CHRISTINE CUTS HAIR (just something to read)

CHRISTINE CUTS HAIR

‘Christine Cuts Hair’. That’s what it says above the window. Nothing more than that. Nothing fancy or clever. Just plain fact. ‘Christine Cuts Hair’. It is not quite true, however. Christine runs the shop, but it is Evelyn and Morag that do the cutting now. Christine trained them herself. Hung up her own scissors then. Takes the bookings is what she does, and sometimes dyes hair. No more with the cutting. No story in that. She just got bored, that’s all.

In the window there are pictures of women with their hair all swept and flicked. Faces like porcelain dolls, eyes like glass and painted lips and painted cheeks. Nobody looks that perfect. Not ever. Next to the pictures a list of Christine’s prices. Special offer on summer highlights. Evelyn and Morag cut men’s hair too. Pictures of men from another time. Black and white. Clean shaven and square chinned. Slicked back hair and shiny.

On the door the times of opening. Tuesday through Saturday. Ten until five. Today being Monday the shop is shut. Christine in the flat above the shop is still in her bed. Lachlan Davie beside her. Third Monday morning out of the last four it has been this way. Christine does not know what that means. Except she was drunk again Sunday night and Lachlan Davie drunk too.

Christine watches him sleep. All cooried in. His face screwed tight like something was paining him. He needs a shave. He needed a shave last night, but Christine was too far gone to notice then. She notices now. Lachlan Davie needs a haircut too. Maybe she could do that, she thinks. In the shop. Keeping the lights out so no-one else sees.

‘Lachlan,’ she says. Same as she’s said the other two Mondays, only this day is brighter, light creeping in round all the edges of her curtains. ‘Lachlan Davie. You should be awake.’

He does not move. Shows no sign of having heard her. She leans in close. Smells cigarettes and beer, stale on his breath.

‘Lachlan,’ she says again

Lachlan shifts a little. Adjusts his position in the bed. Turns his back to her. Then she sees. What she must have done. When drunk. Across his back there’s writing. Words drawn in black pen. Lines from poems she learned as a child. She laughs, raises one hand to her mouth to stifle the laughter, and sees in the palm of her own hand that Lachlan has written words on her too. Descriptions of things: eggs filched from the nests of robins and sparrows; fish in nets with rainbows on their silver scales; sunlight breaking through the clouds and turning the sea into gold. Just short pieces of Lachlan’s life written like poetry on her breasts, in the tuck of her underarm, across the roundness of her stomach.

‘You stupid bugger,’ she says, without recalling if it was his idea or hers. She is laughing when she says it.

'DARIUS AND THE BLOODY BIG FISH' takes the BISCUIT

Good news is that my story 'Darius and the Bloody Big Fish' has just won this year's Biscuit Prize for a short story. This story began life as a 300 word flash in response to a prompt on Sarah Salway's 'Your Messages' challenge in November 2008. Then it grew into a larger fish tale - as fish tales do when the fisherman tells it!!

The Chesspiece Magician News

The final edit is done. My final proof read is done. The cover is done. Already you can go onto Amazon (UK or USA or JAPAN!!) and preorder the book. There's some blurb there too that calls it Douglas Bruton's 'brilliant first novel'. Feels like they are writing about somebody else.

Now I have to wait until the publication date of September 10th... though I am told I should get an advance copy in August sometime.