Of the five people sitting along the wall waiting to get their hair cut, he could be pretty sure that at least three of them would be waiting for him, and possibly all five.
Consequently, he now cut hair as slowly as he could, making as much inconsequential chatter as he could manage along the way. Just because all these bastards were coming to him now, didn't mean that he'd forgotten the resentment of the past twenty years. It was a small gesture, but it was all he could do to make them pay. He hurried for no man, and every man waited on him.
Caught sight of himself in the mirror, felt pleased at how good he was looking these days. There was a light in his eye that hadn't been there since he'd first picked up a pair of scissors.
He turned his attention back to his customer. It had been slightly tricky to start with. A young Arab lad had come in, asking for an Anwar Sadat '67, a haircut of which Barney had no conception. The Anwar Sadat 'Camp David' was one of his old specialities, but this had been new to him. However, it turned out to be the same haircut under a different name. Piece of cake. And now he was slowly making his way through it, taking as long as possible around the ears, even though he could have done them in under twenty seconds, such was his new-found skill and confidence.
'Did you know,' he said to the chap, deciding that although he was going slowly, he wasn't going quite slowly enough, 'that the average male life expectancy in Russia is fifty-nine? What d'you make of that, eh? Fifty-nine!'
Kazeem Al-Sahel smiled, trying to look interested. He had read this stuff in a newspaper a few months earlier. Barney was probably going to mention the abortion rate next. 'You want an Anwar Sadat '67?' they had said to him in Cairo. 'Go to Barney Thomson. But be prepared to wait. And be bored shitless, be prepared to be bored shitless.'
'And you know, there are twice as many recorded abortions as there are births. And that's recorded abortions, mind. Jings knows how many actual ones there are.' Shook his head, waved the scissors about in the air a little. 'That not amazing? You wouldn't have thought it, now, would you? These folk can put people in space, after all.'
Kazeem smiled, thought about the weather. They had told him it would be cold but this place was incredible.
'But I'll tell you something. The life expectancy might be fifty-nine and all that, but have you noticed the age of all they senior politicians, eh? There's none of them died at fifty-nine, that's for sure. And you know why, don't you? Because they'll all get perfectly good medical facilities, won't they now? Aye, bloody right they will, while all their people are dying at fifty-nine. And that's just the average mind. Think how many must be dying younger than that.'
Kazeem affected a serious face, nodded in agreement again. This was unbelievable; but as he studied the progress of the haircut in the mirror, he had to admit that it was worth it. With hair like this he could get the pick of the babes in all the seedy bars in Alexandria.
A seat was pushed back and to Barney's right Chip's customer stood up, started fishing around in his pocket for some money. He had been given a beautiful, regulation, geometrically precise, US Marine haircut. Barney smiled, wondering if it had been requested. Assumed otherwise and that Chip had had to fall back on one of the old safety nets.
The man walked out looking reasonably unhappy, although it could have been because of the rain and wind he was just about to face. Chip turned to the customer at the head of the queue.
'All right, mate, you're up next.'
The man shook his head, nodded at Barney. 'That's ok, thanks, I'll wait for this fellow here.'
'Sure,' said Chip, unconcerned. He moved onto the next and then the next until he had worked his way down the line. All of them were waiting for Barney. He shrugged, sat down in his chair, put his feet up on the counter, and lifted a copy of a two-month old Toronto Sun which his mother had just sent to him. It seemed a man in Flin Flon, Manitoba had transmogrified himself into a lizard and couldn't change back.
Barney looked along the array of men waiting on him, allowing himself an even bigger smile. This was what he'd always wanted. Recognised a few of them as blokes who would have previously waited for Chris or Wullie at his expense, consciously made the effort to slow down even more. He had made a good job of that ear he'd just finished, but perhaps he should just go over it again. If he malingered properly, he could take nearly forty-five minutes over this particular haircut.
Snipped at an invisible hair, stood back to see how much of a difference it made to the overall shape of the head. As he did so, he spotted another few invisible hairs he still had to remove. This could indeed take a while after all, he thought to himself.
***
The young man picked up a flat stone, skimmed it across the surface of the water. It bounced five or six times, came to a stop, rested for a fraction of a second on the surface, sank. He looked at it for a while, then picked up another stone, threw it at the wrong angle, watched it plunge straight into the water.
He turned, started to wander along the shore of the loch. The hills rose up on the other side, the early winter snow beginning to show on the top of them. Around him, large branches lay on the rocky shore, evidence of the devastation caused by the bad storms of two days earlier.
He pulled his jacket collar up, close around his neck against the biting wind, looked at the sky. It was going to be raining soon, judging by the great swathes of low cloud beginning to sweep across from the west.
His mind was not on the weather, however. He was too busy thinking about Amanda Bagel – the girl who'd just dumped him for some big city shopfitter from Stirling. He had turned up in the bar in Callander one night with his fake Gucci watch, a sunbed tan and a couple of twenties in his wallet, and she'd fallen for him like he'd been Brad Pitt. God, they'd made him look stupid.
He was walking his dog, an enormous smiley Labrador called Bond, attempting to tell himself that it wasn't all that important. It would mean nothing in a couple of months. That was right, of course, but it was still difficult not to feel stupid and hurt. Particularly the way they had laughed at his Tie A Yellow Ribbon during the karaoke.
He lifted a large stone – short of a boulder but still heavy – and heaved it into the water. It hit with a satisfyingly loud splash, and he had to jump out of the way of the spray.
Away along the shore, Bond started barking. He spent most of his life barking, the big fella, but now it was with a little more gusto. He was pulling at a black bag, jumping around excitedly, frantically wagging his tail.
Andrew Marshall slowly walked along the shore towards him. He wasn't too interested, knew that Bond would bark excitedly if he found a prostitute in Bangkok.
As he approached, the dog sat down on the rocks beside the large, bound black plastic bags; tail going furiously, enormous grin on his face. Marshall stopped, patted Bond on the head.
'Good boy, Bond, what have you found here?'
Looked down at the large package, now loosely bound with thin rope. Didn't want to touch it with his hands. Kicked at it but it refused to reveal its secrets. Kicked harder.
The bag opened slightly, and then in slow motion an arm fell out, plopping onto the stones. Blue, deteriorated skin, but it was human.
Marshall stared at it for a second or two, then stepped back. Horror ran wild across his face. Wasn't thinking of Amanda Bagel anymore. Turned away and started to vomit heavily onto the damp stones.
On seeing the product of his discovery – such a magnificent reaction – Bond went into another frantic dance, bouncing around in circles, yapping loudly, his tail swirling extravagantly in the chill November air.
###
The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt
Published by Blasted Heath, 2011
copyright © 2000, 2003, 2011 Douglas Lindsay
A version of this book was published by Piatkus in 2000 and by Long Midnight Publishing in 2003 under the title The Cutting Edge of Barney Thomson
A Chronologically Disadvantaged Prologue
Brother Festus. An honest man. W
eird name; honest nevertheless.
They'd called him a variety of things in school. Foetus. Fester. Fetid. Fungus. One Horse, although that's a completely different story. Neither had he been strong, the schoolboy Festus, and so he'd been teased and bullied, every aspect of his character remorselessly picked apart, exaggerated and turned into an object of ridicule. Hair too long, hair too short; wearing school uniform, not wearing school uniform; gunk in his ears, food in his teeth, gloop in his eyes, Y-fronts too big; no pubes, then later a thick forest of wiry agriculture; voice like a girl, voice like a moron; good at art, bad at tech; chipolata penis, hairy arse, breasts too big, testicles like peas, tongue like a Spam sandwich. Everything.
Somewhere there's a queue, and it's populated by comedians just waiting to tell another queue of talk show hosts that their comedy came from being bullied at school. Festus had tried that too, but he hadn't had the jokes, and so there'd been another reason to tease him.
Humour having failed, he'd retreated to that place in the head where everyone goes, but only the sad and solitary remain. And he had never left.
And so, time and bitter experience had brought him to the Holy Order of the Monks of St John, in north-west Sutherland, fifteen years prior to his imminent untimely death. An austere existence to accompany his austere thoughts, for life had taught this man never to attempt to expand his mind. It was a place where no one teased him, and no one cared about the idiosyncrasies which plagued his personality and appearance. He had found his home, a job to suit his underdeveloped intelligence, and people with whom he could associate. Brother Festus was in his element.
He'd arrived in the mid-eighties, and so easily missing the events of Two Tree Hill. He'd heard about them, of course. Low whispers in dark corners, though there was much which was left unsaid. Two Tree Hill; the very name caused Festus's stomach to churn at the personal memories it induced – the world's injustice against one man. A man alone, cast from society, as Festus had been himself.
And so, at this time of murder and terror, heartache and horror, the dichotomy of faith against reality, and the continuing serial of corpulent bloodshed, Brother Festus was about to be another victim. Not, however, of the man who wreaked vengeance for the iniquities of Two Tree Hill. Festus was about to fall victim to that other great serial killer – the act of God.
Festus swept the stairs. A small flight leading down into the main part of the abbey church. His brush moved ponderously across cold stone, his eyes never straying from the work he was about. He had to wash them next. Not his usual employment, but the new floor cleaner, Brother Jacob, had vanished. Festus was happy to sweep the floors and the stairs. Happy, in his own way.
The storm raged outside, every crack and joint and bolt and buttress ground its teeth in strained agony. Stained windows stood tight against the wind, inside the church nothing stirred. Not a draught blew, not a mouse roared, not a spider waved a forward leg, not a dog had its day. The strained quiet of the grave, statue and sculpture looking down on the back of Brother Festus as he bent to his work. God's work.
Sculptures of holy men, whose names had long since been dumped into the damned sepulchre of time; the Virgin Mary, sanguine and resigned to her place in history; a strange, lonely bemused Jesus at the Last Supper, with the disciples nowhere in attendance, while the son of God told his best parables – There was this bar, right, and in walked a Sadducee, a Pharisee and an Australian – and no one listened, but for a detached foot, the foot of Judas; the angel Gabriel, a good-looking guy, bearded and sad, eyebrow raised to some melancholy contradiction, a seraph's question as to the corruption of man and all that lies before him, a sculptor's vague musing on the limits of consequence; a bitter St Francis, the mad monk, scattering bread, a statement of his sexual desperation, his face lined with pain, his eyes scarred by the decades of frantic do-gooding, defying the black heart which lies within us all; and a substantial gathering of gargoyles, fine figures, their heads no more grotesque than comic caricature, the classic 1400s, pre-Reformation, Gothic Götterdämmerung. One of these, it would be, that would kill poor Brother Festus. By accident, indeed, or perhaps by the hand of God. For God's hands are, to quote some Italian gangster somewhere, pretty fucking big, you know what I mean?
Brother Festus moved slowly down onto the floor of the church. Cold stone, under which the bodies of buried Crusaders still lay, their names long since worn from the tombstones of opprobrium, so that most of the brothers were no longer aware of the bare skulls which stared up at them as they walked across the floor.
These were men who had died on the most unholy of Holy Crusades, men for whom the bell had tolled. A dagger in the guts, a scimitar drawn swiftly across the neck, hot oil poured into a tortured open mouth. They all watched Brother Festus, waiting to welcome him to their eternity of tortures.
Festus swept the floors.
What do monks think of when they are about mundane tasks?
God? His existence or otherwise? Deities in general? Some petty infatuation with one of the other monks, or with a long-remembered girl in a photograph which he keeps secreted beneath his mattress? Sport, perhaps, a metaphor for life which once tugged at him, gave him something to live for, so that years later he still recalls the missed birdie opportunity or the dropped catch at silly mid-wicket; the missed smash from the back of the court, the mistimed tackle; the perfect goal unbelievably ruled offside. Or maybe the average monk thinks of nothing as he sweeps the floor. His mind is blank, random visions and thoughts flickering minute distances below the surface, yet never seeing the light.
In that way, Brother Festus was entirely average, his mind an empty desert, thoughts for nothing. And so it was that he did not see the gargoyle, strangely misplaced from its perch upon high, where it had rested for over five hundred years. Resting and waiting; waiting for the opportunity to fall on an unsuspecting monk and to pierce his flesh. A monk like Brother Festus.
Festus swept the floor, mind a long way away. The gargoyle broke away from its base; the stone cracked noiselessly, a precise split. The sort of clean break that you would think only a master craftsman could achieve.
The fall was silent and swift. Five seconds earlier and it would have smashed into the floor in front of Festus; five seconds later and it would have missed him to the rear. But the timing was meticulous and, from on high, from the roof of the church, from the midst of the elaborate super-sculpture, from the gods, it came.
It was an interesting gargoyle, based at the time on a local farmer with a nose like a parsnip. Long, corrugated, and mild to the taste.
The gargoyle spun in free-fall, like a high-diver completing some elaborate octuple somersault, before the fall was sharply arrested as it thumped into Festus and the nose embedded itself into the back of his skull. And stayed there.
Festus collapsed to the floor, the gargoyle impaled upon him by the nose, so that he looked like a man with two heads. The blood seeped out slowly, running down his pallid cheeks and onto the floor; blood from Festus's head mixing with that from the gargoyle's bloodied nose.
Festus was dead. The Crusaders lay in wait below, anticipating the arrival of their brother. The abbey church was quiet. Not a mouse roared, not a dog had his day. And somewhere, somewhere, there may have been the sound of the architect of Festus's timely accident going about his business.
That Old Dead Cow
'What d'you do at the weekend, then?'
'I can't believe the lift isn't working. Twelve sodding floors.'
'You don't think the council's got better things to do with their money than spend it on the bastards who live here? What d'you do at the weekend?'
'No wonder these places are riddled with low life. They build these sodding great monstrosities bloody miles from the nearest shop or pub. They've got nothing.'
'Don't give a shit.'
'Even the sodding lifts don't work. Imagine you're some single mum with three weans and ten bags of shopping.'
'The single mum's probably about
sixteen, and the stupid wee slapper went and shagged some fifth year with a foosty moustache, just so she could get pregnant and get the house. What was she expecting? A bungalow in Bearsden? What d'you do at the weekend?'
'Nothing, same as every other weekend. You, however, sound like you've got something to tell me.'
'Did a bit of shagging.'
'I'm shocked. Who was it this time? Did you have to make do with Aud, or did you play away from home?'
'Well, you could say I played a home leg and four away legs at the same time.'
There was a brief pause in the conversation. They plodded past the third floor.
'You slept with your wife and four other birds at the same time?'
'Aye.'
'Bollocks!'
'Pure right I did. Bloody brilliant.'
'You shagged five women at the same time?'
'Aye. Orgasms all round, 'n all.'
'And what did Aud have to say about this?'
'She had the screaming thigh sweats for it. Loved it.'
'She loved it?'
'Aye.'
'She said that?'
'Aye.'
'Really? Aud? Actually said that she loved it?'
'Well, not in so many words, you know.'
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