The Barbershop Seven

by Douglas Lindsay

'You haven't much experience with women,' said Waugh quickly.

  'How d'you mean that?' said Barney. Either way, and it was obvious what he'd meant, he was right. Twenty years of dull, dull marriage, followed by the most slender of flings, hardly constituted experience with women; and he wasn't exactly a hairstylist either.

  Waugh laughed softly and held his hands open in explanation.

  'Not much,' said Barney, 'but really there's not a lot to it. It's all in the talk and how much product you persuade them they need on their hair.'

  Waugh smiled. 'Women are simple,' he said, echoing one of the guiding principles that had made Bethlehem, Forsyth & Crane what it was.

  'Ain't that the truth,' said Barney, playing along, while actually thinking that most women have more personality strands than there are grains of sand in Australia.

  Waugh nodded, looked back at the mysterious piece of paper in front of him. Nothing else to say. Time to get back to more important matters.

  'Thanks for coming in,' said Waugh, looking up and, by use of the international eyebrow symbol, indicating that it was time for Barney to hoof it on out of there.

  Barney rose quickly.

  'Thanks,' he said.

  'You can find your way down to reception,' said Waugh.

  'Sure,' said Barney, to the top of Waugh's head.

  He turned and walked quickly from the office, closing the door behind him. He nodded at Waugh's secretary as he walked though the outer office – the secretary smiled, recognising the primordial attractiveness of the wanderer in Barney – then down the stairs and into reception, where Imelda Marcos was doing a full throttle Express Yourself, then he was down the final flight of steps and back out into the cold of a bleak Docklands morning in March.

  ***

  By the time Barney had returned to the small flat in NW1 in which he had already been installed by the contracted out men from PwC, there was a message on his answering machine from Imelda Marcos informing him that he had secured the barber position, and requesting that he report for work promptly at eight o'clock the following morning.

  Fisherman's Chips – Crisps You Can Trust

  The offices of Bethlehem, Forsyth & Crane took up all of a ten storey block in Canary Wharf. Joe Forsyth had negotiated a long term deal on the property in the mid-nineties, picking his moment during a bad week when it looked like the market would lose the momentum it had built up after the calamities of '92. With the change of address on the letterhead, from Birmingham to NE14, the fortunes of the company had changed overnight. Ever since, the story of BF&C had been one of growth and increasing market-share.

  The departure of the last remaining founding partners other than Bethlehem – there had originally been five in all – had seen barely a blip in the rise of the company, as the sheer bravado and exuberance of Thomas Bethlehem had seen them through potential difficulties with clients initially attracted by either Forsyth or Margie Crane.

  Forsyth had gone quietly, the culmination of endless disagreements with Bethlehem over the ethics of the company and their business. Bethlehem wanted to have fun, sleep with lots of women and make huge amounts of money. He had known all along that Forsyth's idealism made him easy meat for the carnivores of the world of marketing, so that when the going got tough, Forsyth got going.

  Crane had departed after an incident with a Lebanese prostitute and two sachets of illegal drugs had left her position untenable. Knowing his feelings on women, she had presumed she'd been set up by Bethlehem, although she hadn't. So she had left with a chip on her shoulder, albeit quietly, and with her tail between her legs. Despite the fact that her departure had meant a far bigger slice of the cherry pie for him, Bethlehem had almost been sad to see her go.

  Crane had started a small firm in Birmingham, pitching for the bottom end of the billboard business. Forsyth had gone off to Australia to fight for the rights of the Aboriginals. Bethlehem had lost interest the minute the two of them were out of the door. And their first names, Margie and Joe, had become the bywords in the company for the general public, the masses out there who read the Sun and the Mirror, who watched Ant & Dec and Corrie and Eastenders, who played football and drank down the pub, who wore their cell phones like cowboys wore their guns, and who were there to be duped and controlled and made to buy any old shit that people like Thomas Bethlehem were paid to make them want to buy.

  ***

  Barney turned as the door opened and his first customer of the day, the first of his new position, walked into the small office, which had been converted overnight into a barber's shop. There would be no money exchanging hands, however. Barney was paid as an employee of the company, the other employees would get their hair cut on the company. Thomas Bethlehem was that serious about hair.

  Barney lifted himself off the barber's chair, where he had been sitting at the tenth floor window, looking out on the Thames.

  'Morning,' said Barney. He knew from his appointments list, already handed to him by Imelda Marcos, that this was Hugo Fitzgerald, Head of Television Contracts.

  Fitzgerald nodded, hung the jacket of his suit on a hanger, and slid into the seat, which he then swivelled round away from the window so that he was looking in the large mirror. He settled back, opened up a folder he had brought in with him and waited to be set upon. Barney knew that Fitzgerald would be expecting to be asked what he wanted, but he could see that this was a man whose head demanded a jejune, but appropriate, Brad Pitt. And so, with an apposite cape tossed around the neck, Barney picked up his new razor, flicked the switch, felt the old familiar buzz in his fingers and got to work.

  Fitzgerald glanced up quickly from his folder and said from underneath a raised eyebrow, 'Brad Pitt?'

  'Aye,' said Barney. 'Brad Pitt.'

  Fitzgerald nodded appreciatively, as if relishing a fine cup of coffee, and looked back at his folder. Barney handled the nod, so as not to remove any ears, and kept about his business. Two days after he'd left Millport, seamlessly transported to another life.

  Barely twenty seconds and Fitzgerald tossed the folder onto the counter under the mirror in front of him, an act of almost childish petulance. Aware of how it had looked, Fitzgerald straightened his shoulders and caught Barney's eye in the mirror.

  'The rubbish I have to put up with,' he said.

  Barney raised an inquiring forehead. Here we go, he thought. A confessional. Sometimes made the day go a little more quickly; sometimes made the day an horrendous, god-awful nightmare. Could go either way.

  'New client?' said Barney.

  Fitzgerald checked Barney's eye in the mirror again.

  'Yeah,' he said. 'You got a nose for this stuff?'

  'I'm a barber,' said Barney.

  Fitzgerald held his gaze for another second, then lifted the folder and held it in front of him, as if this would allow Barney to see inside it.

  'Savoury snacks. God,' said Fitzgerald, 'it's come to this. Savoury flippin' snacks.'

  'Which company?' asked Barney.

  'Dundee Salted Snacks,' said Fitzgerald, the words falling out of his mouth as if they were being pushed off the edge of a cliff.

  'They do Fisherman's Chips, don't they?' asked Barney.

  'Yeah,' said Fitzgerald grudgingly.

  'That's a good crisp,' said Barney. 'Tasty and crunchy. Pretty big company too, I would've thought.'

  'Not so big.'

  'Must be Columbia Tristar next to your Channel 5.'

  Fitzgerald raised a different kind of eyebrow this time. But people were going to have to learn; when they hired Barney Thomson, they got it told to them straight.

  'Lovely analogy,' said Fitzgerald. 'Fact is, they're a dinosaur. We need to be getting a bigger share of the telecoms business, not this prehistoric, antediluvian, stuck in the Middle Ages stuff.'

  'Crisps?' said Barney. 'Everybody eats crisps.'

  'Exactly,' said Fitzgerald. 'Crisps. Any idiot can sell crisps. I don't want to be selling crisps.'

  'Got to be a lot of money in it,' sa
id Barney.

  'Yeah, it's all right, but we need money combined with kudos, you know what I'm saying? You don't get esteem in this business doing adverts for five year-olds featuring old footballers. Look,' he said, becoming a little more animated, so that Barney took the wise decision to suspend the hostilities of the cut until his customer had calmed down, 'what does it amount to? How d'you market crisps? One, TV. Two, regardless of how gawping your product is, make it look cool. Three, get Alan Shearer or some other ex-footie player who's instantly recognisable to the thick as mince populace. Four, get wise with your packaging, so that salt and vinegar becomes sea salt and balsamic vinegar, cheese and onion becomes blue cheese and chive, smoky bacon has to be oak smoked pork and caramelised banana, blah blah, the usual stuff. And that's about it. God, the public are too flippin' stupid to know any better. Tell them anything you want, they'll lap it up.'

  The brief conflagration having died down, Barney resumed working. You're nice, he thought, but resisted the brief temptation to give him a Pitt The Younger, rather than a Brad Pitt.

  'Well then,' said Barney, 'why not just do it and move on? Give the man his spit-roasted pork and red Leicester flavour, take his money and shuffle him quietly out of the door. Don't worry about it, don't bleat, just do it and get on with the next job. If you do it well, no one's going to denounce you for having taken the work in the first place.'

  Fitzgerald stared straight back at himself in the mirror. His mouth was watering. He quite liked the sound of spit-roasted pork and red Leicester flavoured crisps, even this early in the morning. He might use that. Not that he would tell Barney Thomson.

  Barney silenced the razor in order to brush some loose hairs from the mechanism. He took a moment to look out on the river, corrupted grey under cloudy March skies. Had the sense that the conversation was over; the confessional had not turned out so bad after all. As he blew across the top of the razor, and looked back down at what was turning into an absolutely superb Brad Pitt, Fitzgerald rested further back against the chair and closed his eyes.

  'You might be right,' he said, as he felt the hum of the razor against the back of his head.

  Love's Labours Lost

  Detective Sergeant Daniella Monk stared across the small table. She was at a McDonald's, which was not the place for the conversation she was having, but for three months now she had been eating lunch here at the behest of Sergeant Khan. He had more or less looked like he'd been at the fish suppers since the start of their relationship; after a month of burgers and fries, she had reverted to salads and water, and was only just regaining her former shape.

  'You hardly know me, Majid,' she said, in response to his recent protestation of love. Had begun to fear that there might be a ring lurking somewhere about his plain clothes.

  Sergeant Majid Khan sat back and placed his hands flat on the table top.

  'Monk,' he said, 'God, when was the last time you fell in love?'

  She continued to stare across the table. How was he expecting her to answer? Did he really think she was going to say that she loved him? Men could be so awkward.

  'It's not about knowing someone,' he said. He looked imploringly across the table. 'It's a gut reaction. It's the first look in someone's eye, it's that instant click. The thrill of the touch. I loved you the second I laid eyes on you. It didn't matter that I didn't know you.' Paused, waited to see how his speech was going down. For some reason took the blank face as a positive. 'You don't compile a list of fifty things you know about someone, check them off and if they pass forty or so, then you decide you love them. It's more fundamental than that, more organic. It's a smile, it's hearing your voice in my head all the time. It's watching you de-seed a watermelon. I've lived in this city for thirty-five years, yet everywhere I go reminds me of you. I've investigated three murders at Covent Garden, but when I think of that place, it reminds me of a conversation we had about opera two months ago.'

  That's nice at least, thought Monk. If a little psychotic in its own right.

  'I've sat alone in rooms with serial killers and I couldn't give a shit, but I get nervous before I lift the phone to call you. I've seen bodies that've been slashed and brutalised beyond the realms of imagination, and I could eat a Big Mac whilst looking through them for evidence. Yet my stomach churns when I know we're going to meet.'

  Another pause, another stare deep into her eyes. Monk didn't really want to think about Khan's stomach churning. Khan continued to be glass half full about her silence.

  'Loving someone is finding out things you don't like and it just not bothering you. I know we don't know everything there is to know about each other, but there's nothing you could do or say that I wouldn't completely forgive.'

  She didn't know what to say. This was what you wanted to hear from someone you loved right down to your socks, not someone with whom you vaguely enjoyed eating French fries. And he was right; love isn't about knowing someone.

  'I love you, Monk,' he said, not for the first time, but increasing the pressure by taking hold of her fingers. 'You walked into my heart and you're there to stay. You're my forever lover.'

  Uh-oh, she thought. There's a fine line between romance and sick bag and he'd just leapt over it with all guns blazing.

  His hand moved to his jacket pocket. Monk froze. He felt the frigidity in her fingers, but ignored the sign. Seemingly in slow motion, her eyes widening in horror, she watched as he pulled a small box from his coat and brought it up onto the table. Her mouth opened. She tried to stop herself gaping. He released her fingers so that he could use both hands to open the box. He looked into her eyes, stupidly reading her horror as gobsmacked amazement. The box shaking in his slightly trembling hands, he opened the lid and held the diamond ring towards her.

  'Monk,' he said, and she couldn't take her eyes off the glittering stone, 'I love you and I know that you love me. Be my wife.'

  Monk managed to drag her eyes away from the ring and look into his eyes. She was spellbound. Her first marriage proposal at the age of thirty-four. Her mum would be delighted. Well, actually, the fact that it had come from a second generation Pakistani immigrant would have her mother very possibly dying of a heart attack, but as long as she never discovered the ethnic origin of the proposer, she'd be able to pass on the glad tidings with impunity.

  'Here, love,' said the McDonald's employee at Monk's shoulder, 'you gonnae eat any mair of they chips?'

  The spell was broken. They'd finished their lunch a quarter of an hour earlier and the waitress – if that's what you call them in McDonald's – had been looking to clear the table for some time, having nothing else to do.

  'You're Scottish,' said Monk. Khan looked at the two women, disturbed that his big moment was being interrupted. Served him right for being stupid enough to do it in a fast food joint.

  'You're a flippin' detective,' said the waitress.

  'Yeah,' said Monk, 'you're right, I am. You can take them away.'

  The waitress cleared the table around the ring, while Monk and Khan sat in quiet and despairing impotence waiting to rejoin their marriage proposal discussion. All plastic and paper crap suitably removed, she nodded at them, looked back at Monk, shook her head and walked off.

  Khan pushed the ring another inch across the table and took hold of her fingers with both hands this time.

  'What d'you say, Monk?' he said. 'You make my heart sing.'

  'Ugh!' said Monk, withdrawing her hand. 'That's too far, bucko. You were doing OK, although, you know I wasn't about to say yes, but the walking into your heart thing, the forever lover remark, and now this.'

  He looked suitably hurt; she felt suitably bad for him.

  'It's just, I know you're right,' she said. 'You're right about falling in love, and that's how I know I don't love you.'

  'It might come,' he said, ditching all his principles about falling in love in search of a persuasive argument.

  'And what if I meet someone who I fall for the way you've fallen for me? What then?'

/>   This one made him think. No real argument, no comeback, nothing to say. Knew she was right, knew that she'd been going off the relationship. The whole marriage idea had been a desperate attempt to cling onto something he was losing. Not the first.

  'I don't know, Monk,' he said, and she could tell he was getting close to the part where he would lose his dignity, 'I just know I love you and that this can work. We can work.'

  He paused. She knew what was coming. He looked sincerely into her eyes; he gripped her fingers once more.

  'Try to see it my way ... ' he began singing softly, more Russell Watson than Lennon or McCartney. Monk rose quickly to her feet, holding her hand out in front of her.

  'Red card!' she said.

  'Monk!' he pleaded.

  'I'm taking the last train to Clarksville, dude,' she said. 'Catch you later.'

  And with that she was out of the door, faster than a speeding bullet, leaving poor old Khan and his diamond ring alone at the table. He watched her go, considered chasing after her, decided against, then quickly slipped the ring into his pocket, looking around to see how many others in the place had noticed him.

  In short, everybody. And he felt very, very stupid.

  Waferthin.com

  Just after two o'clock in the afternoon. Jude Orwell, Chief of Staff of Bethlehem, Forsyth & Crane, had already heard plenty of good things about the new barber in town and had decided to check the guy out for himself. Had come looking for a Hugh Jackman (X-Men). He had a 2:10 with a couple of women from a feminine hygiene company, so he'd decided to kill two birds and have the meeting while he got his hair cut. It never crossed his mind that he wasn't showing the two women from the feminine hygiene company much respect. He knew nothing about the company, and his PA, Rose, had been unable to unearth any hard information, but the name pretty much said it all as far as he was concerned. Waferthin.com.

  Barney was going about his business, creating a magnificently precise Wolverine around the contours of Orwell's head, still a minute or two before the ladies were due to arrive.