The Barbershop Seven (163 page)

Ruth Harrison was terrified.

––––––––

I
t all becomes too much. You break down, fall to pieces, return to a collection of millions of individual cells, almost as though they are completely unrelated to one another. All sensory perception closes down, it's as if you are no longer a sentient being. You barely exist on any level, the world is drawn into you so that there is nothing else, nothing outside the confines of the tiny space into which you have withdrawn. You try to bring your body into the space, and although it doesn't have a chance of fitting, you draw it in as tightly as you can. Everything is minimised, as if someone is shooting at you and you are reducing the target to the least possible area. There are no guns aiming at you, no bullets coming your way, but it feels like there are. You need to be in control and the only thing of which you are certain is that you're not. When you realise that you have control over nothing, that events and people and situations are dictating your life and not the other way round, the only thing you can do is withdraw as far as possible, retreat to the place where nothing and no one dictates to you. And if that place is so small, it is a dark, untouchable point in the pit of your guts, your body wrapped tightly around it and all mental functions shut off, then that is where you go.

However, there's always an out, there's always a recovery. Strength of character. You don't retreat to that place to give up. You retreat to convalesce. You break down, let all the molecules disperse, and then gradually they come back together. You're at the bottom of the dark ocean, then suddenly you're shooting up through the depths towards the light. But there are no bends to be had, you never come up too fast. You have retreated to where you are in control, so no one can drag you from the place before you want to leave. And then, when you return, you are ready. Ready to acknowledge what you control and ready to address those things which still lie outwith your power. Maybe the reaction looks odd, maybe to others you are peculiar and unbalanced, but it serves you well. It's one of the things which makes you a stronger person than so many of those who would mark you down as unbalanced.

Ephesian took another sip of sparkling water. 2:35am. No time for alcohol this. There was too much to be sorted out. He had retreated, he had regrouped. Jacobs didn't understand, not really, despite having had a life of dealing with his employer. When you hide away in the tiniest, darkest place you can find, you don't do it to seek reassurance from others. The hours Jacobs had spent believing he'd been talking Ephesian out from his hiding place had been completely ineffective. Jacobs could have been saying anything. His words had been meaningless, Ephesian had heard none of them. Destruction and recovery had come from within, as had always been the case.

'We'll need to use the money in the morning,' said Ephesian. 'Lawton is a spineless toad, McGhee just as unimaginative. He holds what he does and all the ignorant little runt can think to demand is money.'

'He doesn't know what he holds,' said Jacobs.

Ephesian grunted.

'It wouldn't make any difference. An idiot holding the riches of the world is still an idiot.'

'But Lawton knows the power of what he has,' said Jacobs. 'He might well not be so easily dealt with.'

Ephesian nodded, took another sip.

'Yet he is as shallow. That's why we need the money. Of promises he may well be mistrustful, but a suitcase full of money, enough money to take him anywhere he wants to go, he will not be so foolish as to turn his back on that.'

Jacobs did not reply. He stood with his hands behind his back, following Ephesian's gaze out to the west and the dark night. Ephesian belched softly, the back of his hand at his mouth.

'I can speak to Anthony in the morning,' Ephesian continued. 'It may well be that with him also, all I will have to do is to show him some money. I will certainly dispense with the initiation. He need know nothing about what he is participating in.'

'And the matter of his dealings with the Italians?' said Jacobs.

Ephesian did not reply. He did not think that his son would be openly working against him. He would have been used as some kind of unwitting pawn. However, it meant little, and he was confident that the Italians would know nothing of the nature of the ceremony which would take place that evening at midnight. The secret that had been guarded all these centuries remained just that. The Catholic Church were here to stick their noses into the situation because they knew they would not like what came out of it. However, even they did not have any conception of the magnitude of what was going to happen. And so, as part of his controlling process, Ephesian was convinced that the Italians just needed to be watched for the time being. Or, at least, the one at the hotel could be watched; the other, now acting discreetly, needed to be found.

'We just have to give Ping Phat his head,' said Ephesian, after a short gap. 'He cannot usurp us at this stage, there is too much knowledge he does not have. If he must become involved, if he must be some sort of observer to the ceremony, then perhaps it would be pragmatic of us to accept what must be. At least that way we can keep an eye on him.' He waved his glass.

'You should get some sleep,' said Jacobs.

Ephesian didn't turn. He glanced at his watch without taking in the time. He did feel tired but he wasn't yet ready for sleep.

'There will be ample time for that,' he said vacantly.

Jacobs recognised the tone. Their discussion was over. His boss might not feel the need to lie down but he himself needed a few hours before the rigours of the day ahead. Ephesian might have been able to work his mind around to a positive state but all Jacobs could see were problems and obstacles.

He turned and walked silently from the room. Ephesian did not even notice him go.

***

B
arney's mind rambled on. Three o'clock in the morning, he'd been in bed for almost four hours and not once had he even come close to getting to sleep. Eyes wide open, head full of the banal and the mundane, mixed with the occasional matter of weight.

At the end of
It's A Wonderful Life
, how come everyone is so full of smiles? If the bank investigator bloke was about to arrest Jimmy Stewart for fraud or embezzlement or whatever it was, surely just because everyone in the town shows up and says, 'Here, we'll pay back all the money you think he stole,' doesn't mean he wasn't guilty. Okay, we know he wasn't guilty, but surely there still has to be a trial? You can't let a guy off completely just because everyone thinks he's nice. And then in that final scene, in amongst all the cheerful, weepy people, there's old, miserable-as-shite Mr Potter. Why's he looking so chipper? Because he's got the flippin' $8000, that's why. You don't see him handing it back, do you? And what has his journey been in movie terms? After decades of misanthropy and money-grabbing, he turns into this jovial old buffoon, 50% smile, 50% heart of flippin' gold. How did that happen? Because Jimmy Stewart met an angel? Or maybe there was a parallel story with old man Potter, removed from the final cut, where he met Lucifer and was shown how even more wonderful the town would have been without him in it and it cheered him up to think that he'd ruined at least a few lives.

Barney, shut up! he thought. Get some sleep. Count sheep. Think of how to describe cricket to an American. Calculate all the prime numbers under one million. List the world's airlines. Think of a cellar full of cockroaches and count them.

They say cockroaches would survive a nuclear attack. Urban myth? It's accepted fact but how do they know? Maybe the cockroaches survived Hiroshima or on all those ex-beautiful islands in the middle of the Pacific. Maybe that was part of the tests; they took a variety of lifeforms – cockroaches, locusts, white tigers, dodos, snow leopards, a couple of Mormons – bombed the stuffing out of them and then bimbled back across to the island a few minutes after the mushroom cloud had cleared.
It's all right, Chip, you can wear a protective suit if you want but you probably won't need to.
Of all the animals and bugs on the island the only ones to survive were the cockroaches, albeit they'd all been converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Or maybe it'd been mentioned in a Disney film once and out of that the urban legend had grown. Maybe the cockroaches will just get squished with the rest of us.

Finally Barney poured his legs over the side of the bed and stood up. He walked to the window and looked out to the dark sea and away to the east. The first hint of dawn was beginning to make an appearance on the horizon, another early morning about to kick off in another small town.

He felt the slight lift that he always got when he was up with the dawn of the day. His mind meandered through the Far Side cartoon of
The African Dawn
, the animals sitting around drinking coffee, took a swing through Calvin & Hobbes and the beautiful clean canvas of their final snowy day, and then juddered to a halt at the reality of a life built on walking aimlessly from place to place, of relationships made and squandered, and of another day when he knew that life's beauty – no matter how many old men talked about the simple pleasures of the sound of the fizz when opening a bottle of tonic or the feel of sea spray on your face or the excitement in a child's eyes when discovering something that as an adult you've taken for granted for decades – would only briefly touch him, before being banished by the general darkness of the suffocating gloom that he could not seem to shake.

He sat down in the large comfy chair by the window, the high ledge partially restricting his view of the sea, and for the first time in over four hours his eyes felt heavy and he was finally able to close them with intent.

––––––––

'A
nd would you like fries with that, sir?' said Barney.

Well, that wasn't what he actually said but sometimes he felt like saying it. The fast food counter that is a barbershop.

'Tapered or square at the back?' asked Barney.

The man in the hot seat, old Seth Bagan, brought the universal frown of inquisition into play.

'How d'you mean that?' he asked.

'A taper,' said Barney patiently, 'is where the hair at the back is shaved to a gradual end. A square cut is where the hair is all the same length at the back and cut in a straight line at the bottom.'

'Oh,' said Bagan, who had somehow managed to get to the age of one hundred and ninety-three without ever finding this out.

'Isn't a tapir an odd-toed, South American ungulate with a flexible proboscis?' said the other old fella, parked on the bench behind them.

'Well I don't know,' said Bagan, 'I thought that was a sloth.'

'The sloth's an edentate,' said Barney.

'Eden Tate? Was that the guy who was married to Sharon Tate?' said one of the old men.

'You're thinking about Roman Polanski,' said the other one.

'The Romans,' said Bagan, 'they knew a thing or two.'

'Arf!' said Igor forcefully, getting a bit fed up with it all.

'You're thinking of alfresco,' said the guy on the bench. 'The Romans loved that style of wallpapering.'

'Wasn't Al Fresco the guy who won the F1 World Championship five times in the 50s?'

'Fangio,' said Barney, despite his own determination not to be sucked back into the general level of absurdity, 'that was Fangio.'

'Fangs!' said one of the old guys, 'don't sloths have fangs?'

'
No!
' Igor wanted to scream, '
they're flippin' edentates! That means they don't have any flippin' teeth! No incisors, no molars, no pre-molars, and definitely no flippin' fangs!'
However, it came out as, 'Arf!'

'You said that already,' said one of the old guys.

'So, Igor,' said Barney to change the subject, 'Ruth was all right last night?'

He hadn't really wanted to ask the question in front of the customers but he'd needed to say something before the conversation disappeared up any more blissfully stupid tangents.

Igor guiltily looked at Barney, mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like
arf
, then lowered his head and started sweeping up, even though no hair had yet fallen on this day.

'Igor?' said Barney.

Igor swept.

'Igor?' he repeated.

Igor swept, this time turning his back on Barney, his brushstrokes growing a little fiercer.

''Scuse me a minute,' said Barney to the old guy about to be the beneficiary of a splendid
A River Runs Through It
.

'No problem,' said Bagan. Then he added, as Barney laid down the scissors and walked to the rear of the shop, 'You probably want to ask him about Gently Ferguson.'

Barney looked at the old guy, then caught Igor's guilty eye and gestured to the back room. Igor threw old man Bagan a zinger of a look and then followed Barney into the rear of the shop. He left the door open, only for Barney to close it.

The two men stood staring at each other, Barney waiting for an explanation.

'Arf,' mumbled Igor eventually.

'I left you to look after her,' said Barney. 'I thought you two had, I don't know, a thing or something. I thought you were going to stay the night. What happened?'

Igor looked Barney in the eye but couldn't hold the gaze. He stared at the floor.

'Who's Gently Ferguson?' asked Barney. 'If you had another date last night, why didn't you say?'

'Arf,' muttered Igor.

'That's not good enough,' scolded Barney. 'The woman was scared and she's got those two cowboys after her. You should've stayed.'

Igor looked up again. Held his hands out in an Italian gesture of self-explanation.

Barney studied him, trying to work it out. There is one sure thing, he suddenly realised, that will drive a man and woman apart before their time.

'You slept with her,' he said, not even asking the question. 'You slept with Ruth and after that things got awkward and you left.'

Igor looked uncomfortable and then dropped his gaze again.