‘Look,’ she said. ‘The person who did this, they must have started with the smallest top curl.’ She passed me the hawk. ‘And then peel, peel, peel all the way in, to the longest feather.’
I turned it in my hands. ‘Just think, if you snapped one feather off. You’d have to start all over again with a new piece of wood. My brother made these, you know.’ I ran my finger along one wing, and felt an unwelcome sharpness. Three or four feather tips had been amputated. ‘Oh, look! It’s broken!’
Penny jumped. ‘I know. I saw that. I didn’t do it. It wasn’t me.’
‘Of course it wasn’t.’ I could see the breaks were old; there was dust clinging to the brittle stumps. ‘Oh, the rascal. How could she.’
‘Who did it?’
‘A naughty, naughty little girl.’
‘You don’t sound very cross.’
I met her enquiring gaze. She was trying to raise her eyebrows but the low brim of her beret squashed them down. The effect was comical.
‘I’m not cross any more.’
At the time I would have been. The entire household would have witnessed my sharp cries of annoyance, the dressing-down that would have followed, the list of chores to be done as recompense.
‘Who was the naughty girl?’ Penny asked. ‘What happened to her?’
I pictured her coming up the village street towards me, her arm linked in Bobby Rail’s. The day’s dirt, mostly ink and mud, smutting her face and knees. Her mouth moving. What had she been saying before I came into earshot? Something about a lardy cake they were going to buy. A silent speaking, never forming into words.
‘She was called Pamela,’ I said. ‘She went to Ireland.’
I looked out at the flooded field. Here and there, tufts of pasture could be seen, islands in a reflected sky.
‘North or South?’ said Penny.
I turned to her. ‘South. A long time ago.’
‘My dad’s in the North. He’s in the Army.’ For a moment, her mouth formed a perfect upside-down U.
I nodded. ‘Mrs Dennis mentioned it.’
She looked away. I considered her.
‘Do you know what I think, Penny?’ I said. ‘It’s time to take off your hat.’
Shutting her eyes, she hooked her fingers under the brim of the beret and yanked it off her head. The hair tumbled out, falling around her face and shoulders, a mass of knots and snarls, great hanks of it matted inextricably, inexplicably together.
‘Gosh.’ I swallowed. ‘Gosh, that’s quite a nest.’
She placed her hands over her head, but they were too small to hide this prodigious, embrangled growth. ‘They call me Pigpen at school.’
I didn’t entirely blame them. ‘Oh, Penny. How on earth did it get this way?’
‘I went on hair strike.’
I smothered a smile. ‘Why? So you wouldn’t be sent to Upton Hall?’
Silence.
‘Well. Reason or not, you’ll still have to go to Upper Cuts in Waltham.’
‘That’s what Mrs Dennis said.’ She started to blink rapidly, shaking the horrid tresses away from her face. ‘Just think of all the customers pointing at me and grimacing.’ She pronounced it grimace-ing. I was about to deny this but I couldn’t be sure, looking at this awful growth, that a few people wouldn’t grimace.
I flexed my fingers. I had trimmed Selwyn’s hair on occasion, using the long, sharp scissors I kept for fabric, and the results had been perfectly acceptable. ‘Why don’t you let me cut the worst tangles out? You can always visit the hairdresser when I’ve finished. At least it won’t be so embarrassing by then.’
Her eyes welled. ‘It’d be the end of the strike.’
‘I’m afraid so.’ I went to the door. ‘After breakfast you can decide if you want me to cut your hair. What would you like for breakfast? I have porridge, eggs, or porridge and eggs.’
‘Haven’t you got any Alpen?’
‘No, I haven’t got any Alpen, madam.’
She gave me a sudden grin, and the raincloud was torn from the bright sun. No little teeth left at the front, and the big ones yet to be grown into.
26
I PUT A CHAIR by the kitchen window, fetched the scissors. From the bedroom I brought down my free-standing dressing-table mirror, the kind that swung in a sturdy frame. She sat obediently upright for me to put a tea towel over her shoulders. In the good clear light of the window the mess reminded me of home-made felting. I found myself quite light-headed with anger. A dog in this state would be rescued from its owner.
‘It was because of Dad,’ she said.
‘What? The hair strike?’
She nodded. ‘I thought if he knew what a state it was in, he’d come home and tell me off. But when I wrote to him about it, he just wrote back and said not to be so silly. So it’s obvious he couldn’t care less about me.’
‘Penny, I’m sure it was because he simply couldn’t come. Not that he didn’t care.’
She folded her arms. Cautiously I embarked on the task, working in silence until curiosity got the better of me.
‘Will you like school better now, Penny? The girls won’t be able to call you Pigpen any more.’
‘Oh, yes they will. They don’t need a reason to be awful. They’re horrible, stupid people. None of them even know who David Bowie is.’
I couldn’t help chuckling.
‘I knew you’d laugh.’ She was laughing too.
I continued to cut, delicately parting the locks and pruning where I could. ‘I know who David Bowie is.’
‘You don’t!’
‘Keep your head still, dear. There’s a young chap called Colin, who works at the mill here. He’s got a T-shirt with David Bowie on it, so I asked Colin about him. What a striking young man he is, I must say. You seem a bit young for pop music, dear.’
She sucked her teeth. ‘I’m nearly ten. That’s old enough.’
‘Colin’s favourite song is called “Space Odyssey”.’
‘It’s “Oddity”, actually. Would you like to hear it?’
It was a dirge-like melody, reproduced in a wavering soprano. ‘That was very nice, dear,’ I said when she stopped.
‘Wait. That was just the first verse.’
The story of the troubled lone astronaut and his obscure demise lasted until I had cut away all the larger pellets of hair. The few knots that remained were too near her crown to be tackled without scalping her, so I began to shape the rest. She had fallen into a contented daydream, and there were no sounds now except the snip of my scissors and the crooning of the hens outside, and the tick of the railway clock which hung on the kitchen wall. Althea had given it to Selwyn when he was a young man, after it had served many years in the kitchen of Upton Hall. I heard the deep, measured tick, the seconds falling away.
The blades had come so close round my neck and ears, the black ointment had dripped on my neck. Elizabeth’s face was above me in the mirror, a thin face, a shadow of down on her upper lip, eyes on her work. She never said an unkind thing, not even to Donald of the shaggy locks, our most mutinous evacuee, when he refused to have his hair cut. Donald, you’re a proper disgrace. They knew she didn’t mean it.
Snip, snip, snip. No sound save the deliberate tread of the clock.
Donald got a pudding-bowl like the other boys, and in the New Year Selwyn took the boys to Waltham, to Suggs the barber for a short back and sides. He took Pamela too, even though she was so new with us, for a trim. I thought she might not like it without me. But he brushed me aside and proceeded to manage four children on the bus, four children successively in the barber’s chair, effortlessly keeping order and providing distraction.
And Elizabeth said, Your Mr Parr, he’s a natural with them.
Her hair was shining now, soft, a bobbed style with a slight wave in the short locks at the front.
‘There we are, darling. Done. Look in the mirror.’
She did so, turning her head this way and that, wriggling in her seat with pleasure. ‘Oh gosh, Mrs Parr. It’s groovy.’ She looked up at me, smiling.
‘Is it?’ I smiled back. ‘I’m very pleased. You can see what a nice colour it is, now.’
She wrinkled her nose. ‘It’s annoying. Too dark for blonde, but I can’t call it brown, either. What colour do you think it is?’