You take your uniform off its hanger, and begin buttoning it on.
‘Oh, that reminds me, Do you want me to pick up a zimmer frame for you while I’m at work, Grandpa?’
‘I am getting old. And fat.’
‘Right, that’s it. You’re going out. I don’t want you hanging around, just waiting for me to get home. That’s not what we’re about.’ You pick up my phone and scroll through it. ‘There we go,’ you say, pressing the screen.
Mal Sampson. Calling …
H
Hair
ONE THING THAT stays with me about Mum’s last weeks is how simply getting her hair washed and done would make her perk up no end. So heartening to see. Now I know how she feels. Jackie sorted me out with fresh pillowcases this morning, and now my hair feels shamefully greasy in contrast. My scalp’s itchy, and I’m sure I must be leaving a stain on the starchy linen. I can’t remember the last time I gave it a proper wash with shampoo. But I can’t just ask for a hairdresser to come in and do it, can I? I’d feel like one of the old ladies.
My whole life I’ve been trying to avoid having embarrassing hair. I always thought I could avoid being like those old pictures of my dad from before I was born where he had the ’tache and the burners with tinted thick-framed glasses and his receding hairline. I would honestly think to myself: how could anyone ever get caught out like that? I would never, ever make that mistake.
And there have been moments in my life when, if I say so myself, I have got it absolutely right. I remember a time, sitting in the car on the way to school, looking in the rear-view mirror, and I’d got my curtain hairdo absolutely perfect — it was exactly the right length, with precisely the right curve to the curtains, just clean enough, but not so clean as to be fluffy, with maybe a couple of artfully stray strands of hair breaking the line to say, Hey, I didn’t have to work too hard at this. It was one of the few occasions I’ve prayed in the utmost seriousness to God: Please, please let this perfect hairstyle be perfect for ever so Helen Worthington will have no choice but to love me for ever.
There it is again: all I’ve ever wanted to do is just look my best, and stay that way for ever. If God existed, I’d be a forty-year-old man with a fourteen-year-old’s curtains.
And then there was Mal. Mal, of course, the new kid at school, fresh blood, fresh meat, fresh hair. Long on top and shaved underneath at the time. I thought it was the coolest thing I’d seen. So I started growing out my curtains almost straight away.
I vaguely knew even then it was kind of a crushy thing to do. But it happens all the time, doesn’t it? Every generation of young lads herds through the same town-centre streets, aping each other’s hairdos, just like my dad did, I suppose.
I’m sitting on the floor of Laura’s flat, watching Mal play the PlayStation in his dressing gown, and my head is being licked coldly sideways by Laura’s rhythmical brushstrokes.
I can’t believe I’m going ahead and dyeing my hair. This isn’t me. This isn’t the sort of thing I do. It’s sort of brilliant, sort of scary. God, I’m such a child, even at twenty-two. Such a child.
Mal’s sitting there with his hair already brushed and cooking.
‘Hold still, for God’s sake,’ says Laura.
‘It hurts.’
‘Oh, give it a rest,’ she says. ‘This is what women have to put up with all the time. Hold still. It’s supposed to be even all over.’
‘Have you ever done this before?’ I ask Mal, trying to keep the fizz out of my voice. ‘Does it ever go wrong?’
‘How wrong can it go? If you think of some of the kids at school who used to do it.’
I’m a bit pissed.
Is Mal pissed? Sitting there in front on the TV, game controller in hand, he doesn’t seem pissed. He doesn’t seem bothered at all.
Laura’s definitely completely pissed. But she’s the only one who knows how to do this, so hopefully she’ll keep it together. The front room now stinks of the bleach or ammonia or whatever it is she’s slathered on our scalps.
‘Right, that’s you done,’ she says, and stumbles off out of the room and into the bathroom.
I say: ‘I can’t believe we’re doing this.’ As it comes out of my mouth it feels like the sort of thing Kelvin would say. Squealingly naïve.
Mal’s game crashes to a conclusion, and he hands me the control.
‘Ahh, it’s good. You should try anything once.’
‘Dyeing hair — it’s something other people do.’
‘You reckon?’
‘Yeah. It feels like there are too many parts of my brain saying, I’m going to look like a real dick.’
‘Who cares if you do? It’ll grow out in a fortnight. No one should ever worry about looking like a dick for a fortnight.’
I edge my character along a narrow ridge and hop into the go-kart for the trip down the hill.
‘I’m not like that though,’ I say. ‘I never ever say I want to do this, so I’m going to go ahead and do it, and I don’t care what anyone thinks. You’ve got that, I haven’t.’
‘Yes you have, you moron. You absolutely have. You and me, we’re pretty much the same dude,’ says Mal. ‘We both get things done, maybe just using our different special powers.’
‘I don’t. I never do.’
My cart rattles over rough ground, but I’m quick enough with the joystick to get past the tricky bit that normally sends me flying.
‘Yeah, man, that was one of the first things that I noticed about you, when you— you remember when Mr Miller found that pack of my cigarettes?’
‘Oh God, yeah.’
‘I just could not believe you’d take the hit for that. And I thought, man, he doesn’t even know me. I’d better stick around with this lad, he really doesn’t give a shit, you know? He can really go there.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Anyone who can — fucking—’ he ducks instinctively as my kart passes under the low branches ‘—use their dead dad just to get one over on their Science teacher, well, they’re someone who doesn’t give a shit about what anyone thinks, aren’t they? Someone who’s prepared to go there. You’re a Machiavellian type, I reckon.’
I’ve heard the words he’s said, but I’m only slowly piecing them together in my mind to make sense of them.
Feels sort of — nice? — to be thought so shrewd.
My go-kart pings off the edge of the cliff and drops into the abyss.
I hand him the control. ‘Is your head a bit hot?’
‘A bit. That’s probably normal.’
‘Where’s Laura?’
A graphic retch and cough leaks out from the bathroom, followed by a protracted series of spits.
‘I think she went for a little lie-down.’
A whole hour later, with my head stinging, she’s blearily washing the bleach out, and my dreams of a platinum-blond cut like the Russian Action Man thunder into the bath with it.
Orange yellow at the back, bright yellow at the front. And dark patches all around the back top where she hadn’t brushed it in properly.
It’ll grow out in a fortnight, it’ll grow out in a fortnight.
Something wakes me again now. I look up from my pillow and it’s still dark. Sheila hasn’t been in, I don’t think.
As I concentrate on the rectangle of light beyond the foot of my bed, I can hear a low regular noise. Old Faithful’s breathing has changed. Maybe they’ve switched her medication again. The kazoo sound is still there, but it’s like she’s gently huffing through it, a more thoughtful sound. A peaceful sound. I prefer it to what she was doing before.