3: Drama Queen

The Jack And Danny Chronicles

3: Drama Queen

Alison was not her usual welcoming self.

“For God’s sake Danny! You’re such a drama queen. No wonder Jack loses patience with you. You’re a spoilt jealous brat. He’s entitled to invite his friends over once in a while. Being polite to them for a few hours wouldn’t kill you.”

I was hurt that she’d started yelling about ten seconds after I’d opened my mouth. “Well thank you for those kind words, Claire fucking Rayner. I thought you of all people would be on my side. I’ll take my unwanted over dramatical presence elsewhere, and incidentally, you’re a bit of a RADA graduate yourself when the mood takes you.” 

“Danny...come back,” she reached for me, but I was determined to make her feel guilty for not being sympathetic enough, marching huffily towards the hall. My dignified exit didn’t quite come off. I tripped over a pile ofTeletubbies, or were they Tweenies, cunningly situated in the sitting room doorway and consequently sprawled face first onto the carpet.

“Bloody hell, Ally, don’t you ever tidy up?” I raised myself to my knees and looked up at her. Her mouth twitched as if she was trying not to laugh. I burst into shoe shaking tears.

“I’m sorry.” She helped me up off the floor and onto the couch and sat down beside me. “I’m in a cow of a mood today, a real Friesian. Even Den couldn’t stand to be near me. He’s buggered off out with the kids. Tell me what happened last night to upset you this much.”

I proceeded to give a detailed account of the previous evening, portraying myself as injured and misunderstood hero. “May I stay with you, Alison, just until I find a place of my own.” Saying the words with all their lonely implications made me cry harder. What can I say; I’ve always been an emotional kind of lad. I’d had one brief experiment of living alone and I’d hated it. I’d only lasted eight days, though admittedly it might have been longer if the landlord hadn’t evicted me.

“Danny love,” she hugged me again. “This has been your home since you were nine years old, of course you can stay here. Where else would you go in a crisis? And that’s all this is, a temporary crisis. This business with Jack will blow over. It’s not as if he hasn’t been mad at you before. You’ve set fire to his kitchen, flooded the bathroom, crashed his car into the front of the house and incinerated his computer. Why should a little thing like being rude, justifiably from the sound of it, to one of his friends make him go off you?”

I sniffed miserably, “it’s the camel thing, you know, the last straw and all that.”

“I didn’t know Jack had a camel, how the hell does it manage to get its humps through the cat flap?”

“S’not funny, Ally.”

“I know, and I’m not trying to make light of things, just to put them in perspective. Who is this Tristan character anyway? You haven’t mentioned him before.”

“He’s an ‘old and valued’ friend of Jack’s, huh, interpret that how you like. He’s just moved into the area, a career change or something and Jack lets him walk all over me, then gets mad when I retaliate. He never once stuck up for me last night.  Do you know what he called me, Tristan I mean?” I sat up, wiping away tears with the heel of my hands, allowing indignation to cancel out misery. “He said I was a tiresome mongrel puppy that hadn’t been properly housetrained, and that I would soon lose my appeal.”  I failed to mention that he’d just had a hailstorm of minted new potatoes rain around his head at that point.

“The cheeky bugger!” Alison’s blue eyes blazed. “Tell me where he lives, I’ll go round there and punch his lights out, not his car lights either.”

She would too. She was a complete lunatic when roused. I kept Tristan’s address to myself and continued to hook her sympathy and support. “He told Jack I was too young and immature for him and he ought to send me away until I’d grown up and learnt how to behave properly. He’s after Jack for himself, I’m certain of it. He wants me out of the picture.”

“The smarmy shit! I was married to Den when I was your age. Give me his address, Dan. I’ll fix his game.”

“What’s going on?”  Dennis seemed to materialise from thin air. For a big man he could move very economically. Neither of us had heard him come in. He dropped his car keys on the coffee table, in among piles of Duplo bricks.

I flung myself at him, bursting into a fresh display of tears. I was enveloped at once in a warm bear hug.

“It can’t be as bad as all that.” He patted my back, joking, “what have you done, played Frisbee with Jack’s favourite CD collection?”

“Nothing, honest.” I knew I had all of Ally’s allegiance and affection. Dennis was a tougher nut to crack. I went straight for an Oscar nomination in the spurned lover’s category.  “He’s dumped me, Den! Jack’s dumped me. He doesn’t love me anymore. He puts his friends before me. He was really mean last night, and I’d gone out of my way to make it a nice evening. Can I come home?”  Move over, Di-Caprio. I was acting him off the set.

“Aren’t you being a tad Laurence Olivier,” Dennis held me at arms length and surveyed me with a practised eye. “What happened exactly?”

“He’s been a dumped, d-u-m-p-e-d, does he need to spell it out?” Ally burst into my drama in strong supporting actress role. “And it’s all your bloody fault!”

“My fault!” Den’s mouth gaped in astonishment, “and how did you make that reality leap?”

“Jack’s your friend. You introduced them. You must have known that he had a history of leading vulnerable young men on, and then casting them aside when he’d finished toying with them. I despise that type.” She waved her arms in a way Shirley Bassey would have been proud of, “and I bet you knew he had this other man waiting on the sidelines.”

“What history, what other man? What the heck are you on about, woman?”

“Where are the kids?” She suddenly changed tack.”

“I left them with my mother so we...”

“Oh,” she interrupted him, “so, you’re saying I’m a lousy mother. My little brother isn’t good enough for your posh friend and I’m not good enough to be the mother of your children. Chav is that it, you think I’m a chav? Fine!”

She began wildly scrabbling amongst the building bricks on the table. I had by then stopped crying. I’d also completely lost the plot. Den had the look of a man who had never had a handle on the plot in the first place. Alison finally located the car keys.

“Put those down, Alison, you’re in no state to drive, especially not my car.” Dennis eyed her sternly. “I mean it, give me the keys.”

She smiled sweetly, “get stuffed.”

Oh God! I’d imposed my crisis on them when they were obviously in the middle of one of their own. Alison stumbled and Den reached out a protective hand to steady her. She slapped it furiously away; “I don’t need you to keep me on my useless feet.”

Dennis ran hands of frustration and despair through his hair. “What is the matter with you lately?”

Alison turned to me. “Know what, Danny? Jack giving you the elbow might turn out to be a blessing in disguise. At least you’ll get to have a little fun in life before you shuffle off this mortal coil. Are you coming for a drive with me?”

I swallowed. Alison’s driving was bad enough when she was relaxed. In her present mood it would be like being a passenger in a hearse with an empty coffin waiting for an occupant in the back.

Dennis interceded. “No. He’s staying here and so are you. Now hand over those keys.”

Alison gave him a look that would have withered a lesser man, “I don’t need your permission to go out. I signed a marriage certificate, not a bond of slavery. I need a break and seeing as my car is in the garage I’m entitled to use yours to take it.” She moved with surprising agility for someone with a disability. The front door slammed. Moments later the sound of a car engine and a screech of tyres indicated that Alison had left the vicinity, big time.

“Shit!” Dennis uttered a rare expletive. He turned to me, “seeing as you’ve left Jack to return home I’ll resume authority. You know where your room is, so go to it.”

“DENNIS!” My jaw dropped faster than an elevator in a disaster movie. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Knowing you, I very much doubt that. There’s more to this business than meets the eye. I’m going to contact Jack and get his version of this little drama. If I discover that you’ve been milking and manipulating Alison’s affection for you and hyping her up over trivia, I’ll wallop you until you can’t sit down. Is Jack at home?”

“No,” I said quickly.  “I don’t know where he is. He went off without bothering to tell me. Probably gone to his new boyfriend’s house to shag the day away.”

“Go upstairs, Danny. If you’re back home then you can do as you’re told when you’re told.” Den gave me an old familiar look and I hastily stumped up the stairs feeling all of twelve years old.

I was pleased that my room was much as I’d left it. It meant something that my sister and brother-in-law had not turned it into a games room or computer room the moment I moved out. I lay on the bed, hands behind my head, and stared up at the ceiling wondering what was going on between Alison and Dennis. My stomach turned as for once I contemplated someone else’s troubles instead of my own. Dennis was the closest to a father I’d ever had and Alison, well Alison was Alison. She was my big sister, my friend and confidante, my co-conspirator upon occasion, and my comforter when things went wrong. I loved them both. I couldn’t stand to think of things not being right between them.

There was a brief knock and the door opened. Den’s expression was not encouraging. He shook his head when I asked if Ally had returned and then said in a strangely understated voice. “I managed to track Jack down to his office though. He was surprised that you didn’t know where he was, seeing as he’d left you a note on the kitchen table this morning.”

“Really?” I turned on my side, facing away from him, petulantly glaring at the wall.

  

“Yes really. Furthermore, he told me exactly what transpired last night and in my opinion you got just what you deserved. You behaved like an immature, bad mannered brat and you were punished accordingly.”

I sat up, “am I the only person in the world who doesn’t have a private life?”

“Apparently Jack fears early onset dementia, as he has no recollection whatsoever of having dumped you. Nor does he remember starting an affair with Tristan, whom, by the way, he said you provoked the moment he set foot in the house.”

“Jack had no fucking right…” my protest was cut short as Den sat down on the bed and swiftly hauled me across his lap, delivering a sharp slap to the seat of my jeans.

“Dennis!” I gave a squawk that was half laughter and half panic. “I’m too old to take this from you now.” He slapped again and I flung my hand back in an effort to protect the bottom that was still slightly tender from Jack’s administrations of the night before. 

Taking hold of my wrist he held it fast against the small of my back. “I don’t give a damn how old you are. I warned you what I’d do if I discovered you’d wound up your sister with exaggerated tales of the wrongs done to you.”

All desire to laugh vanished as his hand descended on my backside yet again. He was serious about spanking me. Hand and voice worked in perfect synchronisation. 

“Jack said to tell you that you’re to stay here, and that he’ll collect you when he’s finished at the office. He said he would be discussing your theatrical propensities in some detail. He said while you might be the lead actor, he’s the director, and he’ll decide how the play ends.”

“When it comes down to it,” I yelled, in a sudden burst of defiance, “he’s a bit of a gobshite!” 

“One of these days, my lad, you’ll learn when to give in with grace instead of always trying to have the last word.” 

He gave my backside a final slap and then told me that there was a sink full of dirty dishes in the kitchen and I could make myself useful by washing them up.

Copyright Cat/Fabian Black 2011