The Barbershop Seven (117 page)

There was a scurry of little feet across the floor and Morningirl appeared beside Wanderlip, the tops of her legs clamped together.

'See you later, Winnie,' she said.

'Aye,' said Wanderlip, dryly, 'we could go the ballet together or something.'

Morningirl vented what passed for a laugh, something akin to the noise a hyena would make when, well, it'd just been shagged by Wally McLaven. And she was gone.

Wanderlip turned round. McLaven was sitting demurely behind his desk, tie straight, jacket on, ready for business.

'Can't the two of you go to a hotel or something?' said Wanderlip.

'It's more daring this way,' he said cheekily.

'What d'you mean daring?' she protested, sitting down across from him. 'You don't give a shit if you're caught. JLM's caught you at it before and all he did was congratulate you and take Patsy's phone number.'

McLaven laughed.

'I'm just a brazen hussy, darlin',' he said, being Elvis.

'Bloody marvellous,' she said, then dropped the condemnation and leant forward. Serious face.

'You been thinking what I've been thinking?' she asked.

McLaven considered this for a few seconds then shook his head.

'You know, Winnie,' he said, 'I seriously doubt that.'

'Peggy volunteered to step forward on Friday, and now she's gone. Blood on the pavement.'

'Yeah, nightmare,' said McLaven. 'She was gorgeous too.'

'That's not really the point,' said Wanderlip.

'Oh, it is,' said McLaven. 'It means all we're left with is you, Kathy and Nelly, for God's sake. You'll admit yourself, you're no oil painting, and Nelly, well Jesus-suffering-fuck, there are no end of issues with that face of hers. And Kathy? You know how if you give a dog a bone and then two minutes later try and take it away again. She looks like the bone.'

'Christ, Wally!' she said, becoming agitated by his immature cheeky cheeriness, 'it's not a beauty contest.'

'Sure it is, Winnie,' said McLaven. 'It's all about presentation. There's nothing under the surface that matters anything like as much as how it's put forward, and who's putting it forward. It's not what you say, it's whether the public want to shag the person who's saying it.'

She groaned, Wally smiled at himself.

'Hey, that's pretty good,' he said. 'If I say that in the right place it might end up in one of those books of quotations. What d'you think?'

'Wally,' said Wanderlip, 'Peggy could be dead.'

'I know,' he said.

'She very possibly could have been murdered.'

'I know,' he said.

'And,' said Wanderlip, going on a bit, 'murdered because she was intending to challenge JLM's authority.'

McLaven shook his head, held both hands up in a restraining gesture.

'Settle down, Winnie,' he said. 'You don't know anything of the sort. She could've been killed in a regular hit and run.'

'Where's the body?' she said, voice a little higher-pitched than previously. 'Definition of a hit and run, is that you hit someone, then you clear off. You run!'

'Well, I don't know,' he said, defensively, 'maybe it was a hit, clear up your mess and run. That might be the latest thing with these people.'

'What people?' she demanded.

He sighed big, he leant back, he placed his elbows on the arms of the chair and put his face into his hands.

'I don't know, Winnie,' he said. 'I just don't think you should go picking up the wrong end of the stick and beating about the bush with it, that's all.'

She exhaled a long, resigned breath. Maybe she should look into it more herself, make her own enquiries, before shooting off at the mouth. First things first; if Peggy was killed because of what was said at the cabinet meeting, who was the grass?

She stood up. Maybe she was talking to the grass right now. So what if he was cheeky, cheery and smiley? It was the same persona he'd had on the football field, and it had allowed him to get away with no end of dirty fouls and dodgy dives in the penalty box; made the fans more forgiving when he missed sitters from two feet.

'I'll speak to you tomorrow,' she said.

McLaven put his hands on the desk and tapped out the beat of
Hello Goodbye
.

'Aye,' he said. 'Don't worry about any of it, Winnie.'

She brushed off the remark with a swish of her dark hair and was gone. Wally looked at the closed door for a few seconds, then lifted the phone. Thought better of it, hung up, then stretched his legs out under the desk and pulled up his underwear and trousers.

Unnatural Selection

––––––––

'S
eriously, Barn,' said JLM, 'the plebs just don't understand the pressures. It's hard to know what they're thinking some days. Listen to this.'

Barney was half-listening. He'd had a slow weekend where, had his personality been a little more developed, he would've been lonely. He'd trudged the streets of the capital, he'd found bars and restaurants, he'd spent the money that was mysteriously placed on his tray every morning with his breakfast.

Then, back to work for Monday, and he had spent another day in the company of the team, travelling around Scotland in JLM's wake. A whirlwind tour of the west coast, glad-handing voters in Ayr and Kilmarnock, Girvan and Largs. Not for a minute did JLM's face show anything other than a complete contempt for his public, and an obvious desire to be at some important conference in Rio or Kuala Lumpur. He had travelled the area in the new First Minister's Train, which had been decked out at a cost of three and a half million pounds, and which caused immeasurable inconvenience to the rail network every time it was used. (The public had yet to be informed of its existence, and were generally told about leaves on the line, or of an idiot driving the train. When JLM arrived at the station, there was always the limo there to pick him up.)

Whilst making his enforced visits to schools and factories and old folks' homes etc., etc., the entourage had stayed on the train, reading the Bible, fussing over expensive tailoring, checking medical records, doing whatever it was that they did every day. Barney had sat in a corner of the train, variously viewing his colleagues with suspicion or ill-ease. Wondering what they thought of him. They probably all knew about him, where he had come from. All knew that he was this freak of science, an abhorrent blip in humanity, an unnatural selection, and no one could be at all sure what would become of him, how the unnatural selection would develop. Weird growths on his skin, new limbs, another head, a bizarre enjoyment of Saturday night television. He could be the subject of a horror movie in ten years time.
The Elephant Barber
, or
The Barber Who Was Scientifically Reborn And Who Turned Into A Glutinous Amorphous Mass, Slimed Over Everybody, Drowned Whole Communities With Exploding Suppurating Sores And Didn't Have Much Luck With Women
.

They'd probably need a snappier title than that last one.

To further plunge his melancholic, confused mind into the mire of turmoil, muddle, chaos and disarray, he'd had another chat with the Reverend Blake. It'd been late on in the day, while JLM had been undertaking his final engagement of his whirlwind tour – to Nardini's in Largs, where he partook of some strawberry ice cream, and acted like he holidayed in Largs and Millport and Rothsey all the time. In fact, he'd been jetting off to the Indian Ocean for longer than he'd had the ambitions which now so clouded his judgement.

'You're looking a bit down,' the Rev Blake had said to him.

Barney had turned away from the carriage window and the meagre view of grey cloudy skies above the buildings.

'Aye,' he'd replied. 'Been a long day doing nothing. Sitting here making sure that that arsehole's hair looks all right every five minutes. Bloody waste of time.'

'Well,' she'd said, 'we all felt the same when we first got here, but you'll get used to it.'

'Why?' he'd said. 'Why should I get used to it? Why should I spend another minute here?'

Alison Blake had given a little shrug of the eyebrows. Her right hand fiddled with her dog collar. Her eyes flitted to Father Michael, who had spent the day studying 13th century art, depictions of the birth and of the death of Christ, then back to Barney.

'I suppose you owe them, to an extent.'

'What d'you mean? Because I'm this freak of weird science, and they've brought me out into the world for people to gawp at me?'

'Weird science?' Blake had said, curious, and then her face had relaxed, the eyes had widened and she'd nodded. Sagely.

'What?'

'You've been talking to Edmund?' Blake had said, lowering her voice. 'Always a mistake.'

Barney had breathed deeply, closed his eyes, tried to totally empty his head of all thought, failed, opened his eyes again.

'Go on,' he'd said.

'She's prone to the odd flight of fancy,' Blake had said. 'A bit loopy. Expect she told you some story about rapid cell growth and brain transplants and the like.'

Barney had looked at Blake, although his eyes and his mind were off someplace else.

'Aye.'

Blake had sighed, cast a sideways glance at Dr Blackadder, a pitying look, and had turned back to Barney.

'Barney, really, someone should've said,' she'd said. 'Rebecca's a bit, I don't know, not all there. I'm not saying she doesn't know her stuff, because she does. She makes up these psychological profiles for JLM, and she's on the bloody nose, every time. It's just, she's way off beam herself. Christ knows what a psychological profile of her would look like.'

'Are you allowed to use the name of Christ like that?'

'Yeah,' she'd replied, dismissively. 'Look, I'll come round to your room tonight. I'm just along the corridor. We'll have a wee chat. I've been speaking to Parker and he's told me the truth about your being here. Asked me to have a word. What d'you say?'

Barney hadn't known what to say, hadn't known what to think, hadn't known what to do. So he'd said yes, and now he was back in Edinburgh, and once more seeing to the hair of JLM, before he attended an evening engagement at the Chambers of Commerce. For this evening he wanted to look like George Clooney, which was going to be a bit of a stretch.

'I don't know that I want to,' said Barney, in response to JLM's instruction to listen to his annihilation of the proles.

'Don't care,' said JLM. 'I'm wandering round a supermarket or something, I don't know. What was it, X?'

'A fish canning factory,' said The Amazing Mr X.

'Whatever,' said JLM, as Barney studied the back of his head for the seventh time that day. 'This ignorant, plebeian little scrote pops up from under her white overalls and stupid little hat, and asks me what I'm going to do about bullying in schools. I mean, who do they think I am? You think bloody Churchill bothered about bullying in schools? "I don't care if the Germans are in Kent, wee Johnny got his head splatted against a gatepost by Big Wullie." Pants! Utter pants. I mean, I'm the First Bloody Minister for Christ's sake. I don't have time to bother my arse with the day-to-day stuff. I'm out there, taking care of the big issues. The world stuff, not namby-pamby ten year-olds who can't look after themselves in the playground. Bloody nonsense.'

The door to the bathroom opened without a knock. In a split second The Amazing Mr X had a grenade launcher armed and primed on his shoulder, only to be forced to stand down when Parker Weirdlove walked in, clipboard at the ready.

'Are you nearly done, sir?' he asked.

JLM caught Barney's eye in the mirror.

'Barn?' he said.

'It depends,' said Barney. 'If you want your hair to look all right, well, by Christ, after fifteen haircuts today, believe it or not it looks fine. If you want to look like George Clooney, that'll take a little longer. Say, a few years for the bone restructuring, another couple for plastic surgery, then another ten while you learn to brainwash everyone you're talking to so that they can't see that you look nothing like the fucking guy.'

JLM smiled in that patronising manner.

'You know, Barn,' he said, 'I've sponsored your presence here, I don't think that's overstating the mark. Do you, Parker?'

'Not at all, sir,' said Weirdlove.

'No, not at all. Indeed. Lovely. And I have to be honest, Barn, I'm getting a little tired of your downright rudeness. You may masquerade it as honesty all you like, but you are taking advantage of my good nature. So, well, I think we probably understand each other.'

Barney nodded and fussed around the corners of JLM's hair with a comb and a pair of scissors that weren't going anywhere near his head. (If he'd removed some hair every time he'd attended to the lad JLM's napper, the man would've been bald by the previous evening.)

It seemed he had to consider his position. His past life was coming back to him like lumpy porridge. Vague, meaningless chunks in amongst the general morass; the old shop in Partick, his insane mother, something about a monastery, the details were drifting back in ambiguously connected clumps, the exact meaning of which he had still to put together. However, no matter how much of that came back to him, it wasn't going to tell him what had happened after he had died, if he had indeed been dead. It didn't tell him what had brought him here, into this ridiculous menagerie. It was all very well biting the hand that was feeding him, but perhaps he should wait until he had his life sorted out before he went making mincemeat of the man. It was ridiculous, absurd madness, but sometimes you just have to bite the antelope on the arse.

'Certainly, sir,' he said to JLM. 'Would that be a George Clooney
From Dusk Till Dawn
, or a George Clooney
ER
?'

'Actually,' said JLM, settling back, relaxed and vaguely smug that he had established his superiority over another of the lower classes, 'I rather fancy a George Clooney
Batman & Robin
. That would suit me, don't you think?'

'Most definitely,' said Barney, just about managing to keep the tone from his voice.

He studied JLM's hair, laid down the scissors, and started, well, farting about with a comb and some mousse. He'd never seen
Batman & Robin
, for crying out loud. Who had? He'd never watched
ER
, he'd never seen
From Dusk Till Dawn
. In a few glorious months, at some previous stage of his hirsutological career, he had crammed thousands of pieces of pointless information into his head, so that he could talk to almost any customer on almost any subject. The films of George Clooney; the complete works of Kierkegaard; the geography of the female sexual organs; all thirty-seven French expressions for cut-and-blow-dry; two thousand and one reasons why the moon landing never happened; the history of Christianity and how the real Jesus was in fact the deputy manager of Burger King in Casablanca; fourteen different ways of saying
There is a man molesting women on the promenade
in Italian. And, of course, while his life and the story of who he was, was only coming back to him in sepia tinted sound bites, he could remember every single piece of pointless information and what passed for wisdom in the barber's shop.