“I just want a tuft,” she said, “like a shaving brush.”
“Well, just you leave it at that,” Moon said. “I’m the bald bird in this house. Can’t have two of us, we’ll look like a fookin’ game of billiards.”
Sally did not reply. She rarely replied to anything Moon said, or even looked at her.
Dervla was relieved that Kelly elected to administer the haircut in the living area. It had been agony for her on the Saturday when Sally had done the dyeing in the bathroom. Dervla always rubbed out her messages, of course, and they were only condensation anyway, but seeing Sally with her face so close to the very place where they appeared had been most disconcerting. As Kelly washed Sally’s hair and the mirror steamed up, Dervla had been gripped with an irrational fear that a message might suddenly appear, there and then, right in front of Sally’s eyes. She knew that this was unlikely, unless of course the man had decided to start writing to Sally.
“All done,” said Kelly.
“I like it,” Sally replied, having inspected the little red tuft which was all that remained of her hair. “When I get out I’m going to have my head tattooed.”
“What will you get done, then?” Kelly asked.
“I thought perhaps my star sign. It’s the ram, except obviously I’m not having a male animal on my head, so I’d have to have a ewe.”
“Well, that doesn’t sound very empowering, Sally,” Dervla observed.
“Be a fucking lioness, Sal,” said Jazz. “I mean, let’s face it, them pictures they make out of the stars are just total bullshit anyway. Three bloody dots and they draw a bull round it, or a centaur. It’s ridiculous. If you actually do join the dots all you get is a splodge, like an amoeba or a puddle. Born under the sign of the puddle.”
“Actually, Jazz,” said Moon, “it’s not just about the fookin’ shapes, is it? It’s about the personality, the characteristics of people born under certain signs.”
“It’s bollocks,” Jazz insisted. “People say… Oh, Virgo, dead brave, or Capricorn, really clever and introspective. Where are the star signs for all the stupid boring people, eh? I mean, the world’s full of them. Don’t they get to be represented celestially? Taurus – we’re really dull and don’t get our rounds in… I could tell you was a Libra, they’re very flatulent.”
“You know fook all, you do, Jazz,” said Moon. “Do you know that?”
DAY TWENTY-FOUR. 10.00 a.m.
“So what’s a sweatbox when it’s at home?” asked Gazzer.
“It says here that it’s an ancient Native American tradition,” Hamish replied.
“Native American?”
“Red Indian to you, I imagine,” said Dervla.
The housemates had been given their instructions for the weekly task, and so far Gazzer was not impressed.
“So what the fahk is it?”
“Exactly what it sounds like,” said Hamish, who was reading the instructions. “A box in which you sweat. From what it says here it sounds pretty similar to a sauna, except a bit more friendly. It says this is a historical task because they were used by Native American fighting men.”
“And women,” Sally interjected. “Native American fighting women.”
“Were there any?” asked Kelly. “I thought they were just squaws.”
“That’s because history is written by men,” Sally assured her. “Women warriors have been denied their place in the chronicles of war, just like women artists and scientists never got credit for doing an amazing amount of art and science which their husbands took credit for.”
“Wow, I had no idea,” said Kelly, genuinely surprised.
“Well, think about it, Kelly. History… his story.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Can we get back to this fahkin’ sweatbox?” Gazzer protested. “What are we supposed to do about it?”
Hamish applied himself once more to Peeping Tom’s note. “Well, we have to build one, for a start. They’ll give us instructions and all the stuff we need, and when we’ve built it we have to use it.”
“Use it?” Dervla enquired.
“Well, apparently after these Native Americans had had a fight, or a sports day or whatever, they’d wait till it got dark and then get into a hot confined space all squeezed up tight together and sweat.”
“It sounds totally homoerotic,” said Sally. “Most military rituals are, if you didn’t know.”
DAY THIRTY-EIGHT. 4.45 p.m.
“Homoerotic, oh, for heaven’s sake,” Coleridge snapped.
“Sounds reasonable to me,” Hooper replied.
“Yes, of course it does, sergeant! So easy to say, so impossible to contradict. Why is it that everybody these days insists on presuming a sexual motive for absolutely everything? Military rituals homoerotic? Why, for heaven’s sake!”
Was Freud to blame? Coleridge rather thought that he might be, or else Jung, or perhaps some imbecile from the sixties like Andy Warhol.
“Whatever you say, sir,” said Hooper.
Coleridge let it go, as he let so much go that bothered him these days. At the end of the day, as the inmates of the house were so fond of saying, it wasn’t worth it.
“I still cannot quite believe that these people actually agreed to do this task. I mean, four hours in that thing, naked.”
“Well, Dervla tried to object, didn’t she?”
“Ah, yes,” Coleridge thought, Dervla objected, the one he secretly rather liked. For a moment he felt glad that she had objected. Then inwardly he cursed himself. He had absolutely no business liking any of them, or being glad about what they did or didn’t do.
DAY TWENTY-FIVE. 8.00 p.m.
The sweatbox, which the housemates had been instructed to build in the boys’ bedroom, was half finished. The false floor had been laid, underneath which the heating elements were to be installed; the support poles for the roof were in position and work had begun on stitching the thick plastic for the walls. The construction so far looked rather small and uninviting, with very little prospect of its looking any better when it was finished.
“I am so not sitting naked in that thing with a lot of nude boys,” Dervla said.
“For four hours, they say,” said Jazz.
“No way,” Dervla repeated.
“Why not? None of the rest of us fookin’ object,” said Moon.
“What’s that got to do with anything?” Dervla asked.
“Well, what’s so special about you is what I’m saying? Anyway, don’t you want to look sexy on the telly?”
Of course Dervla wanted to look sexy on the telly, or else she would never have applied to be on the telly in the first place, but she also understood that real allure depended on retaining a bit of mystery. She had a good body, but she knew that like all bodies it was even better when left to the imagination. Besides which, she had her misty green eyes and sparkling smile to rely on; she did not need to go flashing her knockers about the place.
Dervla went to the confession box and asked to be allowed to perform the task in her bathing suit. “It’s high cut on the thigh and a lovely pattern,” she said.
The answer when it came was broadcast to the whole house.
“This is Peeping Tom,” said a much sterner voice than usual, a voice that normally did ads for BMWs and aftershave. “The traditional Native American sweatbox experience was undertaken naked, and this is the manner in which Peeping Tom requires the task to be performed. As with any of the group tasks, all housemates must comply with the rules and if any single housemate fails to do so then the whole group will be deemed to have failed and will therefore lose a percentage of their food and drink for the following week.”
It was jaw-dropping cynical and Geraldine knew it, which was why she had no intention of allowing this outrageous instruction to be aired publicly. Clearly she was blackmailing Dervla into stripping, but the public were to be given the illusion that the housemates one and all simply could not wait to get their clothes off.