by Gerald Kersh
*
So that Saturday, Mr Wainewright went to his barber. Friday was New Blade Day; Monday was Clean Shirt Day; Sunday morning was Bath morning; and he had his hair cut every third Saturday. This was law and order; a system to be maintained. System; routine – in the life of Wainewright inevitable laws governed collar-studs, rubber heels, sheets of toilet-paper, the knotting of neckties, the lighting of pipes, the cutting of string and the sticking-on of stamps. He ate, drank, walked and combed his hair in immutable rhythm. He was established to run smoothly for ever. Every habit of Wainewright’s was a Bastille; his every timed action was housed in a little Kremlin. Therefore, to-day, he had to get his hair cut. But Jowl’s display made him stop for a few minutes.
Jowl, who owned the antique shop on the corner, had stripped some bankrupt’s walls of a great, gleaming yataganerie of edged and pointed weapons. They hung on sale: double-handed swords, moon-faced battle-axes, mailed fists, stilettos, basket-hiked Italian daggers, Toledo rapiers, needle-pointed Khyber knives, adze-shaped obsidian club-axes, three-bladed knuckle-duster daggers, arquebuses, and a heap of oddments of sixteenth-century body-armour. Wainewright stood, smoking his pipe, looking hard. He stopped and examined some assassin’s weapon of the fourteen hundreds – a knife with a spring. You stabbed your man, and – Knutch! – it flew open like a pair of scissors.
At the back of the window stood a complete suit of jousting-armour, with a massive helmet shaped like a frog’s head. Wainewright looked up and, as it happened, he saw the reflection of his face exactly where his face would have been if he had been wearing the armour.
Then, in his breast, something uncoiled. He gazed, whistling. ‘Ye Gods!’ he said. ‘Ye Gods!’ But even as he looked he was inclined to laugh: his reflection was wearing a bowler hat.
Still, why not? thought Mr Wainewright. But then he remembered that he was an important person, that the glaring eyes of the world were focused on him. He walked across the court and pushed open the door of Flickenflocker’s Select Saloon.
Calm! thought Wainewright. Calm! Keep calm! The door of the barber’s shop was fitted with a compressed air brake: it hissed behind him and closed with a gentle tap.
As the door hissed, Wainewright stood still, tense. Then he also hissed: he had been holding his breath. When the door closed, he also made a tapping noise: he had been standing on his toes.
Flickenflocker said: ‘Harpust one! Quarder-nour late! For fifteen years so I never knew you to miss a second! Eh? Tsu, tsu, tsu!’
‘Am I late?’ asked Wainewright.
‘Fifteen minutes in fifteen years,’ said Flickenflocker. ‘One minute every year. In a hundred-twenty years, so you could save enough time to go to the pictures.’
‘The usual,’ said Wainewright, sitting in a chair.
‘Nice and clean back and sides,’ said Flickenflocker.
Wainewright nodded. But as he did so he noticed that a peculiar quietness had come over the people in the shop. They were exchanging hurried words in lowered voices, and looking at him out of the corners of their eyes. Deep in the breast of Mr Wainewright something broke into a glow which spread through him until he felt all his veins were burning brilliantly red like neon-tubes. He knew exactly what was being said: That is Wainewright, the witness for the prosecution in the Tooth murder case.
In a clear, slightly tremulous voice, he said:
‘And I’ll have a lavender shampoo.’
‘Why not?’ said Flickenflocker, as his long sharp scissors began to nibble and chatter at the fine, colourless hair of the little man in the chair. ‘Why not?’
*
Flickenflocker worked with the concentration and exalted patience of a biologist cutting a section, and as he worked he whistled little tunes. His whistle was a whisper: he drew in the air through his teeth, for he had been taught never to breathe on customers. At all times he seemed to be working out some problem of fabulous complexity – breathlessly following a fine thread through infinite mazes of thought. Occasionally he uttered a word or a mere noise, as if he had found something but was throwing it away … Tss! … Muhuh! … Tu-tu-tu! … Oh dear! Wainewright liked this strange, calm barber who demonstrated no urge to make conversation; whose shiny yellow hands, soft and light as a pair of blown-up rubber gloves, had touched the faces of so many men whose pictures had filled posters while their names topped bills.
For Flickenflocker’s was a theatrical establishment, or had been. A hundred photographs of forgotten and half-remembered actors hung on the walls. As small boys cut their names on desks and trees, actors and sportsmen pin their photographs to the walls of pubs and barbershops. Thus they leave a little something by means of which somebody may remember them … until the flies, in their turn, deface the likenesses which Time has almost wiped away; and the dustbins, which gape around the relics of little men like sharks in a bitter sea, close with a clang. Even in the grave nothing is completely lost as long as somebody can say: Lottie had a twenty-four-inch thigh; or Fruitcake bubble-danced; or J. J. Sullivan could have eaten Kid Fathers before breakfast. We hang about the necks of our to-morrows like hungry harlots about the necks of penniless sailors. So, for twenty-three years, singers, boxers, actors, six-day cyclists, tumblers, soubrettes, jugglers, dancers, wrestlers, clowns, ventriloquists and lion-tamers had given Flickenflocker their photographs – always with a half-shrug and a half-smile of affable indulgence. Flickenflocker hung up every one of them: he knew that the day always came when a man returned, if only to look at the wall and dig some illusion about himself out of the junk-heap of stale publicity.
They always came back to Flickenflocker, whose memory was reliable and unobtrusive as a Yale lock. One sidelong look at a profile opened a flap in his head and let out a name. After ten years he could glance at you, name you with matter-of-fact enthusiasm, and make appropriate casual chatter. As soon as the shop door closed and your heels hit the street he kicked the flap back and waited for the next customer … looked up, segregated; silent except for hisses, gulps, and monosyllables.
Yet Flickenflocker could talk. Now, while Pewter’s flat French razor chirped in the lather like a sparrow in snow and, on his left, the great hollow-ground blade of Kyropoulos sang Dzing-dzing! over the blue chin of a big man in a pearl-grey suit, Flickenflocker talked to Mr Wainewright.
The barber made conversation with the least distinguished of all his customers.
*
‘You’re the man of the moment, Mister Wainewright.’
‘Nonsense, Mister Flickenflocker.’
‘I can read the papers, thank God, Mister Wainewright. I’m not altogedder blind yet, God forbid. Hm!’
‘It’s all got nothing to do with me.’
‘No? Your worster enemies should be where that poor woman is now. In your hands is already a rope. A … a … a loop you can tie; you can tie a noose round her neck.’
‘It’s the Law, Mister Flickenflocker.’
‘You’re right there, Mister Wainewright. That’s what the law is for. That’s what we pay rates and taxes for. You want to kill somebody: right, go on. But afterwards don’t say: “Huxcuse me, I forgot myself.” Don’t say: “Once don’t count – give me just one more charnsh.” A huxcuse me ain’t enough – murder ain’t the hee-cups. Murderers get hung: good job too. Poor woman!’
‘But if she’s guilty?’
‘Mmmmyes, you’re right. But a woman’s got a lot to put up with. With a certain class of man a woman can put up with a lot, Mister Wainewright.’
‘But murder!’
‘Murder…. Mnyup. Still, in a temper…. I knew a baker, a gentleman. In … in … in the electric chair he’d of got up to give a lady his seat. So one day in a temper he put his friend in the oven. They found it out by trousers-buttons; by trousers-buttons they found it out. Afterwards, he was sorry. Still, I didn’t say it was right; only I don’t like hanging ladies. N-hah, mmmmyah! Well, you got nerve!’
‘Why? Why have I got nerve?’
�
�Judge, juries: I’d be frightened out of my life.’
‘But why?’
‘They can make black white. White black they can make.’
‘I’ve nothing to fear: I can only tell the plain truth.’
‘And good luck to you! What class of people is a murderer? No class. A man in the prime of life, so she goes and kills. With scissors, eh? She kills her husband with scissors! It shows you. Scissors, pokers – if somebody wants to murder a person, hm! Daggers they can find in … in … in chocolate cakes, if they put their minds to it. Even a razor they can kill somebody with. Present company excepted. With a murderer, everything is a revolver. But what for? Why should she do it to her own husband?’
‘For love, I think, Mister Flickenflocker.’
‘Eeeeh! Love. People should settle down, with a home, and plenty children, with plenty work; happy they ought to be, people. If there’s an argument, so sometimes one gives way, sometimes another gives way. For peace in the house, you got to give way. It looks bad to fight in front of the kids. So in the end you have grandchildren. What do they mean, love? To kill a person for love? In a book they read such rubbish, Mister Wainewright. For hate, for money, for hunger kill a person. For your wife and children kill a person. But love? Never heard of such a thing.’
‘We’d better leave that to the judge and jury,’ said Wainewright, coldly.
‘We got no option,’ said Flickenflocker. ‘We got to leave it to the judgen-jury. Anyway, it didn’t have nothing to do with you, thank goodness.’
‘No?’ said Wainewright.
‘No,’ said Flickenflocker, easily.
‘It happened in my own house. I was in the next room. It does affect me a little bit,’ said Wainewright, frowning.
‘It’s all for the best I dessay,’ Flickenflocker picked up a pair of fine clippers. ‘Lots o’ people’ll want to live there now.’
‘More likely they’ll want to stay away from my house, Mister Flickenflocker.’
‘Don’t you believe it! If there was a body (God forbid) in every cupboard, people’d pay double to stay there. For every one that don’t like a murder, there’s ten that’d rather have a murder than a … a … a hot-water-bottle. Don’t you worry. I know people, so they’d give fifty pounds to have a murder in their place.’
‘Dry shampoo, please,’ said Wainewright.
Flickenflocker unscrewed the top of a bottle. ‘Curiosity,’ he said.
‘Hm?’
‘Curiosity. Were they open or shut?’
‘Were what?’
‘The scissors. The scissors the lady killed the gent with.’
‘Shut.’
‘It only shows you, eh? What can cut, can cut out lives from people. Psss! … Hwheee! Even a road – fall on it from a high roof, and where are you? … Scissors, eh? Temper, that’s what it is: temper. A stab and a cut, and there you are: you’ve hanged yourself.’
Wainewright did not want to talk any more. He was looking into the mirror. Two men, awaiting their turn, were exchanging whispers and looking in his direction. He knew what they were saying. That’s Wainewright, they were saying; that quite ordinary-looking man having the lavender shampoo is Wainewright, the Wainewright who has the house where Tooth was murdered by his wife.
He smiled. But then old Pewter flipped the linen cover from the man in the chair on Wainewright’s right – a big, swaggering man with a humorous, rosy face. One of the whispering men got up and said, in a voice that shook with awe: ‘Excuse me, but aren’t you Al Allum?’
The big man nodded gravely. ‘That is my name,’ he said.
‘May I shake hands with you? Would you mind?’
‘Not at all.’ The big man held out a heavy, manicured fist, caught the stranger’s hand in a grip that made him jump, gave Pewter a shilling, and went out with a cordial and resonant ‘Good-bye’.
The man who had shaken hands with him said to Pewter: ‘I’ll give you two shillings for that shilling Al Allum gave you just now.’
The old man handed him a shilling with a faint smile. The other man, putting it in his breast-pocket, explained: ‘It’s for my boy. He’s crazy about Al Allum: you know what kids are.’
Somebody else said: ‘The greatest comedian alive today, Al Allum. Ever see his fake conjuring sketch? Brilliant!’
‘Brilliantine?’ asked Flickenflocker.
‘Cream,’ said Wainewright.
‘Mmmmmyah! … There.’
As Wainewright was paying his bill he said to the cashier: ‘Is your clock right?’
The girl replied: ‘It wouldn’t be working in a barbershop if it was.’ Everybody laughed. A man said: ‘Dead clever, that!’
Mr Wainewright went out.
The city muttered under dry dust and blue smoke; the day was warm. Girls passed looking like bursting flowers in their new summer dresses. Wainewright looked at them. Here – passing him, jostling him and touching him with swinging hands in the crowded street – here walked thousands of desirable young women with nothing more than one-sixtieth of an inch of rayon, linen, or crêpe de Chine between their bare flesh and his eyesight. Why – ah, why – did his destiny send him out to walk alone? What’s wrong with me? Wainewright asked himself. Tramps, cripples, hunchbacks, criminals, horrible men deformed and discoloured and old – they all know the love of women. What’s wrong with me? What have they got that I haven’t got? I am a man of property … still a young man. He stared piercingly at a pretty girl who was slowly walking towards him. Wainewright felt that his eyes were blazing like floodlights. But the girl, looking at him incuriously, saw only a small ordinary man with mild, expressionless eyes; if she thought of him at all, drawing conclusions from what she saw, she thought of him as a dim and boring little family man – a nobody – the same as everybody.
Mentally addressing the passing girl, That’s what you think, said Wainewright. If I told you who and what I am you’d change your ideas quickly enough, Blondie! He stopped to look at hats in a shop window. A furry green velour caught his eye, and he decided to buy a hat like that – a two-guinea hat, a real Austrian hat and not a ten-shilling imitation such as Tooth used to wear. That, and a younger-looking suit, a tweed suit; a coloured shirt, even…. Why have I waited so long?
Wainewright was not a drinking man. Alcohol gave him a headache. But now he felt that everything was changing inside him: he was getting into step with life. Now he wanted a drink. He walked jauntily to the ‘Duchess of Douro’. Tooth had taken him there once before, one Saturday afternoon several months ago. Wainewright remembered the occasion vividly: he had not yet come into his inheritance; he worked for his living then. His aunt was still alive. He was waiting: she could not live for ever. His little Personal Expenses Cash Book said that Wainewright had had seven hair-cuts since then. This made five months since his last drink of beer with Tooth.
Tooth was a tall dark man, strongly built, bright with the sickly radiance and the good-fellowship of the travelling salesman. He resembled one of those wax models that make cheap clothes attractive in the windows of mass-production tailors: he had the same unnatural freshness of complexion, the same blueness of chin, agelessness of expression, and shoddy precision of dress. Tooth wore Tyrolean hats and conspicuous tweeds. He liked to be seen smoking cigars. Yes, with his fivepenny cigars he was a man of personality with a manner at once detestable and irresistible – a way of seeming to give himself body and soul to the achievement of the most trivial objects. He could not accept the finality of anybody’s ‘No’. Argument, with Tooth soon became acrimonious, full of recrimination. Women described him as ‘masterful’; Tooth would shout for twenty minutes over a bad penny, a bus ticket, or an accidental nudge of the elbow.
‘Have a drink,’ Tooth had said.
‘I couldn’t really, Tooth.’
‘You can and will, cocko. There’s a girl in the ‘Douro’ I want to introduce you to. A blonde. Genuine blonde: I found out. Eh? Ha-ha! Eh? Come on.’
On the way to the public-house Tooth tal
ked:
‘Having the car painted. Just as well: I always seem to get myself into bother when I’m out in the car. Be lost without it, though. Tell you about the other night? Listen: I’m on my way to Derby. Listen. Listening? Well … listen:
‘On the way I meet two girls, sisters. Both ginger; one slim and the other plumpish. So I say: “Want a ride?” And so they say: “Yes”. And well … after a few miles we pull up …’ Tooth became briefly but luridly obscene. ‘But listen: the joke of it was this; I ran ’em about fifteen miles farther on and we pulled up at a sort of tea-shop place and went in for a cup of tea. Listening? Well, I order tea and cakes and things, and I say: “Excuse me, my dears, I’ve got to see a man from the Balkans about a boarhound,” I say. “Pour my tea out and I’ll be right back,” I tell ’em. So I nip out, start up the old jam-jar, and scram before you can say knife. Eh? Ha-ha! Eh? Eh?’
‘But what happened to the girls, all that way from home?’
‘That’s their look-out. I told you I had to get to Derby, didn’t I? What was I going to do with ’em in Derby? Have a heart! Ah-ah, now you’re coming in here to meet the nicest barmaid in London. No nonsense. Shut up. Come on in now.’
He crashed through the grouped drinkers, pulling Wainewright after him. A tall young woman with honey-coloured hair, whose face was strangely expressive of lust and boredom, dragged languidly at the handle of a beer-engine. But when she saw Tooth she smiled with unmistakable sudden joy. Only a woman in love smiles like that.
‘Baby,’ said Tooth, ‘meet Mr Wainewright, one of the best.’
‘Why, Sid! Why haven’t you been to see me for such a long time?’
‘Been busy. But I’ve been thinking of you. Ask George Wainewright. We met in the City. He wanted me to go with him to a posh week-end party in Kingston. (He’s a very well-to-do man.) But I insisted on coming here. Did I or did I not, Wally?’ said this pathological liar.
The compulsion of Tooth’s glance was too strong. Wainewright nodded.
