It Began with Burlesque

Saturday 27 April. 10.00 a.m.

“Hold on a minute, Odette. That’s the doorbell.”

Carrie placed the phone on the table in the hall and un-snibbed the front door. The bright sunlight made her blink.

“Flowers for Mrs Jones,” said the delivery man.

Carrie’s blurred vision was soon brought back into focus by the large splash of red roses that the messenger was handing her. She thanked him, took hold of the massive bouquet in both arms and closed the door behind her with her left foot. She placed the flowers on the hall table and picked up the phone again.

“Sorry, Odette. Where were we?”

“Oh, don’t tell me. Was that another one of your bouquets from Patrick?”

“Yes. What’s he like?” said Carrie, trying to play it down. “I give up. I mean every month for the past five years? I’ve told him to stop. But I guess it keeps the florists in business.”

Carrie felt awkward. Odette had told her that Bob had only given her two bunches of flowers, and the occasions were the births of their children: Ashleigh who was now 17 and Ben who was 15.

“Huh,” Odette had said when she first divulged Bob’s rare, romantic gesture to her friend. “I’d to go through 48 hours of pain and anguish twice and that’s the appreciation I got. If he’d to go through a similar experience then it’d be far more than a bunch of flowers I’d have given him.”

“So how could you get a man to have a similar experience to childbirth?” asked Carrie.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe attach electrodes to his stomach, crank up the voltage and then insert one of his precious footballs into a suitable orifice and ensure his wracked body takes hours to divest itself of said football.”

Carrie laughed. “Rather extreme eh?”

“I’m only joking,” replied Odette. “But I mean to say - two bunches of flowers in 20 years? And you get one a month? How many does that come to now?”

Carrie did a quick calculation in her head. She’d met Patrick on an internet dating site five years ago. Although it had been a case of instant attraction from day one it wasn’t until a few weeks later that he’d presented her with the first bouquet. It was the 27th of the month. He’d arrived to pick her up in his sports car and when she answered the door he’d told her to close her eyes and put out her hands. When she opened them she saw she was holding a bouquet of red roses. Ever since then on the 27 th day of every month, whether he was home or away, he’d continued the floral habit. She told him there was no need but he said he loved doing it for her.

“Well then, how many?”

Odette was getting fed up waiting for an answer. She knew it would be far more than two though…

“Well if you count birthdays and Christmases and oh, I nearly forgot Valentine’s Day, I guess that would make it about 80,” she replied.

“Oh my god,” said Odette. “Just as well you don’t suffer from hay fever. I’m going to rename your place Kew Gardens.”

Carrie laughed. “Well remember I’d to kiss a lot of frogs before I met Patrick the Prince. At least meeting Bob when you were 18 spared you all that nonsense.”

They continued chatting for a while until Carrie overheard Ben whingeing in the background. He wanted her to give him a lift to his friend’s in the next village. Family duties called so they said their goodbyes.

Carrie put the phone down and picked up the flowers. Roses... Again She’d hinted to Patrick several times that she preferred more simple flowers such as daffodils or tulips - especially in springtime. There was something about the seasons when it came to flowers, she reflected. Maybe it was thinking back to her childhood when her best friend Daniel would pick her daisies and make a daisy chain necklace for her in summertime. Or when they both sneaked off to the woods together and he’d picked some bluebells for her. Not all of Daniel’s gestures were so flowery. He made her mud pies decorated in dandelions and cooked the stickleback he’d caught with his bandy net. Needless to say she didn’t eat it. “Who knows?” she wondered. Perhaps he was now a Michelin-starred chef after such an unpromising beginning to a cookery career.

She retrieved her usual vase from the cupboard and tore off the cellophane holding the flowers together. The vase was yet another of Patrick’s presents – this time from Italy. She filled the bright blue, ceramic vase with water and started arranging the roses. Sometimes she could pinch herself at finding Patrick on the internet. When her innocent, childhood romance with Daniel had been brought to an abrupt end by his parents carting him off to Australia at the tender age of 11 there’d been zilch in the love stakes until she’d gone to college at 17. Three “one year wonders” (as she called them) followed in rapid succession. It wasn’t until she was 21 and had started working at an estate agent’s that she’d fallen properly in love. An engagement followed and then the seven-year itch. She’d told Odette all about this scratchy event one night not long after they’d become friends. They were just leaving their zumba class when Odette suggested a drink at the local pub.

“Yeah, why not?” replied Carrie.

Soon they were enjoying a glass of Chardonnay at the Queen Vic. It was the perfect antidote to the frantic zumba class they’d just endured.

“So how long have you been coming to the class?” asked Carrie.

“Two years,” said Odette.

“Good god. It’s a wonder you’re still alive!”

They laughed. Carrie had moved to Little Hatten six months previously. Patrick had wanted to relocate to the country but she’d become a city girl these past few years and was unsure. So in the spirit of matrimony they’d compromised on the pleasant, picturesque village of Little Hatten, population 4000, which was only a 12 mile commute to her workplace in the city. It had a post office, three pubs, two churches and even a winding river running through it. Oh, and let’s not forget – it had the zumba teacher from hell. But beggars can’t be choosers and Zandra was the only Zumba teacher in the neighbourhood.

“Do you think she changed her name to Zandra as a gimmick? I mean, “Zandra Zumba”. Come on. Surely that’s made up?” said Odette.

“You never know. It could just be a coincidence. Or maybe she was named after somebody. I was named after my granny – Caroline. Mum jazzed it up to Carrie.”

“You could have a point there,” said Odette. “I was named after Odette Sansom - the war heroine. My mum saw the film when she was a kid and loved the name.”

“Odette who?”

Odette was used to this. She took a deep breath and repeated the story of the war heroine that nobody under the age of 40 had heard of. Mind you she was fast approaching 40 as well. Carrie was five years younger so she correctly guessed her response would be, “Odette who?” She went on to tell Carrie about the French-born Special Operations Executive who was captured by the Germans in 1943, condemned to death and then sent to a concentration camp to be executed. However, against all odds, she survived the war and testified against the prison guards at their subsequent trial. She was awarded the George Cross in 1946; the first woman to receive the award and the only woman who has been awarded it while still alive.

“Wow, that’s some tale of courage. Ever fancied joining the Special Forces or MI5?” she tittered.

“Don’t be daft,” said Odette who was also getting giggly on the wine. “Mind you, I’ve always loved a good detective story and solving puzzles. Maybe that’s why I joined the police.”

“The police? I didn’t know you were a bobby.”

“Well, not anymore. I was ’til Ashleigh came along. Always fancied myself as a plain-clothes detective. But pounding the beat, arresting comatose, drunken youngsters and a shit-load of paperwork was the reality of the job. Still, never mind. I’m happy enough now with my part-time admin job at the school. Besides, I couldn’t see me and Bob working on the same force.”

Carrie had yet to meet Bob. They’d spoken briefly about the four of them getting together. It would have to be at a time when Patrick was home and Bob’s shifts coincided. It would be good to make friends with another couple, thought Carrie. And it would be good for Patrick too. Sometimes she thought her perfect husband lacked male company apart from his ex-army mates who he kept in touch with. When she had pointed this out to him he told her that all he needed was his very own “Caz” as he called her. Besides, he said, when he was away with his project management job he was awash with male company. Carrie smiled to herself and resolved to get the dinner date for four firmed up sooner rather than later.

Odette snapped her out of her musings.

“I guess when you think about it the real Odette was investigative but in a much more heroic way than me. So maybe my mum chose well in the name stakes after all. At school it was a right pain in the posterior though.”

“What do you mean?” asked Carrie.

“Well the obvious would be bawled at me, “Odette’s in debt”, which isn’t very funny or insulting when you’re 12, is it? I mean who cares about bank balances at that age? Then this boy called Slimy Steve decided to label me “Odour” which was rather ridiculous. I mean it didn’t even rhyme.”

“Odour? Oh dear,” sniggered Carrie.

“Very funny. Thankfully that didn’t last long but worse was to come…”

“What?” asked an intrigued Carrie.

“Well we were studying the Second World War in history and Mr Mayhew, our teacher, started waxing lyrical about my namesake. He told the class that Odette was part of the “First Aid Nursing Yeomanry”.

“So?” replied Carrie.

“Mr Mayhew went on to tell the class that this all-female unit was otherwise known as “FANY”.

Carrie burst out laughing. No prizes for guessing that this was a gift from the gods for Slimy Steve. He and his gang called her FANY or rather FANNY until the day she left school.

Carrie went to the bar to buy another drink. The tall, young barman had to go and fetch another bottle of wine from the cellar. Carrie was beginning to wonder if he’d gone to France to get the wine when he eventually reappeared muttering his apologies.

“Forget another two glasses,” she said. “I’ll just take the bottle.”

He nodded, handed her the bottle and took her ten pound note. Che-ching went the till. She thanked him for the change and returned to the table.

Something about Odette’s story made Carrie want to share an embarrassing moment from her very own back catalogue of embarrassing moments. It was a girly bonding thing; either that or the drink hitting home after the exhaustion of the Zumba class. Which one to choose? There were so many… But she opted for Mr Scratchy – otherwise known as Derek.

“I’ve had my embarrassing moments too. I was engaged once - before Patrick,” Carrie said, wondering momentarily if her embarrassing moment was too high on the list to reveal. It wasn’t until she’d met Patrick two years after Derek that she could finally laugh about Derek. At the time she’d been devastated, but when you move on and find real love anything that pretended to be love seemed just a poor, false imitation, didn’t it? Real love had caused her to shine a retrospective torch back on her previous love life and what had been a series of mild to moderate heartbreakers were now brightly lit up as waste of space jerks – and none more so than Mr Scratchy.

She decided to give the tale a whirl. Odette was proving herself to be a good laugh outside of the Zumba class as well as in it, so why not?

“By day he worked in a bank. Derek was his name. By night he fancied himself as a bit of a D.J. I met him in a club, typical eh? Don’t laugh, but he went by the name of Mr Scratchy. We swapped numbers and started dating. He grew on me and I really thought we had a future. We bought a house together and got engaged. Seven years it lasted, until...”

“Until what?” said Odette.

Carrie took another sip of her wine.

“Until I found out he was seeing one of my so-called friends. It was awful. I mean by then he was part of my family. I flipped and threw him out but it wasn’t long before he came grovelling back. He said he’d made a big mistake and that I was the one he wanted to be with. He claimed he was just panicking as he was turning 30 and that we’d been together seven years so maybe it was just a seven-year-itch thing.”

She glanced at Odette. She looked very serious. Carrie was confident that her expression would soon change. She continued:

“I loved him, so what did I do? I took him back. Things were ok for a few months and we worked hard on rebuilding the trust that had been damaged. I was just getting over the nightmare when another mate told me she’d seen him in the club cavorting with a young blonde. That was it. This time heartbreak wasn’t an option; I was livid!”

Odette gulped. She’d met Bob at 18 and had been with him for 21 years. She’d encountered none of this drama. Sometimes she wondered if they were just another boring, stuck in a rut couple but heh, wasn’t that the same for a lot of long-term marriages?

“So what did you do?” asked Odette.

“Well let’s just say my reaction was different the second time round. I decided to take revenge. I didn’t know how until I was passing a joke shop later that very same day. For some reason I glanced in the shop window and saw it.”

“Saw what?”

“Itching powder. Mr Scratchy gets the “seven-year itch”? Too bloody right. I was going to make him scratch in more ways than one. Instead of a wedding ring I decided to give him a ring of fire.”

Odette laughed. Carrie briefly paused and then carried on with her tale.

“He came home that night from the bank all smiles as if nothing had happened. The plan was to sprinkle the powder in his pants before he put them on. But I was like a cat on hot coals and was so uptight about him coming home that evening that I actually forgot to dose his pants in his underwear drawer. When he plonked himself down on the settee and uttered his usual, “Get us a cup of tea darling”, I flipped. I went berserk and flew at him. I even smashed his bright yellow teapot but thankfully not over his head. The deceitful toe-rag wasn’t worth a prison sentence.”

“What happened next?” asked Odette.

“Tears and tantrums from me – denials from him. But it was over. I told him to pack his bags and get out. Huh – it took him long enough. Eventually I heard the front door slam. Despite the trauma I needed to talk to someone so I fumbled in my bag for my phone. And then out it fell - the bloody itching powder. That really got to me. I couldn’t even make Mr Scratchy itch, could I?”

Odette laughed.

However what once had seemed like the end of Carrie’s world had turned out to be just the beginning. She sorted herself out, threw herself into hobbies, work and friends and two years later met Patrick. It might have been the end of Derek but, she told Odette, it hadn’t been the end of the itching powder.

“For some reason I kept the packet in the kitchen cupboard. One day my neighbour was in with her eight-year-old son, Nathan. Nathan was a bit of a horror and was always playing up. We were out in the garden when we heard a clatter coming from the kitchen. In we dashed and caught him climbing on the worktop. His mum yanked him down and dragged him home in disgrace. But Nathan had been up to a lot more than that in my kitchen. The next day I felt a burning sensation down below and couldn’t figure out what it was. By the time I got home it was unbearable and I jumped in the shower. Yes, you’ve guessed it. The little horror had found the packet of itching powder and sprinkled it over the clothes I’d just taken in from the washing line.”

Odette was now wiping the tears of laughter from her face. The barman walked past and picked up their empty glasses.

“Goodness me. Look at the time. I better go home. Bob will be wondering where I am,” said Odette.

Carrie said goodbye and wandered home. The bottle of wine had cemented a new friendship. Little Hatten was proving to be a good move after all.