The Barbershop Seven (180 page)

'Arise! Arise!' he called.

'Arise!' cried a few of the others.

'Arf!'

'Drop down dew, heavens, from above, and let the clouds rain down righteousness; let the earth be opened, and a saviour spring to life!' ejaculated Jacobs, getting in on the act.

And the great love and strength and power of the Lord flowed down from heaven as a raindrop on a tiny leaf, and they all felt bathed in the wondrous glory of God's light. This was the moment of resurrection when their king would be reborn!

Ephesian dared to open an eye and look at what had been the jigsaw of Azarael Corinthian.

Nothing had changed.

A few others dared open an eye as they had imagined the heat of the Lord's blessing surging through the stricken and chopped up body of their king.

Nothing.

Slowly, around the circle, one by one, they all opened their eyes, the taste of blood still on their lips, and looked at their king. Still frozen, after all these years.

'What's happened?' asked Rusty Brown.

Ephesian said nothing. Suddenly the twisting discomfort which had plagued his stomach for the previous two days returned.

'What's gone wrong?' asked Jacobs, looking at Ephesian.

Ephesian had once again lost the ability to look Jacobs in the eye and was suddenly on the point of returning to the shell he had occupied all his life. It should have happened by now, the resurrection should have come with the pouring of the blood and the laying on of hands. Ephesian felt scared and nervous, wondering if he had done something wrong, wondering if he had not followed the ancient
Prieure de Sion
parchments correctly. Had he just let down generations of knights and monks and grand masters? Mouth open, breath beginning to come in short stabs, eyes wide and locked on Corinthian's blue and frozen face.

There was a stunned and suddenly melancholic silence around the room. There was not a man there, amongst the permanent members of the society, who had not believed that the Grail would bring their revered leader back to them. Instead, they were standing flat and dejected, confronted by nothing more than twelve individual body parts, assembled in approximately the right order, and still frozen.

'Maybe we could stick him in the microwave,' said Rusty Brown.

Jacobs was the first to move, walking round the table and picking up the Grail. The affront of Ping Phat, the hubris of the man in trying to appropriate the organisation for his own ends, was now forgotten. All that mattered was that the Grail had not done what they had thought it would.

'Dear Lord, how could you let us down? How could you deny us the divine powers of the Grail, the cup of Christ?'

He held the Grail aloft, so that one or two of the others looked up at it, as if raising their eyes up into the face of God. And one or two of them, it must be said, took a look at their watches and thought, I have to be up early in the morning.

'I think I'm seeing a problem here,' said Barney Thomson.

Jacobs stared angrily at him, as if equating the fact that Barney could see a problem, with Barney also causing the problem.

'Problem, yes, there is,' said Phat, who was looking most disconcerted at the disappearance of a host of marketing opportunities. For example his extensive range of
Cup of Christ Kitchenware
, which was at that very moment being manufactured by six year-old children in Malaysia, would all be for nothing.

Ephesian did not even hear Barney. He was slumped in his chair, eyes locked on the frozen face, yet seeing nothing.

'You're saying that the Grail has divine power,' said Barney.

'Yes,' snapped Jacobs angrily.

'Yet, your whole argument here, all your society is about, the secret it has been keeping all this time, is that Jesus was the descendant of the kings of Israel, a mortal man, that there is a direct lineage from him to this frozen piece of disassembled meat before us. A king perhaps, but not born of God.'

'Yes,' snapped Jacobs again, but he had begun to see where Barney was going.

'So the Society claims that Jesus was mortal and not divine. He was not born of God. Therefore, if he's not divine, why would the cup he had his last drink out of, be divine?'

There were a couple of nods around the table.

'You didn't seriously think that this,' he said, indicating the grotesque array of parts before him, 'was ever going to come back to life? And if it had, that it wasn't going to scare the absolute hell out of you?'

He let the words sink in. There was some low murmuring around the table. Jacobs looked incensed but it was impossible to tell who or what he was incensed at.

'I suppose,' someone muttered.

'I've seen some weird stuff in my time,' said Barney, 'but it's usually being done by weird people. You lot are too normal for this.'

He looked around the table, at all the embarrassed faces.

'Who would've believed you anyway? How can you prove or disprove anything that is born of faith? It comes from the heart and the soul. Two thousand year-old parchments aren't going to tell anyone that what they feel inside isn't true. And this...,' and he waved his hand at the table, letting the words drift off. 'Go home, go to bed,' he added, then he took a last look around the collective and turned to Igor.

'Come on, mate,' he said. 'Let's go.'

'Arf.'

Jacobs looked angrily at them but had no words to stop them. The rest of the collective watched them turn to go, thinking about what Barney had said and wondering just how weird they were being exactly.

Barney took a last look at the absurdity of what had just taken place, and then he and Igor began heading up the stairs.

'You going back to Garrett's?' asked Barney.

'Arf.'

'Cool. Maybe I could sleep at yours, 'cause I've just realised the time.'

They were gone, and then there were ten.

Around the table the low mumblings grew, the shuffling and the rustling and the glances at watches. A few looks were thrown the way of Jacobs and Ephesian, but no longer was anyone concerned with Ping Phat. Ten minutes ago they had accorded the man some respect, the monied businessman from the east. Now he was a fat foreigner who'd been stupid enough to get involved in an extremely bizarre business with a bunch of no-hopers in provincial Scotland.

'I should probably be getting to my bed,' said Ginger Rogers. 'Up to Glasgow in the morning. Getting the 7.50 from Largs.'

'Aye,' said Rusty Brown. 'I'm having a lie in tomorrow, but I'm keen to start it now.'

Chairs were pushed back, tired bodies were raised up onto tired legs, and the last ever meeting of the
Prieure de Millport
was in the process of being dismantled.

'Someone should probably do something with that,' said Luciens, pointing to the frozen corpse.

'I'll come back up in the morning,' said Gainsborough. 'Need a cup of tea and my bed.'

'It's not like he's going anywhere,' added Luciens, and Gainsborough laughed.

And then, walking around the table, Luciens stumbled across the prone figure of Luigi Linguini and the paramedic in him took over and he bent down to try and revive the man, considering it a better option than trying to haul a dead weight up the stairs.

And so, in a quick succession of ones and twos, the members of the collective were gone, including Ping Phat, already on the make, already running through in his head what merchandise had been manufactured up to this point and how best it could be marketed around the world.

And in the end, after Luciens had raised Luigi groggily to his feet and told him not to keep calling him pontiff, only Simon Jacobs and Bartholomew Ephesian were left.

Jacobs slumped down into the seat next to Ephesian, and he too locked his eyes on the blood covered face of Azarael Corinthian. Years of planning and dreams all for nothing. The lineage of Christ was dead. They still had the documentation, but they knew that Barney had been right. What did any of it matter?

'Dear Christ,' said Jacobs, the words a low and humble mumble.

Bartholomew Ephesian said nothing, but stared morosely at the top of the head of the last king of Israel, as he began the long night's drift into the long early morning of the first day of his descent into insanity.

––––––––

I
t was a fresh day, mostly blue skies peppered by occasional strings of white clouds, the wind which was blowing in off the sea a delicious cool breeze, smelling of salt and adventure and faraway places. A spring day, still demanding a jacket and a robust pair of trousers, but a spring day as it used to be before global warming weirded out the planet's weather systems for the foreseeable future. Middle of April, bit of sun, bit of chill in the air, winter over, hint of summer, the wonderful smell of the grass and the earth from a little rainfall in the middle of the night.

Barney had left the door of the shop open so that he could fully savour the aroma of morning. He had stopped at the bakers on the way along the road and had bought four fresh rolls, two each for him and Igor. Intended to wait and see if any customers arrived first thing, before establishing exactly when he was going to ask Igor to grill the bacon out back. Cup of tea, beautiful morning, bacon roll.

Today he could let his mid-life crisis pass. It would be back, presumably, on its pale horse, to wreak whatever havoc it chose with his mental well-being, but today the world seemed all right. He could get the paperwork signed, commit himself to this place and to Igor, and maybe he'd take his first look at houses along the front. See if there were any available round the west side of the island. Something near the boatyard.

He was standing in the doorway, resting against the frame. Igor was inside the shop, leaning on the brush, following his gaze across the road and the white promenade wall, out to sea. The waves were low, occasional white horses breaching the swell, a few small boats bobbled around in the bay.

Barney vaguely wondered if the secret society would continue its work, even without a figurehead. Or perhaps they would have decided in the middle of the night to keep the figurehead they had frozen, until such times as science had found a way to successfully resurrect him. After all, hadn't he himself once been reduced to just a brain in a jar?

Barney did not know, never would know, and would not have cared had he known, that Ping Phat and his entourage had departed that morning, having spent the remainder of the night plundering the
Prieure de Millport
's secret documents and its secret frozen body parts. They had taken it all, while Ephesian and Jacobs had stood by and let them, so lost were they in disappointment. Not that Ping Phat had any grand motives involving lineage and the denunciation of two millennia of Pauline beliefs and dogma. He had no idea what use he would make of all the material, yet he knew that leaving it behind benefited him not. Better to take it with him and establish later how much money he could make from it. Even at a basic level, perhaps the Catholic Church would be willing to pay for it.

Ping Phat was gone, the
Prieure de Millport
had been split asunder, Ephesian and Jacobs were broken men who would never recover. Barney Thomson was just a guy who was about to buy a barbershop and settle down into life by the sea, and who cared not at all for the plots and schemes of clandestine societies and Asian businessmen.

'I got a right roasting from Miranda this morning. Felt like a kid,' said Barney, turning his head into the shop. 'How was Garrett?'

Igor nodded, couldn't keep the hint of a smile from his face. Certainly there was a relaxed serenity about him, which Barney recognised as coming from the realisation of true love.

'Smashing,' said Barney. 'You know what a Garrett is, as in the third divining force in life?'

'Arf,' said Igor.

'You'll have to explain it to me sometime,' said Barney.

'Arf.'

'Thanks, mate.'

'Excuse me!' said a cheery voice.

Barney turned, a customer on the doorstep. And one of the twelve, no less. Luciens, the paramedic.

'Hello,' said Barney, stepping back. 'Come in.'

'Thanks,' said Luciens.

Igor nodded at him, the spell of early morning had been broken, and he returned to the back of the shop, his hunch a little less marked than before, and began to carefully and dutifully sweep away at whatever was left of yesterday's hair. Luciens removed his jacket and took his place in the chair before the mirror.

Barney took a quick last look out at the sea before the work of the day was due to begin, then walked over to the chair and draped the cape and small towel around Luciens' neck and shoulders.

'Morning off?' asked Barney.

Luciens nodded.

'On call, to be fair,' he said, 'but it's not as if anything much ever happens around here, you know.'

Barney smiled.

'And even when it threatens to,' added Luciens, 'it usually goes wrong, eh?'

'Aye,' said Barney. 'Seems to be that kind of place.'

'Aye, that's what so good about it.'

'Arf.'

Luciens paused, a wee smile came to his face as he thought about something.

'Funny that, when the Italian fella leapt from the cupboard and immediately splatted his head against the table,' he said, laughing. 'Wanted to have a bit of a giggle at the time.'

Barney shared Luciens' laugh, the wonderful light-heartedness of it being infectious.

'But hey,' Luciens continued, 'I had a cracking idea for that lot the other day when I was talking to the weans.'

Barney started the cut as Luciens talked, aware without asking that he would be after a
Hugh Jackman - Van Helsing
.

'Which lot?' he asked to show interest although he knew who he meant.

'Rome,' said Luciens. 'The Vatican. I was attempting to put into words the difference between Coke Lite and Pepsi Lite, which wasn't easy by the way, and I got my words mixed up and said Pope Lite.'

He raised his eyebrows to Barney in the mirror.

'Pope Lite, what d'you think? Doesn't it have a fantastic ring to it? Catholicism with half the guilt. Think how many more people they could interest in the whole religion thing if they offered a kind of fast food version, you know what I'm saying? A ten minute, pray 'n' dash service; shorter hymns, soundbites instead of sermons, maybe a
commit one sin, get one free
offer. They'd be queuing up. Fan-tastic!'