The end of the affair?

Posted on November 6, 2011 by Myras_Kitchen No Comments

It’s been a funny old ride, the Upstairs-Downstairs symbiosis between the McQueens and the Costellos.  This merger of the Premiership with the  Johnstone’s Paint Trophy started near enough a year ago, when Mercedes popped into The Dog for a snifter to help her get over recently-deceased Mal, and ended up accidentally engaged to 19 year old nice-but-dim footie player Riley.  Strangely, this was no obstacle to her allowing his beady-eyed roaming-handed Dad to grope her in the storeroom, in what was neither of their finest hours.  Meanwhile, down at the junior end of the family, Bart and Jasmine took shine to each other, a sweet love doomed mainly by the fact that Jasmine wanted to be Jason, and Bart wasn’t gay.  Other than that, it was all ticketty boo.  For Mercy and Riley, it was supposed to end in marital bliss.  Instead, this week, the McStello coalition finally ended up where the ConDems will probably be in a coupla years time.  DIVORCE.

Mercy’s never been the most happy-go-lucky character, but even by her standards, the last couple of weeks have been a shocker.  She started her dream wedding as an angel wrapped up in a princess, and ended it as a slut wrapped up in a harlot.    There were revelations aplenty, and none of them came from Mitzeee’s bargain bin biog.   “I’ve bin avin an affur … wiv yer Dad!” she yelled, in front of the whole congregation, and then retreated to the bedroom to give Riley’s achey-breaky heart an extra kicking by admitting that her ludicrously enormous bump was of non-specific Costello origin.  Meanwhile downstairs, Jason and Bart squared up to each other, tense on hormones and sexual confusion, as the reception descended into full-scale interfamilial class warfare.  But the special almond frosting on the wedding cake was Grandad Blissett.  There’s a point in most weddings where Grandad does something that raises eyebrows, but Silas couldn’t just have a couple too many sherries and dance to Steps, could he, oh dear me, no.   He kidnapped the bride-the-size-of-a-whale and had her chained and hogtied in a handy dungeon before you could raise your glasses to the unhappy couple.

Couple of weeks he kept her there, still in her capacious bridal gown, with only a bucket for her business, and Rizzo the Rat to lighten the mood.  Silas’s conversation sure wasn’t doing much to cheer her up, specially the bit where he revealed he was a serial killer and she was next.  Thing was, his evil plan didn’t quite work out.  After accidentally strangling his own daughter (an easy mistake to make), he took to rocking backwards and forwards, sniffing his best black leather murder gloves and ripping dialogue straight out of the Old Testament.  “She was a Jezebel, like you,” he pondered, waving a knife around and reflecting less than fondly on his dead wife.  “We made our vows in the sight of God, but even he couldn’t save her in the end.”  He can’t have got to the next testament then, the one about forgiveness.  Shame.  Unluckily for Silas, Old Testament women can be tough old birds.  Mercy took a leaf out of Judith’s book (she cut her tormentor’s head right off, a nasty business) by taking a hefty slash at him with a bit of broken plate, but if her spirit was willing, her flesh, fed mainly on cold baked beans, was weak.  She was back in chains before you knew it and reverting to the only weapon she had left; she gave Silas a tongue-lashing.  “I might be a slapper, but what does that make your daughter?” she asked, curling her lip.  “I’ve slept with a fair few fellas an that, but I have never stooped as low as Gaz.”  Touche.  In response, Silas wearily pulled on his second best latex gloves, and reached for the rope, but the fun seemed to have gone out of it.  The next we saw him, he had Mercedes’s engagement ring clutched in his murderous palm.  It really wasn’t looking good.

As she lay, possibly dead as a doornail, surrounded by the contents of the IKEA tea light department, her loving family were strangely unconcerned.  In fact, while the murder shockwaves were being felt around the village, the McQueens were testing the floorboards of the front room with a Wii-Fit Zumba workout.  Except Jacqui, Jacq don’t zumba.  She had the grace to look appalled.  “Hello, Britain’s clearly got no talent,” she sang acidly into the phone, as she picked up the call.   And the news broke that Mercedes hadn’t buggered off to Dubai, after all, to enjoy her solitary honeymoon.   She was missing.  Silas knew where she was.  But he wasn’t saying.

For a while, as they beat on the windows of the police car that took him away, we feared Silas might feel the wrath of McQueen vigilante justice.  Jacqui threatened to kill him with her bare hands.  “Can’t you just beat it out of im?” she asked DI BustyBlonde.  We had visions of the massed McQueens hunting Silas down through the woods with flaming brands and pitchforks, like those angry mobs on the Simpsons.  It would have made spiffing, if not very moral TV.   But you can see why they might be a bit sceptical about the official police investigation.  After all, Lynsey had been screaming at Ethan for months that it was Silas, and they never even bothered to run a few basic checks.  And down at the Dee Valley Copshop (non-ironic motto over the desk: “Making a Safer Community”), their current interrogation methods consisted largely of shouting “WHERE IS SHE?” while waving a picture of Mercy in front of Silas’s unconcerned face.  “Do you really want Mercedes to die?” Lynsey pleaded with him.  Silas pondered this.  “Umm, let me think … Yes!”  She was a cheating, lying slut, you see, and he wasn’t too keen on the baby, with its list of potential fathers as long as your arm, either.

Eventually, he cracked at the reminder of his beloved Heidi’s indiscretions with ball-bag Gaz, as we all might.  “She’s in the gutter, where she belongs!” he snarled, “right under your noses!”  This somehow computed itself in Riley’s head to the cellar of the pub, the one with the trap door that leads to the dungeon.  You know, the one they’d all forgotten about where Lee and Leanne took everyone for a spectacularly unsuccessful ghost tour a few months back.   Ironic, that.  Probably be a lot more successful those ghost tours now, since the landlady got murdered.  Lee never did have very good timing.

But by the time they reached her, something was afoot.  Or a head, two hands, and two feet, but definitely a head first.  “Thuh baybeh’s coomin!” she yelled, moaning, in a strangely convincing way, like a heifer that’s long past its appointment in the milking parlour.  Less convincing was Riley recognising that the head was crowning, but maybe it looked like a football, and he was drawn naturally towards it.  There was something strangely touching about Mercy, still in her wedding gown (Grecian-style, empire line, diamante straps, stain-resistant, in case you’re interested), popping out the next generation in the presence of both potential Dads.  It was a boy, apparently.  It was also at least 12 pounds, by the look of him, 2 months old, and very clean, but there was no denying he was a cutie.

Like all good soap babies, he developed non-specific breathing difficulties, and had to be rushed to the hossie, where the clans McQueen and Costello assembled.  Carmel prayed.  “Is she on the hotline to God again?” Jacqui asked.  “Bet he’s sick to death of hearing from our family.”  Theresa was nice to Seth.  Everyone was horrible to Carl (except Carmel).  Inside, Riley stayed long enough to be sure the baybeh was OK.   Then he did something he probably should have done a while back.  He dumped the McQueens.  “This is my family now,” he said, flanked by Seth and Jason like Cowley by Bodie and Doyle.  And to their amazement, walked out.  Outside, Jason, his family in shreds, fell into the arms of Bart.  They clung on to each other for a moment, and then they let go too.  Tragic, really.  Maybe that’s where the real love was, all along.  I may have had something in my eye.

So is it decree absolute time for the marriage from hell?  Will Riley really walk away and take comfort in Mitzeee’s dimples and very slightly incestuous charms?  Does it really all come down to who gets custody of the 50 inch plasma screen TV Myra bought on Riley’s credit card?  We find it hard to believe it can be so simple.  After all, few escape from a McQueen liaison unmarked, as Russ, Mal, Father Francis, Craig, Father Kieron, Tony, Calvin and probably others have all found to their cost.

There’s one big obstacle to this separation, as far as we can see.  Currently nameless Baby McQueen-Costello, the stubbornly breathing evidence of their unholy alliance.  If Mercy’s magic vag has lost its pull, her umbilical cord has come to the rescue.  Costellos, consider yourselves McQueened.