Whitethorn Woods Read online

  She was treating me like a real person with views, not someone who would crimp her hair. But I had to be sure that she was the one before I pulled every tuft of her flat, greasy hair out by the roots.

  ‘Yes, I am interested in words, I was just thinking about the word bandbox this morning. Do you know where that came from?’

  ‘Well, oddly I do, I looked it up once: a bandbox was a light box that held bands, like hairbands, I suppose, caps, millinery, that sort of thing.’

  ‘Does it now?’ I was actually interested. Imagine her knowing that! And why should a bandbox be so fresh and clean? But enough speculation. Back to work.

  ‘What do you think you’d like done?’

  ‘I don’t really know, Pandora, I’m not much good about hair, I have to work so very hard, you see. We are flat out all the time. So this is a real excitement for me; I called in a sickie this morning, I can’t go in tomorrow with a new hairdo or they’d suspect and then on Saturday I’m off for my wicked weekend with a colleague.’

  ‘Where do you work?’ I asked her. I could hear the words booming, resounding, echoing in my head.

  Please may she not say Ian’s company.

  She said Ian’s company.

  My hands were on her shoulders. I could have raised them and put them around her neck and choked her until she was dead. She wouldn’t have been expecting it, you see, so it would have worked. She could be lying dead in the chair now.

  But I resisted it. There would have been too many repercussions.

  Instead I talked about hair.

  ‘You wear it fairly flattish,’ I said, amazed that I could function at all.

  ‘Yes. Do you think I should have it higher, and maybe some more shape? What do you suggest?’ She didn’t want to know what I would have suggested.

  I thought of my Ian running his hands through this woman’s horrible limp hair, telling Brenda she was beautiful as he so often told Vi she was beautiful. It was almost too much to bear.

  ‘It’s quite stylish the way it is,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘But let me ask Fabian, he always knows.’

  I tottered on unsteady legs to Fabian.

  ‘New lady just loves her hair the way it is, think she could be a regular, can you come and tell her she looks fine.’

  He peered across the salon.

  ‘She looks ludicrous,’ he said.

  ‘Fabian, you asked us to use our initiative to second-guess people, I’m doing that and suddenly now it’s wrong.’ I looked offended.

  ‘No, you’re right.’

  He glided over and touched her head in that way he does. ‘Ms Desmond, Pandora, who is one of our most esteemed stylists here, asked me to give my opinion. I think the classic style you have chosen is perfect for your face, complements your features and I feel that all you need is a little, tiny trim.’

  ‘You think it’s nice?’ she asked foolishly and the great Fabian closed his eyes as if to say it was almost too nice to describe. It also prevented him from having to lie to her face.

  ‘Lucinda,’ I called to a junior. ‘Take my lady and give her a very good, thorough shampoo,’ I called. I hissed to Lucinda – who in real life was called Brid – to beat her head on the basin and get lots of soap in her eyes. The child not unnaturally wondered why.

  ‘Because she’s an evil tramp and is sleeping with my best friend’s husband,’ I hissed.

  Brid-Lucinda obliged. Brenda Desmond was brought limping, near blinded and aching back to my station. Brid-Lucinda had kicked her for good measure, pretending to fall over her feet. I put the greasiest gel I could find into her already greasy hair and dried it until it looked like rats’ tails on either side of her head. I cut it so that it ended up wispy and uneven. When any of the others looked over at it, I shrugged as if to ask, what could I do when these were the instructions I got.

  When I had finished and made her as awful as I could, she looked at herself doubtfully in the mirror.

  ‘This is classical, you say?’

  ‘Oh very, Brenda, he’ll love it.’

  ‘I do hope so, he’s very stylish, you know. What with being French and everything.’

  ‘He’s French?’

  ‘Yes, didn’t I say, they sent him over from the Paris office! Imagine! And yet he does seem to fancy me …’ She looked childishly delighted.

  I looked at her in horror.

  ‘Do you know Ian in your office?’ I said suddenly.

  ‘Ian? Ian Benson? Of course I do. He’s a great guy, Ian. How do you know him?’

  ‘I know him,’ I said glumly.

  ‘He’s married to Vi, he’s always talking about her.’

  ‘What does he say about her?’

  I was so wretched now that I nearly threw myself on the ground and held her around the knees, sobbing out my apologies for making her look like a madwoman.

  ‘Oh everything, he was hoping to take her away this weekend and then they sent him on a conference. It’s an honour and everything but he said he’d have preferred to take Vi to this place with a lake and they could have watched the new moon. And made a wish.’

  ‘What do you think he’s wishing for?’

  ‘He didn’t say but I think he might have been thinking they’d have a baby sometime soon. And that he would get Vi a salon much nearer home. He’s been doing endless overtime recently. He’s definitely saving for something …’

  And then she was gone, out there with her horrible hairstyle, about to make a total mess of her weekend with the sophisticated Parisian man.

  I think they told me that my eleven-thirty was in but I didn’t hear. Like I haven’t really been hearing much of anything lately.

  You’re meant to give something to charity if St Ann grants your request. But she didn’t really, did she? I mean, Ian had never stopped loving me at all so we were praying for something that had already been granted. But on the other hand, it had all turned out the way we wanted.

  Oh, go on.

  It’s only money for handicapped children.

  It’s not the end of life as it had been five minutes ago.

  Part 2 – Bruiser’s Business

  My real name is George. Not that anyone would know it. I have been called Bruiser since I was two. And in the salon I’m called Fabian.

  So when anyone calls out ‘George Brewster’, like at an airport if I am on standby and they are reading my passport, I take ages to answer. Then I leap up guiltily as if I am travelling on forged documents.

  At our school, the Brothers in Rossmore, everyone had nicknames and sadly they heard my mum calling me Bruiser so that was that. I wasn’t colossal or anything but I was a sturdy thick-set boy, I suppose, so they leaped on that name. In a way it wasn’t a bad name to be called. New people I met thought that I had some terrific reputation with my fists and so they kept away from me which was a relief.

  I was ten when my mate Hobbit told me that my dad was running around. I was so stupid I thought he actually meant running around, you know, like in circles or up and down the road jogging. But he didn’t, he meant going after the ladies. He said he had seen my dad in a car with this blonde one who was much, much younger and they were going at it like knives.

  I didn’t believe Hobbit and I hit him. Hobbit was annoyed.

  ‘I only told you so that you’d be ready for it,’ he complained, rubbing his shoulder where I had thumped him. ‘I actually don’t care if your dad runs from here to Timbuktu.’

  So I gave him two KitKats from my lunchbox as a consolation and everything was all right.

  I always had a terrific lunchbox because my mum knew I loved chocolate and peanut butter sandwiches. Poor Hobbit had awful things like apples and celery and cheese and bits of very dull chicken.

  Shortly afterwards my mum discovered that Dad was running up and down or whatever I called it in those days and everything changed.

  ‘It’s all our fault, Bruiser,’ she told me. ‘We are not attractive people, we haven’t been able to hold your father’s attenti
on and interest. Everything must change.’ And everything did.

  First, she kept dragging me up to St Ann’s Well to discuss the matter with a statue.

  Then I got horrible lunchboxes, worse than Hobbit’s, then I had to jog four bus stops every morning before catching the bus. After school I went to the gym with my mum. It was very expensive so we both had to work there in order to be allowed to use the machinery. She used to man the reception desk for two hours and I went round picking up towels.

  I actually liked it, I liked talking to the people there, they told me their stories, and why they were there. There was a fellow who had hoped to meet birds but hadn’t met many, there was a man who had had a heart scare and a woman who wanted to look well for a wedding, and a singer who had seen a video of herself and said that her backside was the size of a mountain, which it more or less was.

  Because I really was interested in their stories they talked more and they told the people who ran the gym that I was a great asset. And though I wasn’t really meant to be working there at all, what with being way under age, they gave me more hours. They were afraid to give me money because of the law but they bought me nice things like a good brand-new school blazer from the shop and a camera and it was great.

  My mum lost a lot of weight and apparently Dad stopped running all over the place and said that no one should ever underestimate the power of St Ann and a healthy diet. And everything was fine again at home.

  It was fine at school too because I had got a lot fitter and when we were thirteen and I went to the disco, Hobbit said that most of the babes there thought I was a fine thing. Which was terrific for me but not for Hobbit.

  Neither Hobbit nor I knew what to do as a job, a career, whatever. My dad was a sales executive for electric goods and I sure as hell didn’t want to do that. Hobbit’s dad and mum ran a corner shop and he hated even the thought of working in it. My mum worked full time in the gym now, she had done a course and she taught aerobics there. But none of that made it any easier for Hobbit and myself to know what we would do. Even Miss King, the careers teacher who came to the school as a consultant, seemed hard pushed to advise us.

  She said to me that I was interested in people, I should take that into account. I told her straight out I wouldn’t be a social worker, I’d hate it. No, she didn’t mean that, she said. Nor teaching. I couldn’t stand teaching. She nodded sympathetically. She was always nice, Miss King was.

  ‘Some job where you’d be talking to people and making them feel good?’ she suggested.

  ‘A gigolo?’ I wondered. I just wanted to tell Hobbit that I’d said it.

  ‘Yes, that sort of thing, certainly that’s the area where we should be looking,’ she said agreeably.

  So I didn’t tell Hobbit about it after all. Then amazingly Hobbit said that we might do hairdressing, there were loads of babes at the classes in college and we’d be stroking women’s heads and all kinds of things all day in the salon.

  ‘Hairdressing?’ I said.

  ‘We’ve got to do something,’ Hobbit said reasonably.

  Nobody liked the idea except Hobbit and myself. My mum said I could have done something more intellectual, my dad said it wasn’t for real men. Hobbit’s parents said they wouldn’t be able to hold their heads up again in the corner shop.

  It wasn’t bad at all as it turned out. Hobbit got a job at a ritzy salon where he was called Merlin.

  Merlin!

  I had to remember that when I went in to see him or called him on the phone.

  I got a place in a family-style salon way out in the suburbs of Rossmore called the Milady Salon. I liked the owner, Mr Dixon. We all called him Mr Dixon, even people who had been there twenty years.

  It was a very middle-aged, middle-class, once-weekly shampoo-and-blow-dry brigade, and a nervous request for a cut, which they called a trim, once every six weeks, discreet colour twice a year. Nothing innovative, no experiments, no chance to show off any style. But basically good people who wanted to look better.

  Their eyes seemed big with anxiety as they looked in the mirror. Every hairdo was some kind of dream. A woman might be giving a dinner party, or another might be going to an extravaganza on ice, or to an old girls’ reunion. A lot of them were very lacking in self-confidence, which was why they never tried anything new. Sometimes I noticed that they didn’t really look all that much better when they left the salon but they felt better and so they walked straighter with more purpose and half smiled at their reflection in the shop window rather than scuttling past it as they had done on the way in.

  It had been a bit like that with my own mum.

  She didn’t look hugely changed after her first weight loss at the gym. She just had more confidence, that was all. She felt better about herself and she didn’t bite the head off Dad and ask him where he had been and accuse him of ignoring her. She was just a nicer person to live with and so he was nicer to her. It was as simple as that.

  And that’s just the way these women at the salon felt too.

  I think they liked me, they gave me nice tips, they loved my name, Bruiser. They asked about my family and my holidays and if I had a girlfriend. A good fifty per cent of them said I should settle down and the other half said I should take my time. Some of them said I could do worse than visit St Ann’s Well, that she was the last word on matters of the heart.

  I was taking my time as it happened. Hobbit and I would go out clubbing but we only met awful screeching girls, not settling down material at all. Hobbit, now that he was called Merlin, was full of confidence and ambition. He said to me that I would end up an old man who only knew how to do tightly permed grey heads unless I moved. We needed to branch out, go somewhere that there might be a bit of action, where we might win competitions.

  In my head I knew he was right but I hated leaving Mr Dixon and the Milady Salon. It seemed like a betrayal. Mr Dixon said he had five really difficult clients who just loved me. Could I see it in my heart to come in once a month? Merlin said I was raving mad to make a lash for my back like this, but I couldn’t not. Mr Dixon had taught me everything and paid me well, and I don’t think it’s right to walk over people who helped you.

  So anyway Merlin and I put our savings together and opened our own salon. Rossmore had certainly changed over the years. New affluence meant people had to have the best. There was a young and apparently endless line of clients with money. Girls with tigerish manes, girls with close-cropped, plum-coloured hair, ladies with such heavy frosting that no one could guess at the original colour.

  They were leggy and languid and came to the salon twice a week. I marvelled at their wealth and their interest in their hair. It made Milady’s seem light years away.

  Naturally, my name was changed as well. I was Fabian now. And though Merlin laughed at me for going back to Milady’s on the last Friday of every month, I think he half admired me for it as well. Mr Dixon smiled at me as if I were his long-lost son who had come back to the family farm.

  They still called me Bruiser there and admired my own very different hairstyle and smart waistcoats. I told them that people were totally mad in the zany salon in Rossmore and liked us all to dress up. They loved hearing these stories and felt safe in their own place. I had more confidence nowadays and so I suggested a little adventure for some of them. Mr Dixon even accepted some of my ideas about slightly more up-to-date decor.

  They all asked me about my love life and I told them truthfully that I had been working too hard to find anyone to love. Better not wait too long, they advised, and I nodded gravely.

  What I didn’t tell them in Milady’s was that everyone in the zany place, everyone except Merlin, that is, thought I was gay. Now I had no problems with this, in very many ways it actually worked to my advantage. Women confide in gay men more, as if they were somehow the best of both worlds. Not predatory and about to pounce, not thick and male and wordless; like a girlfriend, really, but not in competition.

  It didn’t do me any harm; in fact i
t did me a lot of good. The clients seemed to like it; it helped them to confide in me. They confided. Boy, did they confide. Like that amazing girl Hazel who told me about all her one-night stands and how lonely and used she would feel afterwards. She would never have told me if she had thought me to be a hetero male and possibly a contender.

  I did my best for her by toning down her extremely tarty image and making her look somehow more dignified. I suggested a more classy look, and less in the way of bare midriffs. She told me that it was working a treat.

  And there was Mary Lou who couldn’t get her fellow to commit. He was very happy with her but he wouldn’t let her move her things in. And of course no mention of a ring or anything. I said I thought she should be more independent and go on a holiday with girlfriends. No, definitely not a sun, sex, sleeping-with-the-waiters holiday, on the contrary a cultural kind of thing. She was very doubtful but of course it paid off. He was very worried when she looked as if she could survive without him.

  So there I was as happy as anything. I was beginning to fancy a beautiful girl called Lara, a designer who came to have her hair done regularly. All the time I went back to Milady’s to Mr Dixon, who had after all started me off in the business. Sometimes I brought him a fancy mirror, a turbo hairdryer or a bale of new towels as a gift but I always took my wages from him even though I didn’t need them.

  Mr Dixon was the old school. You wouldn’t want to offend him.

  He had come to visit me in our salon once and he took in the whole scene. He said to me later that I was a good lad, the best he ever had, and that he didn’t care about my personal habits; it was up to me. My personal life, so to speak.

  And I just couldn’t explain it all. It was too complicated. Mr Dixon died shortly afterwards and he left me the salon.

  I couldn’t believe it. But he had no close relations and he didn’t want his life’s work wound up and sold off to someone who would open a fast-food outlet on the premises.

  I had no idea what to do with the place, it was ludicrously old-fashioned and losing money but I knew it had to be kept on as a salon. And I didn’t want to dispossess all the old ladies who had been going there for years, by turning it into a proper Fabian salon with all that that involved. Anyway I wasn’t giving it much thought at that time. I had other things on my mind.