Sixteen Shades of Crazy

Rhiannon drained her wineglass and put it on the ground, the glass ringing on the concrete. ‘Yep,’ she said, voice saccharine. ‘I take ewe, Andy, to be my lawful wedded husband, to ’ave ’n’ to ’old, from iss day forward, in sickness and in ’ealth, to love and to cherish till death do us part: I ’ere to pledge my faithfulness.’

‘And ooh are ewe callin’ a prick?’ she said turning to Marc. ‘That’s my uncle ewe were talkin’ about. Ewe can buy me a drink for that, butty boy. Dai is a prick, about as much use as a cock-flavoured lollipop, but only I’m allowed to say that.’

Marc nodded, stood up, headed towards the pub.

Rhiannon nudged Ellie. ‘I’m watching ewe, El,’ she said.

8

The phone at the reception desk was ringing but Rhiannon didn’t move to answer it. She was looking at herself in the giant mirror, staring at the dark fuzz on her top lip. She hadn’t been to the beautician for weeks, not since she’d asked the girl behind the counter, the skinny one with a ski-slope nose, how to go about getting rid of dull skin. Rhiannon’s face was a dingy, grey colour, like a cup of Marc’s mother’s coffee, nasty German stuff from Lidl. Eat more fruit, the girl had said, eat more bloody fruit. Fuck that. Rhiannon didn’t have time to muck around with fruit. She wanted Botox, a chemical peel or something. There was a chrome fruit basket on the shelf, full of fresh green apples. She’d only put it there to complement the colour scheme. She didn’t like apples. They were something she hadn’t grown up with. The only things she’d eaten as a kid came in watery tomato sauce – baked beans, baked beans and sausage, out of a bloody tin. She didn’t know what apples tasted like. Cider probably. She was going to get a new beautician.

‘Ouch!’ the woman sitting in front of her said.

‘Sorry, love,’ Rhiannon said. She pulled the tongs away from the woman’s head and a ginger ringlet jumped out, the scalp underneath glowing red. ‘I din’t hurt ewe, did I?’

Rhiannon didn’t like doing weddings, and this fat woman was a bride. She was from a party of six from the Dinham Estate, all of them wearing chunky gold sovereign rings on their manky, tobacco-stained fingers. It was a wonder they could afford to come here. Rhiannon charged through the nose, but the scum from up there always found a way, nicked money off their parole officers or something. They were all desperate to look like somebody else, would spend their last quid on trying to buy a new identity, something Rhiannon understood perfectly well. She’d spent most of her life wishing her arse was skinny, wishing her skin was white, wishing her hair was straight. From the age of eleven she’d spent her evenings at her uncle’s kitchen table sharing her auntie’s homework from the local Christmas trimming factory, dipping baubles in a vat of glitter. For every hundred she got 1p. She was saving to go to the salon on City Road in Cardiff. It was the only place in Wales with ammonia strong enough to relax her Afro-Caribbean kink. The customers worshipped the woman who ran it, treated her like a priestess; practically curtsied when they gave her a massive tip. With Rhiannon’s head for business it didn’t take long for her to realize that sort of power was worth a fortune.

She’d been a hairdresser for nineteen years and she took pride in her work. She’d only ever had one complaint, from Kylie Beynon, a stroppy little bitch from the top of Gwendolyn Street. She’d sent a solicitor’s letter to the salon, demanding compensation for a couple of hair extensions that had supposedly fallen out. As if. Five hundred quid she wanted. Rhiannon rang the Williams twins; a couple of smackheads from the estate. They’d do anything for a bag of ten. She told them to hand-deliver the letter back to Kylie with a can of petrol and a lighter. They were only supposed to warn her off, burn the letter up in front of her face. Kylie was washing her porch carpet with flammable shampoo. The useless pair of twats dropped the letter on the floor and the whole bloody house went up. Cut a long story, the ambulance rushed Kylie to Morriston with third-degree burns and the twins swapped life in nick for the address of their drug dealer. Kylie’s still wearing a bloody wig. The best form of defence is attack.

Rhiannon checked the woman’s blister. It wasn’t anything special. ‘Ewe’ll be OK now,’ she said, giving her fat shoulder a little squeeze. ‘A bit sore, I’ll just get somethin’ to soothe it for ewe.’

On the other side of the salon, Kelly had tipped tea over the maid of honour. She was a big, no-nonsense peroxide blonde, sitting with her legs wide open, steam rising out of her jogging-bottoms. Lesbian probably. Kelly was on the floor, wiping the tiles with a worn tea towel. Rhiannon kicked her with the toe of her black Mary Jane’s. ‘Clean it up!’ she said. ‘And get the lady another cup.’ Bloody teenagers; all they fucking did was hang around looking young, smoking Lambert & bloody Butler, sending text messages to their pre-pubescent boyfriends. Rhiannon only put up with Kelly because Kelly was too young for the minimum wage; she gave her fifty quid on a Friday and told her to fuck off if she didn’t like it.

Rhiannon noticed a toddler in the corner, drawing on her leather appointment book with a chewed crayon. She crouched down beside her and said, ‘Ewer a pretty likkle thing. What’s ewer name ’en?’ While it was looking for its voice, Rhiannon yanked the book out of its hands.

It instantly started screaming, spit running down its chin, snot dribbling out of its nose. Rhiannon turned on her heel and eyed her customers. ‘Tired is she?’ she said, trying to trick one of them into claiming it. None of them bloody moved. Rhiannon hated kids, didn’t understand why anyone would want to replicate their wretched lives; take all the things they despised about themselves and give it to someone else to despise all over again, especially the inbreds from the estate. But those are the ones who multiplied fastest. It was one mistake that she was never going to make. Businesswoman she was. ‘Do ewe want some council pop, sweetie?’ she said, turning back to the kid.

‘Give her some Coke,’ Kelly said, leaning over Rhiannon’s shoulder.

‘We haven’t got any Coke!’ Rhiannon said. She was fucked if she was going to start giving Coca-Cola away to the losers from the estate; it was over a quid a bloody bottle. ‘Make urgh stop crying,’ she said, nudging Kelly in her flat 15-year-old tit. She went back to the fat woman and daubed a dollop of Vaseline on her head. ‘Are ewe nervous about tyin’ the knot ’en, love?’ she said as she replaced the cap. ‘I would be. I’d be shittin’ my bloody kecks.’

‘No.’ The woman shook her head. ‘It’s only a vow-renewal ceremony. I’ve been married for seventeen years. Are you still married? You’re not wearing your ring.’

Rhiannon bit down on the hairgrip in her mouth. ‘I ain’t bloody married,’ she said. But she was married, to a chartered surveyor from Barry Island. She’d met him there in 1984, in a pub called the Pelican. She’d been sitting in the beer garden on her own, wearing a Kiss-Me-Quick hat, drinking tap water because the boyfriend who she’d gone on the day trip with, some fucking no-mark from the estate, had run away with her purse. A fella in a cream suit cut through her blurred vision, approaching her with two glasses of sparkling wine, a pink handkerchief in his breast pocket. He looked like some bloody film star. Bob Stone his name was. They got hitched a fortnight later. But nobody else knew that. And she was up shit creek without a paddle if Marc ever found out. He’d asked her to marry him again, since Ellie and Andy had announced their date, said it was about time she made a commitment to him, said he fancied a double wedding with his brother. As fuckin’ if. The last thing she’d do was share her wedding day with that couple of Muppets, even if she could get married. The woman was grinning at her through the mirror and there was a tattoo on her bottom gum, beneath her sunken teeth. ‘DEB’, it said. Rhiannon vaguely remembered a Deborah, a girl who had babysat for her a few times when her father went to Wormwood for the post office job. ‘Ooh told ewe that?’ Rhiannon said.

‘Your mother told me,’ she said. ‘I saw her last week in the chemist in Penmaes. I asked her if you were still hairdressing. She said she hadn’t seen you since you got married when you were twenty.’

Rhiannon leaned on the woman’s shoulder, pressing it down with the weight of her whole body. ‘Ewe don’t wanna listen to my mother, love. She’s as senile as a cunt. Don’t know urgh arse from urgh elbow one day to the next.’

Rhiannon’s mother was a liability, interfering all the time. Cut a long story, she was jealous, because Rhiannon had made it out of the estate. Rhiannon had never had to stand in a queue in the post office to cash a giro and everyone from up there hated her for it. It was like she’d let the team down by having the cheek to better herself. Any more lip from her mother and she’d have to send someone up there to batter her, make it look like a botched burglary.

She looked around at her shop, at the chrome shampoo bottles and glass shelves, the apples that no fucker ate. This wasn’t Curl Up & Dye on Dynevor Street. This was a proper professional salon, like Vidal Sassoon or Toni & Guy, and she was going to put a sign up in the window that said, ‘No DSS’. She put her tongs in the holster, said, ‘Ang a banger, love. Just going outside for a bit of fresh air.’ As she started towards the door she got an idea and turned around. She looked at the woman, said, ‘Did Kelly mention the price increase? It’s another ten per cent. Cost of the products, love. Iss out of my ’ands.’

In the doorway of the old ironmonger’s she reached into her tunic, took a quick slug of rum from her silver hip flask, then lit a cigarette. There was a meat wagon parked outside the butcher’s opposite. The drivers were carrying the carcasses into the shop. Ellie’d have a coronary if she could see that. She was a veggie, one of those awkward bastards, had ‘Meat is Murder’ written in felt-tip on her duffel bag. One Boxing Day, at Marc’s mother’s, she’d seen a group of fox-hunters in the street and got up from the table, went screaming blue murder at them, didn’t say boo to a fucking goose usually. But she had a crush on Johnny, Rhiannon could tell by the way her little blue eyes lit up whenever somebody mentioned his name; as if a man like Johnny’d have any interest in Ellie. She was an olive short of a pizza, that one; had some really fucked-up ideas about not taking Andy’s name, about it being the MFI who flew the planes into the big buildings; read too many of those bloody fat newspapers.

The lorry indicated out of the kerb and Rhiannon dropped her fag butt, crushing it under her heel. She was about to light another when she noticed a blue BMW slowing to let the lorry out. It was only Johnny’s BMW. Well, talk of the devil! ‘Oof,’ she said to herself as a stem of heat ran up the back of her legs. ‘Oof.’ She waved at the car as it pulled up alongside her, music blaring out of the stereo.

Louisa poked her head out of the window. ‘Is this where you work?’ she said, voice all English. ‘Are you a hairdresser?’

Rhiannon looked at the chrome nameplate shimmering in the sunlight. She’d named the shop after its own postcode, CF25. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘I’m a stylist.’

Johnny was looking at her tunic, his eyes following the white piping at the edge of her lapels down to the dark pit of her cleavage, fingers drumming on the steering wheel. Something in her chest snapped at the thought of him touching her, long fingers pressing on her buxom flesh. An electrical current shot straight from her throat to her snootch. Oof. There was a man who could turn profit out of cunning, who could afford to buy her a new pair of Manolo Blahniks. There weren’t many men around here like that, not since Rhiannon’s dad had died. Marc thought nicking a muffin from the Services was adventurous.

She panicked when the car began to roll away. ‘If ewe ever want ewer ’air done,’ she said, pointing at the plate-glass window, ‘on the cheap, like. I own the shop.’ Louisa smiled, but didn’t seem interested. She lifted an apple to her mouth and bit into it.

What Rhiannon said next was the first thing that came into her head. ‘I’m organizing a picnic on Saturday, at the park in Pontypridd,’ hand curled around her mouth, her voice strained. ‘They ’ave bands down there on the weekend. Ewe’re welcome to come along. We’ll be meeting in the Pump House at lunchtime.’

Louisa nodded and waved, the wedge of fruit jammed between her teeth.

Rhiannon stood in the doorway until the car had gone, her blood still pumping ten to the bloody dozen. She took another quick slug of rum and went into the salon. ‘Ewe’re working on ewer own on Saturday, Kel,’ she said. ‘Somethin’s come up.’

Kelly grunted.

Rhiannon smiled anew at the woman in the hydraulic chair. ‘So, where are ewe goin’ on ewer ’oneymoon, love?’ she said.

9

On Thursday night, Ellie closed her desk drawer on three mugs she was planning to steal later. She walked with Safia along the main road, cutting through the Riverside area, the quickest way back to the city. They passed a schoolyard where children were playing football, little red jumpers tied to the steel railings. There were only two white kids among them, and one little black girl, hair braided into chunky cornrows. Safia stopped to chat to the tutor, a man in a long taupe cloak. Ellie patiently listened to their mysterious language as it ebbed and flowed, hurrying Safia along Wood Street when the conversation had ended, past the Japanese and Bangladeshi shop-fronts.

At the Millennium Stadium, the low sun was boring down on the commuters who scuttled like ants around the pavestones in Central Square. Two men sat on the bus-station floor, black T-shirts faded to slate grey, their emaciated pet terriers yapping at one another. Ellie waited with Safia until her Tremorfa bus arrived, admiring the cut and thrust of the disparate metropolitan lives that moved hurriedly around her, listening to the brisk tunes of the human traffic. She loved the anonymity of the city; faceless pedestrians coiling through the walkways like one long centipede. She didn’t know their names, their secrets, didn’t know who their mothers were. In the city, anything seemed possible.

When the bus arrived Safia climbed on to it, waving through the dirty glass as she walked towards the back. Ellie ventured into the city centre, running along the wide pavements of St Mary Street and into Castle Arcade. Her breath quickened as she climbed the stairs to the Victorian attic. She could hear the resonant Zzz Zzz sounds of the violin doctor tuning a cello. The aroma of coffee and garlic from the cafeterias blended into a steam cloud lingering above the balcony. She walked to the end of the narrow landing and stood in front of the office door, staring at the white letters on the glass. The Glamour, it said, some of the u and the r flaking away. The man inside swivelled around in his old captain’s chair. It was Jamie Viggers, one of the staff writers. ‘Elizabeth,’ he said, beckoning her inside.

‘I wasn’t sure I’d catch you,’ she said. She walked over to the empty chair next to him and sat down. ‘I’ve come straight from work, a mug factory in Canton.’ She folded her arms around her waist and then unfolded them to brush an imaginary speck of dust from the thigh of her combat trousers. She glanced around the room, at the bubbling white paint, the colourful stacks of books and CDs, the splodges of coffee stains on the vinyl floor. There was a half-eaten seafood fajita on one of the computer desks, the flotsam of busy city living. ‘Andy’s been really busy with the band. They’ve been touring a lot. I had to find something which paid the rent, and freelancing didn’t.’

When Ellie was fresh out of Plymouth University with a bellybutton bar and a prescription for the combined pill, she’d come back to Wales with the blind intention of becoming a rock music journalist. She was a neurotic, depressive, frustrated romantic who loved everything from bubblegum pop to grating industrial noise, and her prose could piss all over Julie Burchill’s. She’d discovered this talent quite by accident when her friend who edited the student magazine had asked her to review The Cardigans’ concert at the Pavilions. Her plan was to part the Atlantic like Moses did the Red Sea; beat a path all the way to Rolling Stone, where the critics were the pop stars. But she’d had to start at The Glamour, where the critics were socially challenged computer geeks. One of her first assignments was an interview with The Boobs. She met them in a greasy spoon off Womanby Street where a horde of workmen were slowly demolishing the Arms Park. She’d ordered tea and death-by-chocolate and was about to devour the first forkful when the band filed into the café; valley bumpkins hiding behind swear words and ripped jeans. She was a ballsy self-assured über-feminist who scowled at monogamous relationships and housewifery, and then she’d looked up from her fat wad of cake and seen Andy, his cerulean eyes already trying to thaw her thick wall of resistance. Death by calculated erosion was how it had turned out.

She looked up at Viggers. ‘How come you’re still here?’

‘I’m the editor now,’ he said, his tiny eyes magnified by the thick lenses of his glasses. ‘I’m here till gone seven most nights.’

She hadn’t really been referring to the late afternoon, but wondering how, in two years, Viggers hadn’t moved to London, or at least on to the Western Mail, like all Cardiff University graduates eventually did. ‘Can I lighten the load?’ she said. ‘I can take the books that nobody else wants. Or write some art previews.’ Ellie loved art as much as music. At university she often snuck into other people’s art history lectures, just to listen to the erudite lecturers gushing about the tortured lives of Kandinsky and Munch. Pop art was her favourite, Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Claes Oldenburg. ‘Is there anything on at the museum?’

Viggers slapped her leg. ‘I can do better than that,’ he said. ‘You’ve heard of The Needles, haven’t you? We’re doing this thing, paying tribute to the big Welsh bands. We’re doing one every month until we run out. It’s perfect for you because Gareth’s gone back to college to do his MA. It’s the January cover feature. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ Ellie said. She only wanted something trivial to keep her mind off Johnny-Come-Lately. Thirteen days and counting since he’d turned up. They were the longest thirteen days of her life. Like a frantic disciple in search of the great redeemer, she saw the shape of his face amidst the floral patterns in the front curtains, then she’d lose ten minutes staring out of the bay window, wondering where he was, heart brooding, pulse thumping. She needed to see him again, to look into his sooty eyes. Saucepans boiled over. The bath overfilled. She tripped over her own toes. Andy had caught her once, his father’s binoculars pressed against her face. She was looking at the beer garden on the square. She said she was looking at an eagle.

‘It’s probably a kestrel,’ Andy’d said.

Eventually the frenzy thawed into embarrassment. It was ridiculous, she’d only met him once, shared five, maybe ten words. But the hysteria always returned, sporadic, but inevitable, as though he himself was the drug, and she was already dependent. ‘Have you got anything smaller, a gig review or something?’

‘It’s only two thousand words, El. What’s that, a half-hour interview? I’ve got a press pack somewhere. The deadline isn’t until December. That’s four months away.’ He pushed himself out of the chair and walked to the other side of the room, stood in front of a giant-sized poster of Rhys Ifans. He rummaged through a pile of paperwork on a desk. ‘You’ll enjoy it,’ he said, squatting to open a drawer. He held a pack of CDs bound together with a rubber band. ‘Will you do it, yes or no?’

Ellie shrugged. ‘OK,’ she said.

Viggers approached her, dropped the bundle of CDs into her hands. He pinched her chin and then swivelled back to his workspace, his fountain pen waltzing across a page of foolscap.

On the landing the heat had relented. The cafés were closed, the arcade doused with disinfectant. She walked back to Central Square, the city around her empty and expectant, some of the club doormen clocking on for their twilight shift, leaning in the doorways wearing dinner jackets and bow-ties. Platform Six was unmusically quiet. Ellie stood amongst the pigeons waiting for the Ystradyfodwg train. Going back to the valley always made her feel jaded, an hour journey feeling like a mammoth shift backwards in time. Aberalaw was full of resentment. The whole village disapproved of anyone it collectively deemed atypical. All the columnists in the broadsheets ever talked about was how community was dying, and what a detrimental effect its death was having on Great Britain. But in Aberalaw it wasn’t dead, and Ellie wished that it was. Community was a tyrant when your face didn’t happen to fit. Ellie was impatient now for escape, her belly like a wishing well, heavy with copper pennies, every coin representing some unfulfilled dream.

She sighed and opened her purse, took her train ticket out. Behind it was a clipped photograph of Siân and Rhiannon, herself in the middle; their arms weaved chaotically around one another. She’d forgotten that it was there; almost a year old, taken on a rare night out in the capital. Ellie and Siân had wanted to go to a roller disco in Bute Park. Rhiannon insisted on some strip club she knew of, a dank basement bar hidden under a Queen Street department store. She’d spent the whole night acting the big I Am, stuffing five-pound notes into the dancers’ thongs. The flash from the camera had penetrated their lipstick and glitter. Or it had already worn off. They looked like three little girls, the little girls they must have been before they grew up, before they discovered plastic surgery, sarcasm and narcotics, all the stuff that numbed the pain. Round faces and bug eyes. Rhiannon’s fat purple tongue was poking out. God knows she must have been through some crazy shit to turn into such a psychotic bitch. She seemed to think the world revolved around her, that she was playing the lead role in some elaborate stage play. Most people grew out of that when they were thirteen. Siân’s alcoholic father had beaten her mother senseless; kicked her, pregnant, down the stairs, cut her hair, burned her with cigarettes, and when she was in hospital, Siân bore the brunt. Siân had told Ellie all about it when she was blotto on cheap champagne, the whole three bottles that were left after Niall’s christening. Ellie hadn’t had it easy, but nothing like that.

Funny how those three faces should end up in the same club, in the same photograph, all damaged and searching for some kind of affirmation. But then nobody from the valley was a model citizen. Even Andy with his idyllic nuclear family was plagued with insecurities. They were branded into him, something he could never escape, like the ridges in his fingertips. He couldn’t have a shit without consulting his father about what brand of toilet paper to use. He was the sanest person Ellie knew and he floundered through life, waiting for the next instruction, unable to utilize his own mind.

10

At the same time, in Aberalaw, Siân was trying to apply foundation, squinting at her reflection in the mirror nailed under the open stairs. It was the only mirror in the house, something James had made at nursery. He’d painted pasta shells gold and silver and glued them messily around the oval frame. Siân cherished everything the kids made, but between the three of them it amounted to fifteen crayon drawings a day. One time she’d tried to slip a stack into the transparent recycling bag, hiding them between two cereal boxes. Immediately she was overwhelmed with guilt. She’d pulled them out again, filing them neatly on the shelf under the coffee table by subject: cats, Daddy, guns and houses.

She squeezed a splodge of the gooey, honey-coloured make-up on to her palm and tilted her head towards the light. She almost didn’t recognize her reflection, had always imagined herself as the blurred, worried-looking image she saw in Niall’s pupils; a doting, fretting mother, clammy red cheeks, a band of sweat at her hairline. But in the mirror she looked close to human. She brushed mascara on her lashes with brisk strokes, stabbing herself in the eyeball when she heard her daughter shriek.