Kisses for Lula (5 page)

I bent across to lift up the sewing machine from the bed. ‘Where can I put this, Arns?’

He gestured numbly to a desk in the corner.

‘Perfect,’ I said, going over, and put it down carefully.

‘I, er . . .’ said Arns, taking off his glasses and polishing them on his baggy woolly jumper.

‘I knew it!’

Arnold jumped. He saw the look in my eye and took a step back. ‘Uh-oh, what now?’ he asked.

‘You’ve got a
great
nose. The glasses have got to go.’

‘No, no, Lula. Come on now.’

‘Have you never tried contacts?’

‘They make me feel vulnerable.’

‘You don’t want to show your face.’

‘It’s not that.’ Though Arnold seemed suddenly unsure. ‘I worry they’ll fall out, or I’ll get infected eyes and not be able to see or – or something,’ he ended lamely.

‘And you’re supposed to be some kind of genius.’ I shook my head sadly.

‘I wear them sometimes,’ was the pathetic defence. ‘When I go running.’

‘Running. Interesting.’

‘Whoa, Tallulah, I’m going to stop telling you stuff. I don’t like where things are going. Perhaps this is a bad idea.’

‘Three words.’

‘Hn?’

‘Mona de Souza.’

‘Oh. Yes.’ Arnold’s brow furrowed.

‘So, Arns. You got a full-length mirror anywhere?’

His wary eyes never leaving my face, he took a step towards the built-in cupboards and pulled a door open. An enormous mirror glinted red with reflected light.

‘Great.’ I pulled the chair from the desk in front of it and gestured to the client to sit down. ‘Towels?’

‘Bathroom. End of the hall.’

‘Scissors?’

He jumped straight up off the chair and whacked the bottom of my chin with the top of his head.

‘Fffffriiiik! Frik! Frik!’ I clutched my face, seeing stars. ‘I think there’s blood!’

‘Blood? Sorry sorry sorry! You okay? Scissors did you say? I’m not very good with scissors – I mean, blood.’

‘Did someone say blood?’

‘Elsa! I’ve hit her and she says she’s bleeding,’ rattled Arns.

‘I knew I couldn’t leave you alone with her,’ cried Elsa from the doorway.

‘Hey!’ said Arns and I simultaneously.

Dropping a load of heavy stuff on the floor, Elsa came right over. ‘No offence, but you two are an accident waiting to happen.’ She prised my fingers from my face. ‘No blood.’ Arns stomped off to the bathroom. I could hear him running water and rummaging in cupboards. ‘Are you all right, Tatty?’

I opened my eyes and swallowed carefully. Everything north of my neck hurt. ‘I think I bit my tongue in half,’ I whispered.

‘Open your mouth.’

I obeyed. Elsa was about the same age as Pen, eighteen months younger than me, but two inches taller. She was lithe and strong-looking in a frightening Germanaerobics-instructor kind of way. I generally wanted to do what she said.

‘It’s still in one piece.’

‘Thank God,’ I slurred.

‘Could still be bleeding, but probably just the walls reflecting.’

‘Nff?’ I was alarmed, and swallowed carefully again before crawling to Arns’s mirror and dropping my jaw to investigate damages done. ‘Ungrhf.’

‘Ouch,’ agreed Elsa. ‘It
is
bleeding. Good thing you haven’t got a boyfriend. Kissing could be a problem. Have a paracetamol.’ She rummaged in her jeans pocket, came up with an ancient-looking pack of pills and went off for a glass of water.

Arns returned.

‘You cretin!’ I slurred. ‘I come here to help and now look!’ I stuck my tongue out at him. ‘
Look!
’

‘Oh,’ said Arnold, slightly distressed. ‘I’m really sorry, Tallulah. At least it wasn’t your nose. The tongue is the fastest healing organ of the body. You know. Because of the saliva.’ He sat down in the chair with the towel draped demurely round his shoulders. ‘Sorry,’ he said for the umpteenth time. ‘I’ll be good now.’

‘You better be,’ I growled, and came up behind him again, staring at his reflection in front of me in the fulllength mirror.

Elsa appeared with water and I popped two pills and swallowed with a grimace. It felt like half my tongue flapped open with that gulp of water. Eeenf.

Arns handed me a pair of scissors, and Elsa started rolling out dustsheets and pushing furniture around.

‘Let’s discuss this before we get going,’ said Arns politely.

‘Okay,’ I agreed amiably. ‘Where is your comb, Arnold?’

‘You sound angry. How long will you be angry with me? Does your tongue still hurt?’

‘Comb?’

‘Brush. Top drawer bedside cabinet.’

Elsa, already repainting the walls, began to laugh quietly.

‘Wait!’ said Arnold.

But it was too late. I’d opened the drawer and was staring at the entire Western world’s supply of condoms glittering in shiny foil beneath one of those toddler-sized hairbrushes.

I took out the brush and shut the drawer with a grin. Arnold was forgiven. I love a boy with ambition. ‘You dealin’?’ I asked in a fake American accent.

‘Ha bloody ha.’

‘The good boy’ – I winked over at Elsa who was trying not to laugh – ‘he swears.’

‘Just the tip of the iceberg,’ promised my client’s sister, sweeping away with Bright White interior paint like a woman possessed.

It’s hard to cut hair with blunt scissors and a baby-hair brush when you’ve never done it before, but I have to say the results were pretty incredible.

Arns blinked, swallowed and cleared his throat. His eyes didn’t leave his reflection. I took the towel and a sheepful of hair away from his shoulders and he stood up slowly. At last he turned round to face me.

‘I think your work here is done,’ he said, a slow smile transforming his face. He suddenly bounced out from behind the cupboard door to face his sister. ‘Elsa! Look!’ He spread his arms wide.

Elsa stood from her crouched position over a skirting board and blinked in surprise.

‘Wow, Arns!’

I grinned happily.

She put down the roller and the paintbrush and pushed the hair out of her face with the back of her hand. ‘You – you look . . .
amazing
.’

‘The walls are looking good too, Elsa,’ I noted.

‘Yes,’ admitted Arns.

‘Bro, you owe me big,’ Elsa said with narrowed eyes. ‘This is going to need another coat tomorrow.’

The comment reminded me of my own indebted family. I checked my watch. ‘We’ve got to hustle. I don’t want to call my mum for a lift any later than ten.’

‘Arns, you clear up,’ commanded Elsa. ‘Just leave that paint tray and that roller. I’m going to explain your wardrobe to Tatty.’

‘I –’ started Arnold. Then he tore his eyes from the reflection in the mirror and looked at the transformation of his room. ‘Yes, Elsa,’ he said meekly. ‘Thank you,’ and he started clearing paint tins, brushes and rollers away. Elsa was already talking nineteen to the dozen and opening up the other doors of the built-in cupboards, but I was fascinated by her brother. He currently held the handles of Sahara Sunset, Passion’s Flower and African Earth all in his left hand with a dustsheet bundled under his arm, and hanging from his right forearm was a bucket loaded with the rest of the stuff, another dustsheet bunched into his armpit and two paint trays, piled with more brushes, held in his right hand.

Yowzer
, I thought.
He’s got to be really, really strong
.

‘Tatty?’ Elsa was behind me, just visible behind a load of grey matter. Not of the cerebral kind, mind. Sweatshirts, tracksuit bottoms, T-shirts.

‘What a world of grey,’ I said. And got busy with the scissors again.

*

‘The room will look great when it’s finished,’ I called to Elsa above the clatter of the sewing machine.

‘Anything to get Arnold out with a girl,’ she replied.

‘You make it sound like I’ve got facial warts or something,’ said Arnold from the doorway. He looked odd. His head did not match the rest of his body. Old-man sweatshirt and tracksuit bottoms, I realised, had been Arnold’s uniform for as long as I’d known him.

‘Take off your clothes,’ I said to him, pulling out the finished T-shirt.

‘Not bloody likely.’

I ignored him, bit off a thread and held up the shirt, side seams taken in by a mile, sleeves lopped narrower, body length still the same. ‘Put this on.’

Arnold shuffled closer and took the garment from me gingerly.

‘Go on,’ said Elsa, remaking the bed.

Arnold stepped behind his cupboard door, blushing furiously. He got into the black T faster than Kate Moss between catwalks, but not before I got a good look at the structure we had to work with.

I was amazed.

This boy’s bod was
beautiful
.

I tried to say something. Anything. He was looking at me looking at him and it was all getting uncomfortable even though he had the T-shirt on now. Well, especially now that
he had the T-shirt on. It showed off that fine physique like nothing he’d ever worn.

‘W-what’s with all the baggy gear the whole time?’ I stammered in confusion. And then I blushed.

Silence.

It’s hard to describe, but there was, like, A Moment.

Then I noticed Elsa looking at Arnold looking at me looking at him.

‘Mona de Souza,’ said Elsa quietly from the bed.

Arns and I blinked.

‘Mona de Souza,’ I said quickly, ‘is going to, um, be begging you to open the bedside drawer.’

‘Brilliant,’ said Elsa. ‘Even with the old-man trackie bottoms.’

I stood up. ‘Give them to me,’ I commanded.

Arnold clutched them frantically (as if I was going to rip them from his body. I mean, please) and said, ‘Nononono. You step away.’

It’s a pity that as I swooped to rip them from his body – tumbling both of us in a heap, bare hairy legs (his) waving desperately around – Sergeant Hilda Trenchard chose that moment to come home. The front door slammed and she yelled, ‘Hi, guys, any supper left for me?’ up the stairs. I jerked away in shock, pulling the bottoms off Arnold’s feet and hitting my head on the desk with a thwack.

‘Aargh!’ I bleated.

Sergeant T was at the bedroom door in a nanosecond, staring first at her daughter in a nest of tumbled duvet and unbundled pillows, then at her son, naked from the waist down (how was I to know Arnold Trenchard doesn’t wear unders?), and then – for the longest time – at the fallen girl with her son’s trousers held tightly to her wanton breast.

‘What,’ said Sergeant T in a dangerously quiet voice, ‘is going on here?’

‘I ate the last of the Bolognese,’ said Elsa blithely, springing from the bed. ‘Sorry, Mum.’

Perhaps it was no dinner after a long day that angered her mother. Or maybe the altering of domestic decor without consultation. Possibly, just possibly, the disarray and nakedness of teens under her law-abiding roof? Dunno. The truth of the matter is that she was Not Pleased. In the slightest.

Elsa turned from plumping the final pillow, saying, ‘Ar–’ Then: ‘Yoooow! Arns! Where are your underpants? I’m
scarred
! I think I can see some bits!’

‘Arnold?’ added his mother.

Arnold was frozen on the floor, though his hands were now covering himself to some degree. I threw his bottoms back to him and stood up, whirling away to face his mother.

Oh, help
, I prayed, and walked over to her with my hand outstretched. She was just as tall as Arns, but built like a big brickhouse, with an enormous head of curly red hair and chunky plastic-rimmed glasses identical to those of her son.
It was vaguely terrifying. I read her name badge and said, ‘Hi, Sergeant Trenchard. I’m Tallulah Bird. Elsa and I are just helping Arnold –’

‘Get a date,’ finished Elsa, grinning happily at her mother.

Sergeant Trenchard looked me squarely in the eye, still clasping my hand, and said, ‘With demonstrations of a sexual nature?’

‘Mum!’ cried Arnold and Elsa, horrified.

I snatched a look at Arns. He’d managed to scramble back into his bottoms.

‘Where is your hair?’ continued his mother.

‘In the bin where it belongs,’ said Elsa firmly.

‘I just wanted to adjust the tracksuit bottoms,’ I said meekly. The eyes swivelled back to mine, then across to Arns again. ‘They’re a little baggy for this day and age,’ I added in polite explanation.

Sergeant T was quiet. We all held our breath.

‘Arnie, you don’t look anything like me any more,’ she said finally in a small, sad voice. She dropped my hand absent-mindedly and stepped over the mountain of cut-up clothes towards him.

He took one look at her mournful face and pulled her into a hug. ‘Oh, Mum,’ he said. ‘I’ll always look like you. But it’s not good for a teenager to sport the same hairstyle as his mother.’

‘No,’ agreed his mum mistily. She glanced back at me. ‘He looks really great.’ She patted his chest. ‘About time you showed off the yoga muscles, my love.’

‘Mum!’ said Arnold, blushing furiously again. Geez, the guy was going to burst a blood vessel at this rate.

‘And the white.’ She nodded at the walls. ‘Much fresher than before.’

‘Thanks,’ said Elsa, picking up a pillow again.

‘Why does the makeover include the bedroom?’

‘Uh,’ I said hastily, ‘we felt the home affects the attitude, the outlook, the, um, feelings of confidence, maybe . . .’

‘So you’re not planning on bringing a girl back here?’

‘Maybe just to listen to music,’ pleaded Arnold.

‘That’s all right, then,’ said Sergeant T. She bent her curly head towards me and pushed her glasses up her nose. ‘He likes Duran Duran and Wham,’ she said in an undertone, nodding at his stereo on the chest of drawers. ‘No chance he’ll score with an eighties backlash.’

I gulped, startled.

‘I’ll leave you kids to it,’ Sergeant T finished, moving towards the door. ‘Elsa, did you at least leave some cheesecake?’ we heard as she headed downstairs.

Arns offered to walk me home and Mum was pleased not to have to come out in the fresh night. She probably hoped
we’d have a romantic encounter on the way home ha ha ha (bitter laugh). Not likely, thanks to Mona de Souza. I sighed regretfully. What a difference in Arns just with hair, glasses and clothes taken care of. It had been fun.

The front gate yelped at my urgent shove.