8 Hair
When we arrived in Spain, Judith and her ancient but glamourous mother always had advice for us. For more than twenty years they’d lived in the next village and knew their way around. So it was Judith’s recommendation that brought me to Tracy the hair stylist’s door.
“Mother and I always go to Tracy,” said Judith. “She’s frightfully good, y’know. Mother’s very fussy about her hair, dear, and she’ll only trust it with Tracy. Can’t be doing with those salon-type places meself, so it suits me to go to Tracy’s house, don’t you know. She’s got a nice dog, too, so it’s like home from home.” She paused to pat one of her ten dogs as it passed. “Awfully nice gal, Tracy, you’ll like her.”
Judith was right, I did like Tracy, but I didn’t like the experience. It began badly when I rang the doorbell of Tracy’s trim little house in the urbanización, or housing estate, on the edge of the city. Exactly like Judith’s house, the doorbell set off a baying within. But this wasn’t the howling of a pack of good-natured dogs, it was the deep, furious bark of one single dog. A big one.
“Now, stop that, Brutus!” said a voice with a strong Birmingham accent, and the door opened to reveal a slight young lady hanging desperately on the collar of a powerful Rottweiler. The Rottweiler filled the hallway and was straining to reach me, drooling and angry.
“Don’t mind Brutus,” said Tracy, “his bark’s worse than his bite.” I hoped so.
Eventually Brutus calmed enough to allow me into the house and Tracy set to work on my hair.
“Coffee? Tea?” asked Tracy, already snipping and not waiting for my reply. “Judith told me all about you. How are you liking Spain?”
I opened my mouth to answer but Tracy didn’t pause. “We’ve been here seven years now - very settled, we are,” she said. Brutus rested his great head on my knee and dozed, oblivious to the snippets of hair tumbling down on him. “And how are you enjoying living in El Hoyo? Very small village, isn’t it?”
“It’s...” I began but Tracy cut across me.
“Don’t know if I’d like living up there in them mountains meself,” she said. “But it suits some I suppose. (snip, snip) I had a second cousin in England who lived in a small village. He always said that...” Tracy’s voice pressed on, relentless.
I nodded or grunted occasionally but didn’t attempt to answer any more of her questions or join the conversation. A wet patch was forming on my skirt from Brutus’s drool as he slept, soothed, no doubt, by his mistress’s voice. I almost dozed myself, but my thoughts turned to worrying about Joe. I’d been watching him, and I knew for a certainty that he had something on his mind. Something about our life in El Hoyo. Something that he wouldn’t speak about. He’d often said how happy he was to be in Spain, but I felt instinctively that he was missing something. Did he miss the UK? Did he want to return? Surely not! Yet again I resolved to ferret out the truth.
“...and it was the best paella I ever tasted! (snip, snip) I said to my friend, Debbie, ‘Debbie,’ I said, ‘Debbie, have you ever tasted a paella as good as that?’ Anyway, she said, ‘no’ and we had a good laugh and then...”
The kitchen clock ticked. Brutus snored. The wet patch on my lap grew. The scissors snipped. I wondered if Tracy ever took a breath... But at last the haircut was finished and I was pleased with the result. I paid and thanked Tracy, patted Brutus and left, never to return. Brutus I could cope with, the haircut was a good one, but my ears felt used, bruised and abused. I would need to find another hairdresser. Which was how I came to Antonio’s salon in the city.
It was the Union Jack in Antonio’s salon window that attracted me. ‘We speak English’ declared the sign. Goody, I thought, I won’t have to revise difficult Spanish words like ‘fringe’ or ‘parting’ or ‘layered’.
Confidently, I entered the salon and was greeted by Antonio.
“You speak English?” I asked.
“Sí,” he replied, his face lighting up. He ushered me to a chair in front of a large mirror. “You seet. How like type today you want?”
Oh dear, I thought. Perhaps I should have brought my Spanish/English dictionary after all. I resigned myself to communicating in Spanish and filling the gaps with sign language when necessary.
I liked Antonio. He was tall, thin and well-groomed, with hair that stood in stiff, waxed spikes. His smile was easy and he listened attentively. Yes, he did speak English, but not well. His English was so heavily accented and jumbled that I didn’t understand a word he said. The problem was, in an attempt to be helpful, he insisted on speaking English. However, I couldn’t understand his English, and he didn’t understand my Spanish. The result was a very serious communication breakdown.
For example, someone popped into the salon and handed Antonio a cardboard box. I could hear scuttling coming from inside the box, the scrabbling of claws on cardboard. Antonio seemed delighted, put down his scissors and carried the box over to the other assistants. I watched in the mirror as he carefully opened the box for a look, surrounded by his colleagues. They all exclaimed and admired the contents of the box.
Curiosity consumed me. “What animal is in the box?” I asked in my best Spanish when he resumed work.
Antonio’s scissors stopped snipping and his brow furrowed as he tried to understand me. I tried again. This time he leaned forward, concentrating intently, reading my lips in the mirror as I spoke.
I said it again, in English this time. “Is there an animal in that box? What is it?” I tried pointing.
“My sorry. Understand no,” said Antonio, shaking his head sadly. I gave up.
But the communication problem was most severe at the end of the session.
“Desire you spritz?” asked Antonio, a giant industrial-size can of hairspray already poised and aimed, ready to fire.
“No, thank you, I’m allerg…” Too late. Phhhhhttt! The air turned heavy and sticky with spray.
I left the salon coughing and wheezing, nose running, eyes streaming, but not before I’d managed to take a peep into the cardboard box. Inside were two young homing pigeons. The pigeons were attractive, but the spray was just too much. I didn’t return.
And so my quest for the perfect hairdresser continued. Two months later I found myself knocking on the door of Juanita’s salon in the small town of Alhama de Almería, quite some distance from our village.
Alhama is just one of a string of villages in the Andarax Valley, the gateway to the Alpujarras. It is a pretty town, unremarkable in many ways except for one thing. It has natural hot springs that gush continuously, causing it to be a mecca for elderly ladies who believe the water has health-giving properties. There is a pretty cascading waterfall and so much spring water in the area that huge pipes channel it away. I imagine some goes to fill the town swimming pool and the rest is destined for other needs, such as irrigating the vast orange and lemon orchards, a feature of the area.
Alhama swimming pool
Alhama had a smart new supermarket that Joe and I visited fairly frequently. They had their own bakery on the premises and parking was easy. Being new, this supermarket was forever running promotions. Buy one loaf of bread, get another two free. Buy a case of beer, get a free parasol. If we refused the free gifts, the assistants would be affronted, so we had a freezer full of surplus bread and an ever-growing pile of yellow San Miguel parasols in our garage.
“I’ll just wander round the village and wait for you,” said Joe. “I’ll probably pop into the supermarket, too. Meet you over the street in an hour.”
Juanita’s beauty salon was in the main street of Alhama. It was fronted by the typically tall Andalucian double wooden doors, painted in heavy brown gloss and opening onto the pavement. This was Juanita’s home, but she had allotted two rooms downstairs to run her hair and beauty business.
I liked Juanita. She was friendly, and pictures of her family decorated the walls of her salon. Her kitchen was next door to the salon and delicious aromas wafted through to me as I sat in the chair ready to have my hair cut. She told me all about herself.
In her thirties, Juanita shared her house with her husband, little daughter and her elderly mother. Her husband worked in construction and was seldom home. She had never travelled outside Andalucía, and never wished to, happy living in Alhama in the bosom of her family.
Juanita was clearly a confident business woman, and had a reasonable number of regular clientele. She ran the business by herself, aided only by her burly Lithuanian assistant, Olga. To be frank, I found Olga rather alarming. When she smiled, she revealed a set of teeth capable of crushing concrete, and whereas Juanita’s white overalls were crisp and dainty, Olga’s barely contained bulging biceps a Russian weightlifter would have envied.
The pair were masters of salesmanship.
“You would like Product?” asked Juanita, pausing with her scissors. “Extra vitamins for your dry hair? You would like Olga to give you an Indian Head Massage?” Olga flexed her fingers and cracked her knuckles hopefully.
“No, thank you, just my hair trimmed…”
Juanita wasn’t giving up. She picked up one of my hands and inspected it at close quarters. “Your nails are ragged. You need a manicure.” Olga began rearranging the rows of nail polish on a glass shelf. The bottles rattled and looked tiny in her huge hands.
“Thank you, but really I just want my hair cut...”
Juanita lost interest in my hand and dropped it back into my lap, focusing on my feet instead. “Pedicure?” Olga switched allegiance and busied herself with the foot-care tools: scrapers, cutters, clippers and all manner of evil-looking equipment.
“No, really, just a haircut.”
But Juanita was made of sterner stuff. “Your eyebrows have grey hairs in them,” she observed. “Olga will dye them.”
My whimpers of refusal were ignored as Olga parked her trolley firmly by my chair. I was helpless. My head was wrenched back, and I closed my eyes as Olga’s huge face loomed close to mine. Half an hour later, while Juanita sat on the front door-step smoking cigarettes, Olga had transformed my eyebrows into black hairy caterpillars.
Juanita returned to finish cutting my hair. “There is a lot of water in the road outside,” she commented.
At last the job was finished and I paid them both and departed. As promised, Joe was waiting for me on the other side of the street. I wasn’t surprised to see he had yet another yellow San Miguel beach umbrella under one arm and yet more loaves of bread sticking out of a carrier bag clutched in his other hand. He’d evidently visited the supermarket and been showered with the usual mandatory gifts. However, I was surprised to see the state of the street.
Juanita spoke the truth because a river coursed down the previously bone-dry road. Cars splashed and drove gingerly through the water. I hitched up my skirts and waded through warm water to join him.
“You should have seen it!” said Joe, wisely not remarking on my duelling raven eyebrows. “The digger up there on the mountainside broke through one of those big water-pipes. Never seen so much water! Absolute torrents! Hot water came rushing down the mountainside and down the road like a mini tsunami!”
I was disappointed. But for my caterpillar eyebrows, I might have seen it too.
Back in El Hoyo, three more things happened. As we parked the car in our garage, Federico walked past. Trotting at his heels was a small, rather ugly little dog. Its hair was very short, coarse and patchy. There was definitely Chihuahua somewhere in its ancestry, but beyond that, I couldn’t fathom. Even so, there was something about this dog that seemed familiar.
For some reason, Federico seemed mortified to see us. I left the talking to Joe as I was still very conscious of my coal-black eyebrows.
“Buenas tardes, Federico,” said Joe. “How are you?”
“Buenas tardes,” answered Federico, looking uncomfortable, and standing deliberately between Joe and the dog as if hiding it from Joe’s scrutiny.
“I see you have a new dog,” said Joe innocently. He looked up and down the street, adding, “And where is your beautiful little dog, Copito?”
Two spots of livid colour appeared on Federico’s cheeks. His fists clenched and he could barely contain himself.
“I like children,” he said furiously. “Everybody knows I like children. But today I do not like children! Today the Ufarte boys have spoiled my beautiful Copito!”
“You mean that’s Copito?” asked Joe in surprise, pointing at the ugly little dog behind Federico.
“¡Sí! The Ufarte children, they painted my Copito! They opened all their father’s tins of paint, and painted my poor Copito! And so, (dramatic intake of breath) I have no choice, I shave all poor Copito’s hair off!” Federico crammed his knuckles into his mouth, squeezing his eyes tight shut in pain. Copito didn’t seem concerned in the slightest and trotted off to cock his leg against a wall.
“Oh dear...” said Joe sympathetically, but Federico was already walking away, wailing and wringing his hands in despair.
“Poor Federico,” I said. “He was so proud of Copito’s snowy white fur.”
“Oh well,” said Joe. “No harm done really. It’ll grow back in a few months. Like your eyebrows...”
I flinched.
And there were still two more surprises left for us that day. As Joe unlocked our front door, the Ufarte twins, dressed as ballerinas, skipped up behind us.
“Tía Veeky! Tía Veeky! We saw Francisco today!”
“Er... Francisco the chrysalis? You saw him?” I hadn’t confessed that Francisco had crumbled into a pile of dust at the bottom of the jam jar.
“¡Sí! He is a beautiful butterfly now! He was flying up the street...” Ballerina #1 fanned her little hands, demonstrating, then pirouetted.
“And then... Oh, then he sat on the wall beside us, watching us play!” said Ballerina #2.
“How lovely!” I said, enjoying their pleasure and heaving an inward sigh of relief. I’d gotten away with it. I wouldn’t have to tell them about the real Francisco’s demise.
“And you’re very sure it was Francisco?” asked Joe, a twinkle in his eye.
“Oh yes!” chorused the ballerinas. “We’d recognise him anywhere!”
But the day was still not over, and the final surprise knocked the wind out of my sails. Being a Friday, Paco’s family arrived for the weekend as usual.
“We have good news!” said Carmen-Bethina, the dimples appearing in her plump cheeks as she smiled.
“Pah!” roared Paco, thumping the door frame with his fist. “Don’t get excited, woman! You know what Sofía is like! That daughter of ours is too fussy!”
“Sofía has a new boyfriend!” continued Carmen-Bethina. “He is a policeman!”
“Pah!” roared Paco again. “It won’t last. Sofía will find something wrong with him. I do not think she will ever get married!”
“They seem very happy,” said Carmen-Bethina, ignoring her husband. “Who knows? Perhaps this will be ‘The One’. He is coming up to the village tomorrow, Sofía will bring him round to meet you.”
Which would have been fine if I hadn’t been idly watching the local Spanish news on TV that night, and saw something that made my mouth hang open in astonishment.