Unsuitable Men

by Pippa Wright

  At least she had been pleased with the Seaton Hall piece. Although it had been nearly unrecognizable once Martha had fiddled with it, it still carried my byline, along with a few pictures in which I made my unaccredited hand- and hair-modelling debut. I’d proved I was responsible enough to handle a major feature and, in a gesture of kindness that made me almost tearful with gratitude, the duke had personally written to Amanda to say what a pleasure it had been to host the young journalist from Country House. Thankfully he had made no mention of my embarrassing outburst to Lance; perhaps the inherent homophobia of the upper classes had made my indiscretion less terrible in the duke’s eyes. Or perhaps Lance had been good enough not to mention it to His Grace at all.

  I hoped Lance would also be good enough not to object to my offering him up as the first unsuitable man for the column. No, wait: it wouldn’t work if the men in question knew about it. I’d have to keep it from them that they were deemed unsuitable and use pseudonyms for everyone. Even a pseudonym for myself, just in case any of my dates read a copy of the magazine. Though, come to think of it, what man in his right mind, unless in the business of selling private houses worth over a million pounds, actually read Country House? It was hardly of interest even to the most unsuitable men I could think of. And even if they did – perhaps they idly flicked through a copy while visiting Nanny in the retirement home – they were hardly likely to go seeking out its website for extra thrills. Still, it was probably safest to keep it all anonymous just in case someone Googled my name and got an unpleasant surprise.

  Even as I pored over the magazine layouts, I began drafting my first column in my head. I didn’t imagine that Country House readers would have heard of fauxmosexuals either. Perhaps my lack of dating experience was going to be a virtue when it came to the unsuitables; it wasn’t like I was writing this for a bunch of urban sophisticates. The genteel readership of the magazine would want to be entertained and informed without encountering anything in the line of what Martha called a ‘marmalade-dropper’. Nothing scandalous, just good clean fun. And that meant I was surely safe from any expectations that I had to take any of this seriously. It was just a good way of getting noticed by Amanda.

  Ticky interrupted my thoughts. ‘Roars, I’ve, like, been thinking. Since you’re starting this whole dating thing, do you think maybe it’s time to do something with your hair?’

  ‘What about my hair?’ I asked. I’d always considered I was one of the lucky ones – my thick red hair may have been a little messy, but I had the kind of curls that could do their own thing without hours of styling. A hairdresser had told me, many years ago, never to brush my hair. I suppose he hadn’t actually said never, maybe now I thought about it he’d said only to brush it once in a while, but I had taken his advice to heart. I ran my fingers through the tangled curls – it wasn’t like I had a head full of matted dreadlocks or anything, but I believed my hair looked its best when I let it be free and loose and natural.

  ‘Well, like, when did you last get it cut?’ asked Ticky.

  I twirled the nearest curl around my fingers, bringing it up close to my face. ‘Er, six months ago?’ I confessed.

  ‘Six months?’ asked Ticky in horror. With her high-maintenance highlights, she could hardly imagine a life that didn’t involve a monthly visit to a salon to have her head wrapped in foil like a Christmas turkey.

  ‘My hair doesn’t really need that much attention,’ I said. ‘Curly hair’s pretty low-maintenance.’

  ‘Oh, like, beg to differ, Roars,’ said Ticky. ‘I mean, I totally get the whole natural thing you’ve got going on, but there’s a bit of a diff between, like, Pre-Raphaelite tumbling curls and a head full of frizz.’

  I stared at her with frank dislike. If she had set out to craft the insult that would wound me the most, she could not have done better than this. Ever since, as an unconfident teenager, I had first encountered the painted heroines of the Pre-Raphaelites, I had felt an affinity with them. For once the abundant red curls with which I had been cursed, usually scraped by my mother into two tight plaits, were portrayed as beautiful; even as Millais’s ‘Martyr of Solway’ was chained to a rock, the tide slowly rising up to drown her, her unashamedly red hair was gloriously free, falling in thick ropes around her shoulders. Of course, when I was inspired by this painted vision to wear my own hair down, everyone at my new school accused me of having had a perm and I couldn’t cross the playground without someone calling me Mick Hucknall and breaking into a rendition of ‘Stars’, but I took the teasing as my own personal martyrdom. It seemed to me that the look of pained acceptance that I adopted in the face of these philistines only served to increase my resemblance to the tortured heroines I so admired.

  Even when I felt that my legs could have been longer or that my hips could have been smaller, I had reassured myself that the glowing beacon of my spectacular hair compensated for all. It was my only claim to beauty and my security blanket, all at the same time. It would be no exaggeration to say that my decision to study History of Art at university, and therefore my entire career (such as it was), was based on my teenage belief that if I stood close to a Pre-Raphaelite painting someone might point out the flattering resemblance (though admittedly no one ever had). And now, it seemed, Ticky was saying that what I had regarded as my crowning glory was in fact a bit of an embarrassment. A head full of frizz?

  ‘I guess I could get some serum or something,’ I said, glumly looking at the curl in my hand as if it had personally betrayed me in its fluffiness.

  ‘Look, Roars, don’t take this the wrong way, but you are, like, beyond John Frieda Frizz-Ease right now. You actually need, like, John Frieda himself. And probably a team of assistants.’

  ‘Jesus, Ticky, don’t spare my feelings, will you?’ I sniffed, pulling my hair back into a knot at the back of my head, as if I could hide it away for ever.

  ‘Look, Roars, this is the first time you’ve split up with anyone, so you don’t even know the golden truth I am about to pass on to you. It is a female rite of passage to do something major to your hair when you break up with a boyfriend, yah? Sahhriously, new hair, new you; works every time.’

  ‘But I don’t really want to have a haircut,’ I said. ‘I like my hair long.’

  ‘Nothing drastic, Roars, just a good old trim and a blow-dry. It’ll make you feel, like, a million times better?’

  ‘I suppose I could go to that place round the corner,’ I said resignedly. I could tell Ticky wasn’t going to let up on this one.

  ‘No, leave this to me,’ said Ticky. ‘I’m going to sort it all out for you.’

  ‘Thanks, Ticky,’ I said, allowing her to call her hairdresser (‘He’s not actually John Frieda, but as good as’) and make me an appointment for that very evening.

  As she did, I stared at the reflection of my hair in the computer monitor. Even though I had pulled it back, a halo of frizz surrounded my head like a force field. With just one conversation my hair had turned from my pride and joy into a source of shame. In much the same way that I appeared to have gone, in the space of two weeks, from happily settled girlfriend of Martin Peters to cheated-upon frizzy-haired dater of unsuitable men whose closest confidants were an entitled Sloaney office-mate and a bunch of geriatric thespians.

  At least it couldn’t get any worse.

  10

  I am sure I need not say that the hair appointment was a disaster. If this was the new me, she was even worse than the old one. Ticky had, of course, been absolutely correct in saying that a haircut is a tried and tested part of the process of getting over a break-up. What she had neglected to say is that so is sobbing over the resulting haircut, believing that you have never looked more hideous, and actually trying to scoop the hair trimmings into your handbag to fashion some desperate homemade extensions. I knew I wasn’t really crying about my hair. I was sobbing about Martin and my single status and the way my settled life had slipped out of my grasp before I could do anything about it. But when I looked in the mir
ror I didn’t see a haircut; I saw loss. And a bizarre shoulder-length triangular bob where once there had been waist-length curls.

  To compound my misery, Ticky’s hairdresser had decided to twist my curls into individual heavily gelled ringlets, which had left me looking uncomfortably like the famous sixteenth-century Albrecht Dürer self-portrait, if only Albrecht Dürer had had the blotchy flushed face of one who was suppressing hysterical tears. I could have told the hairdresser from bitter experience that the immaculately smoothed ringlets would last about as long as it took me to encounter a solitary molecule of water. Even if it hadn’t been raining that night, I managed to produce quite a lot of water by bursting into tears as soon as I stepped out of the salon.

  I suppressed the tears while I waited for my bus in the rain, convinced I could actually hear my hair kinking around my ears in the moist atmosphere. By the time I got back to Auntie Lyd’s my hair was a frizzy mess. I didn’t even need to look in the mirror to see how disastrous it was; the sheer volume of fluffy hair around my head felt like I was wearing a comedy wig. I went straight to my bedroom, pulled the duvet up over my head and stayed there until morning.

  The house was quiet when I woke up at eight, having slept through my alarm. For once I hadn’t even heard Percy having his morning shower. The night had not done my new hairstyle any favours at all – it stretched out beyond my shoulders in a ginger afro that made me look as if I was wearing a Hallowe’en wig. Once I’d washed it, I hoped it would return to some semblance of normal.

  I put on my dressing gown over my pyjamas and scowled at my reflection. ‘Just be grateful Martin can’t see you now,’ I muttered. If he’d thought I’d let myself go before, it was nothing to how terrible I looked now.

  I hoped, given my late start, that I’d avoid seeing any of the residents until I’d managed to wash my hair. I shared the upstairs bathroom only with Percy – the others used the one on the next floor down – and even though I hadn’t heard his pre-dawn shower I knew he’d already be downstairs by now, arguing with Eleanor. But when I put my hand on the doorknob, it seemed like there was noise coming from inside – singing? I hadn’t realized this in time to stop turning the handle and, before I knew it, I was staring straight at a man’s upended arse.

  I should clarify that it was fully encased in denim, but you will appreciate that it was still quite a shock to encounter a strange man crouching under the toilet with his bum in the air, and I don’t think I can really be blamed for letting out an enormous scream. Which of course made the man hit his head against the toilet bowl with a resounding crack.

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ the strange man swore, pulling his head out from under the loo.

  ‘I know karate!’ I said wildly, hoping this would scare off the bathroom intruder, but he just sat back on his heels and rubbed at his dirty-blond hair with a wince. As he turned around I saw he was wearing a skin-tight T-shirt that read,

  Nice legs, what time do they open?

  Charming.

  ‘Karate?’ he laughed and straightened up to sit on the edge of the bath, checking the palm of his hand as if he expected to see blood. ‘Really? Are those your black-belt pyjamas?’

  ‘I mean it,’ I blustered, my hand flying to the collar of my pyjamas as I realized how I must look, half dressed and crazy-haired. ‘I’m dangerous. Who are you? What do you think you’re doing in my bathroom?’

  ‘Your bathroom, is it?’ he said. He didn’t seem to be taking my threats seriously. I couldn’t blame him: no one was likely to mistake a history-of-art expert for a martial-arts one. He grinned at me, perfectly confident that I would not be breaking into a high kick. ‘Because I thought this house belonged to Lydia Bell. And I’ve already met her downstairs. Which means this isn’t your bathroom at all.’

  Slightly reassured that he wasn’t a burglar – although who knew? Perhaps he was just one who liked to thoroughly research his victims – I allowed myself to relax a little. But not too much.

  ‘Well, it’s certainly not your bathroom,’ I snapped. ‘So perhaps you’d like to tell me what you’re doing here?’

  The man looked at me as if I was insane and gestured to an array of tools on the floor.

  ‘I don’t know if you can see anything through all that hair, but I’d have thought it was pretty obvious who I am.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘You’re the plumber.’

  ‘Yep. I’m the plumber; Jim. And you are?’

  ‘Rory,’ I said. ‘Lydia’s niece.’

  ‘Rory?’ he asked, wrinkling his nose and frowning. ‘What kind of a name’s that for a girl? Bit weird.’

  ‘It’s short for Aurora,’ I said. I hated having to explain my name. It was a grimly ironic fact that while in my daily life at Country House I was regarded as deeply common and only one step away from a council-estate hoodie, the average person encountering my name instantly assumed I was some sort of over-privileged toff.

  ‘Aurora? Like the aurora borealis? Like the dawn?’ said Jim, flashing me a cocky grin. He had one of those American sorts of faces: square-jawed, tanned, white-teethed. As if he should have an American football tucked under his armpit and a cheerleader by his side. The obvious kind of good-looking face that said, You fancy me, don’t you? Everyone does.

  I sighed and didn’t answer him. It was almost worse when people knew what Aurora meant. Although at least he hadn’t guessed the Sleeping Beauty connection – that was definitely more shaming.

  ‘Bit of a mouthful, isn’t it? I think I’ll just call you Dawn.’ I think he thought I’d simper agreement or blush or something. He was probably used to charming his female clients with his cheesy grin and his ridiculously tight T-shirts. I could practically see the muscles on his stomach through the thin fabric. He caught me looking and grinned again, distinctly smug. He might as well have said, ‘Fancy a bit, do you?’

  ‘Call me— Do you mind?’ I said crossly, folding my arms across my chest. ‘I don’t want you to call me anything. If you’ll excuse me, I just want to have my shower and get to work.’

  ‘Oh you can’t have a shower, Dawn,’ said Jim, still smiling.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I’ve turned all the water off. Your aunt said everyone would be finished in the bathrooms by eight.’

  ‘But – I’ve overslept! And I have to wash my hair!’ I shrieked.

  He shrugged, nodding his head towards the toilet, half of which, I saw only now, was in pieces on the floor. ‘Not my problem, Dawn. I can’t turn it back on now, I’ve already disconnected the cistern from the wall.’

  ‘But my hair!’ I wailed, grasping at the giant afro to make him realize the seriousness of the situation.

  ‘I don’t know much about hair,’ said Jim, carefully scrutinizing me, ‘but I think it might take a bit more than a shower to sort out your barnet.’

  ‘How dare you!’ I said, trembling with rage and frustration.

  ‘No offence, Dawn, you’re not a bad-looking girl, but have you ever heard of John Frieda Frizz-Ease serum?’

  That was it. I was not about to be lectured on hair care by a plumber whose blond streaks were, I suspected, not entirely natural. What sort of man actually gets highlights? The vanity! And for him to stand there, all sweaty in his filthy jeans and a tight white T-shirt with a frankly offensive slogan on it, and actually lecture me on appearance! I stomped back up the stairs to my attic room and slammed the door so hard that the frame shook. I shook, too. I couldn’t even, like Percy, rinse my hair in the sink, because there was no water in the entire sodding house. My whole day was ruined. My whole life was ruined.

  I had already cried more in the last few weeks than in the last ten years of my life; and with my horrendous haircut I couldn’t afford to look any worse. So I gulped back the sobs that were welling up in my chest, and attempted to wrestle my hair into submission. I had to resort to a version of the tight plaits that had blighted my early adolescence – anything else just allowed the frizz to escape and, if anything, it l
ooked worse springing out in irregular patches than when in one huge bouffy triangle. I left the house with two sensible French pleats winding down my head as if it was my first day at Wareham Manor School, aged fourteen, friendless and ginger and the new girl yet again.

  ‘Oh Goouurd, Roars, what happened?’ demanded Ticky as soon as she saw my hair. ‘What is this freaky hairstyle you’ve got going on? You look like some spoddy cellist in the National Youth Orchestra, for God’s sake. Tell me Marlon didn’t do this?’

  ‘No, Marlon didn’t do the plaits,’ I said through gritted teeth. ‘Marlon styled my hair so ridiculously that this is the only way I can wear it today.’

  ‘Oh, like, nightmare,’ grimaced Ticky. ‘Turn around – let me see. Well, Roars, I can’t really see how much he’s taken off.’

  ‘Trust me, this is better than it was when I left the salon,’ I grumbled.

  ‘Goouurd, Roars, I am, like, so sorry.’ She wheeled herself over on her swivelling office chair and propped her elbows on my desk. ‘Did you, like, cry and shit? Was it awful?’

  ‘Yes, Ticky, I did cry and shit,’ I said as she nodded encouragingly. ‘For about an hour. But I should have realized that I was expecting too much. It was only a haircut. I was never going to have some ugly-duckling-to-swan transformation. This isn’t a movie.’