The actress goes on. ‘Plus, there’s all these’ – she makes air quotes under her nylon shawl – ‘students and squatters and druggies moving in. Maureen complains to the council, but they say they’ve got no money to do owt, and that’s when Mr Blenkinsop – that’s Peter – comes along. He’s from the new housing association. They can fix everything, he says, but on one condition – everyone’s got to transfer tenancy over to them.’
‘Rowan-Tree,’ Corina says.
‘In the play they’re called Sandhurst, but aye.’
‘Mam was part of the Tenants’ Association what fought them.’
‘I know she was,’ the actress says. ‘And good on her. You can’t have something as important as housing in private hands. Transfer, or forget about getting your hot water fixed? Tell me that’s not blackmail.’
Mrs Terry turns the page, pretending to read.
‘Well,’ the actress continues, ‘that’s it for Maureen. First, they took her marriage, then they took her job, and now they’re trying to take her home. Enough is enough. Something snaps in her, and she decides to take on Blenkinsop – and Sandhurst – head on…’
Despite herself, Corina is intrigued. ‘How?’
The actress winks in the mirror. ‘Come and find out. It’s at the Civic Hall next Tuesday, 7pm. Tickets are £3.’
‘I’ll see,’ Corina says.
They listen to the radio and, little by little, Corina’s hands take over. They hairspray scrunched layers of hair, set them with blasts of the dryer.
‘I think we’re done,’ she says.
The actress inspects herself in the mirror, grinning. ‘Oh God, this is a scream.’
‘Is it OK? It’s been a while.’
‘OK? Pet, it’s hideous!’ She bounces the spray-tacky curls. ‘You’re a genius. I tried doing my own fringe once and nearly ended up in A&E.’
‘It’s not hard,’ Corina says, slightly embarrassed. ‘You just find the shape and bring it out.’
The actress plucks a folded twenty from the coin purse hanging between her substantial breasts. ‘You know, I’ve walked past here a million times, but once the play’s over you can bring me back into the twenty-first century.’
‘I’m afraid today’s my last day.’
‘I thought this side of the estate wasn’t being knocked down until next year?’
‘It’s not that,’ Corina says. ‘There’s just not enough business.’
The actress shakes her head. ‘And why’s that, eh? We might’ve beaten them in ’92, but we always knew they’d try again. All they had to do was wait until things got bad enough again. It took twenty year, but things did.’ She drops her purse back into her cleavage. ‘Me and my husband will be gone by end of summer. Your folks are the same?’
‘Aye.’
‘Once the estate’s pulled down, it’ll be three and four bed family homes. Most folk left in the blocks are older or live alone. How many of us do you think will get to come back?’ She looks out over the green to Alexander Terrace. The removal van is now being loaded with the final few possessions. ‘What’ll you do next?’
Heart of Chrome. Open a Post Office account in Una-Lee’s name, for when she’s eighteen. Annabelle won’t have a say once Una-Lee’s eighteen.
Corina says, ‘I’ll be alright. Anyway, break a leg.’
When the actress is gone, Mrs Terry lowers her book. ‘Save the blocks? She’s not right in the head. They should’ve been pulled down yonks ago. They’re not fit for human beings, never were.’
Corina begins cleaning her scissors.
‘But then,’ Mrs Terrys says, ‘I don’t have to tell you.’
—
Whenever Corina thinks of the blocks – as she often does, as she does then – it’s invariably 1992, the year she finally cracked. Crude protest banners hanging a hundred feet up between windows. Spray painted bedsheets limp with rain:
SAVE OUR FLATS! SAY NO TO TRANSFER!
THATCHERISM = RACHMANISM!
TRANSFER IS PRIVATISATION!
FUCK OFF H.A. SCUM!
She thinks of Mam at the kitchen table, chopping flyers into Seabrook Crisp boxes, ready for meetings and demos. Dad seething in the other room, eyeballing Bullseye, sucking on the last of his teeth. His ash-filled orange peels, the tabloid crosswords he can’t finish. She thinks of poor Jim, how for three years after the accident he barely left his room. How when she tried talking to him, his eyes were clouded, distant. How he didn’t watch his horror films anymore and how she’d scour the Radio Times for late-night Frankensteins and Wolfmen – films she herself found ridiculous, but which she’d sit up late watching in the hope he might decide to join her. He never did. How one night he hurled all his tapes from his fourteenth-floor bedroom window while Dad hammered on his bedroom door. She thinks about how she never saw Alive anymore. About being twenty-one with no clue as to what she was doing with her life. How the sinking feeling was on her even before she’d opened her eyes in the mornings. She thinks about the lunacy that was four fully grown human beings living in a handful of concrete boxes in the sky. How the flat became a psychic tension map burning red in her mind: the muffled crump of her brother’s crutch in the hall after everyone had gone to bed, the squeaking hinge on the cupboard next to the fridge, the spectral clonk in the pipes whenever someone turned on the hot tap – how it all betrayed her whereabouts and left no place to be alone. About how that wasn’t even the worst of it, how there was some ambience the walls took and amplified – the default sound of life itself that went deeper than mere sound, an inescapable clamour that never, ever stopped. How it scraped against her sanity like frayed violin strings. She thinks about how she would lie on her bed with a pillow wrapped round her head in a vain attempt to block it all out, fantasising wrecking balls and caved ceilings and thousand-volt cables whipping death. About Asquith House toppling in a God-fist of dust.
About the futility of such reveries.
—
The actress has forgotten her polaroid. Corina picks it up. That jumper she’s wearing in it… when they were young, back when she was still capable of coherent garments, their mother had knitted such attire for herself and Jim. Jumpers that, in her burgeoning pubescence, she had gone to extreme lengths to avoid wearing.
She puts the picture by the money box. If the woman wanted it, she’d be back.
The Rowan-Tree letter she’d received yesterday is in her cluttered handbag. She ignores it, rummages for cigarettes. Mrs Terry doesn’t acknowledge her as she steps outside.
The precinct is hot and her head thumps in protest as she lights up, inhales. The distant sound of pneumatic drills on the breeze. Getting closer each day.
Exhale.
Across the green, the figures emptying the house on Alexander Terrace close the van and lock the house. Corina squints through smoke as they pull away
No, she won’t be going to the actress’ play. No point. She already knows how it ends.
—
Due to its relative position across the green, Hair by Corina offered front row seats to Alexander Terrace’s demise. Harbinger: the house centre-left, the one with the green door. Vans came and went, and come nightfall the dark windows made the house a punched-out tooth in a grimace of light. Emptiness rippled out from the abandoned geometry of its rooms, disseminating foreboding, drip-feeding Omen. First to fall to the hoodoo was Mrs Hill, who lived at the top of the Terrace and came in for a shampoo and set every two months with the reliability of an atomic clock: ‘We’ve got no choice but to move,’ she said, three months before actually doing so, ‘negative equity, pet.’ Her departure was followed by Mrs O’Shaughnessy (Helen Mirren bob) at Number 19 for the same reason. A month after the O’Shaughnessy’s left, someone – kids probably – set fire to the house. Soot raked up and out of the shattered, blackened windows, as if someone had attempted to mascara a
giant skull. Mrs Veitch (amber tints) lived next door to the O’Shaughnessy’s, and her house was so badly damaged that she and her family had to stay in a B&B while the insurance came through. When it did, the Veitchs moved too. The council began shipping new people into the vacated houses – younger people mostly, on (if gossips was to be believed) housing benefit. Which was fine, Corina had no prejudices; she just wished they’d come in for haircuts.
Then came Rowan-Tree with their majority vote for transfer and ‘Regeneration’. Langland Way and The Avenues were first to be put to the wrecking ball, her regulars on those streets rehoused miles away, their homes and histories smashed; that sound bricks make when they break rolling thousand-fold across the rooftops became the first thing she heard in the mornings. The air took on mass, sat on her chest. Popperwell Avenue went next. Hayrick Walk. South Ponds Rise. Windhorst Avenue. Mrs Laville (Anjelica Houston’s do circa The Postman Always Rings Twice) lived on Windhorst: ‘I don’t open the curtains anymore because the living room looks onto the site. Those men don’t wear tops, and the language…They start banging at the crack of dawn. I rang the council, said my husband’s got epilepsy. They said it’s nowt to do with them, said to ring Rowan-Tree. So I did. It was like talking to the speaking clock.’
That was the last time Corina cut Mrs Laville’s hair.
Mrs Vose (cut and blow dry) lived sandwiched between two vacated houses over on Somers Street, until the council bused in new neighbours. She was in tears as she told Corina about the syringe her daughter found in their yard. The Voses left two months later.
Watch them fall: Halfrey Road, Roman Way, Loom Street. Fences went up around the building site to stop the pinching of bricks and timber, to keep teenagers from heavy petting in the clawed buckets of diggers. The hoardings and billboards: Daddy with one arm round Mummy’s pregnant waist, the other hand paternally resting on his son’s shoulder, the three of them watch the youngest daughter gambol with a chocolate lab on the front lawn of their immaculate new-build:
ROWAN-TREE HOMES:
IT’S WHERE YOUR HEART IS.
Rowan-Tree sent her a leaflet explaining their plans for the bulldozing of her home, for the easiest methods of selling it to them so that they may do so. Included was a map of the prospective new estate: houses and streets so other to those she knew that they simply failed to compute. The blocks, her home, her salon – all erased, replaced by a Rowan-Tree utopia dovetailing with the detached houses of Moorside, where her daughter Annabelle, her boyfriend Kyle, and five-year-old granddaughter Una-Lee now lived.
Meanwhile, Alexander Terrace continued to empty. Goodbye Mrs Barker (perm), au revoir Mrs Lobe (perm), auf wiedersehen Ms Killkerry (shingle bob). Soon, her one remaining Alexander client was Mrs Enright (perm) at Number 30. Mrs Enright who grew Red Hot Pokers in her front garden and glued hand-painted seashells along her wall. Mrs Enright who burned with defiance, her voice powdery from laryngeal cancer. ‘I’ve lived here forty year and I’ll be damned if they’re turfing me out now.’ But the cardboard signs in her windows reminded Corina of the same clapped-out sloganeering on the Tenants’ Association flyers her mother used to distribute: UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL and UNITE AND FIGHT AGAINST ROWAN-TREE SOCIAL CLEANSING! And ultimately, even Mrs Enright caved. Around the time Corina lost a week’s takings on a reverse-forecast at Monmore that should have been nailed on, Mrs Enright took the home-loss cheque. The knotweed rose up to murder her Red Hot Pokers and, one-by-one, kids prised the seashells from her wall, to skim through her windows or carry off to destinations unknown.
—
Corina ponders the whitewashed window next door as she crushes her cigarette. Who was Shaz? Why was she a slag? Further questions without answers. The place had been a laundrette up until a few years ago.
She should go back in, sweep up the actress’ hair, rinse the chemicals from Mrs Terry’s head, but she lingers. The sun works on her hangover. It must be horrible for the kids off school, cooped up inside by abduction-fearing parents on a day like this. What would Una-Lee be up to right now? Drawing, probably. According to Dad, that was all her granddaughter did when Annabelle took her to Asquith for visits timed meticulously to never coincide with her own. Una-Lee is the only thing capable of cracking her father’s carapace these days.
Smashing little drawer, he said, last time Corina was round. A right little Mona Lisa (Corina didn’t correct this). She must get it from Annabelle.
Uh-huh, Corina said.
Don’t know where Anabelle got it, he said. Not you.
Uh-huh.
—
A month or two after the cataclysmic New Year’s Eve 1993 explosion, she woke on Max’s settee to find him sketching her on the back of an envelope. They’d been making love. She must have dozed off.
What are you doing? she said. Let me see.
So he did, and she was astounded. It looked just like her.
Only prettier, she said.
He rolled his eyes. Then: you do me.
I can’t draw.
Everyone can draw. It’s a skill, same as hairdressing. It’s about shapes.
The post must have come while she slept. He picked up a fresh letter, one with a plastic-window, the kind nobody enjoyed opening.
Right, he said, here’s how you do a face. It’s like an oval, then you do a cross like this. This is your guide. Now do another horizontal two thirds down the vertical – here – and that’s the mouth, get it?
I get it. But can you do animals?
The graphite tip of his pencil whipped out a circle, a rhombus tapering.
She said, Your tongue pokes out when you concentrate. It’s cute.
He slashed out more lines and something began to take shape – a deep chest, a tucked waist, powerful haunches.
A dog, she said. A greyhound.
Yep. And this?
More assured lines, the way a pencil had never been in her own hand.
A bird. A hawk. How come you’re a steelworker and not some artist type?
There’s an art to steel, too. Now what’s this?
A rabbit!
Aye. Now, once you’ve got the shape you need to fill it in.
His pencil looped and lutzed inside the rabbit, forming eyes and nose, mouth and teeth. Flattening the tip against the envelope, he rubbed to create light and depth; the tail a delicately shit-stained pompom so real-looking she could’ve sunk fingers into it.
We never had pets growing up, she said. There was nowhere to put them.
He passed her a fresh envelope. OK, now you.
I can’t. What can I draw?
I told you, me. He offered her his chewed HB and splayed out amongst the settee cushions, one languid arm unfurling fern-like above his head. So…how do you want me?
Stop messing about.
Something in her voice halted his clowning.
Aye, just sit like that and be still.
The oval and cross were fine, but when it came to filling them in…The left eye, that delicate fold under the ridge of eyelash – how to capture that? She sketched it as best she could before moving onto his right eye, but soon realised because she’d spaced them too far apart, his nose appeared wonky. The pencil had no eraser. Failure was permanent, and with each new line the mess compounded. Sweat broke out on her lip. She flattened the pencil as Max had done. Sunlight brushed the left side of his face and he was beautiful, more beautiful than she’d thought possible. But on her envelope, he was dead. Mouth dead. Eyes dead. Hair an assemblage of Death. By the time she got around to shading his cheeks, her armpits were damp. Why did it matter so much that she got this right?
Let me see, he said.
She pressed the envelope to her chest.
Come on, let me. Peeling it from her like a bandage from a wound.
She couldn’t look when he looked. She knew why it mattered.
He studied it for what seemed like a long time. You forgot my neck bolts, he said.
Fuck you.
He flopped on top of her, laughing. I love it.
I couldn’t do the insides.
You’ll get better, he said, slipping her top off over her head and kissing the hollow of her throat…
—
‘Time for stage two, Mrs Terry,’ Corina says.
‘I’m just finishing this page,’ she says, turning a fresh page.
‘Take your time, Mrs Terry.’
Corina helps the old woman back into the sink, peels away the plastic cap, and starts rinsing off the perm lotion. As ever, Mrs Terry’s good eye remains flinty and alert.
Corina says, ‘So what’s the book about, anyway?’
‘Why?’
‘Just asking.’
‘Well,’ Mrs Terry says, ‘I supposed I don’t mind. There’s this sculptor, see, what’s in love with the statue of a girl what his enemy’s done. Only this sculptor’s blind, and he’s fallen in love by feeling it, and his enemy won’t tell him who she is, the lass he carved.’
‘That’s not on.’
‘Oh, he’s a proper scunner. So now the blind sculptor’s going round touching everyone up. You wait, though, he’ll end up with his assistant. It’s not my usual, as I say. I prefer the doctors and nurses ones because whatever else they get up to, at least they’re still putting a shift in. But the van didn’t have none. They never have what I want nowadays.’
‘That library van’s still going? How come I never see it?’
‘It’s down to once a month now, and only parks outside the Civic Hall. It’s all computer games and them DDV things.’
‘Me and my brother used to wait for it outside the blocks when we were little.’
‘That would’ve been Henry. He drove it for nigh on forty year.’
‘I think I remember. Elvis hair, yeah?’
‘Lovely man.’
Corina pats dry Mrs Terry’s head before adding the neutraliser. Mrs Terry asks for her book again.
‘You must be a romantic,’ Corina ventures.
Mrs Terry chews on the word like chop fat. ‘Romantic? I read ’em because I get through ’em quick, that’s all.’ And with that, she returns to her story.
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