Huts69

I was meditating up in my room, lying smoking on my bed, glad of the rest, after a long day doing nothing in Ailsa Ward. I wished Wullie the Pole would get sick; lighten up, or something, and not just spend the whole day moaning at me. It was wearing me down. I tugged at bit of my hair; a long black strand lay in the palm of hand. It was a premonition: hair’s hammer and sickle- death card. I rushed to the mirror. My forehead did look bigger. I couldn’t figure it out. Dad had hair, that bounded away from him, which mum had to periodically hack away. I’d been much the same, apart from the cow’s lick, which made my life miserable, but now it seemed like an old friend, I never knew I’d really liked-because I didn’t- until it was too late. Now, I’d need to get a hat. Now, I’d need to get engaged and married before my putative wife found out she’d married a bald man.

I heard the door, but ignored it. I was too busy handling my new life as a bald man. I wouldn’t get a wig. I’d just be the same as that singer, whose name I couldn’t remember, because nobody ever remembers the names of bald people, unless they’re woman of course, then you remember their name, because bald woman are freaks, unless they’re really old, then you feel sorry for them because they’re old, and because they all look like Bobby Charlton, and don’t even know it, because they’re old. I carefully felt my scalp like a craniologist, with one cautious hand, then the other, helping confirm the diagnosis. My hair, for the time being, seemed stable: firmly rooted. But some of my bald patches could be hiding; the only way of really knowing was to start checking the bath plughole. I’d need to remember, to tell mum, not to clean the bath.

‘The door’s for you,’ shouted mum up the stairs.

‘Ok,’ I shouted back, carefully patting my hair.

Maureen Hargreaves’ hair was tied in a no nonsense blond knot. I didn’t know whether to bring her in, or let her stand at the door. She might have been my pal, but she was a girl and she’d even got pregnant to prove it. But I couldn’t reconcile the cute cheeky grin on Maureen’s face with her letting Snoddy-Snodgrass shag her. Anyway, mum would be noseying about if I brought her in. Dad might even look up from his paper and his randomly aimed shouts at the new black and white telly-he never watched, that ‘they were bloody idiots, they didn’t know what they were talking about,’- and get involved.

‘Hi,’ I said, trying not to pat my hair and draw attention to it; keeping her at the front door.

But she no longer seemed to blush anymore, or get tongue-tied; free of all that which had made us feel we held the same secret.

‘We’ve passed,’ Maureen said, in a way that made me want to hug her. Then adding ‘nearly everybody has passed.’ Maureen stepped forward, as if her exuberance was going to sweep her right into the house and up the stairs.

I sneaked a step backwards. ‘Nearly everybody,’ meant nearly everybody, but me. There was no place in the world for a bald failure. I edged the door shut. But I was wondering why she was tormenting me with it. I thought she’d liked me.

‘C’mon,’ she said, grabbing at my hand, ‘we’re going out to celebrate!’

I’d lots of questions: about him and her. But my jaw worked as if I was chewing toffees and my face felt like someone had tipped a pot of boiling water over it.

Maureen’s face started turning the same shade of sympathetic red and she seemed to slump down into herself, as if she was hiding, in that way I knew so well.

‘That’s great,’ I finally said, like an out of tune note.

I reached slowly, as if any sudden movement would scare her away, and gently clutched at her too white hand, instinctively avoiding touching the gold band and emerald of her engagement ring.

‘That’s great,’ I said.

Her eyes peeked out of her long lashes and she smiled. I felt older and wiser as if I knew everything was going to be all right.

‘Come in,’ I said, flinging open the door, not caring if mum and dad, and the Glendevon Brass Section, followed us up the stairs to my bedroom.

Mum hadn’t even made the bed. And there were LP covers strewn about the room, and an ashtray, with a half lit fag still smouldering. Maureen picked a path, clutching her handbag and sat primly on my bed, avoiding the crumpled socks and bits of white toilet roll.

‘I’ll need to get changed,’ I said.

Maureen’s face begun to go red again. ‘It’s warm in here,’ she said.

‘I’ll open a window,’ I was already up, and away from her, struggling with the window, only my mum could open, before she spoke again.

‘Sorry,’ she said, taking a deep breath and standing up. ‘I just thought that…Sorry…I’ll just go’.

‘No,’ I said, moving closer, almost ushering her back towards the bed, like a sheepdog, ‘sit down, I’ll tap mum for some money and we’ll go out’.

We were both red faced, but it felt natural now. Maureen did that trick with her bag that women do, innocently opening it and slyly counting, and quickly re-counting, everything that she’s ever owned in the world, with her fingers. ‘I’ve got money,’ she said, and the abacus of her fingers confirmed it.

‘I can’t take your money. The last time you wouldn’t even let me pay you back.’ She’d about 15 stray kids in her family, how could she have money? I blew out my cheeks, in bewilderment. ‘And anyway, where could we go?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said, rifling through her handbag for a proper hanky, as I eyed the bits of toilet roll under the bed that hadn’t been used much.

‘What about…?’

But Maureen just shook her head and I knew not to ask.

‘Lets go into the toon,’ Maureen said.

‘Glasgow?’ I said, as if she’d said lets hop onto a sputnik.

‘Yes. GLASGOW,’ she said, her little dimples crowning her face.