by Jo Brand
Martha sat grinning on the toilet, taking an extra long time and wishing she’d gone into the spy shop in the West End and bought one of those pens you can activate to tape the conversation when you leave a room. She had concluded very sensibly that she would only hear stuff that would upset her and she was right.
‘Well, it could be Junior,’ Flower was saying. Junior was fourteen and lived next door to Martha with his family, but he was already the size of a small tree and had started having sex at the age of nine.
‘Nah, not even Martha would stoop that low,’ said Sarah. ‘Want to bet?’ said Flower, having witnessed Martha at a party in Southend once, so drunk that she was trying to seduce someone who was unconscious under a table.
Martha eventually reappeared from the ladies’ toilet and stopped at the bar on the way to get some crisps, thus prolonging the agony even more.
‘So who is it?’ said Flower with more than a hint of petulance in her voice.
‘It’s Ted,’ said Martha.
‘But you said it wasn’t!’
‘Well, it didn’t seem right that you got it first guess … sorry. Thought I’d better make it a bit more mysterious, ‘said Martha.
‘Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?’ asked Flower.
‘I just know it’ll be fat and mad as fuck,’ said Martha, ‘and Not That Ugly, with a penchant for pickled onions.’
Sarah, who had been having visions of them all looking much more attractive than they normally did, standing by a font, began to be less and less keen on applying for the post of godmother.
‘So how did it all happen with Ted?’ said Flower, having only met him once and thought he looked like he had committed many dark unpleasant deeds in alleyways with frightening women.
‘I know this sounds awful,’ said Martha, ‘but it was in an alleyway behind the club one night when I was working late and we’d both had a few drinks.’
Sarah, who was obsessional about the attractiveness and cleanliness of her sexual partners, felt slightly nauseated whereas Flower found herself strangely excited.
‘Go on,’ she said.
‘That’s it really,’ Martha shrugged. ‘I got pregnant.’
‘Have you told him?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Don’t want to upset the baby,’ said Martha. ‘Surely he must have some idea? Does he not remember banging you in the alleyway?’ said Sarah. ‘Anyway, why didn’t you have a termination?’
‘Always sounds so nice, “termination”, doesn’t it? Takes all the emotion out of the proceedings whereas “abortion” … now that sounds like what it is — a bloody mess in every way,’ said Flower.
‘I want to have a baby,’ said Martha.
‘To wind your dad up?’ asked Flower.
‘No, it’s not that simple. Obviously that’s a welcome by-product, but I’m old and it would have been too late soon, said Martha.
‘And irresponsible.’ Flower found herself sounding like a proper grown-up.
‘Oh, bumholes to responsible,’ replied Martha, echoing the mating call of those single mothers who just want a baby to love and don’t realise the torturous ties that last for life if you get a bad ‘un.
‘Well, here’s to you,’ said Flower, raising her glass. ‘Good luck.’
‘Yeh, good luck, you silly cow,’ Sarah grinned.
The room darkened suddenly, because there, in the doorway like the sheriff in a spaghetti western, stood Billy.
Flower gulped and Martha tried to sneer but was aware that the side of her face was twitching slightly with nerves. Billy looked angry but in fact when he arrived over at the table his face crinkled into a smile.
‘All right girls?’ he said in a way which was meant to be ironic and teasing but came out rather awkwardly and made him sound like a pimp.
‘Hello,’ they chorused.
‘What are you doing here?’ said Sarah uncomfortably with a fixed grin on her face.
‘Oh, I finished early with the lads,’ said Billy. ‘Thought I’d find you three scallywags in here.’
How did he manage to make ‘scallywags’ sound like ‘stupid tarts’? thought Martha and realised she was really angry with him. ‘Why don’t you give the poor girl a break and fuck off and leave us alone,’ she said.
A look of terror crossed Sarah’s face and she ground her foot into Martha’s under the table. Martha began to laugh hysterically. ‘Ha! Ha! Only joking!’ she said. Flower joined in with as natural a laugh as she could manage, which wasn’t very.
Flower’s mobile started to ring. Perhaps the only occasion it had managed such perfect timing. ‘Excuse me,’ she said.
It was Charlie at the other end to tell her someone from the Nightcap had phoned to ask where she was.
‘Oh piss,’ said Flower, ‘I’ve got to go. I forgot I had a gig tonight.’ She gathered everything in a flurry of roll-up tobacco smoke and jasmine perfume and headed out of the door in a huge panic, throwing, ‘See you over the weekend!’ behind her as she sailed out.
‘I can see when I’m not wanted as well, girls’ talk and all that,’ said Billy. ‘See you later. And don’t be too late, Sarah, will you?’ He disappeared into the gloom.
‘What did you do that for?’ said Sarah.
‘What?’ said Martha, whose short-term memory would have been seen by a geriatrician as definite proof of the onset of Alzheimer’s. Then: ‘Oh, sometimes I just get sick of pretending everything’s all right with you two,’ she snapped. ‘He’s a bully.’
‘He’s got his own problems,’ said Sarah.
‘Oh yeh? Tell me about them,’ said Martha.
‘I’d better go,’ said Sarah.
‘Oh come on,’ said Martha, ‘there’s another half hour’s drinking time left and we can’t fall out over a bloke.’
‘We’re not,’ lied Sarah, ‘but I’ve just got to go.’
Martha, who often thought in visual clichés, saw in her mind a big wedge being hammered in and its thin end disappearing under a door.
‘All right,’ she said brightly. ‘We’ll talk over the weekend?’ It was half confident statement, half question.
Sarah headed slowly home hoping Billy wasn’t going to be in a mood. She got home and Billy wasn’t even there.
Martha was left with her sparkling water, which she swigged back, making a hideous face, and off she went.
Flower got to the Nightcap in quite a short time as she had flown through all the traffic-lights on her bike causing many simmering motorists to shout abuse after her disappearing form. She wanted to stop and explain she didn’t normally do it, but needed to talk herself into a horrible sarcastic comedy mood, so she turned back and tried to give them a dirty look, something some women just aren’t very good at, especially if they are nice and middle class. Flower would no sooner dream of screaming abuse after anyone than killing them with a gun.
On with Flower that night at the Nightcap were Dick Knob and Will Hatchard. Dick Knob was on last and Flower before him. Will Hatchard was doing well when she arrived. He was a Liverpudlian whose naturally drooping moustachioed face suited comedy very well and his heckle put-downs were generally agreed to be so good that almost everyone else was doing them.
‘Have you ever wanted to kill anyone?’ Flower asked Dick as they sat in the dingy dressing-room through the dirty window of which they could just see feet and ankles going about their business in late-night Soho.
‘Only a twelve year old who wouldn’t suck me off,’ said Dick, who often spoke as if he was onstage.
‘No, seriously,’ said Flower.
‘Why? Do you want to kill someone?’ said the unusually perceptive Dick.
‘I felt like it earlier,’ said Flower. ‘Sometimes I really wish I had a gun … just to frighten them, you know’
‘Who’s them?’ said Dick.
‘Oh, arseholes, that sort,’ said Flower.
‘I’ll get you a gun if that’s what you want, sweetheart,’ said Dic
k, trying Humphrey Bogart and getting an old American stroke victim instead.
‘You’re kidding,’ said Flower, open-mouthed. ‘Not at all,’ said Dick. ‘You want to come with me down Canning Town tomorrow, I’ll talk to some mates.’
Flower felt slightly unreal as though it wasn’t really her talking. ‘No, it’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’d be mad.’
‘Oh come on,’ said Dick, ‘it’ll be a laugh. Then you can blow Charlie’s head off.’
‘It’s not Charlie who pisses me off,’ said Flower. This pissed Dick off because he had fancied Flower for ages even though she was so different from the sort of woman he normally went for, brassy and not fussy.
‘Whatever,’ said Dick.
‘I don’t know,’ said Flower, feeling icy.
‘Well, give us a call on the mobile tomorrow if you fancy it,’ said Dick.
‘Oh, somebody shoot her, please!’
A wave of laughter soared across the darkened room, hitting a demoralised Flower with the realisation that she wasn’t- a very sharp comic tonight, her self-esteem was starting to burrow through to Australia, and The Heckler was back. Yes, she had given him capital letters finally and it was obligatory for him now to torture her mentally before, in the final showdown, she rid the world of him, as a heckler not a person, she hastily added to herself. Being funny isn’t something most people do consistently. Everyone has off days and the greatest fear of the comic is that the comedy muse will leave them sweating with fear in their unmade bed and fly into the mind of their greatest rival, raising his comedy skills to even greater heights.
Flower drooped and the audience actually began to feel sorry for her, but she hadn’t learned to use that sympathy either and after a couple more stabs at put-downs which sounded like she was addressing a slightly irritable latecomer at a knitting circle, Flower gave up again and headed off the stage.
‘I’ll get the cunt for you,’ said the ever-chivalrous Dick Knob as they passed in the tiny corridor.
‘Thanks,’ said Flower miserably.
‘Right, where’s that heckler?’ said Dick Knob as he stepped onstage. ‘It’s a long time since I penetrated the arsehole of an arsehole.’
The crowd woofed with delight. They could feel he was in control and Flower crept to the back to watch the master at work despite the fact that his multiple paedophile references turned her into a prude she didn’t recognise.
At the side of the stage from the bar appeared a hapless latecomer, a woman. Flower gritted her teeth knowing that Dick Knob would give it to her with both barrels. The woman was obviously plump even in the poor light and Dick prepared to destroy.
‘No, love,’ he said. ‘Anorexics Anonymous is down the road.’
Blokey tittering.
‘I’m not anorexic,’ replied the woman with just the right level of irony in her voice. The crowd giggled. She continued, ‘And I’m not anorexic because I eat a load of shit, whereas it appears to be the reverse process with you.
Women laughing. Blokes half admiringly grunting. Dick Knob looked astounded.
‘When’s it due?’ he asked, falling back on an old comedy standard for fat women.
‘In about five minutes,’ said the woman. ‘Give us a hand, will you, it’s your little bastard after all.’ The crowd loved this and laughed and clapped.
Flower suddenly realised the woman was Martha and a slight frisson of envy ran through her at the ease with which her friend appeared to be responding to Dick Knob.
Dick Knob got filthier and filthier and then retired with as much grace as someone who is regularly cornered by paedophile-hunting vigilantes, could manage.
‘Well done!’ said Flower, grabbing Martha.
‘Oh pooh!’ said Martha. ‘Just a lucky overflow of hormones at the right time.’
‘What are you doing here?’ said Flower.
‘Didn’t fancy going home after that depressing encounter with Billy. Needed a laugh. Looked in the Standard, saw you were on here et cetera, et cetera.’
‘Did you see that bloke who was heckling me?’ said Flower.
‘No, why?’
‘I haven’t mentioned it before but he’s been to a few gigs and heckled me.’
‘Oh, how deliciously pervy,’ said Martha, who had all the sophistication of an eleven-year-old girl when it came to sexual threat.
‘It’s not delicious,’ said Flower, ‘it’s scary. He’s left me notes and sent me a text message.’
‘Wait to see what he looks like before you condemn,’ said Martha. ‘He might be gorgeous.’
‘Oh, be serious, Martha!’ Flower burst out. ‘What can I do? I’m so vulnerable up onstage and people always know where you are on as a comic, ‘cause it’s in the paper.’
‘Sorry,’ said Martha, ‘but there’s always loads of male comics around so surely they’d protect you.’
‘I wouldn’t bank on it,’ said Flower. ‘If Psycho Heckler comes at me with a breadknife, I can guarantee there will be a complete set of Kings of Comedy disappearing out of the door rather than run the risk of cutting short their brilliant careers.’
‘Better get yourself a gun then,’ said Martha.
‘Do you know what—’ said Flower and was cut short by the noise of Dick Knob being heckled off as he had gone too far again and started a routine about raping a chicken and the effect that had on the taste of it at Sunday dinner.
Flower and Martha left the club and decided to go to a late-night café and have some coffee and bagels.
The place was pretty full as it was a Friday and a few drunks wobbled in and out of the tables dispensing their alcohol-fuelled advice to anyone who didn’t look like they could beat the shit out of them.
‘Can I join you, love?’ said one of the aforementioned, spraying Flower and Martha with the aroma of vomit and Special Brew.
‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ said Flower, forgetting she was a comedian. ‘We’re having a private conversation here.’
‘Piss off twat.’ Martha tried the less empathetic approach. ‘Oh, don’t be like that, fatty-boom-boom,’ he said, falling onto the corner of their table and hitting his nose which stared to squirt copiously. causing Martha to have the rather unpleasant thought that this blood fountain was riddled with God knows how many blood-borne diseases. He rose, clutching the gushing appendage.
‘I said, “Go away!”’ Martha screamed at him and half-heaved, half-punched the man in the shoulder, causing him to catapult into the next table and hit the ground.
‘Oh let’s go,’ said Flower. ‘It’s horrible in here tonight.’ They left some money on the table and headed out into the night, not realising that Mr Nosebleed had not risen from his second visit to the floor but appeared to be knocked out cold.
‘Call an ambulance,’ said a punter who still had some of the milk of human kindness pulsing through her veins.
‘Chuck him out in the street,’ said someone else and the owner did the former though he wanted to do the latter.
The ambulance crew arrived and were not impressed. To each other they said things like, ‘Just another fucking drunk, waste of bloody time,’ whereas they appeared to be the epitome of professionalism as they loaded him onto the trolley and pushed him into the ambulance.
As they cruised through the streets of London towards a Casualty Department reminiscent of Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, they were so busy chatting about the weekends they were planning they didn’t even notice that the final breath had left the man’s body.
Martha and Flower walked on oblivious to the fact that they were murderers, discussing the incident of Billy’s arrival in the pub.
‘He looked like he was checking up on her to me,’ said Martha.
‘It could just be pure ordinary friendliness and niceness that he’d come to meet her and take her home,’ said Flower.
‘Why are you always so positive about people and their motives?’ snapped Martha.
‘I don’t know,’ said Flower, “cause
let’s face it, every other person’s a fucking arsehole these days.’
This shocked Martha who was only used to this kind of language from Flower at specific times of the month when she treated her as if she had had her drink spiked with testosterone.
As if to prove Flower correct, a gang of girls about eighteen years old appeared from an alleyway at the side of them and started to take the piss.
‘It’s fucking Laurel and Hardy,’ said one and the others cackled like a hen-night posse. Flower and Martha quickened their pace and the girls, hungry for more excitement than teasing two women in their thirties, moved on.
‘Do you think anyone ever shouts compliments when they heckle people in the street?’ wondered Flower.
“Course they do,’ said Martha. ‘Stuff like, “Nice tits!” or, “Give you one!”’
‘No, I don’t really mean that,’ said Flower. ‘I’m talking more about something like, “Oh, you look like a nice friendly person who treats the rest of the human race as your equal”.’
‘Oh, come on, Flower,’ said Martha.
‘But why are all heckles negative and horrible?’
‘You said heckles, that’s not really what you get on the street.’
‘Yes, it is. Pooh.’
Martha held her nose and her stomach heaved as they hurried past a big bank of bins which were being rifled through by a homeless person.
‘Got any change, love?’ he asked.
Flower began to shuffle through her pockets and found a pound.
‘Cheers, darling,’ said the man happily as though this wasn’t a bitterly cold night, he wasn’t dressed in filthy clothes and he didn’t sleep nightly on a bed of dog shit.
‘You’re welcome,’ smiled Flower, looking sickeningly beatific and, if she was honest with herself, feeling it too. The mood changed.
‘Well fuck you, you patronising cow,’ he shouted, throwing the coin onto the pavement with such rage that Flower and Martha were quite frightened.
‘Come on,’ said Flower and bent over to pick it up, at which point the man rather unceremoniously vomited on her back.
