The Haircut, Continues ....
‘Oh, don’t be so stupid Kevin. Of course,
it doesn’t.’
‘So why can’t I go to dad’s now then?’
‘Oh, go with your dad then. But you just
make sure you do,’ she said, as she walked off.
Now the thing is Mrs Collingwood, Rita’s
mum, said two days ago that my hair looked really nice, but there was no use
saying that to my mum because she’s thinks Mrs Collingwood’s snooty. Rita liked
my hair as well. I was hoping Rita might let me kiss her next week.
Anyway, yesterday me and dad walked to his
barber’s. It’s next to a chippy on one side and a launderette on the other
which is next to Cindy’s hair salon. My mum told me to duck when I went past
Cindy’s so she wouldn’t see me. On the way my dad told me again how proud he was
that I’d be going to St Cuthbert’s grammar school next year and how he’d told
everybody at the factory and everybody at Trafford Ex-Service Men’s Club. He
gave me 50p to spend at Blackpool as well. That’s a big deal for dad because he
doesn’t earn a lot of money at the factory. Our kid buys all his beer on Friday
nights when they go to the pub together. Dad’s virtually bald. He was in and
out of the hairdressing chair in a flash. Then it was my turn. On the walls I couldn’t
see any photographs of young men with trendy haircuts, like there are at Cindy’s,
only advertisements for Brylcreem and old men with greased back hair. I should
have been worried then.
The barber, Mr Brooks, who must be at
least 50, placed a plank across the arms of the chair and I sat on it and
looked at myself in the mirror. I told Mr Brooks not to take too much off the
back and just a little off the fringe.
I didn’t say a word on the way home, but
as soon as I got in the front door I burst into tears.
‘Mum, look what dad’s barber has done to
my hair!’ I shouted.
I looked in the hall mirror. I’d virtually
got a short back and sides. On the top of my head the hair was so short it
stuck up. Everybody at St Cuthbert’s is going to say I’ve had an accident with
a lawnmower or something. My dad was shocked by my reaction, but I’d fought
back the tears from the moment Mr Brooks asked if everything was to my
satisfaction. He didn’t listen to a word I’d said and he made me end up looking
like Billy Whizz from the Beano. My mum and dad tried to get me to stop crying,
but each time I looked in the mirror I just started again. My dad really thought
there was nothing wrong with the haircut, but I could tell my mum was lying
when she said I looked very handsome. I stormed off to my bedroom and threw
myself on my bed. I told myself not to be a big cry baby, but I couldn’t help
it. My hair won’t have grown back by the time I start at St Cuthbert’s.
Dad doesn’t understand haircuts and fashion
and music and stuff like that. Him and my mum were a lot older than all the
other parents at my primary school. One day, when he still lived at home our
kid told me I was an accident and my dad and mum went mad at him. I know I said
my mum never loses her temper, but she did then. I’d asked her where I came
from.
‘Ask your dad,’ she said in her voice that
meant I was asking a question I shouldn’t be asking.
‘He’s out.’
‘Well ask your brother then.’
So, the next day when he came to collect
dad to go to the pub, I waited until we were alone in the living room and I
asked him.
‘You
were an accident,’ he laughed.
My mum and dad were in the hall and
overheard him. They went berserk.
‘Don’t say that to Kevin! He’s your
brother!’ my dad shouted, as him and mum burst into the living room.
‘He was a blessing not an accident. Don’t
you ever say that to your brother,’ my mum added and I could she was really
upset.
Our kid looked shocked.
‘Sorry, our kid, I was only joking.’
‘Your brother was only joking Kevin.’
When dad came back from the pub, he sat me
down in front of him. I could smell the beer on his breath, but he wasn’t drunk
because he can only drink two pints of beer before his stomach hurts. Mum
thinks he’s got an ulcer, but dad won’t go to the doctor’s because he doesn’t
want to bother him. He looked right into my eyes and said I mustn’t believe
what John had said and that he didn’t mean it and that everybody loved me and
that everybody was proud of me. For a minute, I thought he was going to cry. I
didn’t understand why everybody was making such a big fuss. I really wasn’t
bothered. I didn’t know what our kid meant by saying I was an accident. How can
a person be an accident? That doesn’t make sense.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, after moping around in my bedroom
for a while after my crap haircut, I went downstairs for my tea. Mum was more
cheerful than usual. Dad had gone to work because he was on nights. My mum said
my dad was really sorry. I ate my tea and went to bed. I thought about things
and I decided to say sorry to dad the next day. It wasn’t his fault, it was the
stupid barber’s.
The next day when I got up the first thing
I did was go to the bathroom. I took my dad’s shaving mirror and held it behind
my head so I could look in the bathroom mirror and see the back of my head in
the shaving mirror. Perhaps it will grow back before I start at St Cuthbert’s
next month and perhaps I am overreacting. Perhaps Rita will still kiss me. I
went across the road to the corner shop to buy some sweets for the journey to
Blackpool. As I left the shop I saw Colin knock on our front door and mum give
him a real ticking off. When he never said anything about my haircut all the
way to Oxford Road Station, it was obvious she’d warned him not to laugh at me.
On the train he couldn’t avoid looking at me because it was packed and we had
to sit opposite each other. At Bolton, after the people around us got off, he
finally cracked and burst into laughter. Colin asked me why I let the
hairdresser do it to me. I wasn’t sure what the answer was. I think I just
froze in horror and I couldn’t get the words out, and the barber cut the back first
and I couldn’t see how short it was. Then the fringe was gone before I could say
anything.
After a while we started talking about how
much money we’d got to spend and what rides we would go on at the Pleasure
Beach. The train stopped at a red light and out of the window I could see the
back gardens and into the kitchens of a row of houses. I imagined witnessing a
murder in one of the kitchens and then trying to persuade the police what I saw.
I think this must have been the plot of one of those old black and white films
that are on telly on Sunday afternoons. A couple of young boys came running out
of the back door of one of the houses, waving wildly at the train. Hell! Were
they trying to warn us about some danger we were unaware of? I pointed them out
to Colin and we pressed our faces close to the window so we could see better.
They were frantic now and it was almost as if they were pointing to our
carriage. Colin and I looked desperately around. Were we on fire? Was there a
murderer on board? Then all the passengers in our carriage looked at the boys
and tried to work out what they wanted to tell us. One of the boys ran back
into his house and then came out with a marker pen and a white sheet. He put
the sheet on the ground and started to write on it in huge block capitals. ‘You
have.’ And then his pen ran out. He shook it furiously and tried again, but it
was no use, it wouldn’t work. You have what? You have a bomb on board? You have
brakes that won’t work? You have no chance of surviving? The first boy ran back
into the kitchen and came running back out with another pen which he threw to
the first boy. He started to write on the sheet again. Then the train started
to move off. Quick! Hurry up! Finish your message!
Finally, the two boys held the sheet up
and it said ‘you have a crap haircut.’ I felt my face go bright purple and
everybody on the train fell about laughing. The guard came along, told us our
tickets were free and ruffled my hair, only he couldn’t because there was not
enough hair to ruffle so he did a comic take and pretended to be surprised.
Everyone started laughing again. Yeah, dead funny, ha, ha.
At Blackpool Pleasure Beach we went into
the Fun House because it was raining. There’s an attraction called the Laughing
Policeman. It’s a giant policeman dressed in a 50s police uniform inside a
glass case. He has a big, chubby face and he doesn’t stop laughing. His laugh
is distinctive. He takes a big intake of breath until his lungs are full and
then as he breathes out keeps on laughing, on and on. The ha-ha-has become
louder and louder until he needs to breathe in again and he starts again. His
laugh is infectious and everybody who stands around the case looking at him
can’t help themselves from also laughing.
I felt he was laughing at my haircut and I’m sure rather than continuous
ha-ha-has I could hear ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha, ha-ha-ha, crap haircut, ha-ha-ha.
The day at Blackpool was over in a flash
and when I was back home in our front room there was a queue of people outside
our front door that stretched down the length of the avenue. My mum was selling
them tickets at 5p each to look at my haircut. She lined up five people outside
the house in front of the living room windows and Colin inside the house opened
the curtains and they looked at my haircut for a minute before the next set of
people in the queue paid and took their places. It was like I was some kind of
fairground freak, a bit like the amazing bearded woman that we saw at Belle Vue
a couple of years ago. I really wasn’t happy about this, but when I complained,
my mum just said that St Cuthbert’s uniforms didn’t grow on trees and we could
do with the extra money.
Then I woke up! It was a dream! It was all
a dream! I felt my head. There was still virtually no hair there. The train
journey and Blackpool were a dream, the haircut wasn’t. That morning my mum and
dad continued to reassure me that my haircut was fine. Then the front door bell
rang. I thought it must be our kid, but I didn’t hear his car pull up. I
answered the door. It was Rita.
‘I heard you were going to Blackpool. I
was wondering if I could come as well.’
‘Yeah, sure,’ I said. I was gobsmacked. I
looked at her for a few moments.
‘Don’t keep the young lady waiting. Invite
her in,’ shouted my mum from behind me in the hall.
‘Like your haircut by the way,’ she said
as she walked in.
‘You do?’
‘Yeah, it shows off your ears. You’ve got
really nice ears.’
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