Going Solo

‘It’ll work,’ Unsworth told him. ‘My grandmother cured her dandruff that way.’

‘Your grandmother?’ someone said. ‘Did she have dandruff?’

‘When she combed her hair’, Unsworth said, ‘it looked like it was snowing.’

For the hundredth time, I told myself that they were all totally and incurably dotty, every one of them, but I was beginning to think now that U. N. Savory might beat them all to it. I sat there staring into my beer and trying to figure out why he should go around trying to kid everyone he had dandruff. Three days later I had the answer.

It was early evening. We were moving slowly through the Suez Canal and it was hotter than ever. It was my turn to dress first for dinner. While I showered and put on my clothes, U. N. Savory lay on his bunk staring into space. ‘It’s all yours,’ I said at last as I opened the door and went out. ‘See you upstairs.’

As usual, I seated myself at the bar and began sipping a beer. By gosh, it was hot. The big slowly-revolving fan in the ceiling seemed to be blowing steam out of its blades. Sweat trickled down my neck and under my stiff butterfly collar. I could feel the starch in the collar going soggy around the back. The sinewy sunburnt ones around me didn’t seem to notice the heat. I decided to go out on deck and smoke a pipe before dinner. It would be cooler there. I felt for my pipe. Damnation, I had left it behind. I stood up and made my way downstairs to the cabin and opened the door. There was a strange man sitting in shirtsleeves on U. N. Savory’s bunk and as I stepped inside, the man gave a queer little yelp and jumped to his feet as though a cracker had gone off in the seat of his pants.

The stranger was totally bald and that is why it took me a second or two to realize that he was in fact none other than U. N. Savory himself. It is extraordinary how hair on the head or the lack of it will completely change a person’s appearance. U. N. Savory looked like a different man. To start with, he looked fifteen years older, and in some subtle way he seemed also to have diminished, grown much shorter and smaller. As I said, he was almost totally bald, and the dome of his head was as pink and shiny as a ripe peach. He was standing up now and holding in his two hands the wig he had been about to put on as I walked in. ‘You had no right to come back!’ he shouted. ‘You said you’d finished!’ Little sparks of fury were flashing in his eyes.

&n

bsp; ‘I’m … I’m most awfully sorry,’ I stammered. ‘I forgot my pipe.’

He stood there glaring at me with that dark malevolent glint in his eye and I could see little droplets of perspiration oozing out of the pores on his bald head. I felt very bad. I didn’t know what to say next. ‘Just let me get my pipe and I’ll clear out,’ I mumbled.

‘Oh no you don’t!’ he shouted. ‘You’ve seen it now and you’re not leaving this room until you’ve made me a promise! You’ve got to promise me you won’t tell a soul! Promise me that!’

Behind him I could see that curious black leather ‘violin case’ lying open on his bunk, and in it, nestling alongside each other like three large black hairy hedgehogs, lay three more wigs.

‘There’s nothing wrong with being bald,’ I said.

‘I didn’t ask for your opinion,’ he shouted. He was still very angry. ‘I just want your promise.’

‘I won’t tell anyone,’ I said. ‘I give you my word.’

‘And you’d better keep it,’ he said.

I reached out and took hold of the pipe that was lying on my bunk. Then I began rummaging round in various places for my tobacco pouch. U. N. Savory sat down on the lower bunk. ‘I suppose you think I’m crazy,’ he said. Suddenly all the bark had gone out of his voice.

I said nothing. I could think of nothing to say.

‘You do, don’t you?’ he said. ‘You think I’m crazy.’

‘Not at all,’ I answered. ‘A man can do as he likes.’

‘I’ll bet you think it’s just vanity,’ he said. ‘But it’s not vanity. It’s nothing to do with vanity.’

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘Really it is.’

‘It’s business,’ he said. ‘I do it purely for business reasons. I work in Amritsar, in the Punjab. That is the homeland of the Sikhs. To a Sikh, hair is a sort of religion. A Sikh never cuts his hair. He either rolls it up on the top of his head or in a turban. A Sikh doesn’t respect a bald man.’

‘In that case I think it’s very clever of you to wear a wig,’ I said. I had to live in this cabin with U. N. Savory for several days yet and I didn’t want a row. ‘It’s quite brilliant,’ I added.

‘Do you honestly think so?’ he said, melting.

‘It’s a stroke of genius.’

‘I go to a lot of trouble to convince all those Sikh wallahs it’s my own hair,’ he went on.

‘You mean the dandruff bit?’

‘You saw it, then?’

‘Of course I saw it. It was brilliant.’