Brenda Monk Is Funny (19 page)

Brenda parked the comically tiny car she had hired on the small street that was in fact the main thoroughfare for the village, got out and crunched up the frosted mud on the lane that led to her dad’s house: an old pile of bricks roughly formed into the shape of a house, but surrounded by inexpertly built lean-to type structures made from wood frames and nailed in sheets of corrugated iron and hard, clear plastic. The whole confused building sat in a Wiltshire field that had once been a garden. It was overgrown apart from a very large vegetable patch, currently dormant, which was clearly meticulously tended. Brenda put her rucksack and small bag of presents on the ground and knocked on the door.

‘Happy Christmas!’

Brenda’s dad hugged her tightly and looked her up and down.

‘Nice hair.’

It really had been too long. She’d had this hair since the end of August. She stepped inside her father’s home, or what had once been her parents’ home until the death of her mother ten years previously. It was relatively clean, and she breathed a sigh of relief. She turned to look at her dad. He was also relatively clean. His clothes looked a bit tatty, but then they always had. His hair was long but freshly washed and he had never really been a short back and sides man in any case. Brenda only worried about him when he was actually stood in front of her, but she found nothing amiss here.

‘Is Amanda coming over?’

‘No, she’s seeing her kids today.’

‘OK, that’s nice.’

Amanda had been on the scene for about three years and lived in her own cottage about a mile away. They were clearly happy with the arrangement and no mention of moving in together had ever been made. Brenda and Amanda had little to do with each other but there was no great animosity – more a lack of interest on either side.

‘I can smell food. Good food,’ Brenda said moving towards the kitchen, thankful (and not for the first time) that her dad could cook.

‘I brought this,’ she said, pulling a bottle of half-price supermarket Champagne from her bag.

‘Very good. Let’s open it now.’

Two hours later and they were pissed, a third bottle open on the table and empty plates in front of them.

‘You were a funny child.’

‘Was I?’

‘Yeah. Show-offy, though, and a bit rude sometimes. Your mother got embarrassed when you said things that made it awkward.’

Brenda nodded and sipped her wine.

‘Like the time you told her boss you were an acquired taste.’

‘Did I? How old was I?’

‘Eleven.’

‘Jesus.’

‘Never imagined you getting up on stage though, for real. You were shy in your way, too. Wanted the attention when you wanted it, then didn’t want it when you didn’t want it.’

Brenda smiled. This felt as familiar a description of herself as another could make.

‘Dad, I think I might try and do it, like, full time…’

‘Oh yeah? Must be going well, then.’

‘Yeah…’

A pause while her dad pretended he didn’t know what was coming next.

‘I mean, it takes a while to really make any money.’

‘Mmm.’

He wasn’t going to make this easy. He even seemed faintly amused.

‘If I left my job, I wouldn’t have any money coming in.’

‘Yes, that’s how it usually works.’

Christ.

‘So…’

‘So?’

‘Is there any way you could… maybe…give me a bit of…help?’

‘Why, are you having trouble getting up?’

Brenda nodded to herself.

‘No. It’s OK. I’m fine. Don’t worry about it.’

‘What’s the comedy thing about, then? Where’s it come from?’ ‘I don’t know, but I tried it and now suddenly I feel like… me. Or like someone I thought me was… or might be, would be if I… I’m not making sense… I…’

‘I’ve got two grand in a box upstairs. You can have that.’

Brenda thought she might pass out. This was double, even treble, what she had dreamed possible.

‘It’s the last of your mother’s life insurance. I withdrew it from the bank when those cunts stole all our money.’

Brenda had heard this often enough to know he meant the international banking community.

‘I only need my pension now. Mortgage is paid off, such as it was, and I grow all the food. Got my pension, fuel allowance and whatnot. Only need money for meat and condoms.’

Brenda laughed with a snort.

‘And to be honest, I only wear the condoms to flatter Amanda. She went through the menopause years ago so I don’t know why I carry on with this little charade. It’s my own fault. I did it on the first date so she’d feel younger and now I can’t get out of it.’ Brenda’s heart was bursting out of her body. Two thousand pounds would be a hefty contribution if she kept her outgoings low. That was nearly three months’ rent. She didn’t have to eat anything fancy, just beans or whatever, and people always bought comedians drinks after gigs so she wouldn’t need money for booze. With the credit card and this she could live for six months if she was very careful, without earning a penny from stand-up, and she didn’t anticipate allowing that to happen. She could effectively resign tomorrow, which was Boxing Day, so the day after. She could live for six months. OK. No guarantee of being able to live after that six months with no official job and if she didn’t manage to earn anything through stand-up she would be in an horrific amount of debt but she would be able to travel to gigs outside London because there would be no day job to get back to, and that would surely increase the opportunities for work. ‘Are you OK in there?’ Brenda’s dad said, knocking on her head.

‘Yes, really good. Thank you, Dad. Thank you.’

She beamed at him and he smiled lopsidedly back. He poured out the rest of the wine into their glasses.

‘Shall I open another?’ he asked, rising out of his seat.

‘Always,’ said Brenda.

As her dad wandered out of the room she looked down at her phone and saw an email from Pete.

‘Hi! Happy Christmas! I hope all is well with you and we get a chance to catch up in the New Year! Love Pete.’

This was tricky. It was the first she’d heard from him since he told he wanted some time to himself back in November, a request Brenda had respected and made sure she did not violate by calling him. It read like a template or general message Pete had sent to everyone in his contacts list, but how could she be sure? And if it was personal to her it would look bad to ignore it. On the other hand, if she responded to it and it was just a general mail-out she would feel foolish. Her resistance was low though. She could hear her dad returning from his make-shift wine cellar and hoped the bottle he was bringing up was not homemade. She tapped out a reply before she had time to decide not to.

‘Happy Christmas to you too, Pete. I also hope all is well with you and that we do get a chance to catch up in the New Year! Love Brenda.’

She clicked send, re-read and saw that instead of sounding light and breezy and slightly teasing, it sounded glib and a bit sarcastic. Shit.

A message appeared almost instantly.

‘Sorry. Forgot to take you off my mailing list. Won’t happen again. Pete.’

Brenda re-read that little turd of a message, and then started typing a reply she already knew she would regret.

‘No problem. You’re already off my material list. Old news. Brenda.’

She clicked send and hated herself.

Another instant reply.

‘Am I?’

Brenda ached for him. She ached for sex with him, all warm and strong and healthy feeling.

‘Yes. I’m sorry about that message. It was meaner than I intended. Happy Christmas, seriously. B.’

A long wait while her dad talked about something she wasn’t listening to. Her phone buzzed. Her dad rolled his eyes.

‘Go on, have a look. I’m sure it’s something earth shattering…’ Brenda opened the message.

‘Shall we have a drink in the New Year, then? It would be nice to chat. Pete.’

A sunbeam opened inside Brenda. Yes, YES.

Brenda would have knocked on the door but it was already open and the party was raging inside. Loud hip-hop music was being broadcast to the surrounding area but since it was New Year’s Eve it seemed unlikely that anyone would mind. Brenda stepped over someone who was lying on the ground in the front garden and bent down to ask him if he was OK.

‘I’m perfect.’

‘I’m worried you’ll freeze to death.’

‘If the ice fairies come for me, I will be powerless to resist.’

‘Come inside soon, OK?’

‘What is “soon”? Does an owl have any concept of soon?’

Brenda went inside. Wall to wall comedians. This now legendary and somewhat traditional New Year’s Eve party was a staple of the comedy year and Brenda had been twice before. Once by accident with a one-night-stand she had met at a gig as a student and once with Jonathan. Held in a run-down, old Victorian terraced house owned by an ex-circuit comedian who had bought it in the 1970s and now lived in Spain with little concept of his property’s current value, it stood in an otherwise unassuming residential North London street and the pull of the party was felt throughout the comedy community. Every year comics from far and wide heard the siren call of the beckoning Bacchanal and swung over, like giants crushing the landscape. The five bedrooms were always occupied by stand-up comedians who needed a place to rent for however long and its status as a kind of glorified hostel for working comics had a far longer pedigree than any of its current tenants. As indeed did the party, which seemed to take place automatically without anybody actually organising it. The party always got going late as most comedians worked on New Year’s Eve if they could – the audiences were awful but the money was good. No-one would book someone as inexperienced as Brenda for such a big night but she still left it until 11.30pm to arrive. The party usually lasted around three days, with people coming and going and staying and crying and laughing and coming and going for all that time. In fact it was hard to tell when the party stopped for sure as this house was always full of comedians and so the only real way of telling whether the party was going on or not going on was by the volume of people in the house and since there were always quite a lot of people in the house, there was one argument to say that the party had basically been going on to a greater or lesser extent for the past ten years. In short, this house had become a sort of informal drop-in centre for stand-up comedians, with an especially busy period around New Year.

There was no part of the house that was not available, no mealy mouthed shutting of bedroom doors here. Brenda opened her own bottle of wine, greeted a few people and went upstairs to where Fenella had already texted Brenda to come and find her on arrival.

When Brenda entered one of the bedrooms, which though it belonged to a thirty-year-old man looked like that of a fourteen-year-old, she saw Fenella lounging on the bed with Katherine and Rossly. To one side a woman with a shaved head and multiple piercings sat on the floor gently cradling a baby, who slept happily in clean swaddling. The baby’s father was stood to one side talking quietly with another man, but kept looking down at his new baby with awe and pride. In fact everyone was talking very quietly in here so as not to wake the baby. But it was a slightly empty gesture as the music was thumping through the floor. Perhaps the persistent steady beat aped his mother’s heartbeat in the womb, but for whatever reason, the infant slept soundly.

‘Jonathan’s downstairs,’ said Fenella.

Brenda missed her stride a little, but managed to keep control of herself. She didn’t know how she felt about this news and so anything that wrote itself across her face at that very moment would not necessarily reflect the true scope of her feelings. She cursed herself internally for not realising sooner that of course he would be here. She also realised she had not responded to his request to see her a couple of weeks earlier. A muddle of emotions flashed by in a matter of seconds, but she was grateful for the warning. Fenella seemed to divine this.

‘Just wanted you to know so you’re not, you know, caught off guard.’

‘Thanks.’

‘I’ve been hearing good things about you, Brenda Monk,’ Rossly said.

He took out a packet of cigarettes, pulled one out, then remembered the baby and put it back.

‘You’ve been gigging.’

‘Yes. I’ve also given up my day job.’

‘Round of applause,’ said Rossly. ‘What are you living on?’

‘A loan and a credit card.’

‘All good incentives to get better.’

Brenda drank and regarded Rossly. She liked him. A lot. He was undoubtedly a monumental fuck up, but she liked him. And the way he was looking at her now, she was fairly certain he liked her. Properly liked her – not just to try it on with, but in some emotional sense too. She had felt it before but dismissed it, still slightly embarrassed at that first encounter and also painfully aware that she was nothing special to look at compared with Nina.

‘I think I’d better get Jonathan out of the way,’ said Brenda and left the room.

Always this urge to walk away whenever a man seemed to show interest. She couldn’t account for it. Why did she always require them to follow her, figuratively or otherwise? It was a pathological behaviour pattern but she didn’t seem to be doing anything about it: she was already half way down the stairs.

Jonathan was in the sitting room at the back of the house, sat on a large sofa and holding court. He looked extremely good: tanned and clear skinned, with a new gloss on him that Brenda didn’t remember from before. The contrast with the pallid, winter worn, semi-nocturnal comedians around him was striking. It was four months since she’d last seen him – the day he left her flat to get on his plane to New York – and there was no way of pinning down her feelings in one easy sentence. So much had happened in those four months she almost felt like an entirely different person now – when he had left she had been just another angry, neglected girlfriend. Now she was a stand-up comedian.

Yes, she really was. She had resigned three days earlier to a stony faced Janet, whose partings words had been, ‘Call me when you’ve finished fucking it up, you’re a slightly above average journalist and we always need a few of those to do the basic stuff.’ Since then she had done two gigs and booked several more for the New Year. The first regional heat of the competition she had entered took place in less than two weeks and she had not allowed herself the option of picturing failure.