4. Deloris
1196 Words
Chapter Four
Deloris
A past is often better to have than virtue
Deloris was a short, round woman with a past that involved a lot of men. Years ago, Deloris had been a woman of great cleavage and colour; a “looker.” And there were very few locals who in their youth had not spent a memorable night with her.
George never knew the old Deloris. The Deloris he knew was the sort of woman who was surprised by nothing, had a deep ex-smoker’s voice, and laughed at pretty much anything.
Everyone talked about Deloris except for George; he just liked being with her. She was easy to talk to, mull over things with, which they did every morning when they walked on the green.
George was an early riser and Deloris had Len, a dog to walk. Len was a dog well past his sell-by date and well past the hour-long march that Deloris favoured. His idea of heaven was to be by a fire with a bowl of chum and a naked toe nearby to lick. He even had a soft spot for George’s toes, along with George’s fire.
Len trotted in front of the couple as they took their early-morning march, George wrapped in a trench coat looking like something out of an old black-and-white detective film and Deloris staring ahead clutching her first coffee of the day.
Sometimes she could do without the march, and often wondered about handing George the lead and telling him to head off on his own. Especially during the panto season; there was only so much panto talk a woman could take with her first coffee of the day.
The truth was she tired of the same old talk, the same old faces, and going to bed with just Len at her feet. She hungered for something better, not a man old enough to be her father.
George however was full to bursting and, with no warming up “how are you” chat, burst into a panto tirade as Deloris stepped out of her door. And was still going as they marched onto the green.
Deloris, prepared with a double espresso, took a here we go sip.
“I want that man stopped in his tracks,” George said to Deloris.
“What do you mean stopped?”
“You know, off the scene—silenced.”
Deloris stopped. “Silenced?”
“Yes; somewhere else, anywhere but on that damn stage ruining my production. That man could empty a hall in one song.”
Deloris breathed a sigh of relief. George was a hard man to fathom.
She watched George toss a stick into the wind with venom. Len looked at him with a must I? expression.
“Go on, there’s a biscuit at the end,” he muttered. He looked at Deloris with a pained expression. “I called him slapstick.”
“Hmm. I heard.”
“He took it as a compliment.”
“Derek took slapstick as a compliment?”
“‘I do my best to keep the punters happy,’ he said. Now he thinks he’s Charlie Chaplin . . . in pink.”
Deloris sniggered.
“It’s not funny, nothing I say affects that lad. I reckon he’s short of a few fuses. I mean, I don’t even know what he’s talking about half the time, he calls his dame accessible.”
“Oh, that.”
“To the masses.”
“He is a funny one.”
George turned to Deloris with a fierce look. “There is nothing funny about ruining a production. I want Charlie to create a dame with no singing, no dancing, and in the end . . .” George took a sharp intake of breath. “No Derek.”
“We’re not talking anything illegal, are we? Because if we are, you can just take your panto and . . . stuff it . . .”
“ . . . and you’re to help persuade him.”
“Persuade him to do what?”
The postman whooshed by on his bike. He skidded to a stop. Len yelped, Deloris laughed, while George jumped . . .
“Jesus man, don’t do that, give a man a heart attack.”
The postman slid off his bike. “Mission impossible, ol’ man.”
“What?”
“Getting rid of Derek?”
“I wasn’t exactly talking of getting rid of but more a writing out; killing off in the first scene, act, line even . . .”
“You’ve got to think of the mother,” said the postman.
“That ol’ bat,” muttered George, who had never met the woman but assumed that she must be an old bat having given birth to such a moron as Derek.
“She’s the reason he’s in the panto in the first place.”
“He has a point,” muttered Deloris.
Derek’s mother was the chairperson on the panto committee, the hall committee, and the musical society; she controlled the funds, the musicians, and the hall. Some would say she was a bit of a control freak on par with George.
“She could close the whole thing if she wanted to,” said the postman.
George let out an I give up sigh.
“Or worse, take over—get involved.”
“What? My panto? Never. I’d rather eat cabbage for a week and plug my arse,” said George.
Len appeared with a small stick in his mouth and an expectant biscuit? look. George propelled an extra-large stick across the horizon; Len’s tail drooped.
“No one takes over my goddamn panto. Especially an i***t who still lives with his mother, or for that matter the i***t’s mother.”
George stared at Len trailing back with his stick dragging through the grass.
“She a tarter so I’ve heard, takes no prisoners,” said the postman. “Getting rid of foot fungus would be easier than getting rid of your so-called dame.”
Deloris stared ahead. She saw endless mornings of rantings, mountains of phone calls—six months at least of George bending her ear with his obsessions with Derek. She had to do something.
“There is always the costume,” she muttered.
“What?”
“Remember the wedding dress?”
George’s face lit up. “Yes, we can immobilise the bastard—mute him, then flood the stage with dancers—he’ll be as invisible as his talent.”
The postman, with a you’ve taken that too far whistle, jumped on his bike. “Poor Derek,” he muttered, “have you no shame?”
“Well at least that would stop the i***t from tap-dancing,” shouted George, then looked about to see that no one had heard.
Charlie had no idea about George’s rewrites.
He was trying to get used to writing for a limping stuttering dame in a run-down poky shed while losing his wife to Daisy and her vegan ways. His life was heading downhill faster than a lead balloon on said hill.
His home had been turned into a shrine to womanhood with a bathroom full of oestrogen potions and two women giggling over things he didn’t understand.
He was no longer needed to cook, his quiche obsolete; in fact, his kitchen was now out of bounds. Daisy ran the kitchen and shouted at him when the tofu-and-whatever-nut surprise was ready. Each mouthful was as difficult to swallow as his pride.
Daisy was a terrible cook.
One hen took a mouthful and never recovered; she was found the next day, legs pointing to the sky, beak gaping, eyes glazed. The others didn’t even sniff at the leftovers let alone peck. Even the devil incarnate fox refused the food, and he ate anything. He poked about Daisy’s nut loaf like it was a live snake about to pounce, yelped, and left.
Charlie retreated into the shed with bacon rolls, grieving hens, and his laptop, and he would have happily slept there if it wasn’t for the hens.
- Writer
