Telling Lies to Alice by Laura Wilson Read Free Book Online Page A

to matter a lot.
    When we first got to the restaurant I couldn’t stop staring at his head, because he had two great patches of hair cut out at the side. I hadn’t noticed in the taxi, but it looked bizarre under the restaurant lights because he had all this lovely wavy black hair with two huge bald patches just above his right ear. I wasn’t going to say anything because I thought he must have done it for a film or something, but he was obviously a bit self-conscious because he kept putting his hand up to his head. Then he said, “Sorry about the hair. I hope you don’t mind being seen in public with me looking like this, but it got singed.”
    I said, “Was it a gas ring or something?”
    “No, nothing like that . . . In fact, I was hit on the head by a burning dildo.”
    I thought he was joking so I said, very straight-faced, “Well, each to his own. Spoils your hair, though.”
    “No, that’s the truth. It was thrown over a fence.”
    “A fence ?”
    “Yes, a garden fence. Jack and Val have got this place out in Cuffley, you see, huge great garden, and there’s a woman who lives next door, eighty-five and made of tweed, pillar of the community . . . anyway, it was her granddaughter’s twenty-first birthday and someone had given her this thing as a present so she took off the wrapping paper and waved it about, hey, look at this, but then she suddenly realised . . . what it was . . . The old girl had no idea—they tried to tell her it was an African votive object but she’d knocked about a bit in the colonies and she didn’t believe them because it was made of rubber, and apparently African stuff is usually made of wood. . . . Well, she caught on in the end, and she said, ‘Oh, we can’t have such a thing in the house, I’ll take it down to the long paddock at once and set fire to it.’ Which she did, in a dustbin for burning garden rubbish, and she got a big can of petrol, covered everything in it, and threw in a match. Well, there we were, playing tennis without a care in the world, and suddenly we were enveloped in this evil-smelling cloud of smoke and this great black thing came whizzing out of nowhere and thumped me on the side of the head. The smoke was getting out of control and the old dear had panicked, lobbed it over the fence and legged it. Jack ran up to the fence and saw her going hell for leather back to the house, walking stick and all . . . he rushed over to the barbeque for a pair of tongs, picked this thing up, saw what it was, bellowed ‘Jesus Christ !’ and marched straight round and rang the bell . . .
    “Val put me out by dipping her jersey in the fishpond and wrapping it round my head, then we rushed after Jack because we could hear all this shouting and bawling coming from next door and Val was convinced he’d done the old girl a mischief . . . we got there just in time to see him plunging the dildo into one of the ice buckets—they were having champagne—the granddaughter was hiding in the downstairs cloakroom and the woman was in a terrible state, choking and rushing round opening windows because of the smell . . .
    “At first she denied all knowledge, but of course her guests knew and there I was with this sodden jumper round my head, dripping on the Axminster . . . Jack said, ‘Madam, you should have the decency to restrain your depraved urges until you are in the privacy of your own bedroom,’ so of course she said, ‘How dare you,’ and her son chimed in, ‘Don’t speak to my mother like that,’ so Jack said, ‘Well, she’s the one who’s been throwing burning dildos at complete strangers, not me.’ Then she got even more upset because she’s a magistrate and people usually say your ladyship and offer her cups of tea and all the rest of it and there was Jack telling her what a pervert she was, and then when she did own up he pretended not to believe her . . .
    “Val was terrifically embarrassed: She said afterwards she thought the old dear was going to