This is LW, nothing new here. Please just enjoy the story.
Oxford's English dictionaries define fiction as "Something that is invented or untrue." This is fiction.
So please do not tell me 'It would not happen like that'. Because you are right. It probably would not. So do not complain it is not real.
If you want realism, watch a documentary or the news.
It is just a story, please enjoy it.
I would like to borrow your wife.
I could not believe what I had just heard. The man sitting opposite me at the table wanted to borrow my wife for two weekends a month. What The Fuck!
I stood up. I looked at my wife, Charity. Her real name was Claire, but she preferred Charity. "Close your mouth dear, you look like a photo of a Goldfish." She said.
She carried on. "Don't worry, if you say 'No' it won't happen. Please keep an open mind and listen to what Gerald is proposing."
I flopped back into my seat. I closed my mouth and looked at her in amazement, I was stunned. I could not think straight.
"You're considering this?"
"Yes, please just listen to Gerald." She smiled and brushed my arm. I do not think she realised how much damage she had just done with that reply.
It was a Friday evening and that was how to ruin the rest of my fucking weekend.
He stood up saying. "Ah, here comes my wife, she can explain it much better than I can."
WTF again.
Let me give you a little background. My grandad was an Italian POW, he was a barber in northern Italy, he wasn't bothered by politics. He just liked cutting men's hair and passing the time of day with the odd glass of wine. He got conscripted into a war he thought wasn't his. He was on the supply side of things, not that there was much to supply. The site he was on was overrun by the British in 1942. He became a POW and found himself in a camp in England. He managed to get hold of a pair of scissors and a comb and started cutting hair, after a few months or so he was cutting the guard's hair, and occasionally the camp commandants. They paid him a few pence, which he saved, well, he had nothing to spend the money on. He found that the British treated him better than his own countrymen, so he decided to stay in England when the war finished. He opened a small barber shop with his savings. Most people let bygones be bygones. He wasn't sure a German would have got the same treatment. He married a nice English woman and settled down. My Dad became a barber, and so did I, a family business.
By the time Grandad passed away we owned two establishments in town. Each had a flat over the top for a little extra income. There was a house that belonged to the business that I lived in with Charity and our two children, Bianca was six and Marco five. We paid the business a nominal rent. Dad looked after one barber shop and I the other one, he employs me and pays me a reasonable wage, on paper Charity earns more than I do. Dad was planning to semi retire this year, just do two days a week, more of just coming in for a chat with the customers than anything else. I know the feeling, there can be some heavy philosophical discussions in the 30 minutes it takes to cut a chap's hair. I would inherit the business; it was called Antonio's. That was my name, although everybody called me Tony. Despite my surname being Italian, I consider myself British and proud of it because the British gave my Grandad a home, albeit a bit of a chilly, rainy one. I never forgot my Italian heritage.
The property next door to the barber's shop I ran was about to become available. The China and Picture framing business was not doing well. We were considering making an offer for it and making it a Ladies' Hair and Nail Salon. Dad was quite excited by it. There was a rash of Turkish barbers in the town so the only way to expand was into ladies' hairdressing and buying the place would keep it out of the hands of the Turks. We would have to employ more staff, but the lady that worked for me, Shannon, had experience in ladies' hairdressing, but she did not want to run it, she did not want all the employment law and payroll hassle.
I met Charity at college where I was doing 'hairdressing in the modern age'. She had gorgeous long flowing hair with lovely waves, a really nice figure and I thought the cutest face I'd ever seen. When she smiled all the rain clouds in the world disappeared. She lights up any room with that smile.
I learned a few things at college. Grandad taught me most of what I needed to know about hair cutting, but I did learn a lot about women. We had both played around a bit in college until we got together and quickly became exclusive.
Charity was doing accounting and we just seemed to hit it off. She would tell me all about the latest styles and fashions, including hair styles. None of them would have suited our customers. She kept me up on the lives of celebrities. I wasn't that interested. She enjoyed it, it seemed harmless.
I don't have the swarthy looks of an Italian. I'm told I have the passion and sometimes the anger that goes with the passion, but I can control it, up to a point. I thought I was lucky, my younger brother went into the building trade. He had passion and anger in full. It got him into trouble on more than one occasion. Not with the police, with the teachers at school. By the time he left school he seemed to grow out of it, to control it better.
After leaving college Charity got a job as a junior accountant at a local accountant's office where she helped look after the books of many of our local businesses. It was great because she kept all of our books as well. Not that there were many for a hairdresser.
A year after being out of college we married. Life was good. Bianca and Marco made us complete and thrilled both our parents no end.
A new manager, Gerald, started at her company in a senior post. He was right up in the management chain, after a while he suggested she join the local Amateur Dramatics Society; he was a member. It seemed like a good idea, so we met him and chatted about it. It sounded good, I even volunteered to do behind the scenes stuff. He seemed all right.
With the children at school, we had a bit more time on our hands before they started all their after-school activities when they got older. Both sets of grandparents willingly looked after the children. Sometimes the children would come with us to the town hall where we did most of our plays.
I would help out with scenery and occasionally the odd walk-on comedic part. I would just walk across the stage for no apparent reason, stop, look at the audience, raise an eyebrow, tilt my head and walk off. Just to make the audience stop and think, quite clever really. No speaking, nothing too difficult. I was happy behind the scenes.
But this was right up Charity's street, she fell into acting like she was born to it. Sometimes a little too much. I would have to remind her that she was an accountant, and I was a barber. We were not the Beckhams or Bogart and Bacall. She got all the magazines and looked at the celebrities and their lives. I couldn't match that. Okay, I had a hand in a couple of businesses, and we were doing quite well. We were comfortable, we had nice holidays, nice cars and I could treat her every couple of months.
I knew Gerald was married, but on the first production we did I noticed he flirted a lot with the ladies. I told Charity to be careful of him, although he seemed to stay away from Charity probably because she was the best looking one there, or because I was always around. Okay I'm biased, but she was the best-looking woman there.
