Brenda Monk Is Funny (23 page)

Brenda picked up the bunch of flowers Lloyd had left in her dressing room and put them in the bin. She didn’t need these patronising overtures to femininity. She needed to remain highly focused. Performing jokes she had never used before in front of a large crowd on such a high stakes night was crazy but it was the only thing she could now do in order to protect her best material, which she would need to make her way through the competition. The ultimate prize for the winner of the competition was a guarantee of paid work for six months, and that could be a launch pad to anything. She had to keep her eyes on that prize and simply survive tonight. If she could give a good account of herself here, and not destroy herself, that would be all she needed. She pulled a miniature bottle of Jack Daniel’s out of her handbag and drank it in two swigs. She had never performed drunk before, and didn’t intend to start now, but she needed something to calm her down, her hands and legs were shaking hard from too much adrenaline. She had to find a way to give less of a shit in order to raise her game – the ultimate stand-up paradox. Alcohol was her best option.

She had banned everybody from her dressing room. She didn’t want Pete around her right now, and she didn’t even want to see Fenella or Rossly. She didn’t want friendly, concerned faces making her feel that what she was about to do was any more frightening than it already was. The fact that she had a dressing room at all seemed faintly ridiculous. For the first time she actually longed for the uncaring cut and thrust of a busy green room where she could warm up a little, bounce off some other comics, even if the chat was barbed and occasionally undermining. Stuck in this room that had seen better days, with a brightly lit mirror and an empty metal clothes rack, just felt weird. But this was technically a theatre and was equipped to accommodate groups of actors in larger productions. So there was room to give Jonathan and Brenda a dressing room each, on either side of the stage. They would meet in the middle, in front of several hundred strangers, and begin.

Through the loudspeaker mounted high on the wall Brenda could hear the audience coming in to the auditorium. The hum of excited chatter sounded like bees swarming and Brenda felt sick to her stomach. She wished she’d bought another JD, and so when a helpful young backstage assistant popped her head round the door and asked if there was anything she needed, Brenda ordered a shot from the bar. The assistant nodded and disappeared. Brenda looked at herself in the mirror. The short blonde hair was still in full effect, the black eyeliner was skilfully flicked and black mascara increased her eyelashes by at least 30%, but the effect was subtle. She wore no other make-up. She wore a black V-neck jumper and a pair of black skinny jeans. On her feet she wore a pair of red patent leather lace up brogues. She looked good tonight. That at least, she could be sure of. This outfit had come together well and gave her some confidence.

The assistant reappeared with Brenda’s drink and set it down on an opened ironing board that hadn’t been used for years. Brenda thanked her and waited until she had left the room before she necked it in one. A rustle on the loudspeaker and a voice spoke.

‘Five minutes until showtime, thank you very much.’

It vanished with another rustle and the swarm of bees returned, punctuated by clinks of bottles and glasses as they buzzed around the bar, hastily buying drinks before the show began.

‘Oh shit,’ Brenda breathed to herself, ‘shit, I can’t do it, I can’t do it, someone make it go away.’

She sat down and put her head in her hands for a minute. Her phone vibrated – had her prayer been answered? She opened the message.

‘Good luck – you’ll be amazing x’

Pete had texted her from the other side. She smiled a bit but it came out like a grimace. She was nauseated to the core and even smiling made it worse. She had a very bad feeling about tonight. The assistant knocked and then stuck her head round the door.

‘OK to mike you up, Brenda?’

‘Yeah, come in.’

The young woman had very cold hands as she passed a long thin microphone lead down Brenda’s back and left the end to trail out by her bottom like some kind of tiny tail. She looped the moulded wire structure around Brenda’s ear and bent the microphone along her cheek so that it lay flat against her face about an inch from the corner of her mouth. She was strapped in now, getting further entangled, making it harder to escape.

‘Phil will put your pack on at the side of the stage, OK?’

‘OK. Thanks’

And she was gone again. Brenda felt dizzy with sickness. How could she get away? There must be a back exit. She thought she’d conquered the urge to fly rather than fight a couple of months ago, but here it was, back with a vengeance. Every insecure thought she had learned to suppress in the previous six months of gigging seemed to flood her entire being now, and she experienced that tell-tale urge to lie down and go to sleep – a sign the mind is dealing with the knowledge of impending trauma. She recalled being told by a serious face she could not place at the New Year’s Eve party that the impact of a gig on the human body had been found to be akin to being involved in a medium sized car crash, and that years of dealing with the shock and subsequent adrenaline surge was what made comedians crazy: you get up and walk away from the wreckage every time.

The stakes were high with this gig, and Jonathan’s presence was no comfort, no comfort at all. Did he even think she was any good? Did it matter? Did she think she was any good? These thoughts were as unhelpful as they were insistent and they had to be controlled by force of will. And Jack Daniel’s.

Rustle.

‘Act One beginners to the side of the stage please, Act One beginners to the side of the stage.’

Brenda laughed out loud – Act One beginners? She hadn’t heard that since she was a member of the chorus in a slightly over-ambitious production of Stephen Sondheim’s
Company
at university. This was two stand-up comedians who would walk out, talk, and then walk off again. Not a cast of thousands who needed corralling at the appropriate moments. This slightly officious stage manager was getting on her nerves. He clearly felt this gig was somewhat beneath him and another production, such as
Les Miserables
or
The Phantom of the Opera
, would be much better served by his skills. Brenda took one last look at herself in the mirror, raised her eyebrows twice and opened the door.

She walked the short distance down a grubby, narrow corridor to a door with a laminated notice on it that read ‘STAGE RIGHT’. She pulled it open, jumped up three small black steps and greeted Phil, who was waiting with a radio mic pack. He pulled out the end of her tail and he plugged the jack into the pack.

‘Where do you want it?’

‘Where do people normally have it?’

‘Dunno, depends. Middle of the back of your waistband’s traditional though, I suppose.’

‘OK, put it there then, please.’

He tucked the pack into the back of her jeans with a well-used, professional ‘excuse me’, and clipped it onto the waistband of her jeans, fiddled with a couple of knobs and then vanished.

Brenda turned round to face the side of the stage. There was no curtain between the front of the stage and the audience. Peering round the huge black curtains that hung around her on stage right that were there to cover any activity during a performance, she could see the far corner of the audience, who were sat down and chatting. Brenda felt vomit rise in her throat. She looked over to the left wing and saw Jonathan standing with Phil, having his own mic pack fitted. She saw Phil laugh and Jonathan laugh with him. Brenda hadn’t made Phil laugh. She felt horrible. Why had she ever agreed to do this? How could she ever have thought that this could possibly work to her advantage? Jonathan saw her and blew her a kiss. She smiled weakly. He looked excited. Brenda didn’t think she looked excited. She thought she probably looked like she’d just been diagnosed with herpes.

‘OK?’ whispered the backstage assistant.

Brenda nodded. It was all she could manage. She felt the house lights go down, and the audience quieten and vibrate with an expectant hush. She lifted her head. Showtime.

Brenda walked out on stage and in that instant nothing else existed, as if she had passed through some invisible permeable membrane that divided horror from happiness. The horror lived in the wings, the shadows, the ‘before’. Here was only light and warmth and ‘now’. She smiled at the audience as they applauded. She gave a little wave to show how relaxed she was, and she almost felt it too. She sat down on the sofa next to Jonathan who was already flirting with a middle-aged woman on the front row, who sat with a younger woman who was her spitting image only thirty years younger. Brenda guessed that they were mother and daughter and had come out together on Valentine’s night at the daughter’s suggestion. She guessed they were both single. Brenda had got good at assessing audiences. She had a joke about divorced mothers somewhere. If she was right about these two, she could have a little chat with them from the stage and then drop it in. It would look spontaneous and the crowd would love it. An audience would always laugh hard at a mid-range joke if they thought you’d just made it up on the spot. Her nerves had evaporated. It was as if they had never existed. She was now in survival mode – kill or be killed.

Brenda and Jonathan had decided to begin with a little bit of banter sat side-by-side on the sofa. The plan was for this to degenerate into a staged row. Then Jonathan would leap up, apparently incensed by the conversation, and deliver a short monologue to the audience from his perspective. After about five minutes, Brenda would interject, as if she could stand it no longer, and get up. Jonathan would then hand over to her and sit down while she did five minutes. This would then be the pattern for the next hour or so. There would be no interval. The venue had fought this. They always made money at the bar in the interval, and so Brenda and Jonathan had agreed to allow the bar that was built in at the back of the auditorium to remain open throughout. It didn’t bother either of them. In fact, it was preferable as it lent a certain ‘comedy club’ vibe to this strange hybrid show. They were both so used to people getting up and down to go to the bar at the gigs they usually played that far from being off-putting, it actually put them both at ease and reduced the intensity of the room.

‘Good evening, good evening,’ Jonathan began. He turned to Brenda and leant in a little in mock seduction, ‘Good
evening
…’

First laugh.

‘Good evening, Jonathan. How are you feeling this evening?’ Brenda replied with arch courtesy.

‘I’m fresh as a daisy, Brenda, and you?’

‘Well, I’m a little bit under the weather today because I didn’t sleep very well…’

‘Oh dear and why’s that?’

‘I guess I was waiting for you to come home.’

Jonathan looked at the audience with a ‘boys will be boys’ shrug.

‘But you said you prefer to sleep alone…’

‘I prefer to sleep alone, yes, but I wasn’t planning on sleeping.’

The audience murmured a laugh at the innuendo.

‘I’m concerned I’m being used for sex,’ Jonathan said, as planned.

‘No, you’re not,’ Brenda said, as planned.

‘Being used for sex?’

‘No, concerned about it.’

A huge laugh erupted through the room.

Brenda was glad of it – she had ripped this little exchange straight from a conversation with Pete, and it had worked. She felt the audience settle in. They were more comfortable with Jonathan, who now got to his feet and began his solo piece, but they could see Brenda was perfectly capable and would deliver. They didn’t need to feel sorry for her or nervous on her behalf, and with this realisation, they gave themselves permission to laugh at what she said – she was not the abused party, they could see that, and she wasn’t some shy little woman who would be dominated by this comedy titan she shared the stage with. It would be a fair fight, and a good show. The room eased back into itself, heads turned up like smiling seals in the water.

Jonathan stood up on cue and walked to the front of the stage to start his first solo flight. Brenda reminded herself to look at him and not the audience, and to laugh at what he said. It was all material she’d heard before, much of it culled from his Edinburgh show. Of course he had the luxury of doing his best stuff as he would own it all with Lloyd anyway once the show was over. Brenda felt a fresh wave of resentment rise over her, but did not surf it – she had to stay focused. Looking out over the tops of people’s heads for a brief stolen moment, she caught sight of the black camera mounted behind the back row, recording everything. Its red pin prick of light the only point of true focus in the darkened fuzz of the room. She also knew that somewhere, out there were Pete, Fenella and Rossly. She quickly turned her attention back to Jonathan in case she saw anyone she knew and caught their eye, which could prove fatal.

Jonathan was wrapping up his bit. The audience were laughing warmly. The mother and daughter on the front row, which Brenda decided to use as the litmus paper for the whole crowd, were giggling moistly. They’d probably double team him if he asked them to, she thought grimly and placed a mental bookmark on that thought to ensure that it would not come out of her mouth under any circumstances. If she lost them, she’d lose the audience and she’d look like a woman-hating, bitter bitch. She regretted letting Jonathan go first as it now meant that she was catching up rather than setting the tone. It had made sense when he first suggested it. He had said he would warm up the crowd on her behalf so she’d get an easier ride, but she now saw her mistake all too clearly. Brenda got ready to leap up and take exception, as agreed.

‘So I ask you, can there ever be a
right
way to do Valentine’s Day? Seems like anything I do for my girlfriend will be the wrong thing…’

A couple of men cheered. Brenda arranged her face into outrage.

‘Hold on, hold on,’ she said, getting up and the crowd laughed. Jonathan mimed looking surprised and then apprehensive as he backed away from the front and took his seat on the sofa, giving Brenda the floor. She instantly felt better. She may not have as many gigs as Jonathan under her belt but she’d done enough for this to feel familiar, and the brightness of the lights obscured the size of the room.