Every Tuesday fortnight, a mobile hairdresser comes to our residential home and perms the ladies. His business name is Michael Jonathan. His real name is Michael Gubbin. We call him Mike the Hair. He is a bit brutal with the ladies-you can sometimes hear them whimpering when he has their heads in the sink-but he is unbelievably cheap.
Mike the Hair is a fit 50 and has a year-round tan and the type of craggy film star looks that often improve with age. He wears chunky jewellery and tends to dress as if he has just come in from the golf course. In spite of an unconscious repertoire of decidedly camp mannerisms, he likes to leave one with the impression that he is quite the ladies' man-a bit of a gigolo in fact-and not above comforting those among his more elderly clientele who are both wealthy and sturdy enough to bear his weight. "There's many a tune played on an old fiddle," he says to me gnomically.
For Christmas, Mike usually goes to Thailand; and when he gets back he brings me up to date with the more innovatory techniques being practised in the massage parlours out there; the approximate ages of the youngest masseuses he came across; the going rates; and so forth. Once he produced a Polaroid snapshot of some poor Thai girl, taken as they sat at a beach bar. The girl was smiling for the camera and Mike looked every inch the proud father. Conscientiously, I said "Phwoor!" for she wasn't bad looking. It was the kind of approbation Mike was waiting to hear; but it was a heart-rending scene. I am glad to say that I have yet to overhear Mike making improper suggestions to any of our ladies-most of whom are well into their 90s and far too frail to do anything apart from sit slumped in a chair all day long. Anything involving thrusting pelvises would be quite out of the question.
Once he has settled our ladies safely under the dryers, Mike often pops downstairs to the kitchen in order to make suggestive remarks to the cook-or any of the other female care assistants who happen to be passing in and out. They give him as good as they get; but when he has gone they shudder involuntarily and make little vomit-filled moues at one another.
A fortnight ago, Mike informed us that he was giving up hairdressing to go on the stage. He had been taking singing lessons, he said, and a theatrical agent had got him some cabaret work in and around Torquay. As soon as he had got enough regular bookings he was going to turn pro. We laughed until we saw that he was not joking, and then we laughed even harder. Had it anything to do with the comet, we asked him?
Mike's declaration of his ambition to go into show business was unexpected. We had always innocently assumed that when Mike was not cutting elderly ladies' hair, he was either penetrating them or playing golf-it was difficult to imagine him applying himself to anything else. But his deadpan sincerity was as unsettling as it was unusual. It was as if he had announced to us that he was coming out at last, or had converted to Islam. We demanded complimentary tickets for his next performance. How many? he asked. How many can you get? we said.
In the week leading up to the show, conversation during coffee breaks revolved around whether we should throw spare pairs of knickers at him or the ones we had on. On Sunday night, in festive mood, five female staff and I squeezed into my old Montego and drove to the show.
Mike had been evasive about exactly what sort of show it was. It turned out to be the final heat of a regional talent contest. We had good seats near the front, just behind the panel of judges. One of these reminded me of Julian Dicks, West Ham's tough, bald, full back; and beside him was an almost nude woman, whose figure was an extraordinarily hypnotic combination of projections and concavities. Before the three man band struck up and the lights went down I looked along our row and saw my companions fanning themselves with their programmes and already weeping with barely suppressed laughter.
Twelve acts and two intervals later, after our initial hysteria had turned to earnest appreciation and then to unconcealed boredom, our attention was suddenly galvanised by the compere's introduction to a singer who "always goes down well with the ladies." We nudged each other. This sounded like him. The band went to work with a will, and then Mike the Hair, strangely transmogrified, strode out on to the floodlit stage. He was wearing pale blue eyeshadow (with glitter), thick mascara and lipstick, and beneath his white tuxedo he had on the pinkest, frilliest shirt I have ever seen. He looked as camp as a row of tents. Pat, our deputy matron, who has lived in a small village for most of her life, clasped her hands to her mouth and gasped in horror.
Mike leered oleaginously and unseeingly at the audience while he fiddled with his microphone, and all around me I could sense the audience rising from its torpor, trying to make up its collective mind whether the apparition before it was a comedian with a bizarre and sophisticated sense of humour, or a lunatic. Halfway through Mike's struggle with Mack the Knife, it decided on the latter and began to enjoy itself.n
