Max looks up from his book. “All down to Ralph.”
Ralph waves a deprecating hand.
I bundle some of the tins back into the parcel, and Bill takes them out again to pack neatly. “Let’s hide some,” he says, “just in case,” and so we remove some and secrete them around our bunks. I hide the chocolate on the bunk above my head.
When we’re done, Ralph says, “Come on, then. I promised to take you for delousing and haircuts. And then I’m afraid you’ve got the honey wagon this afternoon.”
I dread leaving the relative safety of the hut for the untold dangers of the delousing station and the mysterious honey wagon, but have no choice other than to follow.
• • •
The three of us weave between the huts to the delousing station. Other prisoners lounge around outside the huts, talking. I wonder what there can be to talk about when you have been together so much, for years maybe, like Bill and Harry were. Guards are patrolling the boundary fence. The one with the bushy eyebrows looks at me as we pass.
As they walk, Ralph and Bill are having the sort of normal conversation that any two strangers might share, as if my life was not hanging in the balance. I want to draw Bill’s attention back to me, but instead I concentrate on walking like a boy, with my hands in my pockets.
“Where d’you come from?” asks Ralph.
Bill replies, “London—Stoke Newington.”
“I think that’s quite close to Max. He’s from America originally, Brooklyn, but lived in somewhere called Hoxton since he was fourteen.”
Bill is delighted. “Hoxton’s just down the road. We’re practically neighbors! What about you? Somewhere up north?”
“Manchester. Ever been there?
“No. Is it nice?”
“Rains a lot. But home, you know.”
They are both silent for a moment at the thought of home, and I picture my mother milking the cow, feeding the chickens, having to cope somehow without my help. I send my apologies to her spinning into the sky.
Before the dreaded delousing, we stop at another hut. The guard with eczema is patrolling outside, scratching at his inner elbow. He looks at my hair and smirks. One corner of the hut has been set aside as a barbershop, and men lean against the wall, waiting their turn. The barber’s another prisoner who cuts everyone’s hair the same, almost shaved at the back and the sides and short on top. I don’t want my hair to be cut like this, but have no choice, no choice, no choice about anything ever again.
In the waiting line, there’s animated discussion about a cricket game due to take place later this week. I concentrate hard, but it’s very confusing and involves a lot of words which sound made-up: wicket, googly, yorker. Opinions are sharply divided about which men should be playing and which team is likely to win. They also talk about the two “tests” this summer, the “Stashes”—stalag ashes. I think of school tests, and the life I would have had if I’d gone to university, if Hitler hadn’t come.
As they talk, the men move forward in an orderly queue until their turn comes to sit in the barber’s chair. Some of them don’t really need a haircut, but sit in the chair and pass something to the barber, and he writes a note in a book with the stub of a pencil or ducks down under the chair and passes an item back, hidden in his hand. I try not to stare. Ralph and Bill don’t say anything.
Bill goes first, and I’m sorry to see his lovely fair hair cut tight to his head. It’s so short, I can see his pink scalp through the blond hairs.
“There, that’ll last you a bit and stop the bugs biting,” says the barber.
I want to run out of the hut, but it’s my turn now, and I force myself to take my place in the chair. I can see myself in the broken mirror the barber has propped up. My hair’s grown, even in the eleven days we were on the run. It looks pretty. The barber places a dirty scrap of towel around my shoulders and picks up his scissors.
He lifts up one of my curls, and calls out to the waiting queue, “Shirley Temple, eat your heart out!”
All the eyes swivel to look at me. Surely they’ll see I’m a girl?
“Been on the good ship Lollipop awhile,” jokes Bill. I fix a grin to my face. How can Bill laugh when he remembers the day he cut my hair, so gently and deferentially, and how he said he loved me with my short curls?
“…And ends up here in Candyland!”
The barber scissors close to the back of my head. “Don’t you want to give us a song, Shirl?”
Ralph says quietly, “He doesn’t talk. Shell shock.”
The men in the hut study me with increased interest, and I stare straight ahead at myself in the mirror. Myself but not myself at all. Sick to my stomach.
“Poor blighter,” says the barber, slicing all the hair touching my left ear. “Do we know where?”
“Not sure,” says Bill. “Tobruk maybe. That’s where I was picked up. He can understand. Just doesn’t speak.”
One of the men in the hut scrutinizes our faces for a second, to see if he recognizes us, but then glances away.
The discussion of cricket resumes as the hair over my other ear is chopped and then the barber attacks the curls that were starting to fall attractively over my forehead. I am shorn, and the effect appalls me. As if that weren’t enough, he takes out a razor and begins to shave the back of my neck and above my ears. I grip the sides of the chair and struggle to keep the horror off my face. I am so ugly! How will Bill love me now?
“There you go, son,” says the barber kindly, “No Brylcreem, I’m afraid, so I cut it shorter on top, Yankee style.”
He flicks loose hair from my neck with a shaving brush and whips off the towel. I feel cold and naked and utterly miserable.
Standing up, I run my hand over my spiky, prickly hair. Shorter than my brother ever had it. Horrible! Horrible! Turning to Bill, I can hardly meet his eyes. He seems a little surprised at how it has transformed me, but I don’t see my own horror reflected in his eyes.
Ralph says, “That’s better,” and they nod.
Bill clears his throat. “Much better.”
• • •
Out in the air again, I take long, slow breaths, concentrating on not crying, and follow Bill and Ralph with my head bent. I feel the eczema guard observing me, but I can’t meet his stare. After a moment, Bill drops back, glances around and whispers, “You’re still the most beautiful girl in the world. Still my sweet’eart.”
I don’t believe him, but his kindness brings me even closer to tears, and I daren’t make eye contact. “I look like a skinned pig.”
He laughs ruefully, but I don’t smile. I’m trapped in a cloud of misery, which almost makes me forget my terror of the delousing station until we arrive there.
There’s only one guard on duty. He takes off his cap to scratch his bald, shiny head, and he barely glances at us. Perhaps my horrible new hair is making me more invisible. Perhaps that. He inspects our ID tags and writes a number in his book, raising his eyes expectantly to Ralph.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Ralph give him a fistful of cigarettes, and the guard opens the door to let us inside.
“I know you haven’t got lice, and the new haircuts will help,” says Ralph, “but maybe it wouldn’t hurt to do your underarms. Lice carry typhus, and they love underarms and groins.”