Alex Shearer - This is the Life

The Borough Press

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperCollins Publishers 2014

Copyright © Alex Shearer 2014

Cover design © HarperCollins Publishers Ltd 2014

Cover photographs © Seb Oliver/Corbis (figures and beach); Shutterstock.com(sky and plane)

Alex Shearer asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007529711

Ebook Edition © February 2014 ISBN: 9780007529728

Version: 2015-02-06

For Bob, who understood the problem.

“I don’t have much advice to give anyone; I’ve learned very little in my life; but here’s a gem of wisdom. Don’t take a dying man’s kettle away. You won’t be doing him any favours. Nor yourself either.”

This is the story of Louis, who never quite fitted in, and of his younger brother who always tagged along.

Two brothers on one final journey together, wading through the stuff that is thicker than water.

Tender-hearted, at times achingly funny, This is the Life is a moving testimony to both the resilience of the human spirit and to the price of strawberries.

Alex Shearer was born in Wick in the north of Scotland, and now lives in Somerset. He has written for television, radio, film and the stage and is the author of many books for children, including the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize-shortlisted The Speed of the Dark . Several of Alex’s novels have become films and TV series, all over the world; one became both a Manga comic and a full-length Anime film in Japan. His books have been translated into many different languages.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

About the Book

About the Author

1. Haircut

2. Terri

3. Plumbing

4. Terri Two

5. Babies

6. Old Black Dog

7. Fried Fish

8. Matadors

9. Strawberries

10. Cat

11. Tricks

12. Crossing

13. Chain

14. Jack and May

15. Numbers

16. Free Lunch

17. Ashes

18. See Red

19. Phascogale

20. Observer

21. Interlude

22. Good News

23. Masks

24. Melon Claw

25. Dictation

26. The Way

27. Reprise

28. No Dramas

29. Wildlife

30. Flat White

31. Shell

32. In Time

The Origins of This is the Life

About the Publisher

We walked in and the two Chinese girls who ran the place looked up and gave us a nod. They were both busy and neither of them seemed too pleased to see us. But Louis was oblivious to that, so we sat down anyway and waited our turn.

Soon as we sat down, the two Chinese girls started working very slowly, as if there were a competition between them to be the last to finish. The prize for coming in first would be to have Louis as the next customer, and neither of them wanted that. So they both attended diligently to detail and went snip-snip-snipping with fine precision and they used plenty of combing and lots of changes of blade sizes and plenty of holding up of the mirror for a look at the back of the head.

By this time Louis was all beard, moustache, straggly hair and eyebrows. The eyebrows arched quizzically, or, if Louis had been fiddling with them, which he did, they pointed up like small devil’s horns. I didn’t think he had had a shave or haircut in six months, maybe longer. Nor had he trimmed his beard in any way. He looked like a wild man, like one of those rough sleepers you feel part sorry for, part afraid of, and part repelled by.

The remains of some ancient dinners were hiding in the moustache. No wonder the Chinese girls were working slowly. If I’d been a Chinese girl, I’d have worked slowly too, or have closed the place early, or simply have said no and have pointed at the door.

But they were too polite, or kind, or resigned, or simply didn’t want to lose the business. Finally, one of the seated customers was done with. The taller Chinese girl – who also appeared to be the older – shook hair from the gown and then invited us to step forwards.

‘She’s ready for you, Louis.’

Louis looked at me in that milky-eyed way he had adopted, and in which fashion he looked at almost everyone. It was a strange look, one of appeal and also of stoical resignation. It took me back half a lifetime, to when we were kids. No, more than half. It was a lifetime. His, at least, and maybe mine too soon – who knows?

‘Louis?’

He stood up and took the beanie hat off, handing it to me along with the blue cooler bag he carried his needed possessions in – things like drugs and paperwork and his mobile phone, which he seemed to have forgotten how to use, and his bank card, the number for which he could not remember.

He sat in the barber’s chair.

‘So what will it be?’ the Chinese girl said. She half looked at Louis, but really she was addressing the question to me, and we all knew it. But Louis was an adult and he still had a brain – well, most of one.

‘What would you like, Louis? How short? General trim? How about the beard? Short but not too short, maybe? That all right?’

He gave me the milky-eyed look and nodded.

‘Short but not too short, please.’

The Chinese girl nodded, and she got to work. If she felt any revulsion or repugnance, she didn’t show it. She knew there was something wrong and that Louis wasn’t firing on all cylinders, but that maybe he had done once. It wasn’t as if he’d always been this way, which would have been a different matter. But it wasn’t like that at all.

She seemed to realise all that, and she clipped and snipped almost with respect and reverence for the old Louis, the Louis as he was, Louis as he had been. Not, in all truth, that he had ever been so different. You wouldn’t have called him dapper or well-groomed at any stage of his career. (If you could call it a career – maybe random trajectory might have been better.)

But she cut away, first with the scissors and then with the electric trimmer. Gradually, Louis emerged from behind the disguise, and then suddenly there he was again, just like he’d been when we’d been punching the daylights out of each other all those years ago. Just older and greyer, that was all. I started to wonder if he hadn’t always had that sad, milky, lost and appealing look in his eyes, as if to say life was just one bewildering mystery, and why didn’t he fit into it, when he could do so many things, and be good at them too. But nobody ever had an answer to that. Nobody, in my experience, has the answer to much along those lines.