SHOW’S OVER, FOLKS
14 MAY
‘So, Callum. Are you looking forward to seeing The Foodies today?’
Stony silence.
‘Ahem. Mummy says you like Libby the Happy Lemon the most.’
Continued stony silence.
‘I’ve managed to get you both seats right at the front, so you’ll be able to see everything.’
More stony silence, accompanied by a piercing glare that suggests contempt on levels hitherto unexperienced by humankind.
‘Callum, say something to Nate,’ Eliza tells him. When the little boy buries his head in her leg, she gives me an apologetic look. ‘He really is looking forward to the show, Nate. He’s been talking about it all day.’
I raise an eyebrow. As far as I can tell, the kid looks about as happy as someone about to go in for a colonoscopy, but I guess I have to take his mother’s word for it. ‘Okay,’ I reply, very unsure.
She gives me a hesitant smile. ‘He just doesn’t know you all that well, and he’s not good with stra’ – she just about manages to stop herself from saying it – ‘with people when he’s out and about.’
That smarts. Callum and Eliza are family, yet he thinks of me as a stranger?
Eliza gives me a sympathetic look. ‘How are you doing? After the break-up with Sienna, I mean.’
I wave a hand. ‘Oh, fine. Good riddance to bad rubbish and all that.’ I’m not entirely sure I believe what I’m saying, but it sounds about right. ‘She was no good for me.’
Eliza’s face clouds. ‘No. She definitely wasn’t.’ The sympathetic look then returns. ‘And what about . . . you know?’
‘Oh . . . er, fine, I guess. Not troubling me too much.’ This is not in any way reflective of the truth, but I don’t particularly feel the need to burden Eliza with even more of my problems right about now.
‘Good,’ she replies, with a half-hearted smile. She knows I’m not being completely honest with her. She always does.
One of the Roundabout Theatre’s stagehands appears at the fire exit door to the green room. ‘Nate, we need you inside,’ he tells me.
‘We’ll go and get into our seats,’ Eliza says. ‘Give me a kiss for good luck.’ She leans forward and plants a kiss on my cheek, before looking down at her thunderous offspring. ‘Want to give Nate a kiss, too, Callum?’
There’s more chance of Callum kissing Freddy Krueger than me, I’d wager. ‘I’ll see you both backstage after the show, then?’ I say, not attempting to meet Callum’s gaze again.
‘Yeah. See you later. Have a good show,’ Eliza replies. With another apologetic look, she turns and leads the little boy away, leaving me to wonder exactly what I’ve done to incur such an intense dislike from someone in my extended family.
Speaking of disliking something, welcome to my nightmare backstage, fifteen minutes later.
Actually, I don’t just dislike The Foodies . . . I actively hate The Foodies.
I mean, just look at them, would you?
No, seriously, I mean it – look at them. Over there, across from me in the other wing of the theatre, crammed together backstage like particularly fat sardines as we wait for the curtain to go up on what will be my last ever show. A bunch of brightly coloured idiots that I thought up in a lunch break one day while I was trying my hardest to write something of value about climate change to educate our children.
Needless to say, this singularly failed to materialise. It’s very hard to rhyme anything with ‘biodiversity’.
Instead of composing a thoughtful, life-changing song about how we can all make the world a better place, I ended up throwing together a quick and upbeat ditty about how the sun gives us our food. If I’d have known it would go on to become something of a national phenomenon I would have tried a little harder.
I certainly would have chosen some slightly more worthy foodstuffs for inclusion in the ensemble, that’s for sure.
Smedley the Smelly Cheese and Frank the Silly Sausage are quite literally only in there because I’d had a sausage-and-cheese toastie for lunch. If I had a more mature palate, they would have been Billy the Bourgeois Brioche and Penelope the Pretentious Pancetta.
Libby and Pip are fine, I guess. They’re fruit. How wrong can you really go with fruit? Parents love fruit, kids love fruit. Everybody loves fruit.
Chewy the Cheeky Toffee is in the group just because I’m a big Star Wars fan and I always go for the toffee pennies in the Quality Street. He’s a bit incongruous when compared to the others, I suppose. You can argue that the other five are all part of a balanced diet, but I don’t think anyone’s sung the praises of toffee’s nutritional value since Werther’s were original.
And then there’s Herman.
Herman the Grumpy Potato.
While I didn’t think it was right to have a proper villain as part of a children’s singing ensemble, I did want a character in there that could cause some low-level friction between the anthropomorphic little twats. Herman seemed perfect for that role.
When I was a small boy, Mum used to feed me at least three jacket potatoes a week. This was a period in her life when she was obsessed with growing her own vegetables. Sadly, she was terrible at it. Potatoes were the only thing she could manage to grow with any real success. Everything else just rotted or refused to grow at all in the first place. The potatoes had no such problems, though. In fact, it quickly became clear that while Mum was a hopeless grower of vegetables in general, she was a master of the home-grown potato – hence my heavy, starch-based diet throughout my formative years.
I grew to loathe the sight and smell of a baked potato. It didn’t matter how many different toppings she forked on top of the bloody thing, underneath it was still a sodding potato.
Luckily, Mum grew out of her allotment phase within the space of a year or two, and I got to eat different kinds of food again, but to this day I cannot stand the sight of a cooked potato. When the local Spudulike shut down, I had a fucking party.
Herman, then, represents my childhood loathing and is the perfect foil for the rest of the gang. He’s grumpy all the time, because wouldn’t you be if you were a talking potato?
The guy currently attempting to squeeze his rather round posterior into the Herman the Grumpy Potato costume across the way from me looks more forlorn than enraged. Let’s hope he’s a good actor. Herman requires a certain degree of barely supressed fury to be captured properly in live action.
I heave a sigh as I slip the guitar from its case, wishing I was anywhere but here right now.
‘Here’ is the Roundabout Theatre, just outside the city centre. This is the seventh and final night of my last Foodies tour of the country – a fact I am delighted about. A week of touring Foodies shows is bad enough when you’re feeling hale and hearty, but when you’re nursing a problem like mine, it’s made a thousand times worse. I’ve been suffering from this bastard headache the entire tour. I can’t wait to get finished with it so I don’t have to stand onstage in front of bright theatre lighting any more.
I should have probably cancelled my appearances after I found out about the tumour. Brightside could have easily started using the session musicians that will be replacing me after this tour anyway, but then after what happened with Sienna, I figured I could probably use something constructive to occupy myself with. The joys of travelling across the country, staying in different hotels and playing my music live seemed liked a good distraction.
It’s a choice I’m coming to wholeheartedly regret.
What I’m not regretting is the decision to extricate Sienna from my life. Since the break-up, I’ve spent a great deal of time mulling over my relationship with her and why I was with her in the first place. When I ask myself the question ‘why did I date a woman like that?’ the answers I come up with are universally unpleasant – and provide an insight into my state of mind that turns my stomach a little when I think about it too much.
After all, how shallow does someone have to be to want nothing more from a relationship than perky boobs and an even perkier bottom? What does it say about me that I viewed my relationship with Sienna much like the one I had with my Porsche?
Okay, she was quite clearly even worse with her attitude towards me – that was proved with the whole Cosmopolitan thing – but I didn’t exactly care about her much, either, when you get right down to it.
Aaaargh!
This bloody tumour is forcing me into a degree of self-reflection I am extremely uncomfortable with.
I pinch the bridge of my nose tightly for a second, forcing myself back into the here and now and away from such unproductive thoughts. I look out into the darkened auditorium at the gathered ranks of overexcited small people and swallow heavily. Even Callum looks animated now. I can see him jiggling around on his seat next to his tired-looking mother.
I’m not normally nervous before doing these shows, but tonight is a different story. You see, that tremor I first felt on the night I blacked out has come back.
It’s almost imperceptible, but it’s definitely there. I noticed it as I was taking a shower after last night’s show. My denial kicked in and I put it down to tiredness at the time, but when I woke up with it this morning I knew it was tumour-related.
I’ve spent the rest of the day convinced that I’m about to drop dead any second.
That’s what this kind of disease does to you – it takes any small ailment you may be suffering from and blows it out of all proportion. It also sends your stress levels rocketing – hence the thumping headache that came on at about 4 p.m., which has only been tamed by four co-codamol and a double JD and Coke at the theatre bar.
So, while I am nervous, I’m also high as hell on over-the-counter drugs and alcohol.
It’s an unpleasant combination. I don’t know how rock stars do it. If I had to go onstage feeling like this every night, I think I’d throw in the towel and get a job as an accountant.
‘Curtains up in one minute, Mr James,’ says a stagehand from behind me.
‘Thanks very much,’ I reply, taking a deep breath.
What I resolutely don’t do is hold my left hand out in front of me to see if the tremor is still there. That way lies madness. Right now, the hand is gripping the neck of my guitar and it feels perfectly normal. Let’s just hope it stays that way once I walk onstage, sit on my seat and strum the C major open chord that begins the first song of the show.
To take my mind off needless self-reflection, the tremor and the headache, I look back across the stage at The Foodies once more, who are now lined up and ready to rock and roll. I feel an instant pang of pity for the poor buggers underneath those costumes. I feel hot in my Foodies T-shirt and jeans. I can only imagine what it’s like to have to parade around a stage under those searing lights for an hour in that get-up.
I’m ashamed to say I have made no attempt whatsoever to get to know this latest group of actors who are bringing my characters to life. I know that they are all new recruits to The Foodies experience, hired by Brightside Productions. I couldn’t even tell you their names or pick any of them out of a line-up after a week of performances. I’ve tended to keep myself to myself, thanks to the tumour – preferring splendid isolation to interacting with those around me. They probably all think I’m a right bastard.
Usually, this would bother me no end, but I have a tremor and a headache to worry about, so my social graces have gone out of the window somewhat. It’s a little hard to make nice with your work colleagues when you’re afraid you might shuffle off this mortal coil at any moment.
Even in the big padded suits, you can tell which of The Foodies are enthusiastic about this debacle from the extremely limited body language on offer. Smedley, Pip and Chewy are standing alert and ready to go, while Frank appears to be sending a last-minute text. How he can see through the gauze window in the front of his sausage head to do this is beyond me, but he appears to be coping fine.
There’s something going on between Libby and Herman, though. Libby is grasping Herman by the arm and is leaning in close. This isn’t easy, as both costumes are very rotund. It looks like she might well be saying something important to him. Herman, for his part, is trying to turn away from her and look back at Frank, who is completely oblivious to all of this, as he’s still texting. Libby takes hold of Herman’s foamy head and turns it back to her, so she can carry on talking to him. It doesn’t seem like Herman’s happy with what he’s being told in the slightest. He keeps on trying to gesture towards Frank the Silly Sausage, but Libby is stopping him at every attempt.
If you’ve never witnessed a heated discussion between two human beings dressed in overblown fancy dress costumes, I can safely report that it does look exactly as ridiculous as you’d imagine. It’s rather like looking at two people at a Weight Watchers meeting having a meltdown about pizza toppings.
Some sort of accord looks to have been struck, though, as Herman now bobs his giant brown foam head up and down a couple of times in agreement with something Libby has obviously just said. It looks like whatever issue the two Foodies have, it has at least been put on hold for the next hour or so.
And with that, The Foodies theme begins to play in the auditorium. The gathered ranks of phlegmy children all start to scream excitedly.
This is my fault. This is something I have wrought upon the world, God help me.
I hate the theme tune with a passion, having heard it about seventeen million times. I invented The Foodies on a lunch break, and I invented their simple three-chord monstrosity of a theme tune while having a luxurious poo. There was a bird outside having a nice sing-song and it sounded rather pleasant, so I stole the melody and made it the basis of the song.
Now I wish I could find that bird and squeeze him until his eyeballs pop.
The Foodies theme winds to a grateful close after about a minute. The curtains open to reveal an expensively designed set that looks like a large country kitchen has somehow inexplicably mated with a bouncy castle. That cooker may look delightfully squashy and soft, but the chances of whipping up a nice chicken hotpot in it are zero. Brightside really have forked out a lot for this new set, though. It puts the old cardboard one completely in the shade.
I wander onstage by myself and take up my position. Looking out at the audience, I see the usual reaction to my appearance. The parents all look confused and the kids look disappointed (including Callum). It says on all the posters that the creator of The Foodies is part of this tour, but nobody paid their twenty pounds to watch a bloke in a cheap T-shirt sat on a stool. They want to see jobbing actors in bulbous fancy dress costumes and won’t be happy until they do so.
Let’s not keep them waiting.
I hold my breath as I sit the guitar in my lap and place my fingers on the strings. There’s a moment – a fleeting, tiny moment – when I think I feel the tremor in my left hand return, but it disappears as soon as I strum downwards with my right hand and hear the C major open ring out clear and divine through the theatre’s PA system.
At this point, muscle memory takes over and my tremor worries are gone. I guess there is a chance I could drop off my stool at any minute and send all these kids into therapy for the next fifteen years, but until that happens, I will do what I’ve always done when I’m playing my guitar – enjoy the hell out of every moment.
I glance over to see that The Foodies are making their way onstage, accompanied by a roar of appreciation from everyone in the audience under the age of ten. Everybody else other than Eliza is looking at me with intense hatred, given that I am the reason why they have to suffer through this shit for the next sixty minutes.
Five of The Foodies look happy to be there. They dance around the stage like things possessed, waving at the children like maniacs. The sixth member of the troupe looks decidedly less happy. In fact, Herman looks like somebody has just shot his dog. He lopes on to the stage with his head bowed, not even trying to acknowledge the audience.
Something definitely isn’t right here.
While Herman is meant to be the Foodie with something of an attitude problem, he is not meant to be a miserable bastard. He gets grumpy with his fellow Foodies for what he perceives to be their rather childish ways, but he generally does so in an animated and upbeat fashion.
The portrayal of Herman being played out in front of me this evening appears to be more downbeat than a Radiohead album.
As both I and the musicians backstage start to play the opening bars of ‘Come on, Give Us a Hug’, Herman stumbles into place alongside his compatriots with about as much enthusiasm as a real potato.
. . . actually, no, I tell a lie, I saw a strangely shaped Maris Piper in Asda once that looked enthusiastically out at me from its cellophane bag, so even that’s not an accurate comparison.
While the rest of my creations are on the money with their performances, Herman is barely doing anything. He’s just swaying back and forth a bit. It’s like watching a potato-based episode of The Walking Dead.
Having seen our awful live show more times than I care to count now, I know when things are not going according to plan. I therefore know something is most definitely wrong when Libby dances her way closer to Herman and gives him a swift poke in his brown potato arse. She then stares at him for a second. This seems to snap Herman out of his miserable reverie, as he starts to dance with a bit more animation, finally getting back on track with the rest of the performers.
I give Herman one more suspicious look before fully concentrating on my guitar playing. The chorus of ‘Come on, Give Us a Hug’ contains a rather complicated transition between C minor and E minor that I always struggle with a bit. I’ll just have to hope that whatever problem Herman is dealing with is taken care of.
Everything goes quite well for the next forty-five minutes. There are no mishaps, no major issues, and my hand stays resolutely solid as I play my way through the set list, while my characters strut and fret their way across the boards, their previously recorded vocals belting out of the theatre’s loudspeakers.
Then, we reach a song that I regret writing to this day.
‘I’m a Poorly Pants’ is the single most irritating piece of music ever conceived by man. The catchy – yet soul-destroying – five-note harmony worms its way into my brain every time I hear it.
You know how awful it is when you develop an earworm and spend weeks singing or humming it to yourself? Now imagine that you wrote the bloody thing in the first place. Can you imagine the self-loathing? The knowledge that you, and you alone, are responsible for the musical madness currently threatening to take away your sanity?
About the only thing ‘Poorly Pants’ has going for it is that it’s mercifully brief. I have no doubt this comes as as much of a relief to the rest of the cast as it does to me, as the level of physical activity required on their part to realise the themes of the song through interpretive dance is extremely high.
Herman has to herk and jerk around the place, sneezing his tuberous head off, while the rest of them have to dance around him, trying to avoid his germ-laden spittle.
. . . I really know how to create fine art, don’t I?
We’re a good thirty seconds into the song when a small calamity strikes. While doing his sneezing impression, the guy in the Herman suit stumbles forward and crashes into Frank the Silly Sausage, who in turn staggers into the inflatable refrigerator, before bouncing back off it and tumbling to the floor.
Now, in and of itself, this isn’t much of an issue. People falling over in those idiotic costumes happens every now and again, and the children all get a kick out of it, so no real harm done. However, on this particular occasion, Frank doesn’t just jump to his feet and carry on with the performance as if nothing has happened. No, Frank, it appears, is decidedly unhappy about being pushed over by Herman. I can tell this because I then hear – loud and clear over the sound of my guitar and the rest of the orchestra – Frank shout, ‘You did that on purpose!’ to Herman as he dances past him.
I look out into the auditorium to see if anybody else has picked up on it, but the kids are too hyped up on E-numbers and overexcitement to notice and the adults couldn’t give two fucks.
The song continues. We reach the chorus once again where the rest of The Foodies run circles around poorly Herman, this time wearing hastily donned berets and strings of onions. I keep a close eye on Frank to see if any retaliation will be forthcoming for the perceived attack upon his sausagey person. Sure enough, as he circles around Herman, Frank sticks out a leg, deliberately tripping the potato up.
Now, I should be disgusted by this unprofessional turn of events, given that I am the de facto leader of this little troupe, but I’ve had to watch this show so many times now that any deviation from the accepted narrative is a positive godsend. I shuffle myself around a bit on the stool to await further developments.
Herman does not fall over, thanks to the fact that Libby holds out her hands as she goes past him to offer her support. She also gives Frank an angry look. At least, I assume it’s an angry look. She could just be constipated for all I know. The giant lemon head doesn’t let me actually see her expression, so I’m well and truly in the realms of guesswork here.
Herman’s next action is far easier to read and understand, though, given that he charges straight at Frank, sending them both tumbling to the stage floor in a tangle of arms, legs and moulded foam rubber.
This wakes up the adults in the audience. I hear an audible gasp rise from everyone over the age of ten, alongside the giggles of two hundred children – who enjoy a bit of casual violence as much as the next person.
While I and the invisible orchestra backstage gamely try to play through the rest of the chorus, the actual Foodies themselves are now caught in an impromptu fight that has little or nothing to do with being a poorly pants.
Herman is slapping at Frank’s head with his big, foamy potato gloves. Given that Frank’s face is frozen in a permanent smile, it makes it look like he’s a severe masochist who just loves getting a hard palming across the forehead. Frank is also holding up his arms protectively. I can hear him screaming for somebody to get Herman off.
Herman, as far as I can tell, is sobbing loudly into his costume.
Pip, Chewy and Smedley are still trying to dance happily around both of them, as if seeing a potato physically assault a sausage is the most natural and wonderful thing in the world, but Libby is not such a happy lemon right now, as she’s trying to break the two of them up, without much success.
Over all of this is the heady combination of my irritating five-note harmony and the happy, delighted sounds of singing coming from the pre-recorded vocal backing track.
‘Don’t be a poorly pants!’
THWACK.
‘Just listen to what we sing!’
SCREAM.
‘Listen to our chants!’
SOB.
I look over to both wings to see if anybody is going to actually come onstage and break this shit up, but I’m greeted with a series of faces frozen in horror.
Given no one else is doing anything, I figure I’d better do something, before all the little darlings below me in the auditorium are sent home this evening traumatised by having to watch a supermarket version of Fight Club.
Still playing my guitar as I walk across the stage (ever the professional), I reach the warring twosome and proceed to gently kick them in the ribs to make them stop. As I do this, I maintain a cheery smile on my face so as not to scare the children.
Through gritted teeth I demand an end to this charade.
‘Stop it, you idiots!’ I hiss at them both.
Libby looks up at me. ‘I’m so sorry, Mr James!’ I hear her muffled voice say.
‘Just get them to stop!’ I repeat, giving Herman another boot to the midsection.
‘Why did you leave?!’ Herman sobs at Frank, ignoring me completely.
‘This, Hamish! This is why I left!’ Frank screams. ‘You can’t control your mood swings!’
‘He is Herman the Grumpy Potato, you know,’ I point out. While this may be factually accurate, perhaps now is not the best time to be reminding them of such.
Frank looks up at me . . . well, sort of, anyway. ‘Yes! I knew it would be the perfect part for him!’ he wails.
‘Yes! Yes!’ Herman squeals. ‘You said that, didn’t you? Right before you walked out of the fucking door!’
‘Oi! Less of that!’ I shout, kicking Herman hard enough this time to knock him off Frank completely. I don’t mind a little light violence in front of the children, but swearing is a no-no.
I hear the orchestra start to wind up ‘Poorly Pants’ and accompany them on the guitar, exhibiting the grinning rictus of a man who knows that this show has ten minutes left to run. It’s ten minutes that won’t feature Herman the Grumpy Potato, as he has now stormed offstage in a tuberous huff.
‘Oh God,’ Libby says from next to me.
‘God can’t help us,’ I reply. ‘I don’t think intervention in sausage-versus-potato warfare has ever been his thing.’
‘Don’t worry, Mr James. I’ll get us through the rest of the show,’ Libby says.
Good. At least someone around here has some common sense. ‘Thanks. Get Frank up and we’ll battle through the rest of it without Herman.’
‘Hamish.’
‘Whatever.’
I walk back across the stage as the first few chords of ‘We Love to Wave Goodbye’ start to play. This should be good. How the hell are The Foodies going to convince Herman that he shouldn’t stubbornly refuse to leave and come home with them when he has already resolutely fucked off?
I decide it’s best if I just concentrate on my part of the show for the remaining song instead of worrying about what the others are doing. There’s not much I can do about Herman and his relationship problems now.
Luckily for me, the woman inside the Libby costume seems to have the qualities of someone who knows how to rescue a situation from impending disaster, and rallies the rest of The Foodies for the last two numbers. Okay, there’s nothing she can do about the giant potato-sized hole in the show’s climax, but at least we haven’t had to call the whole thing off early. There may be a few refund requests coming in at the end of the night, but not as many as we would have had if the last thing everyone in the audience saw was two fully grown men dressed in foam rubber costumes belting each other to the accompaniment of a song about having the sniffles.
‘We Love to Wave Goodbye’ finally segues into the last song of the night: ‘Happy All Together’ – a tune about being friends and getting on with one another. This makes a lot of the parents in the audience laugh their arses off at the obvious irony, so at least we’ve managed to give them something to smile about.
Finally, the curtain comes down on what will be remembered as easily the most eventful night of this seven-night theatrical run. I spy Callum clapping and whooping like a madman down in the front row right before the curtain closes completely.
The second it has, I turn to my cast members with a scowl on my face. ‘Right, what in fuckery was all that about, please?’
‘I’m sorry, Mr James,’ Libby repeats. ‘This has been a very bad time for Hamish and Jonathan.’
‘Jonathan?’
Frank the Silly Sausage holds up a meaty hand. ‘That’s me.’
‘They’ve had relationship problems and—’
I hold up a hand. ‘Can I just stop you there? It’s very hard to have a serious conversation with someone dressed as a grinning lemon.’
‘Oh . . . oh yes, of course.’ Libby reaches up and gently flips up the entire top third of her costume, revealing a woman in her late twenties.
‘As I was saying, Hamish and Jonathan have recently split up, and I think the wounds are still fresh, so that’s why Hamish was the way he was tonight.’ She gives me an imploring look. ‘He’s a lovely man usually, Mr James. Honestly.’
Libby the Happy Lemon is hot, red-faced and sweaty, and her blonde hair is plastered to the side of her cheek and forehead. There’s also something of a disconcerting smell emanating from the bright-yellow costume she’s wearing.
She’s also very pretty, in a sweaty kind of way.
Libby breathes heavily and wafts a yellow foam hand in her face. ‘Excuse me, Mr James, but do you mind if I go and get out of my costume? It’s incredibly hot in here.’
‘Um, yeah, of course,’ I reply.
Libby gives me a bright smile, turns and walks away in the direction of the large changing rooms off to the left-hand side of the stage. The remaining cast members go with her, leaving me standing alone onstage, the sound of muffled movement coming from the departing crowd beyond the curtain.
I lift my left hand up to my face and regard it gravely. It’s shaking ever so slightly.
‘Oh, fuck off,’ I tell it under my breath, before shuffling offstage towards my dressing room.
As this is my last ever night doing a Foodies show, a party has been laid on in the green room backstage by the theatre’s owners.
Taylor and the Brightsides asked me if I wanted them to come along, but I immediately told them no, because I didn’t want much of a fuss made. I’ve been comprehensively dreading this occasion, and having them there would have made it ten times worse.
When I arrive in the rather tatty green room, a few crew members are milling around a couple of tables full of snack foods and drinks. A sign saying ‘Best of Luck, Nathan!’ is hung haphazardly on a wall at the back of the room.
It all looks a bit forlorn, to be honest with you. I walk over with a forced smile and engage a few of the crew in light conversation. Most of them seem quite nervous about talking to me. Eliza should turn up with Callum pretty soon, so at least I’ll have two people I know to talk to.
Eventually, a group of chatting actors make their way from the doors to their respective changing rooms and out into the drab green room.
The two female members of the cast who play Libby and Pip emerge first. Pip is a middle-aged woman who I just know is in desperate need of a cigarette the second I lay eyes on her. Libby is with her, a rather concerned and tired look on her face.
‘Hi!’ I say to them both as they walk across the floor to where I’m standing. Libby looks pleased to see me. Pip is searching through her pockets for a lighter.
‘Hello, Mr James,’ Libby says again, with a cheeky half-smile, her green eyes twinkling in the room’s light. ‘Are you pleased it’s all over?’
I laugh. ‘Yeah, I guess so.’
‘All right,’ Pip says in a broad east London accent. She seems less impressed with my presence. This may be because I am not a white cylinder containing tobacco. She looks at Libby. ‘I’m just popping out for a ciggy,’ she tells her before looking at me again. ‘Nice to meet you, Mr James.’
Pip then shuffles off to the fire exit at the rear of the green room, letting in the cold air as she goes through it, lighter held aloft and cigarette screwed in one corner of her mouth.
I turn back to Libby.
. . . no, her name is not Libby, you bellend. Find out what it really is before you actually start calling her Libby.
‘Please, call me Nathan,’ I say, trying to sound cool. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Alison. My name’s Alison. Though my friends call me Allie.’
‘It’s nice to meet you, Alison,’ I tell her.
She smiles. ‘You too . . .’
From somewhere in the men’s changing rooms over Alison’s shoulder there is a thump and a loud, rather high-pitched exclamation of pain that makes me wince.
I notice that the majority of the theatre crew have now started to exit the green room. They obviously have an idea of what’s about to happen.
‘Do you think I should go and do something?’ I ask Alison, keeping a wary eye on the men’s changing room.
She shakes her head. ‘No. I’d let Joel handle it. He’s been keeping them at arm’s length the whole tour.’
‘Who?’
‘The guy inside Chewy.’
‘Ahh.’
I’ve noticed that Chewy towers appropriately over everyone else in the group. Maybe Alison is right. I should leave it to someone who knows the situation well and not go blundering in myself.
‘So, what happened between Herman and Frank?’ I ask.
‘Hamish has . . . some issues. Has had for a long time,’ Alison explains. ‘Jonathan told me it all started when he got fired from a lucrative mascot job in London last year.’
‘Really?’
‘Yeah. He was playing Baa Baa Bad Sheep from that stupid video game when he got into a fight with someone at a convention for no good reason,’ Alison explains. ‘It lost him and Jonathan a huge amount of money. Things only got worse from there. Jonathan just reached the point last week where he couldn’t cope any more and broke off the engagement.’
‘Ouch. He could have picked a better time to do it.’
‘You’re right . . . and that’s half the problem. Putting them both onstage together after something like that was always going to be a recipe for disaster.’
I’m about to agree with her when Hamish, Jonathan and Joel all appear from the men’s changing room, banging the door open loudly as they come through. None of them look like happy campers.
‘You’re a maniac, Hamish!’ the one I assume to be Jonathan exclaims.
‘And you’re a bastard, Jonathan!’ Hamish responds.
‘Can the two of you just calm down!’ Joel interjects.
I’d calm down if Joel told me to. He’s an enormous guy, with the kind of physique I could only dream about having.
‘No! I will not calm down! This has been a—’ Hamish spots me standing by Alison. ‘Oh God!’ he exclaims, hand going to his mouth. It appears Hamish has forgotten about the party and my august presence in the green room tonight.
I figure I’d better say something to make him and everyone else feel more at ease.
‘Thank you all for your hard work over the past two weeks,’ I tell them. ‘I know The Foodies will be in good hands after I’ve left.’
Given what transpired onstage tonight, this is something of a fib, but I figure there’s no point in making things worse.
Hamish looks distraught. ‘Are you going to fire me?’ he asks, fear etched across his face.
‘What?’ I blurt out.
‘Don’t be surprised if he does! It wouldn’t be the first time!’ Jonathan opines, storming away from Hamish to grab himself a bottle of water.
Hamish actually starts to cry.
He’s quite a heavyset lad, with a face that’s already flushed from all the excitement, so I’m afraid to say he rather reminds me of a squalling newborn baby. ‘Please, Mr James! It won’t happen again! I’ve never done anything like that before!’
‘Ha!’ exclaims Jonathan in a derisory fashion.
Hamish looks daggers at him. ‘That was entirely different, Jonathan! I was provoked!’
‘Ha!’ Jonathan cries again, taking a swig of water.
‘I’m not firing anybody!’ I shout, trying to head this off before it comes to fisticuffs again. This earns me a look of pathetic gratitude from Hamish.
‘You see?’ Joel says to Hamish in a deep, rumbling voice. ‘I told you he’d be an okay guy.’
I don’t quite know how to take that.
‘Well, it was lovely to meet you, Mr James,’ Hamish remarks, still red of face and snotty of nose, ‘and in other circumstances I’d like to stay and chat a little longer, but I really need to leave now.’ He shoots Jonathan another look of hatred. ‘I need some time alone.’
Jonathan rolls his eyes and Hamish storms off through the exit, nearly knocking Pip over as she makes her way back inside. ‘What’s his fucking problem now?’ she says as she watches him go.
‘The usual, Sophie. It’s Hamish being Hamish again,’ Jonathan replies in a huffy voice. He then looks at me apologetically. ‘I’m leaving as well, I’m afraid. I need a decent night’s sleep for once. Goodbye, Mr James. Best of luck to you for the future,’ he says as he passes me, before heading through the exit as well.
Joel sighs. ‘I’d better go after them before they get into another fight in the car park. It was nice working with you, Mr James.’
I watch him leave as well, feeling a little put out. I didn’t want much of a party to celebrate leaving The Foodies, but something that lasted more than five minutes would have been nice. It seems Hamish and Jonathan’s ongoing relationship difficulties have taken precedence over me tonight, though. The crew has been scared away, and now the cast members are leaving, too.
‘Er . . . I’d best go and help Joel,’ Sophie says. ‘We don’t want a repeat of what happened in the car park in Leamington Spa.’ She gives me an awkward look. ‘. . . if that’s okay with you, Mr James?’
‘What? Oh, oh yes, that’s fine,’ I reply, a little despondently. What else am I supposed to do? She hardly knows me. I can’t exactly order her to stay here and commemorate my passing, can I?
. . . ugh. That’s an unfortunate turn of phrase, given the circumstances.
‘Thanks!’ Sophie looks at Alison. ‘You coming, sweetheart?’
Alison looks at Sophie for a moment, then looks back at me thoughtfully. ‘I think . . . I think I’m going to stay and chat with Mr James for a little while.’
Well, that’s very nice of her, isn’t it?
‘Okay, hun,’ Sophie replies, before giving me a sheepish look and scuttling out of the exit door to find out what shenanigans are going on outside with her castmates.
When she’s gone, an awkward silence descends. Alison and I are now the only two people left in the green room.
She points over at the sign on the wall. ‘Nice of them to do that,’ she says, breaking the tension.
‘Yes,’ I reply, scratching my nose. ‘I guess so.’
‘Will you miss doing these shows?’
‘Hmmm. Probably not, no. If Hamish and Jonathan are going to go another round onstage sometime soon, I think I’m better off a long way away from it.’
Alison chuckles. ‘Fair enough.’
At that moment, the main door to the green room bangs open and a very harassed Eliza appears, dragging what appears to be an ambulatory storm cloud.
On a second, closer inspection, the cloud turns out to be Callum, who now looks angry enough to kill. Eliza hauls him over to where Alison and I are stood.
‘Sorry, Nate! I meant to get back here sooner, but Callum . . . Callum got into an altercation with another boy in the entrance lobby,’ she tells me with a pained expression. ‘The kid bumped into him on the way out and Callum really doesn’t like to be touched, so he . . . he got a little punchy.’
‘Oh dear,’ I reply, looking down at the tiny ball of barely supressed rage on the end of her arm.
I wonder if Cleethorpes does a children’s discount.
Eliza looks at Alison. ‘Hello,’ she says in as cheerful a voice as she can muster.
‘Oh . . . er, this is my cousin Eliza,’ I say to Alison, remembering my manners. ‘And this is Alison, Eliza. She played Libby the Happy Lemon.’
Alison smiles. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Likewise.’
I look down at the beetroot-red face of my cousin’s only child. ‘And this is Callum.’
Before Alison can say anything to him, Callum grunts and starts to shake his head back and forth rather violently.
Eliza’s pained expression grows even darker. ‘I might have to take him home. It’ll be ages before I can get him calmed down.’
As if to underline this, Callum starts to try and yank himself away from his mother as hard as he possibly can, growling as he does so. If we don’t do something soon, the kid is likely to hurt himself – or more likely someone else.
‘Hey, Callum!’ Alison says in a bright voice. ‘Did you enjoy seeing The Foodies tonight?’ As she says this, she drops down to his eye level. ‘I’m Libby the Happy Lemon,’ she tells the boy, waving her arms from side to side.
Callum goes from incandescent fury to deep suspicion in a nanosecond. He looks at Alison gravely. ‘You’re not Libby,’ he says. ‘Libby is big and yellow and fat.’
Which is a pretty accurate description, when you get right down to it.
Alison’s eyes go wide. ‘That’s the suit I wear, but I am Libby the Happy Lemon, Callum. No doubt about it!’
To prove this, Alison stands upright and starts to twirl around on the spot, doing the same dance Libby has to do during ‘Come on, Give Us a Hug’.
Unbelievably, Callum starts to giggle. His towering rage has completely disappeared. ‘Libby! Libby!’ he cries with excitement, before giggling again.
Alison holds out a hand. ‘Want to dance with me, Callum?’
He cries with delight and runs forward to take Alison’s hand. Together, they start to dance around the empty green room, Alison singing my irritating song and Callum laughing like a tiny drain. There’s something quite captivating about all of this, for some reason. Maybe because Alison’s singing voice makes my stupid song actually sound . . . I don’t know . . . good? Or maybe it’s the way she’s transformed Callum so swiftly with a few simple song lyrics and a dance.
‘Bloody hell,’ Eliza remarks. ‘Can I take her home with me?’
‘She certainly has a way with kids,’ I reply, watching on with amazement.
Alison continues to twirl around the green room with Callum for a few minutes more, before coming back over to us, a broad smile on her face.
Eliza’s smile is decidedly grateful. ‘Thank you so much,’ she says to Alison.
‘My pleasure,’ Alison replies as Callum goes back to his mother to take her hand again. He’s now quite placid, but he is gazing up at Alison with an adoring expression on his face.
‘Did you enjoy that?’ Eliza asks him, eliciting a dramatic nod of the head. ‘And you know who wrote that song, don’t you?’ she says to him.
This time he shakes his head slowly, still looking at Alison affectionately.
‘Nate wrote it. He wrote that song. Isn’t that wonderful?’
Affection is instantly replaced with loathing as Callum turns his attention to me.
‘Er, maybe you should take him home while he’s still in a good mood?’ I suggest to Eliza, resisting the temptation to step back a bit.
Eliza gives me a worried look. ‘Maybe I should.’ She once again looks down at her tempestuous offspring. ‘Say goodbye to Alison and Nate, Callum. It’s time to go home.’
Callum instantly breaks free of her again and goes to hug Alison around the legs. He completely ignores me.
‘Thank you for tonight, both of you,’ Eliza says. ‘It really has been good for him.’ She holds out her hand. ‘Come on, Callum. Home time.’
The boy is extremely reluctant to leave Alison, but eventually does so after she’s bent down and given him another hug.
We share a few goodbyes (Callum continues to ignore me, of course), and my cousin and her son leave the green room, him skipping as he does so and her looking a little less anxious than when she came in.
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘I thought he was going to kick off spectacularly.’ I look at Alison. ‘Thank you for that.’
She smiles. ‘Not a problem. One thing this job teaches you is how to make a kid happy.’
‘Well, you certainly made my cousin very happy.’
‘Glad I could help.’ Alison looks around the empty green room. ‘Well, I guess it’s time I made a move.’
‘Er, yes. I guess it is,’ I say slowly. For some reason, I’ve all of a sudden become extremely reluctant to say goodbye to her.
Alison holds out a hand. ‘It really was nice working with you, Nathan.’
I take her hand. It feels rather warm and lovely. ‘You too, Alison.’
We continue to shake hands. I don’t want it to stop.
Apparently, neither does she.
The handshake goes on for another few seconds, before we both look in each other’s eyes and simultaneously burst out laughing. Alison is the one who eventually breaks her grip. ‘Well, goodbye then, Nathan.’
‘Yeah. Goodbye, Alison,’ I reply and start to back away from her. This I do with reluctance.
Still smiling, she turns and heads towards the fire exit. I turn as well, heading back in the direction of my dressing room down the corridor.
‘Nathan!’ I hear Alison say from behind me. I turn back and see her coming over to me. From her jeans pocket she has produced a pen. As she sweeps past one of the tables full of half-eaten food, she gathers up a napkin. On it, she writes something down and thrusts it out towards me when she’s done.
‘This is my phone number. If you’d like to go out with me for a drink sometime, give me a call.’
I gulp, and blink a few times.
‘Wow,’ I say, a little taken aback. A broad smile blooms across my face as I take the napkin and look at the digits she’s written down on it. I look back up at Alison’s expectant and slightly nervous face. ‘I . . . I’ll do that.’ I nod a couple of times. ‘Yeah. I’ll definitely do that.’
Alison beams. ‘Great! Well, I’ll hear from you soon, then!’ She lets out a small laugh of what I guess is probably relief and backs away from me again, not turning away until she’s reached the exit.
I watch her disappear from sight with a dumbfounded grin on my face. What the hell just happened?
A pretty girl just asked you out on a date and you said yes, the voice in my head informs me. It sounds as shocked as I am.
With a rather strange, floaty feeling in my head and in my feet, I leave the green room and walk back along the corridor to my dressing room.
When I close my left hand around the dressing room doorknob, I notice that the tremor from earlier has returned in force. That pleasant floaty sensation is instantly quashed.
What are you doing, Nathan? a voice in my head demands. Why are you agreeing to go out on a date? You’re going to die. You lost Sienna thanks to the tumour, remember? Your days of having a woman in your life are OVER.
I feel the breath catch in my throat as the horror and fear of it all crashes in on me again.
For a while there I’d forgotten what was happening to me. When I was with Alison, the tumour took a brief back seat – but now it’s returned with a vengeance, thanks to that slight tremor.
What the hell was I thinking?! I can’t go out on a date with Alison. I don’t get to do things like date any more!
Suddenly, I feel incredibly sick. I throw open the dressing room door and just about make it to the en-suite bathroom before heaving up the contents of my stomach into the toilet.
After the worst is over, I sit back against the wall, breathing hard and thinking about the last hour of my life.
I won’t call Alison, of course.
She might feel a little let down about it when I don’t get in touch, but that’s surely better than watching me drop dead at her feet, right?
I make it back to my house about an hour later. The short delay is caused by finding a twenty-four-hour off-licence to buy the largest bottle of whisky I can get my hands on. The Uber driver gave me a long look when I got back into the cab, which I gamely ignored. Oh, to still have my Porsche on the road . . .
As I start to drift off to sleep later that night in a drunken stupor, the single image that keeps returning to me is of Alison dancing around the green room with Callum. She managed to bond more with that kid in five seconds than I have in five years.
What I wouldn’t give to be in a parallel universe where I was fit and healthy so I could go out on that date with her. I’m sure it would have been great fun – and maybe the start of something good in my life.
If nothing else, she could have taught me how to put a smile on Callum’s face when he looks at me, instead of that permanent scowl.
But you’d still be with Sienna if you didn’t have the tumour, my internal consciousness reminds me. Someone like Alison wouldn’t have got a look in.
Oh God.
Here we go with the unpleasant self-reflection again . . .
It’s true, though. There’s no denying it.
Without the diagnosis, I would still be with Sienna in a gloriously shallow relationship that was devoid of any real emotional attachment.
And I’d be delighted to have that again, if it meant I was healthy. Without a doubt.
After all, I was more than happy with my carefree girlfriend and my carefree life!
. . . wasn’t I?
Wasn’t I?