by James Hannah
“But you’re not doing that now, though, are you?” you say, turning and looking directly at me. “You’re not missing shots now?”
“No.” Mostly no.
“Because I’ve already watched my dad destroy his life, and I don’t intend to watch my boyfriend do it too.”
“Look,” I say, grabbing my gut and tugging it at you. “Does it look like it?”
“You’re not fat! You’re man-shaped.” You come over and lay your hands under my shirt. “I love your tummy. I love you.”
“Yeah, well.” I’m unconvinced.
“Anyway,” you say, slapping my bum and sitting down to pull on a pair of tights, “stop being so down on yourself.” You shimmy your thumbs upward to distribute the denier and snap the elastic at the waistband. “If you’re getting fat anywhere, it’s in your head. Why don’t you go out tonight? Go do something. You haven’t been out with your mates for ages.”
I dump myself down on the bed and wrinkle my nose.
“I don’t fancy it.”
“Give Mal a ring. He’ll be glad to see you. He thinks I’m the queen bitch from hell, so he’ll be pleased I’ve let you off the leash for five minutes.”
“No, he doesn’t.”
“He does, because you haven’t been in touch with him, and he thinks that’s because I won’t let you.”
“I don’t know. It’d be nice if it was just pubbing and chatting, or going to a gig or whatever, but there’s always the clubbing afterward. I can’t be bothered, you know?”
You take your uniform off its hanger and begin buttoning it on.
“Oh, that reminds me: Do you want me to pick up a walker 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 ’stache and the sideburns 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 rearview 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 forever so Helen Worthington will have no choice but to love me for eternity.
There it is again: all I’ve ever wanted to do is just look my best and stay that way forever. If God existed, I’d be a forty-year-old man with a fourteen-year-old’s hairstyle.
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 straightaway.
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-center streets, aping each other’s hairdos, just like my dad did, I suppose.
• • •
I’m sitting on the floor of Laura’s apartment, 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 of 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 naive.
Mal’s game crashes to a conclusion, and he hands me the control.
“Ahhh, 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 kart 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.
I am lost in a world of regular hums, distant beeping, the periodic reheating of the coffee machine in the corridor, and that steady kazoo. I don’t know how long it has been. Is Amber wandering around out there? No sign.
Knuckles knock-knock on wood. Rap through the static atmosphere. I glance up at my doorway, but there’s no one. A moment later, I hear a murmur next door, and a murmur in response. The tones of a woman’s voice, Sheila’s voice, hushed, and the lower tones of a man. Mr. Old Faithful.
Slight metallic clink of a chair leg, and something knocks against the thin partition between my room and hers. It makes me start, makes my heart briefly beat a little faster. For a while there’s a sense of movement out there in the corridor. Diligent attendants move to and fro, and now a nurse passes my doorway.
Sheila pads past too and glances in at me.
I’ve no idea whether she can see if I’m awake. Maybe she’s trying to read my eyes in the darkness. See if there’s a glint off an eyeball. I narrow my eyes, narrow the chances. I don’t want her to see that I’m awake. I don’t know why. I don’t want to encroach on this. Don’t want to be a witness. All I feel is the rhythmic thrum of my heartbeat between the sheets. Can she see me breathing? Sheila drops her look and moves on. Still the kazoo keeps time, though it’s gained an edge of intensity.
There’s a lot of pacing going on out there. No one’s staying anywhere for long.
Slow figures drift past my doorway, closing in on Old Faithful.
Slow spirits.
Come to take her away.
Tender noises from next door.
Gentle huff. Pause.
Gentle huff from Old Faithful. Periodically pausing.
Her own heart, slowing.
I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be here for this.
Hands
Yes, there again, my dad’s hands, kneading and rubbing my calf to work out the cramp.
Or walking to school with Laura…
“Mum said you had to hold my hand over the road.”
“Hold your own hand,” she says callously.
Oh. I’m on my own.
I don’t know why, but I flush hot and feel empty in my tummy, and a surge of hot tears boils up. I try to fight them back, I do. I don’t want her to think I’m getting in the way. I know she doesn’t want to because she wants to look good in front of Danny Refoy and his mates. But Mum said. This is what she said we had to do.
The thunder in her glare as she snatches up my hand and drags me across the road.
• • •
You took my hand for the first time after our second date—our first proper date after your Easter trip back to the Lakes—walking away from the Blue Plate Café.
I looked down at you questioningly.
“What?” you said, holding up my hand. “You weren’t using it, were you?”
“No, no, be my guest.”
All that anxiety about whether it had gone well, about whether we might kiss—gone. I kissed you onto your bus back to your digs.
I didn’t want to let go, once you’d set the seal.
I waited too. While the engine idled and the driver checked his watch, I waited, and when he finally hissed the door shut and pulled away, I waved you out of sight.
Then I floated off into town to meet Mal.
Was this love?
It felt like love.
• • •
The kazoo next door pauses, stays paused. One more murmur from beyond: “Do you think that’s it?”
And the kazoo begins again.
No more murmur. It was not it.
• • •
Hands, hands.
Your hand in mine.
My hand in yours.
Our hands.
So lovely, so simple to be able to take ownership of someone’s hand.
Palms pulsing together.
“Have you noticed,” I say, “you’re normally the one who says ‘I love you’ first? Then I say it.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“I never think the second means as much.”
“So I’m winning, would you say?”
“It doesn’t mean I’m not thinking it. I always feel a bit defeated when I have to follow up with ‘I love you too.’ It’s like the sequel to a film: I Love You and I Love You Too. You know the second one’s always going to be a predictable reworking of the first.”
You laugh. “Well,” you say, “it’s just like this noise that drops out of my mouth. Sometimes I think it’s down to things as simple as luh-luh being nice to say. You say luh-luh, and it feels nice with your tongue and it creates a resonance in your head that feels nice. Nice vibration. And that’s got to be a good thing.”
“Bluh blah bloo.”
“Yeah! Exactly that. Bluh blah bloo.”
“Bluh blah bloo too.”
• • •
And the kazoo pauses once more.
Silence.
Soft breathing of the fans of the machines fills in the emptiness.
And that’s it.
No more from Old Faithful.
And still no more.
And still.
Heart still.
I hear a strangled sniff, a man’s voice. Mr. Old Faithful.
Newborn widower.
The coffee machine rasps into life once more, works up through its steady crescendo of warming the water, reaches its peak and ceases.
And Amber. Amber must be out there too.
Mumless.
Muttering now from next door. Mr. Old Faithful, I think, and Sheila. Sheila’s tones sound kind and concise. A nurse I’ve not seen before emerges, and then Sheila herself appears, leading Mr. Old Faithful and Amber too. None of them looks in, but they walk past my doorway and troop into a room across the corridor. Its door clicks rudely shut.
It’s just me out here now.
Me and Old Faithful, on either side of the partition.
The lately living and the due-to-be-dead.
I’m here.
I’m still here.
I’m still awake.
I’m thinking nothing.
What is there to think?
The latch sounds again, and the door draws open. Sheila passes my doorway and disappears into Old Faithful’s room once more.
She speaks, softly but clearly, and I can make out her words. “Hello, lovey,” she says. “I’m going to take your wedding ring now, OK? Just going
to give it to your husband for safekeeping. I’ll be as gentle as I can.”
There is no response.
Till death us do part.
There it is.
Love ends at death.
Does it?
Heart
“Why do you think people link love to their hearts?” I say.
You look up at me in the orange streetlight, push your hair inaccurately back from your face with your mitten. “What do you mean?”
“Or, like, why is your head supposed to be so sensible?”
“Mmm. I don’t know. Come on, let’s tie a few of these to the bike rack.”
I reach into the bag and try once again through my gloves to untangle one of the crochet hearts.
You’ve plunged into the activity as usual, mittens now off and gleeful. I don’t know how you do it. How can you stay so buoyant when it’s so insanely cold?
I’ve got to say, it’s only reluctantly that I draw my gloves off too, and immediately I can’t feel my fingers. I take up the heart and begin to tie its two specially loosened threads around the nearest part of the bike rack. By the time I’ve finished one, you’ve tied on five, and we both step back and admire our handiwork.
“They are having an impact, aren’t they?” you say anxiously.
“Yeah,” I say. “They look great.”
They do, they do. I thrust my hands rapidly back into my gloves.
“I was worried they’d be a bit small and look a bit random, but they’re just right. They look like they’ve been thought about.”
“Yeah.”
“Come on, let’s finish this off and head over to the churchyard. Almost halfway done.”
Almost half? I look down into the jute bag, which now holds about thirty crochet hearts. My own heart sinks. It’s as much as I can do to prevent a childish whimper escaping my throat.
Come on, come on. I want a new response. I just…I need a response that’s going to help you finish this.
“Hey, come on,” I hear myself saying. “Let’s go over to King’s Walk. There’s a tree on the corner that looks out over the whole town. Let’s hang a bunch in the branches; I think they’ll look great.”
There. I’ve launched those ambitious words into the air between us to convince myself as much as you. The hug you give me as we set off is return enough.
