It went on and on. It had seemed hell’s own godsend that the mirror had been there to hide the sight of him. But now this voice drivelling on and on forced his presence stronger than ever, he was being sent through a loudspeaker, he was amplified, the Dropper could see his face and his movements twice as clearly as before. He saw him swivelling, all hips and elegance, round his customer, snipping expertly with precise alive fingers, arching his neck back in appraisal, arching round to look in the mirror, arching forward to flick off a stray hair—then suddenly taking the whole head in his hand and combing the lot through, sucking in his cheeks in approbation like a woman seeing herself in the mirror.
The Dropper was cutting a difficult Burlington. He had started nicely: but the voice bit at his nerves, his hands became angry, the scissors took the anger on to the hair he was cutting. He began to muff it. Impatiently he slammed down the scissors and took up the clipping tool. This made little sound—Sally’s voice sounded the louder. He dragged the man’s hair, the man cursed up at him. He held his tongue, took up the scissors and comb again and started snick-snickering loudly. He took too much off one side, and had to even the other side. The Burlington was a cut for longish hair, it was nearly ruined. He made as much noise as possible—yet he wanted to catch Sally’s every word in case something personal was said.
Suddenly he threw down the scissors again, and holding his language, shouted over the mirrors:
‘Can’t you cut out that bleeding din over there?’
There was immediate quiet. All those around looked up in surprise. No one said anything. Then Sally’s voice came:
‘Excuse me, but did I hear a pin drop? Or is it my condition?’
They all laughed on the other side. On the Dropper’s side only one or two chuckled, for standing up there, grim-jawed, his little eyes behind the glasses glittered dangerous. He grunted back, half from the corner of his mouth, invoking the conspiracy of those beside him:
‘Pipe down, I tell you. You can’t hear yourself work over here.’
Sally came back quick:
‘Down in the forest something stirred. Could it’ve been a bird by the name of Dropsy-wopsy?’
Another peal of laughter. The Dropper blazed behind his glasses. He spoke quietly now:
‘All right. I’ll see you afterwards. I’ll see you. That’s all.’
‘Better put a drop in ’em, Wopsyboy. Else you won’t see nobody if not.’
The others did not quite catch this, they did not know who Culbertson was. And that one made no answer only pressed his long lips together and picked up the scissors again. Sally piped from the other side, in a false north-country accent:
‘Let funeral re-commence. Ever ’ear what t’ blind ’eadmaster said when dam broke and ’e drownded isself in school bog? “Lads, lads,” he cried as he went under, “summon up Wetropolitan Mortarboard.” Ha ha! Then there’s the one about the cross-eyed tart and the Siamese Twins….’
The Dropper never said another word. His hands shook, his hands shivered with held-in hurt crying dry fury inside him—he made an impossible mess of his clients’ head.
Time went on and the judges came round with their notebooks. They looked curiously at Culbertson, and smiled to each other. Their smiles re-echoed the laughter of the others. His lips pressed tighter and he put his hand against his breast pocket to feel the little weapon there.
Now all the floor was hair, a dark odorous frost of hair sending up from among shoes and spilled lotion a smell of dry must. The barbers stood back finished, the rows of glossy heads propped before them erect and naked-necked. That shadowed upper air round the gymnasium glass and the iron rafters hung again still and quiet. The shadows stopped their green game, the birds fell silent asleep.
The judges finished their round and took their selections to the high baize table. There was a long and tedious wait: everyone watched the dais: the executives laughed easily among themselves as they made on paper their jovial ticks: the barbers talked little, for they were anxious—one of the cups or even a diploma brought prestige, and there were free deliveries of the cream and small but interesting cash prizes. Even Sally said less. The Dropper stood quiet and withdrawn into himself—he looked made of hard tough rubber.
Then the president rose to give a short address on the conservation and health of the hair. He was careful not to emphasize his own cream, but referred more to massage techniques and the need to have by one an old trustworthy lubricant. His was old. He was careful also to make his address before presenting the prizes, so that all should hang on his words. Then the time came for the presentation of the cup. This, to applause from his enemies and catcalls from his friends, was awarded to a plump Smyrnese who was known to be opening soon a large establishment. The second prize went to an old customer for the cream. Sally got a diploma. Culbertson, who had once taken the second cup and always rated a diploma, got nothing.
He collected his things quickly and made for the cloakroom. There he fiddled a long time with his coat, waiting for Sally, watching him, and then at a careful distance following him out and along the street. Sally walked with a couple of others, they tried to persuade him to come with them into a café, but Sally refused and walked on back to his shop. The Dropper kept in to the side wall, walking quickly past street-lamps and lighted windows. He felt no emotion that Sally had so easily got rid of his companions. He felt now he could wait equably for ever.
The shop was approached by steps into what had been an area. Sunk in the basement, its windows showed a yellow light frosted and thus convivial. The Dropper waited a minute up by the railings, then suddenly looked right and left up the street, saw it was empty and edged quickly down the steps. Big in his long dark greatcoat, hands deep in pockets, he was for a moment like a sudden huge shadow cast by a motor’s headlights—then as suddenly as such shadows vanish he was gone.
Down by the door he looked through the glass panel and saw Sally still in his white coat bent over the basins. The room looked the emptier for its many chairs. It was very still. Through the glass no sound came. He could hear none of the noises of tidying, no little clicking of instruments.
With no expression on his face, deep in thought, his hand went to his breast pocket and drew out the razor mounted in wood. He palmed this down to his side so that his arm hung easily, and with the other hand quietly opened the door. The shop bell rang out brightly. Sally looked up at the mirror and then swung round. The Dropper jolted, surprised at the bell—then went fast across the floor towards Sally.
In a second Sally’s mind had gone to his own waistcoat pocket, rejected it buttoned over by the white coat—and his hand slid across the marble behind him and grabbed a cut-throat. The Dropper’s arm hung not so easily, it hung too far out and intentioned from his body, it hung wide with purpose like an ape’s arm—but he knew and Sally knew and Sally knew that he knew, for he suddenly stopped as Sally flashed the cut-throat out glittering into the light.
What then happened took no more than a few minutes: but to those two facing each other it was so much longer, time pounded down as slow as the movements they now began to make. They began to move, only very slowly moving to keep moving and not be still, moving a little sideways but not getting nearer, pensive boxers circling for the first blow, stiff-legged dogs poising side-eyed: they kept at each other, never eye to dangerous eye, but with eyes curiously withdrawn and absent to listen to each second, eyes dilated wide to consider no single intention but every slight, light movement within a broader view.
Sally was out from between the fixed chairs, nothing between them now but the swept linoleum, and his razor was palmed down like the other one: it was an awkward weapon, but his hand arched round it firm, the blade was keen and he knew how to use it. Once, like a wind of leaves passing above, a car drove by. Pavement lights thudded the feet of someone walking by, the loud hollow sound brought the mist and the closeness of the street very near, and they were indeed very near—two feet only above the Dropper’s head: but
more than these sounds was a silence down there that rang in the ears, silence made thicker by small noises—light shuffling of feet on the linoleum, clothes rustling, a breathing that at first came light, but as the minutes passed pumped open-mouthed and heavy. Neither breathed with fear; it was rather a breath of illness, of possession, a heavy droning breath of slow-moving ritualists seized in the dance.
It was known, and not much liked among the boys, what Culbertson did to those he had to beat up. He did it not because it was necessary—but from venom, from hate without pleasure. He used the eyebaths, and nobody came away with their sight the same as before. Sally knew he carried a couple with him: but he was not frightened of this, he was simply alerted, and he watched the Dropper’s big figure now with only the thought in mind to get in first. And this, with those weapons, was all that was needed. So both continued to circle.
The one shaded light struck dully down—the top of its white shade dark with dust and the yellow ceiling in shadow. But downwards the light caught a glitter of mirror, and this cast pale shapes of the two men on the walls. The barber-chairs rested back motionless, leather hard-headed creatures masked and mummied. Pink-veined marble basins lay dry, empty. But bottles gleamed deep green and redly rich behind exotic farded labels: they dreamed their heavy odours, and through teat-stoppers sent a gloomy night-lit essence on to the air. To one side a maroon-painted Moorish fretwork of wood encased mirrors, and by the frosted glass that from the street looked festive a row of brown old chairs sat tired of the torn picture papers on their knees. And still at this swept evening-time a smell of hair hung mixed with the perfume. Old enamel letters worded the mirrors: there was a methylated bottle, brass taps sprouted from pipes, and on the red and green Turkey linoleum lay the end of a burnt taper.
It was not the kind of shop one would have expected of Sally—and perhaps this proved a key to the outcome of that night’s razoring. His shop should have been fresh, modern, plastic. But in fact Sally was tolerant, above his neatness and his nervous ladyship there straggled an easy, careless tolerance. His shop was old-fashioned, and if he did keep it reasonably clean he let the thing rest at that, and—in a London way, in a way of theatre corridors and Victorian alleys—felt it cosy and liked it. ‘It’s just like you, you dreary old bag,’ he would say to a blowsy old pro with whom he sometimes took a port-and-lemon, ‘plushy as all get out.’
But the Dropper’s shop was a different kind, it was dead matt cream, and the chairs where cheap and new. There were clean white and black showcards lettered especially—the Dropper spent hours writing them out himself—and in each corner there would occur thumbnail drawings of flowers and small birds. The basins were black plastic, and in the window, arranged in attractive formation, would lie rosettes of razor-blades, combs circled like fish on the slab of an art-fishmonger, neat platoons of collar-studs, and behind all an Alpine range of tiered cream-bottles. The Dropper liked to get things squared up, he liked them neat and clean. He was a delicate-handed man.
This very efficiency, compared with Sally’s tolerance, probably decided the matter. The Dropper was brutal and moved with hidden angers—yet above this he liked a good job well done. Sally was nervously high and impatient for the next word and the next move—yet beyond this he had an easy carelessness.
So that finally it was not Sally’s love of exhibition that forced him to move first, but his resilient easiness that made it easier for him to keep waiting. And it was not the Dropper’s stealthy repression that might have enabled him to go on and on in that murderous circle but his very efficiency that forced him impatiently to clean up the job and strike first. Sally, in fact, could let things ride: the Dropper could not.
And thus after slow minutes in that dim-lit place, among the pale shadows moving like dust and the dark etherous smells—to the near sounds of the street above and the little sounds of shuffling and breathing there was added a new sound. It seemed to come first from that very breathing. The breathing seemed to get wet, as if it sweated. Then the sweat became a bubbling. And the bubbling became, from saliva, words. Words formed from the wetness, wet-mouthed words—the Dropper had begun to stream words. His mouth open, his breath dribbling, like a talking dummy the jaws began to munch up and down and from them streamed out a filthy cursing at the small man agile in front.
Sally said nothing. He kept watching. The words came out for some time—the Dropper was chanting in his heavy sleep—and then suddenly he bellowed deep like a bull and flashed out his hand. Sally ducked and knocked the wild elbow easily clear. And in the same movement he was in under the Dropper’s arms, his small body chest to stomach, his head looking up at the Dropper’s face, and his free arm with the razor making movements. Two movements. Left side, right side. Expertly, with care, it was exactly like lathering the cheeks before a shave.
But there was neither soap nor brush, the Dropper’s cheeks suddenly streamed with blood. Two wide red curtains fell down his face, and without a sound the whole of him sank like a great draped cloth to the floor.
Sally had stepped back to be out of it. Now for a moment he stood, his dark large eyes dull, watching the big overcoat and feet mixed up on the floor.
He raised his foot to kick—then thought better of it, gave a small shrug of his shoulders, and walked over to the basin. He threw the razor in and turned the tap. He washed it, dried it, turned, still holding it, and waited. He had one hand on his hip.
After a minute the Dropper made a quick jerk with one foot as though he had just then been hit. A groan. Then nothing. Sally knew he was coming to, the shock that drops a man dead was over, he was gathering small resources, feeling and waiting there in the mess of overcoat.
A quiet second—then he was stumbling to his feet. He stood a moment swaying. Then he gripped his coat collar with both hands and held them over his cheeks. He never looked at Sally, simply lurched off silent from the shop. He looked like a man stumbling, collar up, through a storm.
Sally heard him kicking up the stairs. Then he shook his head, sighed and looked sadly round the shop. He sighed again. So that was that. Now the only thing was to get packing, to get packing everything up and get out of town and stay out for good, for town was now too hot.
Episode at Gastein
LUDWIG DE BRODA bowed as he passed the new young woman with her orange hair, her pensive grace. He bowed not stiffly, as his more military ancestors would have done, but with the ease of a new world, a world not of private halls but of the less formal lounges of hotels. His face he kept grave, it was unwise to smile too soon. And his eyes seemed after their first deep search scarcely to notice her—like the eyes on the ends of a snail’s horns they withdrew their intrusion and stared seriously beyond her. Hers fluttered, there was recognition of his bow in her short glance of understanding, long enough only for this to be established: then they lowered, and with it slightly her head, as if this too were a bow, a half-inclination of the head, for it never retrieved itself.
He passed on, not pausing, a modern middle-aged man in a modern suit, with no trace of former graces but a certain recession of manner. He went in to dinner. He dined alone at his table in the white and gold, hugely mirrored dining-hall.
After dinner he walked back through the lounge, noted where the young woman sat taking her coffee, called a waiter to send a tray of coffee for himself to the adjoining table, and went into the toilet room to wash his hands, to comb his well-combed hair, but really for a minute to wait. It was more tactful for his coffee to be established at the table first, it would appear that the table was his habitually and not chosen intrusively to be near hers.
He judged his time patiently so that, when he walked out across the red carpet and past the gilded marble pillars, the silver coffee-jug already winked its welcome opposite his chair. He pretended not to notice her. He sat down, poured and stirred his coffee, chose from a new pigskin case a cigar, lit this, and stretched himself at last at ease to look round the lounge. When his eyes met hers he allowed himself a
most perceptible start. He coughed, bowed again from his chair, and looked with pained disappointment at his cigar.
‘I trust the Fräulein will not be disturbed by this … smoke….?’
She seemed not to have noticed his arrival. He repeated his question. She started, noticed him with surprise, smiled and looked at the cigar as if it were a naughty but charming child:
‘No, no. I don’t mind at all.’
‘It would be no trouble to move….’
‘Please—not on my account.’
‘You are very kind … perhaps I could offer you …’
But she had looked away again. She closed the interchange calmly. She did not bother to pretend to fumble with her bag. Not even to look in a direction pointedly away from his table—she simply stared straight ahead, hardly at the hotel lounge at all, perhaps seeing nothing, simply effacing herself. But de Broda had reached an age when he was no longer nervous of a snub in these matters. Once he had been most fearful of this, now he was tired and more settled—for what could it matter?—and he leaned without hesitation towards her. For propriety’s sake he did not turn his full face, he leaned towards her sideways like a puppet that could not rotate:
‘You’re staying here for long?’
She seemed not to hear. He coughed—to offer her the excuse of really not having heard—and repeated the question. Again she started, it seemed she awoke from a slight, wide-eyed sleep, and turned to him apologetically:
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Forgive me—I asked only, is the Fräulein staying long? For the cure?’
‘Oh—I see.’ She expressed relief—it was quite as if a hand had fluttered to her heart and she had sighed. Now she could allow herself to smile easily:
‘For two weeks. No, not for the cure—for a little holiday.’
‘How strange! That is exactly my own position—we must be the only two unemployed by the waters.’
The Stories of William Sansom Page 27