing. I never get to say what I want. I don’t want you to interfere. I need to sort this out my own way. Keep it shut, will you?’
Charlie nodded.
‘Are you the one who keeps following me around heckling me?’ said Flower, staring at him very hard and holding the gun surprisingly steadily for a person who had consumed a pillful of consciousness-altering chemicals.
‘You’re fucking joking, aren’t you?’ said Charlie. ‘Surely—’
‘Just say yes or no,’ said Flower.
‘No, of course not! You’ve got to trust me,’ said Charlie.
‘And do you trust me?’ said Flower.
Charlie hesitated for a split second.
‘You see!’ shouted Flower. ‘You don’t, you never have and I know you’re a nice bloke and all that, but you’re driving me mad with your suspicion and twenty-four-hour surveillance. I can’t relax.’
Charlie was wondering whether to make a grab for the gun. He couldn’t believe that this mild-mannered, sweet woman had turned into a gun-toting tower of unpredictability. This was several big steps up from the kitten-kicking diva of PMT fame.
Perhaps Sim will make a story out of this one day, he thought, and it will be a fuck of a sight more interesting than any of the bollocks he normally comes out with. It also occurred to him that one’s thinking really clears in circumstances such as these.
Flower noticed someone in the front row had their hand up.
‘Yes?’ she said.
‘Can I go to the toilet, please?’ said the young man, a sweat breaking out as he tensely tried to avoid her eyes. Flower was shocked at the degree of deference he was demonstrating, even through the fog of her altered perception.
‘Go on,’ she said tersely, and he scuttled off as if he was under fire.
This awareness of her own power gave Flower the push she needed to turn the gun towards Billy. The audience gasped.
‘Well?’ she said.
‘Well, what?’ he answered nervously, having shrunk in stature, his usual cockiness missing.
‘Let’s hear from you about your behaviour over the last few months, shall we?’
The audience strained forward. They were almost enjoying themselves.
‘Look, Flower,’ said Billy, ‘I know you and Martha hate my guts and I don’t blame you. I realise I’ve been a right little shit all my life really and I’ve got away with it ‘cause I always picked on people who were scared of me.’
‘Go on,’ said Flower.
‘I can’t,’ said Billy. ‘I don’t know what else to say.’
‘You can tell us why you’ve been hitting Sarah for a start,’ said Flower.
‘Yes,’ murmured the audience: a surreal soap opera had sprung to life in front of their eyes.
‘I don’t know,’ said Billy. ‘She just gets on my tits sometimes. Women do.’
‘Why, what do we do that’s so irritating?’ said Flower, enunciating every word slowly and sarcastically.
‘Shall I be really honest?’ said Billy.
‘Yes,’ said all the women in the room under their breath. ‘You’re all too vulnerable, smarmy and clinging sometimes… and like a dog I want to kick,’ he said. ‘Sometimes I can’t stand the condition of being loved by a woman. It chokes me.’
This was the most insightful and possibly the most intelligent thing Billy had ever said in his life and it left him with a very surprised look on his face.
‘All?’ said Sarah and Martha together.
‘Yup, pretty much, eventually,’ said Billy, ‘and I don’t mean it in a bad way. It’s just the way I feel.’
‘So why are you like it?’ said Sarah, throwing a glance across at Flower to check it was all right to take questions from the floor.
‘I don’t know,’ said Billy. ‘I was just brought up that way, I suppose, and I’ve never even thought about it.’
‘Well, maybe you should if other people are getting it in the neck,’ said Martha.
‘I grew up with it,’ said Billy wearily, as though he had told this story a hundred times before when in fact it was the first time.
He continued: ‘I watched my father treat my mother like shit for all of my childhood and I suppose I just absorbed it. I didn’t like the way my dad treated her and it made me angry, but look at me now — I’m almost a carbon copy of my old man. Perhaps it’s unavoidable.’
Martha shuddered. Was she a carbon copy of the Rev Brian?
‘And even when my mum was being treated really badly, I remember feeling guilty for thinking she was so pathetic. My dad had her in such a state that he just had to look at her in a certain way or make her jump by dropping something and she’d do what she was told. She started to have this expression on her face constantly as if she’d been hit, even when she hadn’t, and I found it repulsive and wished she’d sort herself out.’
‘Not your dad, then?’ said Flower.
‘Eh?’ said Billy.
‘Why should your mum have had to sort herself out?’ said Flower. ‘It was your dad who was the problem.’
‘S’pose,’ said Billy, hanging his head and looking like this initial foray into self-analysis had killed off half his brain cells, including the ones that controlled his neck muscles.
‘You’r
e a bully,’ said Flower, ‘and you rely on your physical strength to intimidate people. It’s just not fucking fair.’
‘I know,’ said Billy. ‘I’m not proud of it, you know.’
‘Are you not?’ said Martha, trying inappropriately to get a one-liner in. Everyone ignored her.
‘It’s partly my fault, you know,’ said Sarah.
Flower cackled, a very high-pitched sound she had not heard herself emit before and it quite unsettled her. To Charlie it signified that she was well on the way to being completely out of control.
‘Oh, don’t make me laugh,’ said Flower. ‘You’re not going to do that old talking doormat “I deserved it” bollocks, are you, Sar?’
‘Look, Flower, we’re not all bloody lesbians, you know,’ said Sarah.
‘I presume that’s your way of saying we’re not all left-wing separatist feminists, is it?’ said Flower.
‘Maybe,’ said Sarah, continuing, ‘and we’re not all going out with Harry the Fucking Hippy either. What I mean is that I have sat there and taken it over the months and surely that’s given him’ (she pointed at Billy as if he was a road sign) ‘the message that it’s all right. I should’ve left ages ago, but I stupidly thought if he really liked me he wouldn’t hit me.’
‘Fair enough assumption,’ said Ted, who had been quiet up until this point.
‘Look, Flower,’ said Charlie, ‘I’m not being annoying, but I suggest we wrap this up fairly soon because some of these punters must’ve told the Old Bill you’re on one in here. Surely it’s only a matter of time before they send a sniper in.
This had the opposite effect from what Charlie intended.
Flower, losing what composure she had left, screamed at Charlie to shut up with such a degree of vehemence that the audience became rather frightened and all looked at the floor lest they incur Flower’s wrath.
‘Look, I just want to sort Billy out and find out who heckled me,’ said Flower, ‘then we can all go home.’
‘Billy doesn’t need you to sort him out,’ said Sarah. ‘He’ll do it himself.’
‘Well, he hasn’t looked much like doing that so far,’ said Flower.
‘Come on, you two, don’t fall out,’ said Martha. ‘Us girls have got to stick together.’
‘What, even when you’ve fucked my boyfriend?’ said Sarah.
Ears pricked again in the audience, bowels loosened inside Martha. She was too shocked to construct an argument against this statement so just looked sheepishly at the ground and said, ‘How did you know?’
“Cause it was bloody obvious,’ said Sarah. ‘What else could have happened? You look guilty as hell every time I see you and you talk rubbish every time we mention that night.’
‘So why didn’t you come round and slap me about a bit?’ said Martha, realising as the words came out of her mouth that this wasn’t the most tactful thing to say, given the circumstances.
‘Because,’ said Sarah, ‘I suppose I was hoping that if I just ignored it, it would all go away and that Bill and I could get back on an even keel again and that we would never need to bring it up.’
‘So why have you?’ said Martha.
“Cause I’m bloody livid,’ said Sarah.
‘Me too,’ said Ted.
‘Excuse me,’ said Flower, waving the gun about as if it was a wilting bunch of flowers, ‘but I think you’ll all find this is my fucking crisis and I’m in charge. Now let’s sort the heckler business out. Was it you, Billy?’ She turned the gun back to him.
‘No, I swear on my mother’s grave it wasn’t,’ said Billy. ‘Fucking drama queen,’ mumbled Ted under his breath, having developed a recent desire to punch Billy in the face.
Sarah added, ‘I thought you could only say that if your mother was actually dead.’
‘I believe you, Billy,’ said Flower.
‘Perhaps it’s a stranger, and he’s gone home and you’ll never find out,’ said Ted.
‘Shit,’ said Flower. ‘That kid that just went to the toilet — do you think—?’
‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘Couldn’t be.’
‘Are you sure it’s not you, Charlie?’ said Flower.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ said Charlie, ‘why would I, someone who loves you to bits, follow you round heckling you? We’re not all like Billy, you know.’
‘That was below the belt,’ said Billy.
‘So hit me then,’ said Charlie. ‘Everyone else does.’
For once a fist did not visit Charlie’s face, nor a boot his bollocks. This caused him to launch into a speech he had been planning to make for some time, and now seemed a perfect opportunity.
‘Look, Flower,’ he said, ‘I can’t tell you how hard it’s been to see you dragging yourself round this godforsaken comedy circuit trying to get laughs, not to mention finding that bloody heckler. In fact, I know you’ll be angry, but one night I did come to see you and heard the guy. I tried to get across the audience to see who it was but by the time I’d got there, I couldn’t find him. Please stop putting yourself through this, will you? You’re too nice for all this. It’s more Martha’s sort of thing.’
‘Oh cheers,’ said Martha.
‘Give up and come home. I’ll really make an effort not to be so possessive and all that shit, I promise,’ continued Charlie.
A tear rolled down Flower’s face. She knew Charlie was right and that she wasn’t any good. In fact, on the rare occasions Martha had been to a club she’d always come out with far funnier things from her seat in the audience.
‘Come on, Flower, give us the gun,’ said Charlie. ‘Let’s go.’
Flower drooped. She lowered the gun and began to walk towards Charlie. The dressing-room door opened and Dick Knob, who had been watching the whole thing on the CCTV in there, sauntered past.
‘Great piece of entertainment,’ he said. ‘Right beautiful.’ A massive firework went off in Flower’s memory as neurones began firing to tell her that the word ‘beautiful’ held the clue to the identity of the heckler.
‘Fuck me, it was you!’ she shouted, wheeling round to face Dick Knob and retaining the steadiness of hand that had surprisingly characterised her gun-use all evening.
‘Me what, Princess?’ he said, feigning casual.
‘You who’s been heckling me,’ said Flower.
‘Nah, you’ve got the wrong geezer, Flower. I’d never do that to you,’ said Dick. ‘I love you. Don’t you know that? Oh shit, what am I saying? I know the heckling was a fucking weird thing to do but I didn’t want you to leave the circuit and I thought you were about to, so I was doing my best to harden you up, to give you that extra shell you need to cope. Christ, if you think you’ve had it bad so far, just wait till your career progresses and the critics start on you. They’re far worse than any pissed-up old cunt in the audience, I’m telling you. No one survives them, even the ones who seem the hardest. That hairy wanker’s right, you are too nice. So I was just trying to prepare you for the sort of shit you’re bound to get if you stay around in this job because fuck it, Flower sweetheart, you’re bloody gorgeous and I adore you. Shoot me now if you want.’
Dick started to get a hard-on at the very thought of being shot down on the stage of the Comedy Store by the woman he loved.
Even though he looked so greasily forensic Martha found herself slightly jealous at this disturbed declaration of love and looked towards Ted for one to equal it. Unfortunately Ted was still coping with the idea of Billy entering her flat that night … and her, of course. Charlie had a fist raised.
‘Calm down, Charlie,’ said Flower. ‘There’s no need for that. He loves me — you don’t have to hit him for that.’
‘Do you love him?’ said Charlie.
‘Of course not,’ said Flower and then, seeing how crestfallen Dick looked, wished she’d left out the ‘of course’.
‘Is it ‘cause I’m ugly?’ said Dick.
‘You’re not ugly,’ said Flower.
‘Oh yes he is!’ tried a few wags in the a
udience.
‘Don’t listen to them,’ said Flower.
‘Bollocks,’ said Ted, who’d barely said a word all night. “Course he’s plug ugly and so am I, and it’s something you have to learn to live with. Not for me the romantic gesture coupled with a granite jaw and steely good looks framed with wild black curly hair. Oh no, just an overweight victim of acne whose limbs appear to have been designed for someone three times my age and whose hair has the texture of greasy spaghetti. I’ve been laughed at, spat on, sneered at, avoided, put down, ignored, kicked, beaten up, used as a trampoline and left on the pavement in a very ugly heap so many times I’ve lost count, but I’ve had to put up with it.’
‘What about surgery?’ said Sarah, the queen of tactful interjection.
Martha drew in a sharp breath at this innocently cruel remark, but Ted just laughed.
‘Christ no,’ he said. ‘I just went into a job that suited my face. Everyone expects me to be a pervert, so why disappoint them? Confound them from inside the job, that’s what I plan to do. I run my club well, I’m kind and I pay good money. And it’s as a result of that club that I’ve met the most disturbed, unpredictable, silly, petty, messy, stubborn, most gorgeous woman in the world, we’ve got a son and that’s me sorted. You’ll just have to keep looking, Dick old son.’
‘Yeh,’ said Dick, still reeling from the response of Flower to his secret, the one he had nursed for two years. He couldn’t believe his chance of happiness had been trashed so decisively and so quickly.
Martha beamed a broad grin. ‘I always wanted an ugly one,’ she said, ‘so no one would try and nick him off me and I’ve hit the bloody jackpot with Ted.’ Ted started to laugh.
Martha continued, ‘Reluctant as I am to join amateur psychology hour, Flower and I just wanted Billy to stop hitting Sarah, whether they sorted things out with each other or not. Sarah and Ted, I am so sorry I ended up sleeping with Billy. I’m not going to come up with any excuses but my raging hormones and drink contributed. It will never happen again and I’m sorry if I’ve hurt anyone. In a weird way I suppose I thought Sarah might leave Billy if he was unfaithful and that would sort the situation out.’