Rachel's Holiday

by Marian Keyes

  Bitter was my disappointment when someone – Mr Hutchinson, I presumed – said Chris wasn’t there. I didn’t leave my name in case he didn’t call me back. Then I went through the whole nerve-racking ordeal again on Monday but this time he was there.

  ‘Rachel!’ he exclaimed, sounding delighted to hear from me. ‘I was hoping you’d ring. How’s it all going?’

  ‘Fine!’ I declared, instantly upbeat, everything sunny and wonderful.

  ‘When did you get out?’

  ‘Friday.’

  You should have known.

  ‘Been to any meetings yet?’ he asked.

  ‘Er, no,’ I said vaguely. ‘Busy, you know…’

  Busy eating biscuits and hanging around the house, feeling sorry for myself.

  ‘Don’t neglect them, Rachel,’ he warned, gently.

  ‘I won’t, I won’t,’ I promised hastily. ‘So, er, do you want to meet up?’

  ‘We could, I suppose,’ he said. He didn’t sound half as enthusiastic as I would have liked him to.

  ‘When?’ I pressed.

  ‘Before you left the Cloisters weren’t you given a warning about not doing… well… anything for a year?’ he asked. First I thought he was changing the subject, then I realized he wasn’t.

  ‘Yes,’ I blurted, mortified in case he thought I was trying to make a move on him. ‘No relationships with the opposite sex.

  ‘Suits me down to the ground,’ I lied. ‘Were you told that too?’

  ‘Yeah, no relationships, no alcohol, no scratch cards even! I’m surprised they haven’t warned me off breathing, in case I get cross-addicted to oxygen!’

  We both laughed long and hard at that, then he said ‘How about Wednesday evening? Seven-thirty, Stephen’s Green?’

  ‘Great!’

  Delighted, I hung up.

  After all, there was no law against flirting with him.

  61

  In honour of meeting Chris, I persuaded myself to have either a leg-wax or a haircut. I couldn’t afford both, well actually, I couldn’t afford either, so I decided on the haircut. No point in having a leg-wax. As both Chris and I were banned from carnal knowledge, the results of it would never see the light of day. If I was going to the bother of spending money I wanted everyone to know about it.

  On Tuesday morning it was in a mood of handbag-swinging, high anticipation that I got Mum to drive me to The Hair Apparent to have my hair cut by Jasmine. What was wrong with me? I had never, ever, in my whole life, left a hairdresser’s not struggling to hold back tears.

  But I always forgot. It was only when I found myself sitting in front of the mirror while someone disparagingly lifted and let fall strands of my hair, then heard the words ‘Christ almighty it’s in flitters,’ that it all came rushing back to me. By then it was too late.

  It was so long since I’d done anything as normal as go to a hairdresser’s that I viewed the tiles and mirrors and towels and bottles of The Hair Apparent with something akin to wonder. Which wasn’t reciprocated – the receptionist barely glanced at me as I explained my mission. ‘Take a seat at the basin,’ was her advice. Then I heard her shouting ‘Gráinne, Gráinne, client at basin two.’

  Gráinne didn’t inspire confidence. She looked very young. I would have said she was no more than thirteen, except surely there were laws against that kind of thing. She hobbled towards me on stick legs, attempted to make eye-contact and failed.

  Wobbling, she put a gown on me and tucked in loads of towels round my neck. She seemed to be having trouble remaining upright in her platforms.

  Then she turned on the taps and I settled back. But relaxation was not on the cards.

  ‘Er, where are you going on holidays this year?’ Gráinne asked awkwardly, like she’d been taught by the big hairdressers to do. She was clearly determined to get her diploma in cutting, tinting and poor conversation.

  ‘Nowhere,’ I said.

  ‘That’ll be lovely,’ she said, kneading my skull.

  We had a few short moments of blissful silence.

  ‘Have you been there before?’ she asked.

  ‘Loads of times.’

  More time elapsed, during which she scalded my scalp and sprayed the shower-head into my ears so often I nearly got water on the brain.

  ‘Are you going with a couple of friends?’ she enquired.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I haven’t got any friends.’

  ‘That’s great,’ she said pleasantly.

  As Gráinne scrubbed, rinsed and conditioned, I felt a certain pride that I must still look ordinary.

  ‘Who’s doing you today?’ asked Gráinne. I thought it was an unfortunate turn of phrase.

  ‘Jasmine.’

  ‘I’ll go and get…’ She gave a strange snigger, but so long as she wasn’t laughing at me that was fine. ‘…Jasmine for you.’

  She lurched away, leaning very forward because of the shoes, and called ‘Maura, Maura, your client is ready.’

  As soon as I saw Jasmine/Maura I recognized her and not just because she had trimmed my hair when I was home at Christmas. She was slathered in so much dark-brown foundation that with her white-blonde hair she looked like a negative. She was kind of hard to forget.

  When she passed Gráinne she stopped for an angry couple of words, probably telling her not to call her Maura.

  She mustn’t have recognized me because when she did the lifting and letting fall of the strands of hair thing, she said, in disgust and a strong Dublin accent ‘Jays! Who done your hair de last time? It’s a disaster area.’

  ‘I got it cut here.’ I cringed. I had to fight hard to stop myself speaking like her. I was ashamed of my middle-class accent, afraid that she might think I thought I was better than her. I wanted to be salt of the earth like Gráinne and Maura.

  ‘Who done it?’ she demanded.

  ‘I think it was you,’ I mumbled.

  Now she was going to destroy my hair as punishment. Hairdressers belong to the most powerful profession in the universe and they didn’t get that way by being nice. Sure enough, she ran her fingers through my hair and made ominous noises and tuts and tisks.

  ‘Jays,’ she said in disgust, ‘it’s in bits. What have you done to it?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Next you’ll be telling me you blow-dry it.’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Are you mad? You can’t blow-dry hair as brittle as dis. And do you ever condition it?’

  ‘Of course I condition it!’ I did know the rudiments of hair-care, the stupid cow.

  ‘Well, I’ve only got your word for it.’ She looked at me with narrowed eyes.

  ‘When I say I condition it,’ I flailed around, ‘I don’t actually do the hot-oil, once a week, in a heated towel type of thing. But I do use an ordinary conditioner every time I wash it.’

  ‘I see,’ she said, tightlipped. ‘Well, you’d want to start. With hair as dry as yours, you need a serious conditioner.’

  She paused.

  I waited.

  I knew what was coming next.

  ‘We do a range,’ she said, right on cue.

  I braced myself for the sales pitch. I picked up the occasional words like ‘Laboratory tested’, ‘Exclusive agents’, ‘Vital nutrients’, ‘Nourishing formula’, ‘Your only hope’.

  ‘How much?’ I asked.

  It was extortionate.

  ‘Fine,’ I swallowed. ‘I’ll take it.’

  ‘You’ll really need the shampoo and the mousse and the non-rinse conditioner and the anti-frizz serum and the…’

  ‘Wait,’ I said. And then I braced myself to say the hardest words I ever had to say.

  I paused, took a deep breath and said ‘I can’t afford them.’

  Her eyes held mine in the mirror. I knew she didn’t believe me. I knew she was thinking, ‘Stupid, posh bitch.’

  I tensed for her to grab me by the throat and scream ‘WHATABOUTMYCOMMISSION?’ She didn’t. I tried to convince myself there wasn’t any
need to feel guilty. But nothing doing.

  ‘It’s up to you if you don’t buy dem,’ Jasmine said reluctantly. ‘I tink it’s woort it personally. But it’s up to you.’

  ‘I’m unemployed,’ I explained, hoping that she might soften towards me.

  She tossed her head dismissively, like an angry wife shrugging off her apologetic husband’s overtures. ‘How much of dese ends do you want off?’ she demanded coldly.

  ‘Just a trim, please.’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  No?

  Apparently not.

  ‘De ends are in bits all the way up. It’ll have to come off up to here.’ She indicated an area around my shoulders.

  I felt a twang of anticipatory loss. Every cell in my body fought against the idea of having my hair cut.

  No, Jasmine, anything but short hair. Have mercy. Please.

  ‘I don’t mind if it’s in bits all the way up,’ I assured her warmly. ‘Honestly, it’s fine, I can live with it.’

  ‘But, it’s all broken and dead. And it’s split all the way to the roots practically.

  ‘Look!’ she ordered me. ‘Look! See how it’s split all along here.’

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘But…’

  ‘No, you’re not looking,’ she said.

  I looked.

  ‘But I don’t mind,’ I said, when I felt I had looked long enough. ‘I’d rather have long split hair than short not-split hair.’

  ‘You can’t have that,’ said Jasmine. ‘You can’t go round with split hair. It’s not on.’

  We were interrupted by Gráinne.

  ‘Maura,’ she said to Jasmine, ‘Mammy’s on the phone, she said she can’t babysit for Elroy this evening, you’ll have to come home.’

  ‘Fuck that, I’m going out on the piss, you’ll have to do it.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Do you want your job to be here when you come in tomorrow?’ asked Maura.

  ‘Oh,’ said Gráinne, her face a picture of resignation, and she limped away.

  My eyes met Jasmine’s in the mirror.

  ‘Me sister,’ she said, by way of explanation.

  I smiled nervously.

  ‘So we’re agreed,’ she said impatiently.

  Maybe it would be all right, I thought. A new beginning, cutting away the dead wood and the dead hair of the past. Going forward to a healthy, honest future with healthy, honest hair.

  ‘OK,’ I said.

  The hand that wields the scissors rules the world.

  Helen looked up when I let myself in.

  ‘But you’ve got ladies’ hair,’ she said in surprise. ‘Why did you ask for ladies’ hair?’

  ‘I didn’t!’ I screeched.

  I rushed to the mirror to see if it was as bad as I remembered. I had a white ring around my hairline where my foundation had been washed off. I had grey puddles under my eyes. But worst of all I had short curly hair. Jasmine had cut with a liberal hand, way above shoulder height. And then, to add insult to injury, had blow-dried it into short, tight, Mammyesque curls.

  ‘I’m so ugly,’ I sobbed. Huge, choking tears.

  ‘You are,’ agreed Helen.

  I was glad she agreed with me. If Mum had been there saying ‘It’ll grow,’ I would probably have become hysterical.

  I thought of the yards and yards of my hair on the floor, the hair that Luke used to tangle his hands in, and I cried even harder.

  ‘My life is over,’ I heaved.

  ‘You certainly shouldn’t do any going out for a while,’ said Helen.

  With her words, I almost began hyperventilating. Going out! I was supposed to be going out with Chris tomorrow night! How could I, now that I was almost bald?

  ‘I hate her,’ I gasped. ‘Stupid, fat, overmade-up bitch. I hate all hairdressers.’

  ‘I hope you didn’t give her a tip,’ said Helen.

  ‘Don’t be so fucking stupid,’ I sobbed. ‘Of course I gave her a tip.’

  I shouldn’t have given Jasmine anything, except maybe a black eye, but I couldn’t help myself. I even found myself murmuring ‘It’s lovely,’ when she did the thing with one mirror behind me and another in front.

  I managed to wait until I got outside before the tears started flowing freely down my face. I stood at the bus-stop and cried helplessly and felt naked without my hair. I was sure everyone was looking at me and for once my paranoia was correct.

  ‘Who’s your one with the dodgy hair?’ I heard. And when I turned round there was a crowd of schoolboys studying me carefully, then sniggering. Fourteen-year-old boys at the height of their hormones and they were laughing at me!

  ‘And it was so beautiful,’ I sobbed at Helen.

  ‘What was?’ she asked.

  ‘My hair,’ I cried. ‘Until that bitch got her hands on it.’

  ‘Well, it was all right,’ said Helen. ‘I wouldn’t have said beautiful, but…’

  ‘And they didn’t even give me any Hellos to read,’ I wept.

  ‘Swizzers,’ Helen sympathized.

  ‘And the fucking cost of it!’ I screeched. ‘My hair wasn’t the only thing that got done.’

  ‘Do you know who you look like?’ Helen said thoughtfully.

  ‘Who?’ I asked tremulously, hoping for redemption.

  ‘Brenda Fricker.’

  ‘AAAAaaarrrrggghhhhh.’

  ‘You know, when she was the mammy in that film,’ she said.

  I rushed to the mirror. ‘You’re right,’ I bawled, almost glad things were so apocalyptic. It gave a certain unimpeachability to my position.

  Mum and Dad arrived back and were invited to tender their opinion of my annihilated hair.

  Mum said doubtfully ‘It’ll grow.’

  Dad said proudly and fondly ‘You look more like your mother every day.’ I burst into tears again.

  ‘Do you know who you look like?’ Mum mused.

  ‘If you say Brenda Fricker I’ll kill myself,’ I warned her, my eyes bright red.

  ‘No, not at all,’ Mum said kindly. ‘No, what’s that her name is? An actress. What’s her name?’

  ‘Audrey Hepburn?’ I asked hopefully.

  ‘Noooo.’ Mum flapped her hands in frustration. ‘Oh, what’s her name?’

  I wondered if she knew who Linda Fiorentino was.

  ‘Linda Fiorentino?’ I dared to ask. (A man at a party had once told me I looked like Linda Fiorentino and I was so touched I slept with him.)

  ‘Who? Linda who? No!’ Mum danced a little jig in an attempt to jog her memory. ‘It’s on the tip of my tongue. Oh what was she in?’

  ‘The Last Seduction?’

  ‘That sounds like a terrible pile of filth. No, it wasn’t that. Oh, I have it! She was in that thing with Daniel Day Lewis…’

  My heart began to sink.

  ‘… you know, poor divil of a painter… Christy Brown! My Left Foot, that was it, that was it!’ She beamed in triumph.

  ‘What was the name of the woman who played the mother?’

  ‘Brenda Fricker,’ I said dully.

  62

  I had a choice of knotting a rope and kicking the chair from under myself or preparing to meet Chris.

  I’d have liked to put our big night out on hold until my hair had grown back, but I couldn’t be sure he’d wait the necessary twelve years.

  Although I didn’t look so puke-making once I’d washed the matronly curls out, and smeared on three times my usual amount of make-up.

  ‘At least it’s lovely and healthy,’ I consoled myself, after I’d combed my hair as flat as possible in an attempt to lengthen it.

  There was a raucous shriek of laughter from Helen. ‘Listen to her,’ she wheezed. ‘You’re so sad.

  ‘See my hair?’ she invited, lifting up some of her silky, waist-length strands. ‘Split to fuck. And does it bother me? Not at all!’

  On Wednesday, I spent hours getting ready. Preparations began as soon as I got up (about two-thirty), and continued throughout the afternoon. Once again I
washed what remained of my hair, then I shaved large parts of my body, while reflecting on the injustice of having far too much hair on my legs and not enough on my head. Of course, there was no need to shave anything, as Chris wouldn’t be getting a look at me. But what harm could it do? I demanded, my stomach pleasantly aflutter.

  After that I spread myself generously with Helen’s Issey Miyake body lotion. Then felt guilty, I should have asked her. And, if she’d said no, I shouldn’t have called her a little bitch, I should have just accepted it as an adult. Next time I needed to steal something of hers would be my opportunity to practise, I reassured myself.

  With that in mind, my hand wavered over Helen’s bottle of eau de parfum… then picked it up decisively. Sure, hadn’t the damage already been done, with the body lotion? Perfume was different, there was more of it. People might accuse you of being a selfish hoor for decimating their body lotion but they’d give a few squirts of their perfume to a total stranger, no questions asked.

  Next on the agenda was, of course, the great Agonizing about What to Wear. My worry about giving Chris the right message with my clothes – sexy but casual, stylish but easy-going – was compounded by several factors. One: all my summer clothes were in New York. And two: what was considered the height of fabulous in New York might have people in Dublin crashing their cars with mirth. And, of course, the third factor, the one I couldn’t really acknowledge, was that I felt very uncertain how to behave in the outside world anyway.

  Mum watched my preparations with concern. What worried her was not so much that her daughter who’d recently been released from a treatment centre was going out into the drug-infested world, but something far bigger.

  ‘Helen’ll kill you,’ she warned, when she saw the depleted bottle of body lotion.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said irritably.

  ‘Who’re you meeting, anyway?’ I could hear the massive anxiety in her voice and that both pained and annoyed me.

  ‘Chris from the bin,’ I said. ‘You know, you met him. So no need to worry, I won’t be with anyone who takes drugs.’

  ‘Chris Hutchinson?’ she said in alarm.