Trouble & Strife Read online

  Only, with the exposure comes the bleedin’ exposure, don’t it? My version of that night—all the fun of the fair, I don’t think—started to crumble. Next thing, some bloke’s come round from the Guardian Weekend, asking for my story—full-page, colour photo—and I tried to put the brakes on. He pressed harder. So I thought it over and then I goes: one condition. If I can name the salon and put a link to the website, you are on, my son. He give me this funny look, like he didn’t get his wedge.

  Thing is, though, the day he arrived on my doorstep with his budget highlights and his mini-recorder, turns out he’d done some homework. ‘You weren’t the only victim,’ he goes. ‘Were you?’

  ‘Right, right, right,’ I came back with, thinking on my feet. It’s always been a talent of mine. ‘Ohhhhhh, you’ve seen that garbled mess that local rag printed up, have you? I was mortified! It made it sound like I was all me me and not a care for the other one.’

  I took a drag of my fag, held it and then trickled it out, planning what to say to get him back on my side again. Face on him, just because I was smoking, but it’s my salon and we were in my office so he had to lump it. It would have done him a power to take up the sticks himself. Shift a few pounds off him. Anyway, after my bit of thinking time, I carried on. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I did think I was the target of a trap. At first. That’s what I thought when I woke up in the hospital. Course it was, what else? I was out cold, see? Turns out though, that my date—never even knew his name!—was in another ward hooked up to machines in an even worse state than me. Now, why would that bit from the locals lop off half the story like she did? I phoned up and asked but they wouldn’t tell me. You’re a journalist. What was that all about then?’

  He shrugged, but I could tell he wanted to defend the honour of the press.

  ‘We do sometimes select a few key facts,’ he said. ‘And it can sometimes seem as if the truth’s been twisted.’

  ‘But not this time, eh?’ I said. ‘You’ll print my story. My voice. No messing?’

  ‘That’s what our readers expect from the column,’ he said. ‘The straight gen.’

  ‘Well, the straight gen about that night at the fair is this—I pieced it together from what the police were saying when they questioned me—and it wasn’t a honey trap set for me at all! Someone who didn’t…approve of us kissing slammed into my date and knocked him down on the ground. He bashed his head on the…what do you call it? The thingy that the tow-bar drops onto? Sticking out the back of the trailer? Sticking up? He fell on it. And when he was on the ground…’ I stopped.

  ‘What?’

  ‘He got kicked. In the head. In the kidneys. All over.’

  ‘You didn’t?’

  ‘Get kicked? Worst that happened to me was my head smashing into the corner of the van. Reinforced, it was. Knocked out cold. I came round in the HDU the next day. Concussion. I couldn’t remember a thing. As soon as I was on my feet again, the cops asked and asked and asked. But I couldn’t tell them anything. We went round the back of the van, we kissed, I got knocked out, he got done over. I couldn’t remember a face or a voice or anything. I said to them to polygraph me but they don’t do that in real life,’ I said. ‘At least not back then. I didn’t know that, did you?’

  ‘Did you see him again afterwards?’ he asked me. ‘The other…boy, I suppose. You were seventeen, weren’t you?’

  ‘I never did. I wasn’t out. He more’n likely wasn’t out. My mum and dad would hardly let me over the door after. They’d never had the police round the house. Never had their names in the papers. I went along with what they said. I just wanted it all to be over.’

  ‘But you’re speaking up now,’ he goes. ‘All these years on.’

  ‘All these years on,’ I agreed. I felt a flare of panic, like heartburn, but I ignored it and plastered a smile on. ‘My head’s up, my shoulders are back. My business is booming. You did say I could mention the salon, didn’t you?’

  When it came out, Saturday Guardian weekend section, I got it mounted and framed, hung it up in reception. Long-time clients who thought they knew me would read it and then look at me with basset eyes.

  So business boomed a bit more. I spoke to a Rotary about homophobia. I signed T-shirts for Pride Week and threw them off a low-loader. I got asked to donate to the homeless at Christmas and the refugees at Eid.

  When I got the email asking if I’d offer ‘something unique’ for Cancer Awareness, I deleted it without reading to the end. You can only do so much. I don’t know if the sort that had the brass neck to doorstep me at work was the same one that sent it because she never mentioned anything about an email and I could hardly admit to getting it, could I? Just like I could hardly say no when the bint asked me right there at reception in front of Amanda.

  ‘I’d be honoured,’ I said. ‘Cancer, is it? It’s an honour is what it is.’

  ‘A gala dinner and live auction,’ she said.

  ‘So…I’d donate like a voucher? Or products?’ I was guessing. And I was guessing wrong.

  She goes: ‘We wondered if you would be willing to offer an experience.’ I’m thinking she’s a bold one. Never mind that she’s marched into an upscale hair salon looking like she cuts her own with a penknife. ‘Something more than money could buy,’ she’s telling me.

  ‘Oo-er,’ I said, dropping a hip. But when she didn’t laugh I straightened up again and asked her, all business-like: ‘What sort of experience were you thinking?’

  ‘Well, hairdressing,’ she says. ‘We’ve got The Beaten Olive Tree kicking in a buffet with wine and we wondered if you’d be willing to do the actual bzzzzzzz. You know—with clippers. Say for six friends? In someone’s home?’

  ‘Six haircuts?’ I said. ‘In someone’s front room? I’d rather do it here in the salon. I mean, that’s a day’s work. Not that I’m not—’

  She cut me off. ‘Not haircuts,’ she said. ‘Head shaves. Spread a sheet, plonk a kitchen chair on top and shave heads. For cancer, you know. Solidarity?’

  ‘You think you’ll get someone to bid on that? Shouldn’t we pay them?’

  ‘We had a group do it last year. Curry and Clippers, we called it. And if you wanted to, you could always do one of those designs. You know the kind of thing I mean? Can you? They look terribly complicated.’

  Patronising mare.

  ‘An undercut?’ I said. ‘Course, I can. Known for them.’

  That’s how they get you.

  I was as good as signed up to go tripping off to the ’burbs to give intricate razer-dos to a pile of sloppy-drunk book-club mums.

  ‘And I’ll take a table at the auction too,’ I said, just to wipe the smirk off her face. ‘Staff night out for a good cause, eh Amanda?’

  I wanted to see who won it, see what I was up against. And by the time I found out how much it cost for a table—two hundred quid a head, if you can wrap your brainbox round it, for a function room in a Best Western!—the staff were too giddy to stand for me changing my mind again. I made damn sure they all had paddles to bid with and told them not to show me up, getting hammered and keeping their hands in their pockets. Because there were salon clients in the room: Mrs. Burns with her bald patch and her bad breath; Julie with the warts on her scalp that was always tutting at me for catching them with my comb till she took herself off and good riddance; Simon Latimer that would never admit he colours his sides grey and his brows black because he reckons he’s George Clooney. In his dreams.

  They all looked through me like I was a ghost.

  ‘I should have come in a tinting apron and gloves,’ I said to Amanda. ‘Sparked a memory.’

  ‘Don’t be like that,’ she said. ‘You’re too sensitive.’

  Typical. She never stops criticizing. If she wasn’t cheap, loyal and not averse to a quickie in the supply cupboard I’d sack her for snide digs like that.

  ‘I know,’ I said, leaning against her as if she’d said something nice and I was grateful. ‘Me a
nd my issues, eh?’

  Amanda turned to a waiter passing behind her and asked if that was decaf or real he was carrying. ‘Because this lot could do with a pick-me-up, frankly,’ she said, pointing at the rest of the staff. ‘Free booze and their Spanx too tight to let them eat owt.’

  The waiter smirked but said nothing because the auction was starting; the auctioneer up on the podium, rocking on his heels with his thumbs in his braces, waiting for his big moment.

  I shushed Amanda. ‘They’ll start with the tiddlers and work up to the big ones like mine,’ I said. That’s what the auctioneer had told me, when I met him in the gents between the mains and puddings. He was having a fag and blowing it out the window. I joined him.

  ‘Aaaaaaand first up tonight!’ he goes, throwing the mike from hand to hand like a Vegas cabaret, ‘Lot No. 1. Laaaadies and g’men, we have a luuuurvely little package for you. A buffet supper for six delivered to your home, wine included of course, and a top local hairdresser thrown in to do your Cancer Awareness solidarity head shaves right there on your own livingroom carpet! Slip him a tenner and he’ll sweep up the clippings. Won’t you, sunshine?’

  He winked at me and the roving spot picked me out. So I had to hoist a smile onto my face, as if I wasn’t seething. Going first, like I was some kind of warm-up act! Sweeping clippings? I thought we’d bonded over the fag smoke. I was being kind to him, as a matter of fact, sweaty little porker in his braces and his stacked heels trying to look five foot six and failing.

  At least the bidding was brisk. It started at two hundred quid and went to four without a pause, three different paddles going up and down like the clappers. Then it slowed and limped to five with just the two of them. At five fifty, the gavel banged and then the winning bidder was coming over to talk dates with me.

  He was a standard issue dad on a night out, with bad shoes and a worse shirt—hanging out as if that would hide his belly. And his hair was nothing. He had a bit of a cheek, actually, expecting praise for shaving that.

  ‘We did it last year,’ he said. ‘The same six of us. We shaved our heads and got them tattooed while they were bald. This year we wondered if maybe you could do something fancy. A stubble cancer ribbon or a…’

  Tumor, I wanted to say but I bit my lip on it. ‘Course I can,’ I said instead. ‘Anything you fancy. Now then, what night were you thinking?’

  It looked good to start with. Nice leafy bit of town and uplighters on the monobloc drive—serious money.

  I recognise the bint that answers the door. She was at the auction, but she’s not in her glad rags now: tracky bums and a cut off T-shirt from some half-marathon, with not a lick of make-up. I’ve made an effort with my high boots and a linen shirt. And she’s spared herself the hassle of washing the hair she’s shaving off. Her scalp grease is going to choke my clippers if I’m not lucky.

  ‘You have a lovely home,’ I say to her.

  She wrinkles her nose at me. ‘It’s not my house,’ she goes.

  ‘Where are we setting up? I’ve got a sheet to put down on the carpet.’

  ‘Oh there’s no carpet.’ She’s showing off, even though she’s just said it’s not hers. As if a carpet’s as naff as ruffle blinds and she’s laughing at me.

  As I follow her through to a lounge that opens right off the entrance hall with just a swoop of wall to stop the drafts, no door, I see that a carpet would look a bit out of place. The floor’s polished concrete like a wine bar and the furniture—what there is—is grey suede. There’s some plug ugly art too. The worst of the paintings is six feet square if it’s an inch, black and grey slashes and not even framed, but there’s a light trained on it as if it’s the Mona Lisa.

  I spot the rest of them round another swoop of wall, standing in the kitchen, they’re all looking down at something I can’t see over the breakfast bar. Or maybe not a breakfast bar. Maybe I’d get another nose wrinkle for calling it that. They’re in a circle, staring downwards, and their faces are sombre, the five of them. Three men and another two women, all of them in T-shirts, none of them in jewelry. I’m fuming. This was supposed to be a smart night.

  They’re on the move, now, coming towards me.

  ‘Welcome, welcome,’ goes the first man to see me. It must be his house. He’s got that look about him—huge watch, boat shoes, proper salt and pepper Clooney-do, like he’s never had to count a penny in his life. I can’t work out which one of the women he’s married to. None of them are arm-candy, that’s for damn sure. He calls back over his shoulder. ‘Where should the guest of honour put his coat?’ Not the owner then. He turns back to me. ‘Or are you keeping it on?’

  Before I can answer, I hear a scurry of feet overhead and then thumps as—it sounds like—a herd of baby elephants comes hammering down the stairs. It’s two kids, teenagers. They go coiling round the adults like cats, to get to the kitchen. They’re loading plates with free food that the caterers dropped off.

  ‘Go easy,’ says another of the men. He’s as thin as a whippet with Dracula hair brushed back and gelled stiff, long thin sideburns like stilettoes. He doesn’t look like a dad—he looks as gay as poodle in leg warmers, if I’m honest—nor like the owner of this place neither. ‘Don’t eat all the prawns.’

  The kids are looking down too now, laughing. Then, balancing plates and hugging bottles of pop under their arms, they scamper off upstairs again. From the kitchen comes a whirring noise I can’t place. Dishwasher? Freezer? But it’s getting closer and round the swoop of wall comes an electric wheelchair. In it, there’s a little gnome of a man all curled down, neck arched, the knobs of his spine sticking out like knuckles, chin on his chest.

  He’s got a kind of a clicker in one hand and, as I watch, a string of letters starts marching over a screen off to one side of him. Hello Marty, it says. Nice to see you.

  ‘Nice to meet you too,’ I say.

  ‘Marty?’ says the woman who let me in and laughed about carpets. ‘Don’t look at the screen. He prefers it if you look him in the eye.’

  ‘Of course,’ I say. Stupid bitch. The way he’s crunched over? To look him square in the boat I’d have had to crouch in front of his wheelchair and peer upwards. And I don’t fancy it, seeing as how he’s wearing a bib and it’s soaked through. Poor sod. Lucky sod as well, mind you, with all these pals making sure he got included in the evening. Cheeky sods they are, dragging a raspberry ripple along. It was supposed to be an elegant gathering, what with the donated champagne and finger food. Quail eggs and lychees those kids had, as well as the prawns.

  And now bloody Stephen Hawking’s sat in the middle with his bib and his knee-blanket. I wouldn’t have offered this experience if I’d known there were special needs involved. Not that I’m cruel; just that I’ve got my own issues. I’m easily upset.

  ‘Right then,’ I go, turning away. It’s not as if you could have a conversation with him. ‘Shall we eat, drink and be merry first? Or shave the old bonces and drown the sorrows after?’

  ‘I don’t know about anyone else,’ says the third man. It’s the dad who came over after the bidding, but he wasn’t hiding a belly, as it goes. Stripped to a basketball jersey and long shorts, he looks a bit of a gym-hound. ‘But I’d rather you didn’t have any champers till you’re done with the razor. No offence.’

  ‘And there won’t be sorrow,’ says the woman who’s standing with her hand in his back pocket. It’s the one who came into the salon to press-gang me. Yoga-type. Barefoot tonight, even at a drinks do. ‘We did it last year,’ she goes. ‘I thought you knew. So we’re ready for what we look like.’

  ‘And you were thinking of undercuts?’ I say. I’m taking charge now, tired of them pissing me about. I open my case and spread the dust sheet down on the polished concrete. ‘Might take a bit longer but I’m more than happy.’

  ‘We changed our mind,’ says the third woman. She’s younger than the rest, but not scared to speak for them. Maybe it’s her house. ‘We did something a bit extra
last year but this year we’re just going to get them shaved and see what happens.’

  Whatever that means.

  She goes first. Once she’s slipped off her do-rag, I carve the length off with my long shears. Not much length, as it goes, seeing it’s only a year since the last shaving. Then I put the zero on my clippers and bend her head forward. She’s got some kind of birthmark on her skull, I notice—or think I notice—as the overhead light hits. I take the clippers up from her nape—nice hairline; I could have done a spider’s web undercut if she’d let me—and run it right over to her brow, a spill of hair falling away on either side like snow from a plough. I love to watch it. Never gets old.

  That’s some weird birthmark, I think, as I glance back at her scalp. It’s a ring shape. Hollow. I take the clippers back to her nape and shave off another strip. It’s got a straight bit, the birthmark. And it’s not a birthmark at all. It’s a tattoo!

  ‘We did it last year,’ says the man with stiletto sideburns. ‘We’ve all got one.’

  I’ve uncovered the whole thing now. It’s an R.

  ‘You…all got your initials tattooed on your heads?’ I say.

  ‘Nope,’ says the woman I’m shaving. Then before I can think what to say to that she goes on. ‘Have you got any ink, Marty?’

  ‘Not me,’ I tell her. ‘I’m bad with needles after everything I’ve been through.’

  I wait.

  ‘Me too,’ goes the big guy with the watch. ‘So the back of my head was the perfect spot. I couldn’t see a damn thing.’