Humbugs and Heartstrings

by Catherine Ferguson

  ‘No.’ She flings out her other arm and nearly gives me a thick ear. ‘Get away from me. You’re poison.’

  ‘What?’ I laugh. ‘I’m only trying to help.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Like you tried to help me when Beau buggered off?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You didn’t give a monkey’s, did you, how I was feeling?’ Her face is twisted with fury. Or alcohol.

  ‘I had no idea—’

  She cackles. ‘Well, of course you had no idea. Guess why! You were in one of your stupid fucking self-obsessed mood thingies—’

  ‘My what?’

  She growls. Yes, growls.

  ‘You know, when you cut yourself off from everything and everyone, and retreat up your own fucking backside—’

  Mum nudges me.

  ‘What?’ I snap at her.

  ‘I told you that’s what you do,’ she hisses helpfully.

  Carol stops and stares at Mum.

  In the temporary lull that descends, the entire building and its inhabitants are holding their breath.

  Then Carol barks out a delighted laugh. ‘So I’m not the only one, then.’

  A titter goes round the hall. It’s all so unfair. Even my own bloody mother is ganging up against me!

  Everyone is staring at me, waiting for my reaction.

  ‘So I prefer to sort out problems all on my own!’ I splutter. ‘What’s wrong with that? At least my solitariness is through choice.’

  Carol blanches.

  Oh God, why did I say that? It was a cheap shot, bearing in mind she was pouring her heart out to me only last night about not having any friends.

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ she demands.

  ‘Nothing. It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Oh, but it does,’ she barks. ‘Come on. Spit it out. Or are you too scared to say it? That’s the story of your life, isn’t it? Too scared to speak up for yourself. So you hide behind me, just like in the playground.’ She laughs contemptuously. ‘Nothing ever changes. Miss Bobbie boring, play-it-safe Blatchett!’

  She stabs at the air and nearly falls over. ‘Ever thought of getting yourself a personality, hun?’

  Suppressed fury is boiling inside me.

  ‘Well, if I do, it won’t be from the same place you went for yours! You probably got it cheap, did you? Let’s face it, there’s not much customer demand for ‘tight old witch with a face like a bag of spanners’.’

  ‘At least I haven’t got hair like a witch. Is rats’ tails the new look for winter, then?’

  ‘Ha! Well, at least … at least … ’ I cast around for a pithy retort.

  ‘Yes? Oh dear, has the wit run dry?’

  Her nasty, superior smile really gets my goat.

  ‘At least … at least I haven’t got … I haven’t got—’

  Piles!

  No, I can’t say that!

  She glares at me. ‘Haven’t got what?’

  ‘At least I haven’t got – erm – nasal polyps!’

  There are a few suppressed giggles, and Carol’s face turns brick red. I’ve never seen her so livid.

  She actually looks quite ugly. Not that I’m gloating at all.

  She’s right, I’m not renowned for my off-the-cuff quips. Especially in front of a large audience like this one. I usually think of the perfect retort after the event. But I can’t help basking in the glory of having, for once, managed to shut Carol up.

  It’s nothing less than she deserves … hang on, what’s she doing?

  Alarm bells ring a second too late.

  A mince pie wings past my right ear.

  I freeze. Did she just throw that at me?

  Oh my God, she obviously did because she’s – Aaargh! Duck! – doing it again!

  “Take that, you haggard old witch!” she yells as the second mincer slaps me right in the decollétage.

  It hurts – quite a lot, actually – and tears spring up. I can’t believe she’s actually physically attacking me! Fury surges up inside me.

  “Fuck off, you venomous old slag!” I retaliate with a rather pathetic cream horn covered in edible glitter. It sticks to the front of her stupid Cruella wig and a small gloop of cream slides down her sweaty forehead.

  There is a collective intake of breath in the room as, almost imperceptibly, she purses her lips.

  Hastily, I glance around for a suitable weapon. But the iced gingerbread men look woefully ill-equipped for the challenge. I reach for a Christmas pudding – then decide against it. I’m looking for a minor maiming here. Not a charge of first degree murder.

  With a curl of her lip, Carol removes the gooey stuff from her left brow, looks tempted to lick it but changes her mind.

  Then she reaches for – oh God, please no! Not that!

  The crowd groans.

  A sticky toffee pudding!

  Like Big Daddy weighing up the damage potential, she shifts the pudding from one hand to the other, a mean glint in her eye.

  I swallow hard.

  This has gone way too far.

  I’m out of here.

  I make a dash for it round the back of the stalls, stumbling over half-filled boxes and bags, making for the stage at the other end. There are loads of nooks and crannies I can hide in up there behind the curtains.

  People gape and hastily step aside to let me through.

  A child’s weedy voice calls, ‘Go get the bitch!’ and a second later, there’s an outraged ‘Ow!’ as he or she is smartly reprimanded.

  I have to escape Carol’s missile.

  It’s not the thought of a squishy mess landing in my hair that panics me. It’s the absolute, utter waste. Because quite apart from the fact that it’s the king of kings in the pudding world, a good sticky toffee job retails at little short of a fiver!

  Come to think of it, even more alarming is Carol’s willingness to trash a fiver’s worth of food without a second thought. The balance of her mind is clearly most shockingly disturbed.

  And she’s coming after me!

  If I can make it to the door, I’ll be fine. Since I walk everywhere, I’m much fitter than Carol, so I should be able to shake her off and sprint home.

  But just as I’m on the threshold of freedom, disaster strikes. I happen to glance to my left and catch Charlie’s dismayed expression. ‘Bobbie?’ he shouts, and I falter.

  ‘Lily-livered wimp!’ screeches Carol. ‘You’re nothing but a chicken! Go on, then, run away! It’s what you do best, isn’t it?’ She starts doing a loud impersonation of a hen laying an eye-wateringly large egg.

  I turn to defend myself but she’s advancing on me with a family-size custard tart, holding it like a waiter bears a tray of glasses.

  Ohmigod, we’re not in some tacky, slapstick panto! A custard pie in the face? She wouldn’t dare …

  Yes. She would.

  Retreating swiftly, I stumble backwards and end up snagged in the Christmas tree. It bears me up for about three seconds before crashing – agonisingly slowly – to the floor.

  I land on top of the tree to the sickening crunch of a dozen smashed Christmas baubles. Dazed, I lie there for a moment amid the pine-scented wreckage, staring at people’s feet.

  They’re not moving. The feet. But they’re all, without exception, pointing in my direction.

  Shit!

  My tights are laddered and I’ve got needles poking through my pants.

  Perhaps I’ll just stay here for a while. I’ll crawl under the branches, like a woodland hide-out person spotting badgers, and wait for the owners of the feet to disappear.

  But then I think maybe they’re just going to stand there until I get up, so I heave a sigh and haul myself up into a sitting position. In the process, I put my hand down hard on a broken bauble.

  The razor edge pierces the pad of flesh at the base of my thumb and makes me yelp in agony. Then I see which bauble it is. Dad bought it for me when I was about ten. It’s glittery and gold with my name printed on it in red. I suck my wound as warm tears start to leak o
ut.

  Mum rushes over and hunkers down beside me.

  ‘Do you and Carol argue like this at work?’ she whispers, aghast, trying to get a look at my wound.

  I shake my head, unable to speak for sobbing.

  I’m crying because of the pain and humiliation. For the lifelong friendship so disastrously fractured and beyond repair. But mostly, I’m weeping for my tree decorations, gathered over twenty years or so and smashed into smithereens because of that stupid drunken cow.

  Suddenly Charlie is there, too. His strong arms are around me and he’s bearing me up and twitching my skirt down to cover my modesty. Even when I’m on my feet, he continues holding me firmly against him and for a moment, I stand there feeling miraculously safe, protected from all the fascinated eyes that are trained upon me, breathing in his lovely masculine scent.

  Then he lets go. And I stagger slightly.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Mum asks, taking over.

  I turn round and stare back at the solemn faces and suddenly I have a fierce urge to burst into hysterical laughter.

  The whole room is a disaster zone.

  It looks like a minor earthquake has struck, rendering familiar objects at odd angles.

  As I stand there gazing at the messed up stalls and the Christmas tree debris, a kid comes running up and does a spectacular skid on the remains of my cream horn missile.

  Charlie quickly takes charge. ‘Right, folks, I’m afraid we’ll have to leave it there. Thanks for coming. And if you’ve bought a winning raffle ticket, we’ll be in touch soon.’ He scans the stalls. ‘Oh, and grab your free mince pie on the way out.’

  Everyone starts talking all at once and moving towards the mince pie stall, which thankfully takes the focus off me.

  ‘Right, you two.’ Charlie addresses Carol and me, as if he’s the head teacher and we’re a couple of unruly pupils, ‘Go home. Sort yourselves out.’ He smiles at Shona, who’s still filming. ‘Can you turn that off now and help me clear the hall? Get the stallholders packed up and out? It shouldn’t take long.’

  ‘No problem,’ she says with a shy smile, and the two of them move into action, leaving Carol and me to slink off in shame.

  We make for the changing room backstage where our bags are and sink down on a saggy brown sofa, keeping a stubborn distance between us.

  We both stare glumly into space.

  The Christmas Fayre, which was meant to raise both our fortunes, is a total disaster. And we have only ourselves to blame.

  For ages, we sit there in our corners, heads lolling back, deep in our own troubled thoughts.

  At last it’s Carol who breaks the silence. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Your tree decorations.’

  ‘Is that all?’ I ask stiffly.

  ‘It’ll have to be.’

  She sits up with a great sigh. ‘Are you okay? You came quite a cropper there.’

  I stare at her suspiciously. Is she laughing at me?

  But she looks genuinely concerned.

  ‘I’m fine. Just a bit dizzy.’

  ‘Did you bang your head?’

  ‘Er, yes, I did,’ I say, to make her feel worse. ‘Quite hard, actually.’

  ‘Oh. I could take you to A & E.’

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ I say, heroically. ‘And anyway, you’ve got a pint of Bunty’s finest in you, so you’re certainly not fit to drive.’

  She hauls herself off the sofa, staggers through the open door of the changing room and peers through the musty old stage curtains.

  ‘I can’t face anyone,’ she says gloomily, when she comes back.

  ‘Have they all gone?’

  ‘Almost.’

  My mobile rings. It’s Mum.

  ‘Hi, love, where are you? We lost track of you.’

  ‘Oh, I – er – I’m at home.’ It’s just a small white lie. I can’t face anyone, either.

  ‘Sorry, I should have told you I was going.’

  ‘As long as you’re okay.’

  ‘Yes, Mum. I am. I’ll just – um – have a nap, then I might come round later, okay?’

  ‘Shall we hide out here till everyone’s gone?’ Carol looks positively suicidal.

  I nod. ‘Good idea.’

  We grin feebly at each other and sink back into our exhausted stupors.

  What must Charlie think of me?

  Don’t think about that!

  But I can’t help it!

  After a while – it might have been minutes or maybe hours – Carol gets up and peers through the curtains again.

  ‘Anything to report?’ I call wearily. ‘Has Charlie gone?’

  Damn, I shouldn’t have asked that! She might think I actually care.

  ‘Everyone’s gone.’

  At that moment, without any warning, we are plunged into darkness.

  Someone squeals in the distance and Carol groans, ‘Great, a power cut.’

  But next moment, the lights flash back on.

  Then they’re off again.

  And on.

  And off.

  And on.

  Three times.

  My insides go cold.

  Three times.

  Just like last time!

  This is freaky.

  Something is happening.

  I haven’t a clue what.

  But something is definitely happening.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Perhaps my fall is making me hallucinate.

  Yes, that must be it.

  But the lights definitely flashed on and off. Three times.

  Just like last time.

  It can’t be a coincidence.

  Can it?

  Okay, so supposing – just supposing – I choose to believe in this ‘three messengers’ lark, which, of course, I don’t. It’s all completely absurd …

  Suddenly, a booming voice from the other side of the curtain says, ‘She ought to be shot!’

  We both jerk upright with shock.

  Bunty?

  Then another voice, softer and far less scary, says, ‘Well, she’s not that bad!’

  Mum.

  Carol puts a finger to her lips, slides off her heels and tiptoes over to the gap in the curtains.

  ‘Come on, get on the stage!’ I hear Bunty order. ‘Look lively! This is far too good an opportunity to pass up!’

  ‘No! Someone might come.’ Mum, sounding worried. ‘We’d better go.’

  ‘Look, you’re frightened you won’t be heard at the back, right?’

  ‘Well, yes—’

  ‘Well, bally get up here, then! Otherwise your first time on stage will be in front of the entire am dram group, what!’

  I join Carol at the gap and we peer cautiously out.

  ‘What a bossy old witch,’ Carol murmurs.

  Bunty is standing in the middle of the stage in her typical hand-on-hips ten-to-two posture. Mum, looking hot and flustered, is clambering up the narrow steps at the side.

  ‘I told you my Steph says all the cleaning staff call her ‘Vinegar Tits’! VT for short, if she’s in the vicinity! Absolute twat of a boss!’

  I freeze with horror.

  ‘And the way she treats your Bobbie! It’s bloody diabolical! If you ask me, she ought to be horse-whipped! With every one of her overworked, badly-paid employees taking a turn! Icy-veined, vicious old Scrooge!’

  I stare rigidly ahead, not daring to look at Carol.

  ‘Ah, but you see,’ Mum, the voice of reason, says, ‘I knew Carol when she was younger. She was so much nicer then and very supportive of Bobbie. A better friend you’d never find.’

  ‘Ha! Well, not any more, it seems!’

  ‘No.’ Mum sounds sad. ‘Not any more.’

  ‘Has Bobbie ever had a pay rise?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Does she get paid for putting in all those extra hours?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Does Bobbie’s ‘supportive’ friend ever do anything to help Tim? Does she even ask about him?
’

  Mum shakes her head.

  ‘Well, there you are, then. Diabolical, I tell you! Absolutely diabolical!’

  ‘I know, Bunty, I know, you’re right. She can be horrible to Bobbie sometimes.’

  Mum’s growing flushed with agitation and I want to rush over and fling my arms around her and tell her it’s okay. But I’m also aware of Carol standing silently beside me, white-faced and frozen like an alabaster statue.

  Oddly, my loyalties are torn.

  ‘In fact, if I were Bobbie,’ says Mum. ‘I think I would have snapped long before now.’

  ‘Would you, by George!’ roars Bunty, striding to the centre of the stage and flinging her arms out dramatically. ‘Say it again! Louder! Practise throwing your voice!’

  Mum looks unsure.

  ‘Come on. There’s no one else around! What would you say to Carol if she was listening right now?’

  ‘I’d say – er – I’m not sure,’ stammers Mum.

  ‘You’d tell her to stuff her job, wouldn’t you? And that Bobbie deserves so much better!’

  Mum nods. ‘I would!’

  ‘Go on, then! Tell me what you’d say!’ Bunty swings round and gestures. ‘To our audience out there!’

  ‘I’d say … I’d say … ’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I’d tell her – I’d tell her to take her poxy job and shove it up her jacksie!’

  ‘Yes!’ yells Bunty and punches the air. ‘And again!’

  ‘Take your poxy job and shove it up your jacksie!’ shouts Mum obligingly.

  Ohmigod! Ohmigod! Ohmigod!

  ‘And again!’ enthuses Bunty. ‘Louder this time!’

  Mum strides to the centre of the stage and flings out her arms at the imaginary audience.

  ‘TAKE YOUR POXY JOB… ’

  She glances back at Bunty to see how she’s doing and Bunty nods eagerly. ‘And shove it up—?’

  ‘AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR JACKSIE!’

  Bunty starts applauding and totally without thinking, I start clapping, too. Then I remember Carol and quickly shove my hands behind my back.

  I swivel my eyes sideways. She’s staring stiffly ahead, lips pressed tightly together.

  ‘Shall we go?’ I whisper.

  Carol gives her head a tiny determined shake and stays there, riveted.

  ‘That’s it, standing tall, breathing from the diaphragm!’ Bunty is doing both with huge enthusiasm. ‘And again!’