Off Script-1

The brown pantomime horse clollomped onto the stage, then stopped, dead. The front half wheeled round, doubling back on its rear end; there was a ripping of fabric.

Two slender arms emerged from the front half of the costume, bunched up into small fists. A tall, dark-haired woman emerged from the torn-off body of the rear half, eyes blinking. The hands from the front half made a grab for the tall woman’s dark hair. “You bitch! Christine! You fucking BITCH!” The words were muffled by the head, but they were clear enough for the audience, such as it was, to hear.

The left arm thrust its fingers of her right into her face. Christine snarled and twisted her head sideways, then grabbed the two slender wrists. “AAARRRGGGH!”; a muffled yell from inside the head. Christine lunged her left hoof into the innards of the torn-off front half of the costume. There was a muffled yell and a gasp from inside the horses head.

Christine relinquished her grip on the two wrists and the front half of the horse stumbled backwards, the head thumping onto the deck. Christine straddled her assailant, grabbing her wrists again, and hoisting her assailant upright, then spinning her round to face the edge of the stage. There was a yelp of pain as Christine gave a sharp kick with one of her hooves; the front half of the horse was poised in mid-air for a split second and then fell, arms and hooved legs flailing. It hit the strategically positioned hay bales six feet below, bouncing back up a couple of feet from the impact. “UUURRRGGGH!” it gasped.

“CUT!” shouted the director.

The front half pulled off its head to reveal a young woman, about eighteen, with a mass of long golden ringlets.

“That was brilliant!” the director cried, clapping his hands. Only one problem.”

“What’s that?” said Christine. Zoe looked up expectantly from the hay bales.

“The wrong half-horse won.”

Take 2

The pantomime horse doubled back on itself. There was a rending sound as the restitched material ripped in two. (Not very loud, but a more satisfactory noise could always be dubbed on.) Zoe brought her knee up into Christine’s midriff. She groaned, then staggered backwards and hit the deck, bounced back up slightly before slumping back down again, moaning theatrically. The director raised his eyes skywards. Zoe grabbed Christine’s hooves and proceeded to drag her over to the edge of the stage. Except that she couldn’t; she was too heavy for her.

“CUT!” sighed the director…

The cast and crew nursed cups of hot tea and coffee. “I suggest,” said the director, “that we leave the fight in the pantomime horse scene for now. I’ll find a stunt double for Zoe.”

Christine failed to conceal her smirk. Or perhaps she wasn’t trying to conceal it.

On the bus home, Zoe pulled out her mobile phone and called up Google Maps. Then she got off the bus two stops before her normal one and hurried round the corner to the Fitness Hub, a big glass-fronted place on the ground floor of one of the new apartment blocks that had sprung up all over the town centre in the past decade. Lycra-clad ladies stretched themselves out on mats or pounded lightly on treadmills. There was something that looked like a yummy mummies’ Pilates class going on in the far corner.

Zoe hesitated at the door, then about turned and took the second on the right, a street where they hadn’t yet knocked down the terrace of gardenless houses that fronted directly onto the pavement. Charlie Drake's Gym was at the very end of the row, at the junction with Albion Street.

Zoe shoved open the wooden door; its cracked red paint shed a few more flakes onto the pavement. Inside, she could hear the slightly uneven thump-thump-thump of a punchbag being pounded, the skiff-skiff-skiff of a skipping rope. The place was almost empty. Now that the shipyard had closed, most of the patrons had time enough on their hands to come during the day.

The mingled smell of sweat and dust, the last of the day’s sun shining unevenly through grubby high windows, dark wooden boards polished by decades of canvas plimsols and heavy boots. Somehow, it put Zoe in mind of family visits to Grandpa Halden on the Holderness Road in Hull, years ago.

“Yes?” said Sid Bulling. Old Charlie Drake had been pounding the punchbags in heaven a good couple of decades now, that is if he hadn’t been sent straight to the Other Place.

Sid had been about to nip outside, an unlit roll-up between his thumb and forefinger. His dark trackie bottoms sagged; a large black towel was tied around his middle and a string vest completed the assemblage. Zoe didn’t think men wore string vests any more.

“Please, how much does it cost to join?”

“Well, it’s two hundred bob for a single session … Don’t it sound a lot when you say it in old money? Tenner. And ten sessions for the price of eight, that’s right, innit Hugh?

“Yeah. Eighty quid. You get the use of all the weights, all the gear, the punchbags. Even use the mitts if we’ve got any that’ll fit yer,” said Hugh Jones glancing down at Zoe’s slender wrists.

“Might want to bring your own anyway,” interjected Sid Bulling. “Some of the kids here ain’t too hot in the personal hygiene department. But are you sure … wouldn’t you be more at home in the Fitness Hub? Don’t have girl’s weights here. Start at 40 pounds, and they go up in twenties. No other women to train with…”

“I want to build up some upper-body strength quickly … in about six months, maybe less. I thought, maybe, this place would be right for that.”

“We did have one lady member, once,” said Hugh. “Rita. Good on the old weights, and the punchbag, she was.”

“Lady! That was debatable.”

“Woman.”

“That was debatable too…”

“I’d like to meet this …Rita. Perhaps she’d have a few tips for me.”

“You’ll have to go to Holloway for that these days.”

“I heard she got a transfer to the Scrubs.”

“Let me try your smallest weight.”

Zoe slapped her hands together and gripped the bar of the 20-kilo weight, of the 40-pounder as Sid insisted on calling it. She straightened her legs, then slowly brought the weight up to hip height. Then, wrists trembling she brought it up to her chin. Her arms felt like jelly as she straightened them, pushing the weight upwards; the tremble became almost a spasm. She held the weight above her head for a split second, then let the weight fall with a thump onto the thick grey mat.

“Tell yer what,” said Sid. “Why don’t you try a couple of sessions for free, like? Then if you think it’s working out, sign up for a full session.” Having such a fit bird – so to speak - working out in Old Charlie Drake’s would be good for business, he reckoned.

To be continued in part 2 tomorrow