Gooseberries: How EastEnders Saved Our Marriage (Again)
By Stephanie Kaye
EastEnders is never better than during its half-hour riveting duets. Well, we finally had our own. We were going at it hammer and tongs, or is that tongues? Granted, it was quite a bit longer than the usual tidy half-hour, but surely the fine editors at East could have pulled out enough cinematic moments to rival Den and Ange's proper old flap, the Dot and Ethel reminiscences, or the Steve and Matthew psychological thriller. In the end it was a tear-jerker a la Bianca's good-bye to Ricky. We decided to split up. "Ba-dum-bum-bum."
The next episode was expectedly dull by comparison. It lasted about five months, and we were decidedly between juicy plot lines. Natalie and Barry are moving back home, Sonia's Italian beau dumped her, Pat and Roy are in money trouble again... ho hum. We lived apart but not much had changed; we still watched EastEnders together. Sometimes we even kipped down together after. Just like those episodes when you kind of wish something big would happen, but it's all so cosy nonetheless.
EastEnders understands that a good plot line, like life, or even plonk, takes time to mature. Eventually he had a girlfriend, I had a boyfriend. Sometimes you've got to introduce new characters. His lived in a foreign country, and mine was a Yugoslavian fashion designer that even I couldn't take seriously.
I think we even mentioned the D word, but really we were all talk and no trousers. But word got round that the foreign girl had moved to the New York set. His apartment. Well I couldn't give a monkey's, and a cheeky monkey she was. Just your run-o-the mill Dolly little barmaid.
The gooseberry forever destined for third place in the triangle. Like poor little Lisa, first Matthew's dad and now Phil. The Slav started giving me clothes and shaved his head like Grant. The audience slowly started to warm up to the new characters. If it did work out with these new characters, maybe we would be like Pat and Roy and Frank and Peggy. We could all buy a pub somewhere. And watch EastEnders.
But the Slav started asking questions, like, Why can't I see you on Wednesday nights? At first I felt it was the deepest kind of betrayal to the husband to say the word "EastEnders" aloud to the boyfriend. So I said I was watching "my" TV show. But when the foreign girl moved into my husband's apartment I immediately called the Slav to tell him "my" TV show was "EASTENDERS." I yelled it into the phone three times. "Ba-dum-bum-bum."
It was Wednesday. The Slav wouldn't leave it alone. Why can't I watch it with you? If you like it that much I'm sure I would too. I gave him the usual reply. You won't like it. You won't get it. And most importantly, I don't trust anybody who doesn't know who Reg Cox is. "Who?" he said. "Exactly my point." I replied.
It was twenty minutes to showtime. I'd called Lenny five times. No answer. He must have had a terrible accident. Did that foreign girl push him down the stairs? (Or a better plot line...he pushes her down the stairs because he slept with her mother; or even better better: did Frank run him over in the street?) I decide to call hospitals after I set the VCR to tape. Ten minutes to showtime. Tape rolling. Five minutes. Phone rings.
"Honey? I can't make it over for East. Could you tape it for me?"
"La-la-la-la-la la-la... anyone can fall in love." The image of the Thames like a dark serpent inking its way across London. Phil on a drunk in Paris. Cath is becoming a bit stroppy, as was I, going spare. This was the ultimate betrayal, on a par with sleeping with the wife's mother. Now I know how Tiff felt. But did she know how I feel?
At least Grant kept it all in the family, but this one of mine has to go larking about with the foreign girl's mum (who incidentally happens to be my age), so you do the math, How old is the foreign girl? Not that there's anything wrong with that. This was my internal soliloquy, all thoughts easily read on the final five-second close-up of any EastEnders face. The phone was still in my hand.
"Honey, are you there?" Lenny sounded as scary as Steve.
"Did you ever sleep with MY mother?"
"No..." I heard snivelling, swallowed laughter.
"Don't you dare laugh at my mother because she's old."
"Honey, I think you're mixing fiction with reality."
"Life imitates art. Sooo, you jammy toerag, you proxy prat, you just made me the gooseberry!"
"The goose-what?"
"Look it up in the How to speak EastEnders. Oh, too bad I'll be taking our copy with me to the Slav's." I put the phone down on the bed while I dressed up like a dog's dinner. He kept yelling gibberish from the receiver. He sounded like one of Phil's drunken rambles. I had to turn up the volume on the telly. Then I picked up the phone to hang it up.
"Honey, have you gone spare?" I heard him ask.
"Yes, I guess I have, as in spare tyre, spare fat around the waistline, anything that's left over from the two main parts. And I'm not bleaching your y-fronts anymore. So just NAFF OFF!"
I ran outside in the street, shaking and in high heels and nearly got run over by a cab. That would be my luck, dying in the street before I make it to the Slavic Beppe. When I got there the second episode was on. Phil was still drunk. The Slav was deeply engaged in sewing ribbon flowers on a mustard silk charmeuse corset. I turned up the volume on the telly. He must be made to understand that there can be no multitasking during EastEnders. Cardinal rule. After a silent 15 minutes of him watching me watch it...."Ba-dum-dum-bum."
"I don't get it," he said. "As far as I can tell it's a bunch of unattractive people with boring problems in cheap ill-fitting clothes, all improperly accessorised with cheap jewels. Pat has got to quit wearing those candelabra earrings, and those gaudy prints. And I beg them to shave off that little caterpillar where the Christian girl's eyebrows should be."
"But what about the brilliant dialogue, and the superb acting?"
"How should I know? I speak Slav, I barely speak American English, how could I understand cockney?"
And how could they ever understand you, I fumed. Even Simon didn't sit around sewing poxy flowers on ladies' dainties.
"Just one more question. Take your time. Do you like Sex and the City?"
The usually darkly tempered Slav was moved to glee. "Those impeccably dressed beautiful women sporting the latest Fendi bag to their glamorous careers and posh dinner joints. There's a new love affair every episode, so you can't get bored."
Bored. He said Bored. Meaning EastEnders BORED him! Too speechless to speak, I threw one Manolo Blahnik pump at the telly, and another at his bald head. I saw them later being hawked on eBay. I rushed back into the street, shoeless. Ha-ha: I still had my keys to Lenny's place.
I knew I'd gone off my trolley, sobbing and moaning on a public street corner. Screaming when I realised I left my bag at his house and had no cab money.
Nonetheless, a weird coloured cab drove up. Ali's Cab Service. Nobody ever really leaves the show. A familiar face spoke to me through the rear-view mirror. "I know where you need to go." Fade out. "Ba-dum-bum-bum-bum...."
For a show of whatever power I still maintained, I did not knock. I opened his door with my key. He was playing his guitar in the front room. He looked different, though I didn't know why. She was probably hiding in the bathroom.
"You look a little peaky," he said.
"I desperately have to pee." I said, sure I would find the spoiled little cow in the loo. That's where all the great girl-rows happen. All I found was the EastEnders mug sporting one lone toothbrush and some foreign toothpaste.
"You have no shoes," he said. We laughed. No one else could have known I had a long-time-ago, way-underground hit song with that title. It was even before Reg Cox. "And what was all that nonsense about sleeping with your mother?" Lenny gave me the Frank ("Darling, what the hell are you talking about") Butcher look.
I think we would need Dr Legg to unravel that psychology... Dot at the very least.
I could hear through the clear haze of Dot's cigarettes: "Okay, Leonard, you didn't sleep with anyone's mother. But it does happen, and in her state of irrational jealousy, it is easy to see why she could be hurt if you didn't sleep with her mother as well." Thank you Dot for sorting that one out.
"Where is she, anyway?"
"Gone."
I was dying to know the sordid details but I missed that episode.
"Gone where?"
"Forever for now, unless of course, they decide to write her in again."
"Yeah, like they did with Sam." She only lasted long enough for a short affair with the handsome, dark and barely bearded one, Beppe, who these days is obviously returning to his original child bride.
When I looked again at Lenny's face, I knew what was different. He had grown Beppe facial hair. Wasn't he just looking Jack the lad. Ooo-la-la.
"Did you tape East?" he asked. I nodded my head smiling like the cat who just ate the gooseberry.
"Then we're off to yours."
The night was dark, but I could still see the sun shining out of his jacksie as we held hands. Over the moon.
I feel this plot line running smooth, sweet and dependable. Arthur and Pauline. I just gotta keep him outta the Nick.
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