Barney said nothing, although he did feel his cheeks rippling with the G-forces of the woman's presence.
'Don't take food to your room, I deadbolt the front door at eleven, there's no smoking, no coming in drunk from the pub, and you're out the door the first time I hear language that the Lord did not intend. Shoes off at the door, I'll let you off this time, although Garrett ought to have told you. Don't leave clothes lying around any other part of the house, I expect tidiness and order. That particularly applies to the bathroom. No toothpaste on the sink, no urine on the floor or the rim of the bowl, no faecal matter left attached in the bowl after a bowel movement.'
'I should've said,' said Garrett behind her, apologetically.
'There's only one television and the reception's not very good, so I don't want you watching it. No loud music. If you actually manage to make any friends in this town, don't bring them back here without my clearance, and under no circumstances will there be fornication of any description.'
'You'll have to come back to my place then,' Garrett threw into the mix, then shrugged an apology at the joke.
Her mother gave the appropriate look at the remark then turned back to Barney.
'Are you content with that or will you be taking your leave?'
'Content,' he said.
'Good. You can remove your shoes now. Your tea's ready. Steak pie. That's all there is, so too bad if you don't like it.'
With that she left for the kitchen. Garrett smiled; the children stared expectantly at Barney, as they had done throughout his interview, waiting their turn.
'She's a little intense,' said Garrett.
'I didn't really pick up on that,' replied Barney.
Garrett shrugged it off. There was, after all, just plain nothing she could do about her mother. She put the girl down next to her brother and knelt down beside them.
'Guys, this is Mr Thomson who's going to be staying as a guest at Gran's for a while.'
'Hello,' said Barney. 'What are your names?'
'I'm Hoagy,' said the boy. 'This is Ella. She's a gobshite.'
'Hoagy!' said his mum.
'That's what you said!'
Barney held out his hand and Hoagy Carmichael took it importantly. Then he put his hand out to Ella and she retreated behind her mum, giggling. Barney poked his finger under her armpit and the giggle increased.
'Do that to me!' said Hoagy, and Barney reached out for him.
Rosa Kleb appeared at the door.
'It's on the table,' she said snippily.
'Right guys,' said Garrett, 'hands washed!'
'I washed my hands last morning.'
'Get to the sink.'
'Did you hear about Jonah Harrison?' said Miranda Donaldson.
'What about him?' asked Garrett.
'Fell down the stairs, banged his head.'
'Shit, is he all right?'
As they talked, Barney suddenly found himself leading the children off to the bathroom. Basic instinct.
'You're out of nappies, right?' he said to Ella, who looked at him big-eyed.
'She is,' answered Hoagy, 'but she still poos in her pants sometimes. Mum says she does it just to annoy her, because it never happens when she's at Gran's.'
They got into the bathroom. Hoagy pulled out a small stool to help him stand at the sink.
Barney lowered the toilet lid and sat down; Hoagy splatted water around the place. Ella stood in the middle of the bathroom and stared at Barney.
'Where's your father?' asked Barney.
'He's dead,' said Hoagy, in the matter-of-fact manner of the too young to grasp the concept. 'Mum says we'll see him when we die, but that won't be until after I'm a dad and Ella's a mum.'
'Long time to wait yet,' said Barney.
He turned, aware that there was someone behind him.
'How are you getting on?' asked Garrett.
'Fine,' said Hoagy.
'Your boy is scrubbing up for open heart surgery. We should be done in an hour or so.'
Garrett pounced on him and started rinsing the half gallon of liquid soap from his hands.
'Had a death in the town today,' she said.
Barney felt his heart sink. A tangible feeling, where his insides dropped and rearranged themselves in some new squirming order. Was it not inevitable? The curse that pursued him. Death. Everywhere he went.
'What happened?' he asked, looking up. Don't let it be a murder, he thought. Leave me in peace. Let me walk into a new town and let it be ordinary. I'm not looking for Brigadoon, no Utopia on earth, no Eden where the sun always shines and there is always fruit on the trees. Just a normal town, with the good and the bad of town life, but most importantly, where people don't get murdered the minute I walk into the damned place.
'Jonah Harrison,' she said, moving onto Ella, and quickly washing her hands, 'big fella lived round at that wee scheme behind Kames Bay. Fell down the stairs, banged his head. Died instantly.'
'Was he pushed?' asked Barney, assuming the inevitable.
'Pushed?' said Hoagy.
'No one was pushed,' snapped Garrett.
'Sorry,' said Barney. 'Just an assumption.'
'He just fell down the stairs. Big guy, must've been twenty-five stone. God knows the crack he must've hit his head with.'
'Why was he pushed?' asked Hoagy.
'I didn't push him,' said Ella, contributing to the general conversational confusion for the first time.
'No one pushed anyone,' said Barney. 'Come on, let's go and get dinner.'
'Yeah!' said Hoagy, suddenly excited by the thought of food that he had no intention of eating.
'Yeah!' said Ella, with even less reason to rejoice.
'All right, I'm sorry about the pushed thing,' said Barney.
'Just don't do it again,' said Garrett, and they walked off together, like a microwaveable instant mum and dad, to the dinner table.
Red, Red Is The Rose...
Bartholomew Ephesian sat alone at the large dining table. His soup plate had been cleared, he was waiting for roast pork, roast potatoes and several other perfectly cut and steamed vegetables. He liked his dinner plates to be full and an array of colour, as long as there was no red. In silence, bar the crunch of the fire and the jabber of the rain against the window. Drinking a caustic French Chardonnay, a little resentful and petulant, but playful around the mouth, extraordinarily well lengthed, hinting at summer fruits, icecap meltdown and eight out of ten cat owners.
He invariably dined alone. Food was too much of a pleasure to be wasted on company.
The door opened. Jacobs walked silently into the room. Three and a half minutes ahead of schedule. Ephesian liked exactly twelve minutes between courses. He did not, however, look askance at Jacobs in any way, knowing that if his man had chosen to enter sooner than expected, there would be a good reason for it. He regarded him with his eyebrow raised, the international symbol of the curious, his gaze as ever directed at the knot in Jacobs' black bow tie.
'There is a call, sir,' said Jacobs. 'Mr Phat.'
Ephesian tried to mask his surprise. He looked at the clock. 6:05pm. 2:05am in Hong Kong. Phat never worked this late. His every working day was the same. He would play two rounds of golf in the morning, stop at the club for a large lunch, arrive at the office at two o'clock in the afternoon and leave at seven-thirty in the evening. The rest of his day would then be divided between his principal pleasures of cinema, food, and sex with at least three women at the same time. He went to sleep at three o'clock in the morning and was back on the golf course by seven. A life by clockwork.
'I'll take it in here, Jacobs,' Ephesian said. Jacobs nodded and began his retreat.
'You'll listen, of course,' said Ephesian.
'As you wish, sir,' said Jacobs, before closing the door.
Jacobs had been in Ephesian's family for as long as either of them could remember. He was Ephesian's contact with the outside world, the bridge between his condition and the rest of humanity. After so long in his servic
e, Jacobs understood everything about his employer, understood that all the quirks and the madness and the rudeness and intolerance were all part of who he was, his behaviour always prosaically justifiable in his own mind. It had been through Jacobs that Ephesian's mathematical genius had been channelled into an ability to make money. Without him he would have remained on the sidelines, his talents used and abused by misunderstanding employers. Through Jacobs, Ephesian had become much richer than any of his forebears. And it was one of the bizarre obsessions which had dominated his teenage years and had never left him, which had brought the two men to Millport and now to the defining moment of their lives.
Ephesian waited a few seconds, aware that the palms of his hands were suddenly clammy. He was close to his dream and every little thing that could affect it from now on was going to have this effect on him. He lifted the phone, hands uncertain.
'Ping!' he said, with the level of enthusiasm which he knew Ping Phat liked to conduct all his conversations.
'Bartholomew,' said Ping Phat, 'you are well? Have I interrupted, as pig grease cooked in cow fat and batter you eat?'
Ephesian paused and then answered, 'I did but taste a little honey with the end of the rod that was in mine hand, and, lo, I must die.'
Ping barked out a laugh.
'Just so long as happen that does not before arrive I do,' said Phat.
Ephesian closed his eyes. Jesus! Why couldn't the man just leave him alone?
'You're coming to Scotland?' said Ephesian, attempting to keep the surprise and annoyance out of his voice and wondering suddenly where Ping Phat was. If he was calling now it wouldn't be because his working hours had changed, it would be because he was in a different time zone. God, was he already here?
'Absodefinitely,' said Ping Phat. 'You are good man, Bartholomew. In you one hundred per cent confidence I have, that you know my fat friend.'
The fat friend remark at least took away some of Ephesian's nervousness. He stopped himself on the brink of an acerbic, well why are you coming then? choosing instead not to fill the silence.
'But a long wait it has been for myself as well as for you. To be there at the end I wish.'
Stop sounding like fucking Yoda, you stupid Chinese twat! Ephesian wanted to shout down the phone. He bristled in silence. Ping Phat could speak English perfectly well. Getting sentences the wrong way round was an entirely elective process.
'That's wonderful,' said Ephesian, the enthusiasm long since departed from his voice.
'Bullshit!' exploded Phat, laughing loudly. 'But let's not our friendship ruin now with honesty.'
Ephesian grimaced bitterly.
'Paris I am in,' said Phat. 'France,' he added, as if he was an American.
Ephesian clenched his fist tightly round the phone. Direct flight to Glasgow and the man would probably get a helicopter to the coast. He could be in Millport tonight.
'When are you coming?' he asked, his voice full of contempt, wholly displaying his complete inability to hide his feelings or to manipulate any other member of humanity by artifice and sophistry rather than strength of will.
'Wednesday evening I will be there,' said Phat. 'The road has been long, my fat friend, and present I shall be when we all coffee drink at the café of light eternal.'
Ephesian had wondered if Phat would feel the need to be there at the denouement to all Ephesian's work. For that was how Ephesian viewed it. It was his work and the prize should be his. Phat had provided the financing all these years. Ephesian was wealthy by old Scottish money standards. Phat was wealthy in an Asian or Middle Eastern way, with investments and bank accounts and businesses to make Ephesian look like East Stirling. But just because Sharp or Vodafone or whoever sponsored Manchester United, it didn't mean that they took the glory when United won anything.
'You will stay as my guest, of course,' said Ephesian formally, already beginning to wonder if this was someone else who might need to be taken care of.
'Kind that would most be,' said Phat. 'Thank you. I will a little entourage be bringing. Room you have, no?'
Ephesian stared at his desk, blood pressure shooting through the stratosphere. He had plenty of room. His house was ridiculously huge for such a small town and for the fact that he lived alone. Accommodating an entourage would not be a problem. It might make it more difficult to murder him, however.
'Certainly, Ping,' said Ephesian.
'Delightful,' said Phat. 'Wednesday I will call, you let know the time, I will.'
Oh, for crying out loud, shut up.
'Very good, my friend,' said Ephesian.
The line went dead. Ephesian gripped the receiver then placed it back in the cradle. He stared at the Moroccan rug he had picked up in Rabat ten years previously. His eyes always fell on the same orange camel in the row of ten. Well, why wouldn't Ping Phat want to be here? They had uncovered the whereabouts of the most sought-after relic of these times. They were about to be present at the biggest event in two thousand years of history. Was there anyone on the planet who would not want to be there, given the chance?
The door opened. Jacobs entered carrying a tray, Ephesian's dinner covered by a large silver lid. Jacobs laid down the tray and began to rearrange the table.
'Well?' said Ephesian.
Jacobs placed the dinner plate in front of him and lifted the lid, so that the roast pork steamed out at them, then he poured some more wine into Ephesian's glass and put the bottle back in its small rack at the side of the table.
'Clearly,' said Jacobs, his voice measured, 'something requires to be done about Mr Phat.'
'Yes,' said Ephesian, nodding. Then he added, 'Bullet in the back of the head he needs,' although he could not manage the accompanying rueful smile.
The expression on Jacob's face flickered and then he turned and left the room, leaving Ephesian alone with his roast dinner and a new decision to be taken.
***
Late at night, Ruth Harrison lay in bed watching the streetlights on the ceiling. Twenty-eight years of marriage had ended and with it nearly three decades of arguments over whether or not to sleep with the curtains closed. Now she had the decision to herself, yet she felt suddenly bound to do as Jonah would have wished. So she lay with the curtains open, as he had liked and she had always hated. Had she been self-aware to any level, she would have realised she was only doing it to compensate in some way for her ambivalence over her husband's death.
As she lay, she wondered what she could do with her future, and what she could do with the insurance money which she assumed, wrongly, she would have coming. And at the same time she felt guilty that she was contemplating the life of the merry widow so soon after his unfortunate demise. However, as the delicious Jane Austen once wrote: Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can. And talking of guilt, she no longer had to feel guilty about the Reverend Dreyfus.
She smiled. Sure, he hadn't come round this evening, not even in the moment of her distress, but she knew he'd had the Bible Study Group to lead, and he always worked on the following week's sermon starting on a Monday night. He would be round the next day to discuss Jonah's funeral arrangements and their new life could begin. He was one man who would not be living up to his Christian name.
There was a noise in the hall outside her bedroom door. She gasped. Immediately her body tensed; she felt the fear and surprise in every bone; she gripped the bedclothes and looked at the door. Another sound, another footfall, closer to the door.
She held her breath. She wondered if she should pick up something with which to defend herself. Yet she couldn't release her grip on the bedclothes, no matter the meagre protection they provided.
Another footfall, this time slightly beyond the door. Her eyes were wide. Another, then another and then she heard the bathroom door open and close, the bolt hurriedly placed over. Head pressed back against the wall, bolt upright with fear, she listened. Toilet seat up and then the long stream into the bowl of water, trickling to a conclusi
on.
The flush of the toilet. Silence.
She waited for someone to emerge but the footfalls had stopped and there were no further sounds of bathroom activity.
She waited. And she waited. And Ruth Harrison was still sitting bolt upright in bed waiting, when the sun came up and began to flood her bedroom with light at just before six o'clock the following morning.
The Eager Nature Fit For A Great Crisis
Barney was standing at the window watching the rain sweep across the main street. A chill north-easterly was bringing it from behind, so that the window of the shop was clear and he had a good view of the agitated sea and the few moored boats bubbling nervously about on the water. Igor stood behind him, one eye on the window and Barney's back, the other paying scant attention to dusting the rail around the middle of the shop. Having dusted it the day before, it required little attention.
Igor was thinking about toast and marmalade and bacon sandwiches and a good muesli and the first cup of tea of the day which is always the best. Barney stared out to sea, thinking of the guy who set out to row across the Pacific, realising a few hours in that he'd forgotten his tin opener.
Maybe that's what he needed. Some grand adventure to answer his continuing mid-life crisis. He had wandered restlessly for some years, encountering absurd murder and death wherever he went. Always thought that what he needed was to settle somewhere, a quiet town where nothing ever happened and where one sleepy day blended seamlessly into the next. But had he not found that already, only for it to prove equally unsatisfactory? From Helmsdale to Annan and others in between. Nowhere seemed right, and though he now felt happy enough standing looking out over a view that felt new and familiar at the same time, how long would it last? He clung to the barbershop as some continuing certainty in his life but maybe that was what he needed to get rid of.
He needed to get out there, do something grand. It didn't have to be something that had never been done before, just some great final act of magnificent stupidity. Row the Atlantic. Walk the Silk Road. Climb all those peaks in China that no one's ever heard of before. Invade Poland. Visit all the Scottish football grounds in one season. Something big and illustrious, something that he could write a book about and appear on Parkinson to discuss.
The Barbershop Seven Page 114
