Strange Affairs, Ginger Hairs

by Arthur Grimestead

  ‘Scare who?’

  ‘Help me.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Get me a gun.’

  ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘A gun!’

  ‘I wouldn’t know how.’

  ‘Lying bitch.’

  ‘Don’t you dare—’

  ‘You’re a lying bitch.’

  ‘Enough. Get off my property.’

  ‘Fuck you. You don’t own me.’

  She scrunched up her face, pointing the spade. ‘Give me one reason why I shouldn’t do you in right now.’

  ‘Because you don’t know who I’ve told.’

  It fell so quiet I could almost hear the stars twinkle – even the dog stopped growling.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You heard.’

  She forced a laugh. ‘Don’t you dare threaten me.’

  ‘No threat. Just cashing in a favour.’

  ‘I owe you nothing.’

  ‘I know what you did.’

  ‘What we both did. I’ll just take you down with me.’

  ‘And what have I got to lose eh?’

  The whole world seemed to pause for a moment. Her eyes betrayed the threatening stance, I could see she was worried. I glared at her, my wet eyes stinging in the night air. I simply waited, before she spat the words at me:

  ‘So what do you want?’

  Twenty

  Like what you see?

  Well it don’t come free.

  The following morning, I awoke to a room that smelt of sick. I reckoned it was my own sick because it matched the taste in my mouth. The room was frilly, with pink drapes and such shit – which somehow made the sick smell worse.

  Ms Fish was standing at the bottom of my huge, absorbing king sized bed. ‘You’re cleaning that up,’ she said, pointing to a pebble dashed mirror, and then further chunks on the carpet.

  ‘I need a drink.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  She left a bucket and gloves on the dressing table.

  What? No kiss?

  Firstly, I found a bathroom and spent a couple of minutes swigging from the tap. Then, I swilled my mouth with Listerine and took a shower. The smell of food tingled my nasal passage, grooming my hung-over state into following.

  Many rooms, halls and disgustingly overpriced interiors later, I found the kitchen. It was a big kitchen, not only bigger than my bedsit, but probably my street. Ms Fish was fiddling, unenthusiastically, around a big range-like cooker – she stopped and glared at me.

  ‘Have you cleaned it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘Then sit.’

  By the window, a gargantuan table displayed a single placemat at seat number twelve, which I then occupied. The table was unblemished, and I got the impression I was the first person to ever sit there. Indeed, the whole kitchen seemed like a pristine B&Q mock-up.

  ‘I made you this,’ said Ms Fish, offering a plate loaded with overdone chips. ‘And then I remembered you’re a cunt.’ She snatched back, smiled and tipped the chips out of the window.

  Glancing out over football pitches of garden, the autumn colours seemed to scream under a blue sky – I imagined the chips payment to a gardener who worked for food scraps. ‘Nice day,’ I said.

  ‘Cut the crap.’

  ‘Fine… Who shall I tell first?’

  ‘Seriously, that’s still your play? You’re sounding tiresome.’

  I shrugged. ‘So where’s “Daddy”?’

  ‘Why would you care?’

  ‘I don’t.’

  She placed her hands on her hips. ‘He’s recuperating with a lady friend.’

  ‘Cosy.’

  ‘She’s a slut.’

  I dared to laugh. ‘I’m hungry. Where do we go for food?’

  ‘We? Hardly.’

  ‘And I need some fresh air. Do you like the seaside?’ I paused to remember Scarborough, February 1986, gale force winds, a pink bucket and spade, alone on the beach and forsaken by Dad in favour of nine pints of Guinness – I reckoned it was time to overwrite that memory. ‘What about fish and chips? It’ll be a novelty for you.’

  ‘I am aware of the concept,’ she snapped.

  ‘Great. Get your coat.’

  Hell, she drove fast. She propelled the Lexus along the country roads with an utter disregard, seemingly for everything in the world, let alone me. At times I thought I noticed the wide eyed gormless smirk of a joyrider.

  ‘Does this make you nervous?’ she said.

  ‘Not at all,’ I replied, fear making me sound like a helium junkie.

  ‘I could crash this car – kill the both of us. What then?’

  I reckoned she enjoyed manicures too much. ‘Please yourself.’

  We got faster, as though to outrun a coyote with a stick of TNT. Men, women and children fled for their lives, but as we slowed a little for the streets of Sunny Scarborough, Ms Fish reckoned the death count to be no more than a hedgehog.

  I say Sunny Scarborough, meaning it was cloudy and cold. Ms Fish drove along the promenade, and I remembered what the seaside was all about – a choppy sea, flashing amusements and the smell of fish and chips. She parked on a double yellow and we took a stroll. Amongst the people, candy floss and bingo calling, I felt a million miles away, almost secure. It was nice.

  After a while Ms Fish said: ‘So who knows?’

  Reality sapped away any false comfort. ‘Someone… Maybe no-one.’

  ‘Bluster.’

  ‘You reckon?’

  ‘I eat guys like you with a side salad. You’re a chancer – I won’t give a penny.’

  ‘I’m not interested in your money.’

  ‘Are you still drunk?’

  We walked, glancing at the sea, a dirty postcard – sporadic eye contact seemingly a blink-off.

  ‘Do you propose some kind of arrangement?’ said Ms Fish.

  ‘What I said to you last night – I meant it.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘I want a gun.’

  She laughed. ‘What the hell for?’

  ‘For personal use.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Ms Fish grabbed my arm, steering us until the people thinned away – we stopped by the sea wall. ‘That’s crazy. I can’t help you.’

  ‘You will help, though,’ I said.

  ‘Are you going to make me?’

  ‘If I have to.’

  Looking out, the sea seemed so vast and undiscovered, and as each wave enveloped the next, I fancied life would be easier if the sea enveloped me.

  ‘I can stop your wages in a heartbeat.’

  ‘But you won’t.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘You’re scared of me. You don’t know me – and you can’t figure balls from bullshit.’

  Ms Fish wore a burgundy pea coat, from inside of which she produced a small dictation machine. ‘So to clarify,’ she smiled, pointing it to my face, ‘why do you want a gun, exactly?’

  I was quiet.

  ‘And what will you do to me, a law abiding citizen, when I refuse to be drawn in?’

  ‘Switch it off.’

  She stepped back. ‘Touch me – I’ll scream.’

  ‘In other news,’ I said loudly. ‘The Choice Seafood Robber has been revealed—’

  A click from the machine cut me short, Ms Fish tucking said contraption back into her coat pocket. ‘I’ve caught the juicy bits. Just to even the balance.’

  As she turned, a rogue wave spilled over the wall, drenching her swank. She shrieked, I grabbed her from behind, a second wave then drenching us both. My hand slipped beneath her coat, across her chest and into her pocket. I tossed the dictation machine over the sea wall.

  The freezing water made me gasp, but I smirked. ‘How’s the balance sitting now?’


  She shoved me into a stumble. ‘Get me a fucking towel!’

  Grasping a cup loaded with twenty-pence pieces, my feet squelched across the arcade to a table in the shape of a fishing boat.

  ‘What did you order?’ said Ms Fish, beach towel draped over her shoulders. The transparency of her damp blouse accentuated her bra and the eye-poppers held within.

  I plonked myself beside her. ‘Shit on a stick.’

  ‘Prick. Where’s my change?’

  I rattled the cup, then nodded toward a labyrinth of arcade games.

  ‘Seriously?’

  The amusements into which we’d retreated offered a small nautical themed café, tucked in between the bingo and shoot-’em-ups, warm air from the deep fryer served to re-heat our cockles.

  A while later, Ms Fish looked up from her mug of tea and said: ‘Why me? You must know a thousand scallywags.’

  I shrugged. ‘The theft of fifty grand, the attempted murder of a security guard—’

  ‘Keep it down, buster.’ She kicked my shin beneath the table. ‘Anyhow, that man’s alive. So it was hardly an accomplished attempt.’

  I spoke with restraint. ‘An accomplished attempt would be murder.’

  ‘Stop splitting hairs. There’s a lack of evidence and people know not to blab.’

  ‘So the security bloke saw you?’

  ‘That perverted sleazebag won’t dare open his mouth.’ She kicked me again. ‘Nor will you.’

  Or what? Talk and I get a fish head in my bed?

  I made for the nearest game and slipped in a couple of coins. A burst of light and electronic ditty saw a Wild West apocalypse unfold before me – I took aim of a cowboy zombie with my Uzi.

  ‘What’s your name?’ said Ms Fish.

  Eat lead zombie! No brains for you today. ‘I told you – people just call me Ginger.’

  ‘Rubbish. Your real name.’

  Ginger was all I’d known since being a sprog. If my real name was shouted in the street I would never turn my head. ‘Lloyd,’ I mumbled quickly. ‘Like the bank.’

  ‘Lloyd’s not so bad. What’s the big deal?’

  Jesus, I’m trying to kill zombies here! ‘Nothing. Until you know it was to remind Dad to keep up the loan repayments.’

  Ms Fish released a long sigh. ‘Lloyd, if I help you, there’ll be conditions.’

  I glanced to her.

  ‘Whatever you’re planning, I have to be in too.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘Way. You’ve got something on me, now I need to have something on you. If you rat on me, I can rat on you too. Get it?’

  Game over! Thanks a lot, bitch. ‘I’m not having you take over,’ I said, dropping my Uzi like a spent Twix wrapper.

  ‘Do you think you can come and threaten me on a whim?’

  ‘This is… different.’

  ‘Look, I help you. Then we never speak or see each other again.’ She sniffed, it somehow sounding begrudging. ‘If that’s not acceptable, and you still insist on being a tell-tale tit… I guess we go to jail.’

  ‘But I don’t trust you.’

  She flicked her hair. ‘Ditto.’

  With no thoughts more cunning, I concocted a version of the truth: ‘OK. I need to scare someone,’ I said. ‘I mean really scare him. So he leaves and never comes back.’

  ‘Who? Why?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that.’

  ‘But he’d have to be really scared – utterly shitless. Even then, how could you guarantee he’d disappear?’

  ‘Well… I can’t…’

  ‘Then we need a plan.’

  I pulled a face. ‘All you need to do is get what I asked for.’

  ‘I hope you realise that gun wasn’t real?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘A replica, I bought it through an associate of an associate.’

  ‘It looked real to me.’

  ‘That’s the point.’

  I shrugged. ‘It’s not like I was actually going to shoot him anyway.’

  Ms Fish observed me for a moment. ‘Well, quite.’

  Fish and chips arrived at the table, and as I sat beside Ms Fish, the waitress’s raised eyebrow and short glance back were perhaps an indicator that we looked suspicious.

  ‘I’ll give you my number,’ said Ms Fish. ‘You can loan my second mobile – call when you’re ready.’

  I nodded.

  ‘But only then. Don’t think we’re friends or anything.’

  Looking down, I picked at my food, passing the odd stealthy glance towards Ms Fish. When I imagined us together, naked, writhing – it gave me a tingle.

  ‘So what’s your name?’ I said quickly, without looking up.

  ‘Arabella,’ she replied – there was no emotion.

  ‘That’s nice.’

  ‘I know. Anything else?’

  Er… There must be something else I can say…

  I sighed, then we finished our lunch and went home.

  Twenty-One

  I can smile inside, now that

  I know I don’t have to be you.

  The Nokia 5110 was my very first mobile phone. Loaned from Ms Fish to call her as appropriate, it also facilitated a form of witchcraft known as SMS. Against my better judgement, I had given the number to Brian.

  Hi Ginger. Hows u? Bri.

  OK. Is ring Ok?

  U not trust me? Lol. It safe.

  Might need it soon.

  ? Sure U OK?

  Yes.

  U want to chat?

  No.

  :(

  It had been a week since my meeting with Ms Fish – a Thursday night to be specific – and Mum was down the Chinese with my money. My intention was to sit and mull, but I had a visitor. The person to whom I answered the front door was unexpected, to say the least.

  ‘Dad?’

  ‘I wanna see Mum.’

  ‘She’s out.’

  ‘Then I’ll wait.’ He accepted his own invitation to come in, plonked himself on my bed and breathed heavily. ‘We’ve things to say.’

  Dad looked as though he’d stopped ten yards from dropping dead. ‘You walked?’ I said.

  He nodded.

  ‘You’re too fat.’ I looked at him hard. You are too fat – but you’ve lost weight. Yes, there’s definitely less of you. ‘You on a diet?’ I said.

  He shook his head.

  We were a good minute into each other’s company and he hadn’t yet called me an idiot, or a twat, or a dickhead.

  ‘So what’s up with you?’ I said.

  Dad took a moment to steady his breath. ‘I’ve come to claim her.’

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘For what she’s worth.’

  I didn’t know what to say really. ‘Suppose you’d better wait then.’

  ‘Ta.’

  He sat there, kind of lost, there was a first day at school look about him. He also looked dirty, smelt nasty and had a pallor that suggested he had the same attitude towards vegetables as he had God – they didn’t exist.

  I considered my betrayal of him and couldn’t help but sigh. If he’d have seemed as pathetic then I probably would have played the game – and saved us all a lot of trouble.

  ‘What happened with Social?’ I said.

  ‘I’m in court in a fortnight.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Dad didn’t seem particularly angry, more resigned to his fate.

  ‘What’s going to happen?’

  ‘Get a fine, probably lose most of me benefit. I won’t go down though.’

  ‘Well… suppose that’s something.’

  ‘Yeh.’

  It was quiet for a moment.

  ‘How’s stuff then?’ I said.

  ‘Been better.’

 
; ‘Yeh, daft question really.’

  ‘Yeh.’

  ‘You want a drink or something?’

  ‘No.’

  I had little else to say to Dad, in fact I barely knew him.

  ‘Does she talk about me much?’ he said.

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘I thought she could come away for a few days, just the two of us. What do you think?’

  ‘She’s a bit unpredictable.’

  He mumbled.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m lonely,’ he said.

  I looked at him, then walked into the kitchen to make a drink. I knew all about loneliness, growing up with shit parents. A nasty hollow feeling that disconnects you from everything, a feeling you could never properly capture with words, but then even if you could there’d be no-one to listen. I wanted to shout at Dad ‘that’s what it feels like,’ but I didn’t, I made myself a coffee.

  Mum returned.

  ‘A full hour for an omelette and bloody fried rice!’ She slammed the door, her skinny hand clutching a large paper bag that was kind of a greasy see-through colour. She saw Dad, stopped, observed him for a moment and then carried on to the kitchen.

  ‘Hello Eileen,’ he said.

  Mum ignored him.

  ‘How are you?’

  She took two plates from the draining board, wiping them clean with a piece of tissue from her pocket.

  I nudged her. ‘He’s trying. Give him a chance.’

  She kicked me in the shin. ‘Touch me again and I’ll batter you.’

  ‘You look… well,’ said Dad.

  Mum looked like she always had – bony and haggard.

  ‘I’ll dish up,’ I said. ‘Go and sit down.’

  She grumbled, occupied the only chair and turned her back on Dad.

  ‘Still working at chip shop?’ he said. ‘I miss fish and chips. I aint had it since… you know.’

  ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’ said Mum.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fish and bloody chips!’

  ‘Well…’

  ‘Get out.’

  ‘No, please, just listen to me.’ Dad’s voice was pleading, it didn’t suit him – it embarrassed me.

  ‘I’ll give you five seconds.’

  ‘I just want, I mean—’

  ‘Four.’