Deception is the Old Black

by V Clifford

  Viv filled the kettle. No intention of making anything, just to give Marjory space to do whatever she needed to do. Viv was used to clients crying. People underestimate the intimacy of having their hair cut. Having someone right inside your personal space, making gentle physical contact with you was rare and could trigger an emotional flood.

  As the kettle came to the boil Marjory sat upright, pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and said, ‘Sorry. Okay now. Can we continue?’

  Viv raised her eyebrows, but not within sight of Marjory. She continued cutting into the layers on the crown in the hope that undercutting would support the longer lengths and give her the height that she wanted. Viv knew that Marjory’s hair regime was minimal and if she wanted height on the crown she’d actually have to use a hairdryer now and again. Unlikely, Viv thought, but at least she’d covered all bases.

  As she began the blow-dry Marjory was back to her usual tense self. Her blotchy face and a handkerchief being tortured between her hands were the remaining signs of her distress. If she had wanted to talk to Viv about what was going on she would have. Viv tidied up her things while Marjory went off to write a cheque. As Viv was leaving she gently touched Marjory’s shoulder. Big mistake. Her eyes filled again and she retreated so quickly that she caught Viv’s kit bag in the front door. Experiences like this reminded Viv that everyone was carrying a history that no one else knew, and the more swan like the exterior the more they were paddling like fury beneath the surface. Marjory was an unusual woman, because despite being a regular and long-term client their relationship had remained formal. Marjory’s husband, on the other hand, was an open, sometimes too open, academic – his wife’s polar opposite. It took all sorts to make a nation, and she wondered what was going on for Marjory. She tossed her kit into the back of the Rav and glanced back at the sad exterior of the house.

  Her next client was the antithesis of all that was wrong in the world. Jinty lived in Royal Terrace, a few doors away from the ferocious Edinburgh Bridge Club. On days that they were playing it was impossible to park, but today Viv had sailed into a space right outside Jinty’s front door. Jinty greeted Viv with a warm hug and a couple of air kisses, and already had coffee on the go. It was always a joy to see her. She had good things to say about everyone and had a fabulous head of hair that was one of Viv’s best advertisements.

  ‘How are you, girl?’ Jinty asked, as she turned down the gas on a pan of warming milk and pulled out a jar of homemade biscuits from an overhead cupboard in one continuous sweeping gesture.

  ‘Great. Just been on the west coast.’

  ‘That’s not like you. I see you as an urban animal.’

  ‘Oh, I am, but this was a work thing. Got the chance to swim with a seal.’

  Jinty swung round. ‘What a seal seal with flippers and . . .what else do seals have?’

  They laughed, neither knowing quite how to describe a seal.

  ‘Help yourself.’ Jinty pushed forward the jar of biscuits. ‘Made them yesterday. Ginger cookies. Not bad for a first attempt. Posh do on at Holyrood tonight. Queenie and all. No idea why we’re invited but hey ho, no hardship since it’s a hop, skip and jump from here.’

  ‘What’s the occasion?’

  ‘Something to do with the Archers’ centenary. I’ve probably got that entirely wrong. But we’ve been summoned and the jewels are out.’ She snorted. ‘Well the mockeroos are out.’

  It was Viv’s turn to laugh. She was sure that Jinty had jewellery enough to please a gathering of royals, but she was happy to wear paste.

  ‘So what’s happening to your hair?’

  ‘Exactly as you did last time, and the time before, and the time before that. Do you know, I even get stopped in Waitrose? People, well women usually, although I have had comments from men, ask who does my hair. It gives me great pleasure to say that you are unavailable until someone dies. Itching powder, that’s all I want off.’

  Viv laughed again. ‘You know this is money for old rope.’

  ‘If my husband hears you calling me old rope he’ll agree with you and adopt it as his own. Let’s go up.’

  Viv drained her coffee and they took the stairs to Jinty’s bedroom on the first floor. The paintings on the way up were a stunning mix of Victorian portraits and landscapes. One portrait of a young boy had such detail on his necktie that Viv gazed at it every time she passed. In the bedroom Jinty had an outfit lying on the bed. Still wrapped in a moth protector. Viv could only see the exquisite embroidery on the hem.

  ‘Can I have a quick glance at the . . .’ She nodded to the bag.

  Jinty hauled off the cover to expose a cream silk jacket, the sort of thing Viv imagined Nehru could have worn. Crewel work, tiny raised fronds of foliage with small flowers clinging to it as if their petals might at any minute close, glimmered on pale golden silk.

  ‘It’s old. A family thing. Had it tailored to fit. Think they’ve made a decent job of it. Designed, of course, to be worn in candlelight. It shall positively sing in the royal dining-room tonight.’

  ‘What will you wear with it? I mean do you have to have a skirt or trousers beneath?’

  Jinty pulled out a pair of cream silk palazzo pants. ‘They don’t match, but in a dim light what does it matter?’

  This was one of the things that Viv loved about Jinty. She could wear a paper bag and look fabulous with the natty turn-up of a collar or knot of a scarf.

  ‘Come on then, let’s get that itching powder off.’

  The unspoken aspect of Viv’s job was to keep the secrets of her clients. Many of them knew each other and had come to her through personal recommendations, which made this more difficult than it sounded. Jinty was Viv’s number one fan and had sent her lots of clients, some Viv wished she hadn’t, but others who Viv enjoyed almost as much as she did Jinty. Once her hair was completed and payment made, Viv skipped back to the car.

  Her next client was five minutes’ drive from Royal Terrace, and she was tempted, since she had a parking space, to walk. But the weight of her kit banging against her calf in the heat of the sun made her think otherwise. Easter Road was fast becoming the bohemian end of town with its lovely wide streets where there were no parking restrictions. This was fine most of the year, but in August, with so many visitors looking for free parking for the duration of their stay, this area was manna from heaven. Viv sympathised with the residents. She cursed as she circled for a parking space. When she eventually found one she still had to walk a fair distance to reach Annabelle’s flat. She rang the doorbell. No answer. Not good. No sounds from inside. She rang the bell again. Same, nothing but the chime echoing in the hallway. This had happened before, but Annabelle had eventually appeared, flushed from her basement studio, having lost track of the time. Not today, though. Viv took out her phone and rang her number, hearing it loud and clear on the other side of the door. No one made any attempt to pick up. The answering machine kicked in. Viv left a message saying she hoped everything was okay and would she ring her back. She called her next client, and in a rare stroke of luck he was in his office and could see her early. She made her way back to the car and drove to York Place. The client, a solicitor, had parking at the back of the office, which she had permission to use if there was space. There was.

  When she entered, Carol, his snippy receptionist, smiled an unconvincing smile and said, ‘Take a seat. I don’t have you in the diary for another forty-five minutes.’

  Viv was about to speak when Carol lifted her phone and stabbed at the unsuspecting buttons.

  ‘The hairdresser is here. Would you like me to get her coffee?’

  He must have said ‘send her through’ because Carol, evidence of anger crawling up her neck, gestured with a jerk of her head for Viv to go in. What was it with receptionists? They were the first greeting point for the firm, were supposed to put people at ease. She behaved like a eunuch, sleeping on the floor outside his door.

  Viv smiled. ‘Hey, Gerry. Thanks for changing the time.’ She set up her floor
mat and plugged in her drier.

  Gerry brought a chair over and tried to secure the gown. ‘Oops. You’ll have to do this.’ Viv took it from him, and once he was seated she wrapped him and the chair beneath it.

  He said, ‘This suits me really well. I’ve got tickets for a show later, but I’ve a notion to go and sit on George Street with a large latte and watch the world go by.’

  ‘Sounds good to me. Does Carol know you’re on your way to . . .’

  He grinned. ‘No, she bloody well does not. I’m sure she’s getting worse. Anyone would think that our citadel was worth storming.’

  Viv sprayed his hair with water and began cutting. ‘Why don’t you send her for some training?’

  ‘Oh God. You should hear the fuss. “If I’m not good enough etc etc.” The stuff of high drama. She only has two years before she retires. I swear she’s got a genetic predisposition to torture.’ He snorted. ‘But today I’m off to play hookie and she doesn’t know.’

  Gerry wasn’t the only client who was afraid of his secretary. Was it because receptionists had so much information stored in their heads that it wasn’t worth the hassle of trying to replace them? Two years seemed an awful long time to put up with someone who was beyond a pain in the neck. His hair took Viv twenty minutes to cut and less than five minutes to dry. Gerry was one of a few men who were phobic about going to a salon, and he frequently asked what he would do if anything happened to Viv. Her response was always the same. Why worry about something you have no control over? If only she could put her own rhetoric into practice. The huge office had windows facing onto York Place. The firm had amalgamated and another name had been added to the inscription on the window. To Viv’s eye, the calligraphy had been done by an artist determined to show the inferiority of the original; the result a modern colour combination that did nothing to enhance the old discreet names. Ferguson, Smith and now Cameron. The ‘Cameron’ brash, like Walter Scott’s idea of tartan against the subtle plaid of an old clan.

  ‘New partner?’ Viv nodded at the window.

  He drew in a deep breath. ‘Needs must. We apparently should have an in house matrimonial solicitor.’ He huffed.

  ‘Surely that means an anti-matrimonial solicitor?’

  He laughed. ‘You’re right. I’m not impressed. We’ve been conveyancing solicitors since the beginning and never had to contend with too much strife. Now we’re dealing with warring parties who once shared the same bed. It’s obscene.’

  Gerry was a bachelor. Not, as is often the case, a euphemism for a gay man in the closet, but a real live bachelor with old school values, braces, cufflinks and an embossed pinkie ring – style. Viv imagined him wearing a bowler hat until the ridicule became too frequent to bear.

  Chapter Twenty Two

  The following morning Viv decided to start the day with a run. As she was leaving the building she received a text from Ruddy. She locked up, jogged up Victoria Street and turned left towards the Mound. As she reached the junction with the Lawnmarket she looked right toward St Giles’ High Kirk. A metal barrier was set up along the edge of the pavement holding a crowd of people behind it. All eyes were peeled on the doors of the Kirk, which dominated Parliament Square. She stopped and said to a woman holding her phone aloft, ‘What’s going on?’

  The woman replied in a Texan accent. ‘Queen Elizabeth. We’ve never seen the Queen.’ She grinned.

  Viv stepped behind her and waited.

  The sun shone and the expanse of cobbles immediately outside the Kirk’s doors glistened from an earlier downpour. The air was fresh and tourists were in high spirits. A row of black saloons waited, their engines idling, their drivers capped and gloved, ready to move at the slightest nod from a soberly dressed official with an ear-wire, legs apart and hands clasped behind his back.

  Viv had watched a clip with the Queen and the First Minister on the late news last night. They’d been snipping some ribbon or other, the Queen sacrificing days away from her beloved Balmoral.

  Within the huge edifice of St Giles’, the Queen and her Knights of the Thistle had a private chapel. Becoming a KT was an honour bestowed on a select few who liked that sort of thing. For this visit High Court judges, a number of High Constables and the Royal Company of Archers. They had not been called out for any other occasion this year. If the Queen was actually under threat these would be the last men who would be able to protect her. The Constables and Archers made up an army of about 100 men, many of them too old and too overweight to fit into their eighteenth-century style uniforms. Viv stared at them and felt a giggle rising, as it occurred to her that clothes used for the preservation of rank, could, over time, have the opposite effect. This lot had become like caricatures.

  There were so many people behind the barrier that they were squashed against the shop fronts of the Royal Mile.

  Viv looked up to the roof of the building behind her on the corner of George IV Bridge and spotted two marksmen. So she did have real protection. People began to clap and cheer. Viv spotted a tiny figure dressed in lilac exit the church’s vast double doors flanked by men in stiff, dark green uniforms, none of whom looked fit enough to make it to the next bus stop never mind defend their monarch. Their hats, with great slim feathers extending up into the air, and ornate longbows were assurance of the ceremonial nature of the job. She spotted Jinty’s husband looking very upright and uncomfortable, but in true military fashion they marched her to her waiting car, not her usual one with the glass bubble on the top, but a black saloon with dark tinted windows that was bound to belong to Edinburgh council. No walkabout today then.

  Just as Her Majesty was stepping into the car a skinny youth broke ranks from the crowd and charged into the line of Archers. There was a collective intake of breath as one of the most elderly Archers was hurled to the ground. It all happened in seconds. Two other Archers rushed to his aid. A strange look passed between them as they half-heartedly tried to lift him. He roughly brushed them aside. Meanwhile the door of the saloon closed and the vehicle was driven off in a swift orderly manner, with the Queen safely inside, leaving her Archers trying to keep a grip on the offender. The watching crowd let go of their breath as soon as the Queen was safe, but the Archers seemed unsure of who was more important, their ancient colleague still kneeling on the ground, cocooned in his uniform, or the skinny young man being swung round by one of their number who had had the wit to grab his tee shirt. The young man wriggled efficiently out of it and bolted into the crowd, swerving as people tried to grab him. No shots were fired from the rooftops.

  She thought she saw him turn left into a close, so pushed through the crowd and raced towards St Giles’ Street, a dead-end for cars but with steps leading onto Market Street. If the young man had taken any of the closes on the left side of the High Street he’d end up in Cockburn Street and Viv might have a chance to cut him off. Knowing Edinburgh’s Old Town, full of nooks and crannies, increased her chance of success.

  She was breathing hard when she turned into the bottom of Cockburn Street and crashed head on into the tee shirtless young man. He side-stepped her but she stuck out her foot and sent him head over heals. She was on top of him in a second. He was around the same height as her, both of them slender and fit, so it was an equal fight. She managed to pin one of his arms to the ground with her knee and forced the other arm behind his back. Purplish bruises on his upper arms and old yellowing bruises on his back looked as if he’d been held by force before. Just as she pulled out her phone, a plainclothes security guy came puffing down Warriston Close. He looked right and left before settling an astonished look on Viv sitting astride the young man on the pavement. He ran to them and cuffed the man before even opening his mouth to Viv. Passers-by stopped and pointed their phones. Viv turned her back to them.

  ‘How did you know to do that?’

  She caught her breath and shook out her limbs. ‘Watching crime on telly.’

  She stood with her hands on her hips, still with her back to the increasing crowd,
and watched the security guy, or whatever the royal household’s minders were called these days, haul the man to his feet. He spoke into a tiny mouthpiece. ‘Assailant apprehended. Request backup vehicle on Cockburn Street.’

  Viv was intrigued by the formality of his language. ‘So what happens now?’

  ‘We will need a statement from you, Madam.’

  Viv walked away a few paces, took out her phone and rang Mac. ‘Hi. You’ll never believe it.’

  Mac interrupted her. ‘Try me. You’ve just witnessed an attack on the Queen?’

  ‘Yes, but if it was an attack it was pretty ineffectual. I’d say it was more like a decoy. What has been running along your ticker tape?’

  ‘Two minutes ago it came over the wire that a young man had attacked the Queen.’

  ‘I saw it. He didn’t actually attack her. He ran at the Archers but didn’t get to touch her or anything so that doesn’t constitute an . . .’

  ‘Whatever, Viv. What are you doing?’

  ‘I apprehended the guy.’

  She could hear him almost choke at the other end of the line.

  ‘What the fu . . . You mean you chased him?’

  ‘What else was I supposed to do? Did you think I’d just spectate? Look I’m not sure what to tell them. Should I keep quiet about our stuff or will they already know?’

  ‘Some of them will know but who is with you? And listen, what were you doing there?’

  ‘I was out for a run. Hang on, you speak to him. It’ll make life easier.’