Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [13]
Respectability and the guise of normality.
Jack had always felt intimidated by Madge. However, tonight his concern for Eddy overcame his usual inhibitions. Swilling the dregs of his fourth pint of beer, he climbed a little unsteadily from his stool at the bar and made his way over to the booth where Madge was holding court. She was in the middle of a story about her brief spell as a model back in the forties. ‘It was always the same,’ she was recounting, ‘bikinis in winter and furs in summer. That’s why I packed it in and concentrated on me hairdressing. Never knew whether I was coming or going.’
Her companions all nodded appreciatively, but Jack had heard them snipe about Madge behind her back too often to believe their sincere expressions.
Madge caught sight of him as he arrived at her booth. She sighed theatrically. ‘If it isn’t boy Bartlett. What do you want?’
Jack swallowed. ‘I’ve been waiting for Eddy. He was meant to meet me after he finished work, but he hasn’t shown up. I just wondered if. . . ’
‘Probably licking his wounds,’ she said, and turned to her audience. ‘I sacked the little sod this afternoon.’
‘What?’
‘You can tell Eddy Stone that he needn’t come sniffing around for his job back either. I’ll put up with a lot, but I’m not having my stylists mincing around my shop looking like girls.’
Jack couldn’t understand what Madge was saying. ‘You’ve sacked Eddy?
That’s crazy. What did he do?’
21
‘As if you don’t know. Came to work with his hair bleached blond.’ Madge sneered, her companions exchanged disapproving glances.
‘You sacked Jack because he dyed his hair? I don’t believe it.’ Jack felt an anxious anger rise up through him. How could Madge have done such a thing? How could you sack someone for dying their hair? Jack felt a nagging worry that somehow this was all going to turn out to be his fault. Jack often teased Eddy that he usually fancied lads with fair hair and that Eddy was not his usual type at all. Had his teasing caused Eddy to get the sack?
Frustration and confusion got the better of him. ‘You stupid fat cow!’ Jack swore at Madge. ‘You’ve gone and spoilt everything.’ He swept the drinks on the table in front of him on to the floor with his arm.
Several things happened at once. Madge screamed and went to slap Jack around the face but missed, and only succeeded in knocking the rest of the drinks over; Fred the barman lunged for Jack while angrily informing him that he was barred for life; and the small man in the tweed jacket, whom Jack had seen enter earlier, suddenly appeared in the middle of the scene and shouted at the top of his voice: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please!’
Everyone was so shocked by this sudden intrusion that they stopped what they were doing and stared at him.
Impossibly, the little man produced a huge bunch of long-stemmed white roses from his sleeve. He handed the flowers to a bemused Fred, and bowed low. When no one applauded, the little man looked up, an expression of mock hurt on his face. ‘Ah, I see that you are a most discerning audience, unimpressed by such childish illusions. I shall have to win you over with my world famous disappearing chicken trick.’
The little man winked privately at Jack. With a flourish, he produced a rubber chicken from his right sleeve and threw it high into the air. Aiming his finger at the bird, he shouted, ‘One finger can be a deadly weapon!’ There was an ear-shattering explosion, the chicken disappeared in a ball of blinding scarlet fire, and customers of the Fourth Magpie were showered with hundreds of tiny chocolate eggs.
When the spots had cleared from their eyes, the regulars of the Fourth Magpie discovered that the little man had vanished, taking Jack Bartlett with him.
By the time the cab dropped them outside his lodgings in Notting Hill, Jack had sobered up. The smog was thick tonight and he could only just make out the grubby front of his own house. Jack was wondering