The leafing through the brochures, which was the most enjoyable part of the whole thing, took eight minutes. The haircut itself, two, including the taking off of the cape and the brushing up. Somehow, John the Goblin had managed to get himself a glass igloo, signposted ‘Bertie the Barber’, through which he and the customer could see outside, but which was frosted on the outside, and impossible to see into.
‘Well, John, you’ve really landed on your feet here,’ Archie ribbed him every time he came for his haircut. ‘Your very own one-way glass igloo. Your very own thermal chair. And these tips too,’ he added, nodding towards the tin champagne bucket by the door. ‘How do you get away with it?’
‘Barefaced bravado,’ said John with all honesty. ‘You just give people – sorry, customers – what they want. Which is something cheap and simple, but dressed up as something fancy and complicated. Surely you must know by now that’s what business is all about? And even storytelling, when it comes down to it – as the great storyteller, Archie, you surely ought to know that!’
Archie nodded, looking down at Haircut Number 50 – the bin Laden Look.
‘All hair and beard that one, Archie. I don’t think it’s for you, Sir. But take a look at Number 75. That might suit you better.’
It was the extended Berlusconi look: the Full Yul Brynner.
‘Far too cold for that up here for that,’ was all that Archie said.
‘People just like to talk,’ John the Goblin continued, keeping one eye on the clock, which now showed that four minutes had passed. ‘Lots of them come in here who don’t need a haircut at all. What, after all, is a month? Especially for a bald man. But in they troop, month after month, follically challenged or not, and sit right there, Sir, leafing through all these impossible alternatives. The Berlusconi, the bin Laden, the Brynner. We used to have one called the Bush. There’s not much of a demand for it now. Or, for that matter, for the slick sleek look, the Blair. But this one’s in big demand – the Barack. Look – Number 100,’ he whispered into Archie’s ear, ‘though it’s just exactly the same as the Number 1, Sir. Short back and sides.’
He pressed a lever on his chair and lowered himself down to whisper further into Archie’s ear.
‘The stories I’ve heard in here, Sir. You wouldn’t believe half of them if I told you.’ He re-pressed the lever, saying as he ascended, ‘Which you won’t, of course. Mum’s the word. Discretion is my name. Discretion is my game. Like a confessional, what I hear in my clipper-chair never goes beyond these glass walls. Now what is it, Archie – the usual, is it? The Number 1?’
And down he plonked the soup bowl on Archie’s head, revving the shaver round the uncovered parts, like a mower clipping the lawn. A bump here and a cut there and slap-bang-wallop, and Archie was done and dusted, brushed down and sprayed, like a horse leaving the harriers or a patient the theatre.
In all his time at the Great Northern Field, Archie never once set eyes on Gobhlachan or Olga or Yukon Joe. At first this worried him, but Ted Hah reassured him, saying that all three – like very many others – were on ‘special missions’ where invisibility was the key to success. Questioned further as to the nature of these special missions, Hah was suitably vague, trotting out a whole series of buzzwords which completely failed to impress Archie. He’d heard them all before, and knew their hollowness: ‘integrated’, ‘exploratory’, ‘visionary’ – a load of guff about how Gobhlachan and Olga and Yukon Joe and these nameless others were the pioneers, ‘the first force’ on whom the future of ‘the civilised world’ depended.
Gobhlachan! thought Archie. Gobhlachan, who can hardly move with that cold anvil stuck up his arse! And Yukon Joe, with his glass eye and a dark monocle over the other! And Olga, who’d never really gotten over the terrible loss of her best steed, Prushka, drowned that time crossing the ford in the great flood north of Benbecula!
Oh, they’re a first force all right, Archie said to himself, but not in the way this bastard means.
And then one day Ted Hah brought in the video. It was at the monthly press conference. As usual, the world’s press had been flown in to be briefed and debriefed about the latest progress in drilling through the top of the earth. All of them, from the National Geographic to CNN, from the Stornoway Gazette to Fox News. A monthly spree such as hadn’t been seen since the time Nero caressed his violin.
‘I’d like you to join us for today’s press conference,’ Ted had said to Archie. ‘Plenty food and drink. Come on.’
The news conference was just as good as the food and wine itself: full of goodness: how they had already drilled down to the Terastration Layer at a depth of 5,000 metres; how the Oil of Gladness was already pouring not just from the wells of the earth but also from the springs of the sky.
‘We have discovered a way,’ declared Ted, ‘of drawing the goodness which has been frozen beneath these northern soils for millennia out of the frozen earth, by means of nuclear-electronic-physics, into the skies, from which we then drain it by pipe down to our own wells. The technique – niuclofidophysics – is based on using a magnetic samarium mirror to extract the oil’s rays, which we then – at the other end, in the upper ether – where the oxygen and gravitational rates are minimal, are able to re-constitute as oil before pouring it back down here to earth through our own anticoagulant pipes.’ He glanced at Archie. ‘That’s why we have elevators, by the way.’ Then Ted Hah paused, put on his sad face and added, ‘But alongside that great and important news, I’m afraid I also have some bad news today.
‘Some of our most treasured personnel – free, law-abiding citizens of various nations fully signed-up to the United Nations Charter on Human Rights – in the course of their duties, have been kidnapped, and are currently being held for ransom at an as-yet unidentified location.
‘I am not at liberty to disclose the kidnapper’s demands, but rest assured that the The Alaskan Oil Company Drilling Corporation, along with the full moral, and if needed military, force of the United States of America, Great Britain and all the Great Free Nations of the World,’ (he’d now begun to talk in Capital Letters mode), ‘Are and Will do Everything within their Power to Liberate these Workers.’
He then paused, going into lower case. ‘Meantime,’ he continued, ‘the kidnappers have sent this video, which in the best interests of free speech we’ve decided to show to you representatives of freedom gathered here today.’
After some difficulty trying to get the video into the machine, he eventually pressed the button to reveal a grainy image of Gobhlachan, Olga and Yukon Joe sitting on the floor, clad in the inevitable orange suits, their mouths strapped, their hands over their heads and masked men with Kalashnikovs hovering over them. One of the masked men steps forward, roughly pushes Gobhlachan to his feet with the butt of his gun, tears off his mouth-tape, points the gun right at his brain and presses him to speak.
Obviously through that primeval fear which drowns all things at great moments of crisis, Gobhlachan reverts to his mother language, Gaelic, and begins to speak. Ted Hah and the assembled press corps look even more bemused than the Kalashnikov-bearing kidnappers crowding round Gobhlachan. The kidnappers gaze straight ahead: French. German, Italian, Swedish. Russian, they think. Not that it really matters: the message will reach its intended audience. It always does. Or never does, Archie couldn’t quite remember which. Hah and the Press Corps and the few ordinary workers like Archie who’ve drifted in with nothing better to do, glance at each other. Only Archie is really transfixed, listening to his own language.
Gobhlachan is telling a story.
Well, what else would he do? It is the story of Hector and the Balloon – Eachann agus am Ball-Sèididh.
‘Aon fheasgar foghair,’ begins Gobhlachan, in a clear, strong voice…
One autumn afternoon, when there was a big squad reaping for his father, Hector saw nothing better to do than to start making a balloon of grey paper. His father had a married farm-servant on his farm, called Donald, who kept a cow. So Hector
shaped his balloon like a cow, and made it in every way like Donald’s cow, as regards legs, tail, and horns. Then he went behind a knoll and let the balloon away so that it would go past over the reapers.
One of them looked up and saw this lump coming, and shouted: ‘Oh, lads! Lads! Look at the cow.’
They all stood up to gaze at the wonder.
‘God save me!’ said Donald. ‘Isn’t it like my own cow?’
‘Indeed,’ said one of the reapers, ‘if it isn’t your cow, it’s the image of it.’
‘May Providence protect us! The Isle of Skye was always famous for witchcraft, but we never heard of cows flying in the air before!’
Donald dropped his sickle and went off to see if his cloud was in the field. When he reached the field, there was neither cow nor stirk to be seen, for Hector had put Donald’s cow out to the hill. Donald went on home. When he got home he found his wife busy at her housework. She stopped and looked at him.
‘Aren’t you home early on such a fine evening?’
‘Oh, I stopped working anyway, whatever the others did.’
‘Is there anything wrong?’ his wife asked.
‘Indeed there is,’ said Donald. ‘Our cow’s flown off into the sky tonight.’
‘What nonsense is this you’ve thought up?’
‘Anything I say you call nonsense. If I’m taking nonsense, so is everyone else who saw her along with me.’
In the video the kidnappers moved their weight from one foot to the other. Around Archie the press corps were busy texting, phoning and laptopping. A few had already left. No doubt to wire. Deadlines, thought Archie absently. Gobhlachan continued, in his strong, even tone:
‘Isn’t the cow in the field where you left her this morning?’ asked his wife.
‘The cow is not in the field where I left her this morning,’ replied Donald. ‘At the speed I saw her going, she’ll be in London by now.’
‘I never heard of such a thing,’ his wife said. ‘You stay here indoors with the children while I go out and see if I can find her.’
‘Go and see if you can find her then,’ said Donald. ‘You’ll need to be pretty speedy if you’re to see her, however. I don’t want to see any more of her. You never believe anything you don’t see yourself, unless some lying baggage or other comes around when you’ll believe every word he or she says. Go along then, and find out for yourself.’
Donald’s wife went off, paying no heed to him. She was walking to see if she could see the cow, and there wasn’t a single cow or stirk in the field. Then a heavy mist came down, and who arrived at Donald’s house but Hector.
‘Are you alone?’ he asked Donald.
‘Yes.’
‘Where’s your wife?’
‘She’s gone where she needn’t have troubled to go, to see if she can find the cow. I’m sure you’ve heard about the cow already.’
‘Indeed I have. It’s a terrible business.’
‘Well, I never heard of such a thing,’ said Donald, ‘and may it be long before I hear the like of it again as long as I keep my sight and hearing. It was bad enough to hear about, let alone to witness.’
‘Indeed it was; the world is surely changing.’
‘It certainly is; we never heard the like of this.’
‘Well, a thick mist has come down,’ said Hector, ‘and you’d better go to look for your wife, or else if she starts flying off it will be worse for you than the cow was.’
‘Providence protect me, I was never in such a fix. Will you stay in the house along with the children for a while?’
All the press corps had now gone, bored if not baffled by Gaelic. Only Ted Hah and Archie remained, Archie at the heart of the story, Ted Hah gazing at the screen as if it contained some secret clue. Gobhlachan continued, the gun still hanging at his head, but the kidnappers arm evidently tiring and the gun beginning to droop. Staring tight at the video lens as he continued his tale:
‘So Donald went out and stood on the top of the mound, and began to shout for his wife,’ Donald shouted, ‘HO, ISABEL!’ (and here the kidnappers stepped ever-so-slightly back) ‘ARE YOU THERE, ISABEL? HO, ISABEL!’
The gloomy crags opposite him echoed back HO, ISABEL! as loud as himself.
‘God help me with my wife lost and my cow in the sky and the night falling,’ said Donald.
He went back to see if he could find anyone to send to look for his wife. When he got back his cow had come home by herself, and was standing at the door chewing her cud. Donald looked at her.
‘Here you are, you witch,’ he said, ‘sniffling at the door, but by your nose you’ll get no further inside. God between me and you!’ he said, going past her into the house. His wife was sitting there, having already come home.
‘The cow has come back,’ she said.
‘Let the cow come or go,’ said Donald, ‘but you keep away from her. Don’t go near her.’
His wife did not dare go near the cow.
As soon as day dawned, Donald went over to the farm to see his master. He went into the byre where the servants were milking the cows. He asked them if his master had got up, and they said he had, and that he was in the big house.
‘Hello,’ said Corrie, the master. ‘Is something wrong with you today that you’ve come here so early?’
‘Yes, indeed there is,’ said Donald.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Didn’t my cow fly off into the sky last night? I’m sure you’ve heard about it now. I’ve come over to ask you to shoot her, if she can be shot – I don’t know – if she can’t be shot, we must think of some other way to destroy her.’
‘Tut, tut,’ said Corrie, ‘you’d better put that nonsense out of your head. Go home and take care of the cow.’
‘Take care of the cow!’ replied Donald, angrily. ‘Not another drop of that creature’s milk will go into my children’s mouths. I’ll put an end to her at once. If lead won’t kill her, something else will. She’s not going to be flying over the world like that!’
When Corrie saw that nothing could put this idea out of Donald’s head he said, ‘Well, bring her over to the farm, and I’ll give you another cow in exchange.’
‘Well,’ said Donald, ‘that’s very good of you; I don’t know what she’ll do for you, unless you fatten her and send her to Glasgow around Hallowe’en. That’s if she can be fattened. I’m told that the people of Glasgow will eat anything. Likely they’ll even eat the Evil One!’
So Corrie gave Donald as good a cow as he had in his fold in exchange for Donald’s cow. And Donald believed ever afterwards that his own cow had flown in the sky!
At that point, the video did the usual sizzling and crackling and ceased in a blur of horizontal lines.
Ted Hah switched it off and he and Archie sat in the great silence.
‘Well,’ said Ted Hah, ‘whadya make of that?’
Archie shrugged. ‘ Hard to say. Could mean anything. Could mean a thousand and one things.’
‘But they’re in danger,’ said Hah, standing up. ‘Mortal danger. These men holding them are animals. We all know that.’ He walked towards Archie. ‘Friend of yours, ain’t he?’ he asked nonchalantly.
‘Yes, yes. A great friend of mine,’ said Archie. ‘Came here with me. We go back a long way.’
Ted Hah sat down beside Archie. Wearily, with a terrible sigh, as if all the world’s burdens were on his shoulders.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘it gets kind o’ lonesome out here. Day after day, year after year, pushing the very limits. Hoping for that great strike. The oil of gladness! Huh!’
He laughed quietly – a warm, human laugh. A true lower-case laugh. ‘I miss the wife and kids, son. I miss them like an ache wider than even that hole in the ozone layer. You know, sometimes I think it’s actually the same hole. A great void. Hey, you probably think I’m going crazy,’ he stood up again, ‘because I’m not.’
He looked dolefully down at Archie.
‘Right now I’m saner than I’ve ever b
een.’
He walked over to the window, from where you could see the entire drilling-operation. ‘Vermont is where we stayed at first. Pretty little town called Ashgrove. Bets are you’ll have never heard of it. No one has. It’s just one of those run-of-the-mill American towns. Millions of them. Or used to be.’
He slapped his hands together, laughing that natural lower-case smile again. ‘May the Good Lord pity me, I’m already beginning to sound like that guy in the movie – what was his name again? Willy? Willy – that was his name! Willy Loman! “The world’s an oyster, don’t crack it open on a mattress,” something like that.
‘Oh, you shoulda seen us the day we married. Marion was as pretty as a summer’s day. The proverbial polka-dot dress. The stamping white horses. The little flags on all the verandahs. A real American dream, not an imagined one. And the kids came along too – Good Lord, now that I think of it, we even called one of them Biff! His real name was Jeffrey. Then came Bill and beautiful little Lucy.’
The sun was shining though the window: that pale Arctic sun which is all light and no heat. Ted Hah was standing in the rays as if they had been distributed just for him for this moment. Archie had never noticed before how old he really was. His shoulders, which were always held back erect, now looked hunched and small. His thinning hair was almost invisible in the bright shafts. The lines on his face were etched like granite, all bends and folds and bumps and holes.
‘Then it all fell apart, of course. Bush – I blame Bush, but then again, he was likely as much a victim as all the rest of us. The downturn in the economy, the car factory closing, people leaving, squeezing the last drop of gasoline into the tank.
‘Marion left, taking the babies with her. Said there were no prospects in Ashgrove – no future, no decent schooling, no neighbourhood any more. Sounds pathetic, doesn’t it? The very word “neighbourhood”. Now so uselessly old-fashioned. You must think I’m just a sad old man…’
Archie and the North Wind Page 14
