What with all the excitement of returned family and food and
presents, I had completely forgotten about the man who was looking for Tutu House.
He only came back to me when I drove past the place the other day. I suppose
that’s understandable as it happened on the morning of Christmas Eve and there
was a lot of stuff going on. Anyway, I thought I’d set him down here before he
vanishes completely, so here goes.
I was walking to Tesco to make one of those ‘quick in-quick
out’ forays through the automated tills. Some small thing forgotten, like shallots
or mustard or cider for the ham. There’s a hill down towards the Tesco car park
where all the national buses stop so there is usually a collective of people there
with baggage and sandwiches, all off to, or arriving from, somewhere else.
Halfway up the hill, away from the throng for the coaches,
a man was talking to a tall slender woman. As I approached, I could see that
the woman seemed ill at ease. Just as I passed the woman said, “I’m sorry, no,
no,” or words to that effect and turned and marched quickly away. The man immediately
turned his attention to me, even though I was a pace or two past him by then.
“Excuse me, please?”
I didn’t want to stop. I wanted to get my cider home and get the ham into it, as Delia prescribes. But I did stop. I’m a stopper, I
guess. I stopped, turned, and looked back.
The man was from some part of Asia, I reckoned, India at a
guess but I’m not great as detailed assessments of this nature. He was mid-thirties
and a little dishevelled, as if he had recently come off one of the buses.
“I scared her, I think,” he said, nodding to the rapidly
disappearing back of the tall woman as she ascended the hill.
“Did you?” I asked, slightly warily.
“Yes.”
The conversation dangled then, which was not a good look for
me as I had to get on.
“Can I help you?” I asked. It seemed to be the best thing to
do. In truth, I anticipated a lengthy pitch followed by a plea for some money.
This expectation was not born from considerations of race or appearance or even
demeanour. I’ve been around for a while and bus stop adjacent queries are
generally either about directions or money and the direction queries usually
get asked quicker than how this was going.
The man spoke.
“I need to find Tutu House,” he said. His accent was heavy.
I tried to extrapolate some meaningful information from his query but largely failed.
“Sorry, where?”
“Tutu House. It was here last week and now it has gone.”
As I stood talking with the man, I started to get a faint
scent of alcohol from him. He was smiling and coherent and amenable but I was
still wary of the pitch that seemed to be inevitably coming. If that were the
case, I needed him to get on with it so that I could refuse and escape. All
good, except what and where was he looking for?
“I’m sorry, I don’t know where Tutu house is.”
He pointed back up the hill.
“It was there and now it has gone.”
If he had angled his pointing arm a few degrees towards the
east, he would have been pointing directly towards the hospital. Was Tutu House
some facility annexed to the hospital, perhaps the man needed urgent care.
“Is it at the hospital?”
The man beamed.
“No. No hospital. My girlfriend bought it for me. It is my very
first time.”
My mind swam. Was Tutu house some kind of pop up Christmas brothel and was the girlfriend the type who gave unorthodox presents? Although I wanted to be done with this, it was also just a little bit intriguing. If the guy was a ‘pitcher’ then he was taking too long to get to it. Ninety percent of his pitches for money would end in nothing so he had to get through them quickly in order to get to one that paid. I am not a payer and I think that was probably self-evident. I’m also usually fairly good at reading people and what I was getting here was that the guy needed directions to Tutu House and nothing more. I tried harder for him.
“What is Tutu House?” I asked.
The man extended his forearm and tapped his inner elbow with
the first two fingers of his other hand, as if he were bringing up a vein. This
brought me some supposed clarity. The man was seeking a drug rehab unit. Great,
the only problem was I had not the first clue where it was. I pulled out my
phone, hit Google Maps and entered Tutu House without much hope of success. I
was not disappointed. Well, I was. There was nothing to see. All the while the
man stood and smiled and me.
“It is my first one,” he said, “fingers still on forearm, my
girlfriend bought it for me. I will have many.”
A small light was dawning in my head. I looked at him and he
looked at me.
The clouds parted.
“You want the tattoo shop,” I said.
“Yes! Tutu House. My first. My girlfriend_”
I grabbed him by the elbow. I knew where it was and I was
delighted to have solved the puzzle. We set off back up the hill, smiling at
each other inanely. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been around a long time. I knew
this could still be a just pitch that would be made at the front door of Tutu House but I
comforted myself by knowing the guy wouldn’t get a red cent from me if this all turned out to be just another money-gaining charade.
We arrived at the Tattoo House. As I had suspected, it was
closed up tight for the holidays. Seeing it was closed and fearing how the
discussion might evolve from here (I pictured the man tucking into turkey at my
kitchen table) I bade him a hasty farewell and a Happy Christmas and went on my
way, leaving him peering into the darkened shopfront.
But I wasn’t leaving him entirely adrift. There was another
Tutu House just down the way, smaller and lesser-known, and I intended to go
down there and, if it was open, I was going to walk back and bring the guy
there. But, as I looked back from down the street, the side door to Tutu House opened
and, after a few words, the man stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
Tesco was a bit manic, as was to be expected, but thinking about Tutu House kept me smiling throughout
the visit.
1 comment:
We are with Virgin Media. Have been for twenty years. Probably will be in another twenty we/they/the world survives another twenty years. I'm not especially loyal but they get the job done at a price I'm willing to pay. I've had precious few issues with them although one is ongoing: their damn call centres. According to their website: "Virgin's existing UK-based call centres are in Birmingham, Manchester, Teesside and Sheffield" but everyone I've ever spoken to bar their engineers has had a syrupy-thick Asian accent and every call begins with, "This is Wurgin Media calling." Every. Damn. Call. And I don't mind—people have to work the world over—but, Christ, do I struggle to follow them. I've started using their chat function more often, which I dislike but don't hate, and they still insist on phoning me to see if I'm happy with my package even though I just renewed my damn contract. Do their computers not talk to each other?
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