Madeleine
by Spider Griffin

Madeleine by Spider Griffin

"Reincarnation: Fact or Fiction?" Percival read. Being absorbed in the article, he had not heard the salon assistant speak; or at most, had not caught enough to interpret her words. A shadow, painted across the magazine he held, caused him to glance up. ‘Pardon?’ he said.

The assistant smiled politely as she repeated her sentence: ‘We are ready now, Mr Snelling; if you’d like to come this way.’

As he stood, a single chime sounded from the clocktower in the square, the toll seeming sombre and deeper than usual. Percival strutted past the sun-lit windows after the girl and she showed him to a padded chair facing a large mirror. His reflection, a darker, more sinister Percival, stared back to him. Perhaps if this double were able to communicate to the real dimension it might have mouthed the words, “Get out now, before it’s too late!”

‘This is Kataline: she’ll look after you,’ the assistant informed him while he sat. She switched on the spotlights above the mirror.

‘Mr Snelling? Percival Snelling from the Art College?’ Kataline asked brightly with a broadly applied grin but with teeth held tightly together.

Percival was surprised at being recognised by this young woman. After his accident he had become forgetful and easily confused. Nevertheless, he was proud that he could at least remember all his students and she was surely not one of those. He still possessed his handsome ways, he considered. Maybe his charisma and charm had cast its spell at a gallery or social event, enough for her to have discovered his place of employment. ‘I’m sorry, Miss…’

She held up her hands, as if requiring her digits to be counted, with their extended, blood-red nails adorning each end. It was as if she were proud of these claws, giving evidence of the feline in her name. ‘Call me Kataline.’ 

‘…Miss Kataline, but I’m afraid I cannot recollect meeting you. However, you do seem familiar. Maybe you studied at evening classes or — ’

The hairdresser interrupted while touching his charcoal-grey locks. She sounded blunt: ‘You don’t know me.’ Percival wanted to ask how she knew him but Kataline was continuing; now with an exaggerated gaiety in her voice. ‘What masterpiece shall we have? I recommend taking it short on the sides,’ and she scooped up the coils of hair with the edges of her palms, ‘keeping length on top. Modern, if you like; trendy, if that’s possible.’ With that pronounced she rubbed his pate as if petting an animal, one of her nails scratching his skull.

Percival agreed to the hair-style and was led across the varnished stone tiles – proudly watching his image multiplied in mirrors as he went – past nine other chairs standing in pools of hair. The suppliers of this hair sat still as mannequins, intense looks upon their faces, with hairdressers preening them. An assistant who daubed shampoo onto Percival’s crown was silent other than to say, ‘Take your specs off, will you?’ Percival enjoyed the sensation of his head massaged and listened to the loud music permeating the extensive salon. But the top of his spine ached as he lay back in the bowl, his epiglottis dry, his Adam’s apple protruding and exposed. He gulped involuntarily, glad that Kataline was not washing his hair using her long nails.

When shown back to his chair, a violet gown was thrown over him to cover his body like a shroud. A towel, taken from about his head, was tucked into the back of his collar. Kataline performed this carelessly and it burned Percival’s neck as though rubbed with canvas.

‘I think you should whip your glasses off again,’ the hairdresser suggested and she took them from him. ‘Chunky lenses, aren’t they? Your eyeballs are little and all watery, don’t mind me mentioning?’ With this said she began to cut his hair. 

Percival, being short-sighted to an advanced degree, could see only an Impressionist image in the mirror, with reflected glare from spotlights bloomed into a hazy aura. He moved his head. ‘Keep still,’ Kataline snapped. ‘Don’t want these scissors cutting you, do we: sharp as a razor they are.’ Percival sucked in his bottom lip like a scolded child might, then let his stinging eyes close to muse on the works of Monet and Gauguin.

At first, Kataline snipped in silence – pulling his head one way then pushing it the other with a deliberate manner, attentive to her task.

‘So does the college still have its History of Art bit?’ she suddenly questioned.

Percival was broken from his meditation. ‘Why yes, I’m the head tutor of    that department — you really have me wondering, young lady. How do you know me?’

Kataline laughed. It was an odd, strangled laugh, as if forced. ‘That silly ol’ college, looking like a supermarket, plonked on the hill. I watched students trying to reach the top once after it snowed and the road went all slippery. Up they climbed…’ snip, snip… ‘and down they slid with their hands and feet freezing off. Quite amusing, really.’

Beginning to rub his stippled chin, Percival was asked again to keep still so he was content with creasing his brow with perplexity. If he had been wearing his spectacles, he might have seen the hairdresser glowering to his reflection. 

He spoke up. ‘You must have some connection with the college.’

‘Let’s see now,’ snip, snip, ‘there’s Natalie, and Allison — ’

‘Allison Murray?’

‘No, Allison Winfield; fat Peter,’ snip, snip, snip, ‘…and Madeleine.’

Upon that name registering, the muscles in Percival’s neck became solid and his torso jerked forward.

‘Woah there, old man,’ Kataline cried out, pulling him back by the shoulders. ‘I can’t style your hair properly if you keep moving around now, can I?’ She was sounding annoyed. ‘Don’t you ever listen?’

Percival had not heard her rude and abrupt words for his mind was washed over with a horrible muddy blend of painful and sweet recollections, as tears welled in his eyes.

Kataline appeared concerned. ‘Crikey, something’s upset you. Wonder if it was something I said. Have a natter Mr Snelling, I’m used to bending an ear to customers’ problems; part of my job.’

With a sniff, Percival composed his crumpled visage. ‘It wasn’t anything… well yes it was,’ he admitted. After keeping the harrowing memories in the background of his mind for so long, they were now to the fore. He felt the need to speak of them in the hope of lessening the burden he carried. He had not learned to mourn so now he must communicate his sorrow to someone — this stranger even. The girl seemed willing enough to become his unpaid counsellor.

Kataline had retrieved a stool. After perching her slender form on it she put her head near to his, as if a confidante. ‘Go on, carry on,’ she whispered hurriedly. A familiar claustrophobia was returning to Percival and the hairdresser seemed too close suddenly with her perfume overpowering him.

Overcoming embarrassment, Percival began: ‘As you seem to know, I teach History of Art at the college. Thirty-five years, on and off. And in all that time, with the hundreds of students I have taught, there is but one whom I consider to be – to have been – a student par excellence. Look here, I really shouldn’t be telling you this.’

Kataline threw her straight dark-brown hair away from her pastel, pale face. Possessing an intent look, she dragged a comb down the back of his cranium with the scissors snipping a fine shower of hair. ‘Keep going, I’m interested,’ she insisted.

‘All right, the student in question was called Madeleine. And that’s as much as I shall tell. If you knew Madeleine, you know what happened.’ Percival sighed with a deep sadness.

‘I don’t, Mr Smelling: I mean Snelling. It might not be the same Madeleine,’ snip, snip. ‘Talk about anything you like. I’m used to it, really I am,’ snip, snip. ‘Anyway, I reckon it’ll help to get it off your chest.’

How considerate of this young person to take time to listen, Percival thought; but then Madeleine had also been a good listener. 

‘She was a blossoming youth, in mind and body. Truly charming in manner and appearance, with quite distinctive red hair and as fresh as the morning. Her beautiful skin was as smooth as white marble. She was not much older than you, I would estimate. Indeed, if I had my spectacles on, I would say your features bore a remarkable resemblance to her.’

‘Steady on,’ snip, snip, snip, ‘I s’pose that’s meant to be a compliment.’ Kataline’s breathe was quickening and rasping in his ear as if she was having difficulty in breathing.

‘You’re welcome. It got so that being such a remarkable student, I took to giving Madeleine lessons after hours. Sometimes she would come to my home during the weekend so that I might examine an essay or for us to study art books and my paintings. I’m almost sixty, believe it or not, but I have a way to go before the grave. And she took to me, as it were. In no way did I encourage her: Madeleine was an intelligent and strong-willed girl who knew her own mind. We became more than tutor and student. It happened without warning; it took me quite by surprise.’

Kataline’s words were pressing. ‘What happened then?’ snip, snip. 

‘Why am I telling you this?’

She pushed his head forward without care so that his chin touched his chest. ‘Because you have to,’ she replied succinctly. 

Percival knew this answer to be correct. He had not allowed himself to speak to anyone about Madeleine until now. With a guttural and muffled voice, he said, ‘Shall I say that we ––fell in love.’

Kataline sniggered. ‘So polite.’ Snip, snip. ‘Fell in bed, you mean.’ A moment then, while she held the scissors upright and closed. She had hold of his neck with her nails making marks into his flesh.

‘Well really,’ said Percival, feigning offense. ‘It was not like that. We vowed to share our lives; be together for always. And we would have, had it not been for…’ Percival grimaced and he wanted to prevent his tongue from moving, but it would not cease. ‘We were to be married you see. Excuse me.’ He moved a finger over his damp eyelids. ‘Then the pointless accident.’ Kataline’s snipping had become urgent with her hands twitching and the scissors lungeing at chunks of grey hair. ‘They called it an accident but I ––killed her. By accident. How could I have consciously harmed one hair on her precious head?’ Percival paused as if waiting for confirmation of his question. The music seemed louder all at once and a hairdryer started its hoarse exhalation, giving them their own bubble of privacy. 

Kataline was weeping and turning the chair around so that Percival would face her. 

‘My poor girl, I didn’t mean to make you…’ 

Percival’s words were cut short, for the hairdresser had taken hold of her fringe. With a flourish, she pulled the umber wig from her head, waves of flame-coloured tresses flowing from under it.

The tutor stared aghast and shouted with astonishment, ‘Madeleine, Madeleine, it’s you! You’ve come back to me!’ and he held out his arms to embrace her.

The hairdresser returned the chair to face the mirror so as to avoid his touch. She put her luxuriant hair next to his, red against diluted black, as if posing with him for a photograph. Brushing tears from her tinted cheek with others glistening in her eyes, she simpered then. ‘Tell me Percy, have you missed me? Tell how much you’ve ached for me.’ Her voice had become child-like and peculiar.

‘How is this possible? This cannot be happening, but tell me it is! How I long for you – like you have longed for me.’

After this declaration, her demeanour changed. With a hate-filled scowl, she sputtered: ‘So bloody vain, you are! How could you possibly give real love,  you doddering decrepit? Anyway, you love yourself too much!’

‘My darling, what are you saying? You know of my vanity. You used to encourage that; it made you secure with me strong for both of us — why are you being like this?’ Percival shook his head in consternation, both at who he  perceived and at what he had said. ‘This is impossible. I should be saying: why are you being? You are dead, Madeleine. The car was a mangled wreck; how I survived was a miracle; and the tree branch, through the windscreen…into your passenger seat…my God, no…’ His words had trailed away and he sobbed uncontrollably.

It was as if the hairdresser was sapping his strength for as he dissolved she became stronger.  

Her voice was firm now and demanding. ‘The essay,  the last one, read it.’  She had reached into the back pocket of her jeans to take from it folds of cream paper. Throwing them onto his lap, she whispered with a tremulous tone, ‘Last before the end.’ Percival took the papers and unfolded them with shaking hands. 

She began to trim his hair again and spoke with a syrupy whine. ‘Read, Percy,’ she urged. ‘I want to hear it all.’ 

There was Madeleine’s prose written in her distinctive hand and style. 

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Read to me like you used to with Madeleine,’ snip, snip, ‘before the — death.’ Her last word was accompanied with a sharp intake of breath but followed by a hissing from pursed lips.

Now the scissors were snipping and stabbing the air…

Percival gazed longingly through tear-filled eyes to her reflection. He was certain she must be an apparition, expecting her to vanish at any moment. Indeed, she seemed to be shivering as if cold or about to dematerialise. Tearing his sight away he looked to the page and spoke in a shuddering voice: ‘Van Gogh’s Self-Portraits: A Study,’ but could no longer speak. He had to view his beloved Madeleine framed there in the mirror, a look of besotted craving upon him.

But this was not Madeleine but Madeleine’s keeper-of-secrets, advisor and loving twin sister. 

Percival could not have realised Kataline had been spying on him for several months; upon the death of her cherished sibling, this young woman’s mind had become unhinged. He would not have been aware of how much she loathed and despised him. He could not have known (without his spectacles on) her delicate face was marred by a manic expression as she snatched at the Van Gogh essay…

…and that she yearned to claw at his eyes and plunge those sharp, pointed scissors into his neck. 

Instead, with a strange quivering sigh, Kataline took the scissors to Percival’s right ear-lobe and cut it off, with a snip.