How To Choose a Sweetheart

by Nigel Bird

  Cath steps up to the plate again. “And as it got darker and darker in the woods, the more lonely Jonathan became.”

  “Fang was getting tired. He had been searching and searching for his friend. His paws were sore and he needed to rest. When he saw the stream, he wandered over to take a drink before going to sleep. He put his tongue in the water and began to lap it up.”

  “Yeuk.” Cath does the face and sticks her own tongue out. “Fang pricked up his ears and spat.”

  “Then he realised that there was something familiar about the taste. Now what was it?”

  “It’s Jonathan,” Alice shouts out, doing her best to try and help.

  Max nods, puts a finger to his lips and carries on. “He sniffed at the stream and he sniffed again. Jonathan, he barked. Jonathan.”

  “Fang was so excited that he ran up the hill following the tears, barking and panting all the way.”

  “But the witch will hear him,” Alice says. “And she’ll chop him up.”

  Max winks. “She couldn’t hear anything because secretly she was afraid of the dark, so she always slept wearing earplugs.”

  Cath sniffs at the air and whispers. “I can smell something that’s about ready to take out of the oven. I’d better go.”

  She gets up from the ground, kisses Alice on the cheek and tiptoes out of the room. Alice just gazes at Max and waits for him to carry on.”

  “So Fang followed the river of tears until he saw Jonathan’s head. He ran over to him and licked his face. Jonathan licked him back and sent him away to find the other parts of his body. First he came back with the legs, then his arms and then the rest. He put all the bits into the right place and ran off to the witch’s house where he found a bottle of magic glue. After that, he went back to the cage and stuck Jonathan back together again. When Jonathan had his arms back, he hugged Fang as tightly as he could and then rolled over onto Fang’s back. Fang ran faster than he’d ever run before until they reached home.

  The witch woke up and was so angry to find that her breakfast had disappeared that she vanished in a puff of yellow smoke and the people of the village were never troubled by her again.”

  As the story comes to an end, so does Alice’s energy. Her head has sunk into the pillow, her eyes are tight shut and she’s making whiffly noises when she breathes. Max leans over and kisses her head.

  She looks so innocent and peaceful, like everything in her life is just dandy. He wants to protect her from the outside world. From growing up and from all the slippery characters out there. Slippery characters like himself.

  He pulls the duvet up over her shoulders and tiptoes from the room.

  TWENTY

  Max is full of cheese pie, salad, fruit and ice-cream. The booze has his head spinning in the loveliest of ways and he still has the flavour of strawberries lingering in his mouth.

  Cath leaves him smoking and walks in from the balcony and over to her iPad where she spends a few seconds flicking through things. She rests it down again and a cacophony of brass music followed by the shouts of Screaming Jay Hawkins bursts from the speaker.

  She walks over to the table and checks it over. There are half-empty salad bowls, empty plates, remnants of French loaf and two empty wine bottles.

  She takes the candlesticks from the middle of all the mess and carries them carefully so that the flames don’t go out.

  In the kitchen, she manoeuvres herself carefully and picks up a fresh bottle of wine and puts it under her arm.

  When she returns to Max, he’s leaning against the wall holding on to an almost empty glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other.

  Cath stumbles a little as she steps through the door and giggles.

  She puts one of the candlesticks down and takes the wine bottle in her free hand.

  First she fills Max’s glass, then her own. She sits down, picks up her drink and leans in to Max.

  The couple sit momentarily in silence as they consider what to say next. Screaming Jay does the business instead.

  Cath leans over to take a cigarette. She takes a light from the nearby candle, making sure her hair’s safely out of harm’s way.

  “You smoke?” Max sounds horrified, but it’s only surprise that makes his voice sound twisted.

  “Never. Never when I’m sober at least. So tell me what happened.”

  Now they’re back to where they left off.

  “Off she went with her new love.”

  “That’s awful.” It’s been awful until Cath came along, but he’s not quite drunk enough to tell her. “And you still see her.”

  “All the time. We get on better now than we ever managed to do when we lived together.”

  “I can understand that. Still, I can’t imagine seeing anything of Tom if it wasn’t for Alice.”

  “With Jazz,” he needs to be careful here, “it’s like we were always meant to be friends. The other stuff just got in the way.”

  “With Tom we could never seem to get to be lovers or friends, not after the first flush.”

  “That doesn’t seem to be much of a basis for a marriage.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “Tell me how you met.”

  “I wish I could say it was a long story.”

  Max smiles. “I like the short ones better.”

  “You know the way things go. We were young and thought we knew everything.”

  He knows. “So where was this?”

  “In The George. Nobody in there was over eighteen. I was really happy. Thought I was some incarnation of Helen of Troy for some reason.”

  “So you looked this good even then?”

  She digs her elbow into his arm and carries on. “It wasn’t all my fault. Boys were always trying to buy me drinks or take me outside for a quiet chat when all they wanted was a snog and a feel. It was great at first, but they all tried so hard to make me laugh and to keep their chests puffed out that it all ended up like some hideous cartoon.”

  Max sticks his chest out and lowers his voice by an octave. “What’s black and white and red all over?”

  She doesn’t bite, but carries on. “You went to The George too?”

  “Only till my bedtime.”

  “No, I’d have remembered you.”

  “Another George in another town, perhaps.”

  “You probably had another Tom in there, too. He was sad looking and always alone. Which is what drew me to him, I guess. I was looking for something different and there he was. He was kind of cute looking and we got talking and then I thought I could save him – like I might be the only one who could.”

  “So you threw in the rubber ring.”

  “And the armbands with me in them.”

  “Which helped you float for a while.”

  “I suppose so. He was my man of mystery and intrigue and I was a woman on a mission.”

  “How did he like being rescued?”

  “He loved it at first. In a funny way, I think he was trying to save me at the same time.”

  “From all those puffed out chests.”

  “I don’t know what exactly.”

  “So there you were trying to save each other and...”

  “And then I got pregnant and everything turned scary.”

  “And you were still only seventeen.”

  “Exactly.” She was still a kid herself. “My friends thought I was mad when I told them I wanted to keep the baby. They knew Tom was a creep. I didn’t care, though. I was obsessed by then, with Tom and with feeling different. Mum was worse than the lot of them. She never forgave me, not really. Even threatened to disown me if I didn’t have a termination. So I did the opposite of what she said – isn’t that what teenagers are supposed to do?”

  There’s something missing from this part of the story. Like the main part. The human touch. Surely she didn’t have Alice out of spite. “What about your dad?”

  “Dad? Dad was sweet. He always understood everything, ever since I was a little girl. So he said he’d support me
whatever I chose to do. It was awkward at home, but Dad won out in the end and I became Mrs Catherine Craven.”

  “That doesn’t seem too bad,” Max says. “It could have been Parr.”

  Screaming Jay interrupts them. ‘I Put A Spell On You’. Cath runs back into the living room, fiddles with the iPad and the music gets louder.

  When she returns, she fills the glasses. “I love it. My absolute fave.”

  Max looks at his fingers and wiggles them. “Think there’s enough magic in these fingers to work a spell?”

  Cath leans over and takes his hands in hers. They’re warm and soft and her touch is like the stroke of a feather.

  “It’s not the fingers that do the weaving.”

  Max smiles in a way he knows looks bashful and probably makes him look ridiculously young. He lifts his eyes to look at her hands as she strokes him. They sit together for a while and just watch their fingers move.

  He tilts his head up and looks up at the sky.

  “You ever get the feeling that you’re in the perfect moment?” It sounds corny, but what the hell? “That everyone in the world is whispering so that you can have your time. Like you’re invincible. And all of a sudden everything that happened before made sense. Just a perfect moment you’d never forget. That maybe life would never be the same again.”

  He’s been talking up to the stars.

  Cath interrupts him by leaning over and kissing him once on the lips.

  Her sweetness offers a wonderful contrast to the cheap, red wine.

  They look at each other and bend together as if pushed by some irresistible force to kiss and stroke and join themselves together. And then the music stops.

  Cath looks into the room and sees Alice coming towards them, rubbing her eyes.

  “Mummy, I can’t sleep anymore, the music’s too loud.”

  Damn the music, Max thinks, but then does his best to look like there’s nothing going on out there that Alice might want to know.

  “I’m sorry Darling,” Cath says. “Come here and give me a cuddle.” She opens her arms and Alice falls into the hug like they’ve been practicing.

  “Will you sleep with me tonight?” Alice asks.

  Max should be cursing his luck, but he’s too mellow. Maybe it’s a good thing, he decides. A blessing in disguise. They won’t have to go through the sleeping together fumbles yet, which will keep them on track as daters rather than bring things to a swift end as a one-night-stand.

  “Course I will,” Cath says. It’s the only answer Max would have expected to hear.

  “Can I stay up till you’re ready?” This one’s not such a blessing.

  Max stands and picks up his cigarettes. “Perhaps I should go. It’s pretty late anyway.”

  He’s got the vibe just right. “Maybe that would be best,” Cath says. “Alice, you run along and go to the toilet and we’ll get into bed.”

  She does as she’s told and walks slowly out of the room.

  “Do you think she saw us?” Max has to ask the question, just to keep things real and wondering if he’s just invented a new kind of dinosaur.

  “No, don’t worry.” He wasn’t really worried, but he does care. He moves to pick up the glasses and takes them inside.

  “Just leave those. I’ll do them in the morning.”

  Max sets about getting his stuff together and when he’s done the couple walk to the door.

  “Wait a second,” Cath says and holds him back.

  She takes a felt pen from Alice’s pencil case by the piano and, taking Max by the hand, she bends down to the picture Alice drew earlier. She draws a lasso from Max’s hand to the moon then stands up, a little off balance.

  “See,” she tells him.

  Max smiles.

  They come together and kiss and give each other a brief hug.

  It’s Cath that breaks away first. She leads Max by the hand to the front door. He opens it and they stop at the threshold.

  “Call me tomorrow,” Cath says and he kisses her again.

  “Goodnight then.”

  “Goodnight.”

  “And thanks for the dinner.”

  He kisses her one more time and shouts through to the back of the flat. “Goodnight Alice.”

  There’s a muffled reply and the night’s over.

  Max squeezes Cath’s hand, kisses her on the cheek and leaves.

  Cath pushes the door closed without making a noise.

  Max screams, but only on the inside.

  TWENTY ONE

  Max bounces down the street carrying a large paper bag. He arrives at the barber’s shop and looks up to admire the spinning red and white pole. Before entering, he peeks into the bag, sees the plastic skunk that Cath gave him and smiles.

  When he opens the door, a bell rings. It rings again when he closes the door behind him. That’s two angels getting their wings, he thinks – he’s not a believer, just stuck in his ways.

  The shop is dim and cool compared to the brightness and warmth of the afternoon outside. To Max’s left there is a row of old wooden chairs. In front of them is an old, coffee table that’s covered with magazines. At the back of the shop there’s an empty doorway that’s covered by faded plastic strips. On the right, there’s one barber’s chair, currently occupied by a head that’s emerging from a sheet that covers the rest of the head’s body. The customer is getting a short back and sides, his newly cropped, grey thatch looking neat. The barber who attends him sets about tidying up the last of the edges with a cut-throat razor. His razor looks deadly sharp and Max is pleased that his barber has none of the luck of the legendary Barney Thomson and his long midnight.

  The barber has broad shoulders and strong arms which make him look strong, though both of these features have been overshadowed by his growing belly. His hair is grey and is smartly slicked back. He scuttles about on the floor in a pair of tartan slippers. He always smokes as he works and his cigar, lying in the silver cigarette stand, sits filling the air with blue twists. He’s not been reported once in all the years since the smoking-in-the-workplace ban and if he ever gets worried about a customer he just shifts the ashtray into the back room, the place he calls home. “Afternoon,” he says to Max, looking in the mirror and seeing who it is.

  “Hello.”

  “Think we were ever that young, Bill?” He points at Max with his razor – it would make Max nervous if he didn’t know his host better.

  “Course we was, George.”

  “We was quite a crowd back then.” George squares his shoulders and glances at his reflection.

  “Best looking lads north of the river.”

  “Look at the youngster,” George says. “He don’t believe us.”

  Max lights a cigarette and laughs. It’s one of the great things about having a haircut at George’s place, being able to smoke while you’re waiting. That and the fact that he’s the best barber Max has ever come across.

  George stops with the razor and points over to a photograph of a suited-and-booted man that’s pinned over by the door. It’s old and shows a clean cut man who might easily be mistaken for a gangster. Or George Raft.

  “That was my kid brother,” George says. “Remember how the ladies flocked after ‘im?”

  “Not ‘alf. Mind you, he wasn’t the only one.” He gives a wink to the old barber and then checks out his new look.

  “Keep it down.” George motions to the back door. “Wouldn’t want the old dear getting upset in her condition.”

  It’s too late. A grating voice comes from upstairs. “I don’t remember having to do much chasing to catch up with you, love.”

  George waves the statement off. “Don’t listen to her. Her memory isn’t what it was. Nor are the mammaries now I come to think of it. Here, have you seen anything of Ken? He’s normally regular as clockwork and I ain’t talking about his bowels neither.”

  “He was robbed not so long back, didn’t you hear? Some kids knocked ‘im over and roughed ‘im up a bit. He says they even filmed
it on their phone. Took his wallet and his shopping.”

  “Bastards.” George looks angry. He stands and puts his hands on his hips.

  “They wouldn’t have touched him when he was their age. He couldn’t half box.”

  “Always a good man to have on your side. Had a few tricks up his sleeve an’ all. The kind of thing the Marquis of Queensbury wouldn’t even have dreamed of.”

  George puts the razor down on the counter and picks up a cloth. He sets about wiping Bill down with one hand and pulls the cover off with the other.

  Soon as he’s done, he hands over a brush for Bill’s suit.

  “Just shows,” Bill says as he gets rid of the hair from his jacket sleeve. “We’re none of us what we once was.”

  “Know what I always say Bill?” He probably does. “Breathe in then breathe out and that’s all we can do. It’s the good lord who’ll take us when he’s ready.” He lifts up a mirror and Bill uses it to check out the back of his head. “Smashing job. I’ll be on a promise looking like this.”

  “You and me both,” George says.

  The screech comes down from upstairs again. “I’ll promise not to kick your backside is all.”

  The barber sets about wiping the hair from the leather seat. Bill hands over a note while he wipes his neck and goes over to the hat-stand to pick up his hat.

  George picks up some change from the box.

  “Keep it,” says Bill. “Can’t take it with you.”

  “God bless Bill. Regards to Brenda.”

  Bill leaves the shop and the bell rings twice. Another couple of angels.

  Max walks over and takes a seat. He sinks into the cushions and feels immediately comfortable. His reflection is looking good – clean skin, nice colour, smiling eyes.

  George drops his tip into a box and picks up the sheet which he throws skilfully over Max then tucks it in around his neck.

  Before he starts, he relights his cigar and takes in a long drag. When he’s done, he picks up the scissors, gives a couple of phantom cuts in the air and asks for instruction.

  “Just a tidy up. Not too much off the top.” His quiff’s at optimum length just now and has been trained to sit where it is like some pedigree Labrador.