This place will do, I thought. I passed through that part of the shop devoted to the selling of tobacco. A woman of thirty or so sat behind the counter. She was reading a newspaper. She did not look up.
I pushed open the swinging glass doors and entered the saloon.
The barber, a soap-encrusted razor in his hand, looked up from the man he was shaving.
‘Hullo, my friend,’ he said, with great friendliness. ‘And how are you?’
‘Fine,’ I replied. I glanced at his face quickly, but not recognising him looked round for a place to sit down.
The room was very small. There was hardly room for the two barber’s chairs. They were placed close to the mirrors.
Shelves each side of the mirrors were full of cardboard boxes labelled ‘The Merry Widow’.
In a small recess were four chairs. One of them was occupied by a man with large, heavy boots upon his feet. His trousers were spattered with yellow clay. His patched galatea shirt was open at the throat. He leant forward with his elbows on his knees and stroked the week’s growth of bristle on his chin.
Lounging in the barber’s chair not in use was a youth with sleek, black hair. He wore riding trousers. They were stained with oil. His black shirt was also stained with oil.
The three remaining chairs did not offer seating accommodation. On one was a ragged black overcoat. One arm, grey from soil, drooped to the floor. There was an old leather kitbag bound with string on another. A felt hat encircled with a narrow leather band rested on it. There was a worn hole in the crown of the hat just at the junction of the dint. The remaining chair contained an overcoat. Someone had sat on it. It was pressed flat on the chair. It was an old coat. I sat down.
‘And how is the green Amilcar going now?’ asked the barber, still with great friendliness.
I once had a green Amilcar.
I looked at him with interest. ‘Oh! I sold that.’
He noticed my expression. ‘I’ll bet you don’t know me.’
‘I can’t remember you.’
‘Remember Freddy Stevens?’
‘Yes, quite well.’
‘He worked for me in that shop in Little Collins Street. I shaved you there, often.’
‘Why, of course you did! How’s things?’
‘Good.’ He sprayed a mist of water on the face of the man in the chair.
‘Got a car now?’
‘A sort of one. Yes.’
‘Well, I’ve got a Pontiac; but you can’t tell a man by his car. You know old Parker—well, he drove past here the other day in an old Dodge.’
The labourer sitting on the chair next to me leaned across. ‘My father came out from Ireland forty years ago on a sailing ship. Parker’s old man was on board. He started making taffy on a stick.’
‘You can go down to his factory any day,’ continued the barber. ‘There’s a garage down there with barred windows full of Packards.’
‘He has two Rolls-Royces,’ said the sleek youth.
I leant over to the labourer. ‘What were you saying about your old man?’
‘He knew Parker’s father. He had nothing when he started.’
‘I think you must mean Parker himself,’ I said. ‘He must be over seventy.’
‘Well, him, then,’ said the labourer.
A man thrust his head through the doorway.
‘Four,’ he said, holding up four fingers.
The barber took four packages from a ‘Merry Widow’ box and handed them to him.
‘I worked for him once,’ said the labourer. ‘His son—’
‘He’s got well over the million,’ said the barber.
‘Sons or pounds?’ I asked.
They all laughed. The barber leaned back with his eyes closed. ‘I’ll bet he has,’ he said.
He jerked the towel from the neck of the man he had shaved.
The man rose heavily. He looked at me.
‘Your coat?’ I asked, rising. ‘Sorry.’
He took the coat I’d been sitting on. He smiled. He felt in the pocket for matches.
‘Want a light?’ said the barber. ‘Here you are.’ He gave him a folder of matches.
‘Thanks. So long.’
The sleek youth took his place in the chair.
‘It’s wrong that old Parker should have so much money.’ He looked at me. He held a towel poised above the youth in the chair. ‘Look at you and me. How much sun do we see?’
‘Not much,’ I said.
He raised himself and thrust his meagre chest forward. ‘Look at me. I should be out in the sun. You should be out in the sun.’
The labourer, with his heavy, weather-worn and calloused hands resting on his knees, said nothing.
‘It’s men like Parker who make wars,’ said the barber. ‘Now, I’ve got nothing against the Italians, but I bet there’s a lot like him over there:’
‘Italy’s full of Italians,’ said the labourer, looking sadly at the floor. ‘No, it’s America I was thinking of,’ he suddenly added.
‘We’ll all be in it,’ said the barber. ‘They want to kill some of the working men off. We’re getting too intelligent for them.’
‘Well, take the Bible,’ said the labourer, almost apologetically. ‘A lot of what it said is coming true. I don’t hold—’
The barber stopped lathering. He turned his head and, looking to us, said with great deliberation: ‘You know what I think of the Bible? I think it’s all hooey.’
‘So do I,’ defended the labourer hastily.
‘Now, who wrote the Bible?’ said the barber, looking at me.
‘Now I’ll ask you one,’ I replied.
‘It was wrote hundreds of years ago,’ he went on. ‘The chaps who wrote it: who are they? Just like me and you.’
He nodded his head to give emphasis to this last pronouncement.
‘Now, say I wrote a book like the Bible.’ He flourished the razor ostentatiously. The sleek youth sat in a strained stillness while the blade swept down his cheek.
‘I’d have to call it something like The Holy Bible. Say I called it “The Holy Temple”, or something. I could say in it there’s going to be a world war. Well, in a thousand years, when they read it and they were having a world war, they would think I was marvellous. That’s how they do it, you see. It’s all hooey.’
‘We should have a thirty-hour week,’ said the labourer after a pause.
‘That’s what I reckon,’ said the barber.
‘Even a forty-hour week would be better,’ said the labourer. ‘No one should have to work on Saturday. It should be kept for recreation.’
‘Now, you and I,’ said the barber to me, ‘we never see the sun and that affects our kids.’
‘Two,’ said a man at the door.
The barber again opened the ‘Merry Widow’ box.
‘What chance have children got?’ he continued.
‘Thanks,’ said the man, taking the two packets.
‘They haven’t got a hope from the start,’ said the barber.
‘Here’s your zac,’ said the man.
‘Conditions will always be like that till the workers gain control,’ I said.
The barber stopped spraying powder on to the face of the sleek youth.
‘Are you one of them there Communists?’
‘Why not?’
‘Look, I’ll admit it. Fm ignorant. I’m not for or against it. But I’d like to learn. Neck shave, sir? Thank you. Two chaps came in here once, and they said, like you, “Do you believe in Communism?” and I said, “I know nothing about it,” and they both went off the deep end. I wouldn’t shave them. I said, “You can go to hell.” They said I’d get mine when the revolution came. Well, that puts a bloke off. What’s the strength of this Communism?’
He stopped shaving and placed one hand firmly on the arm of the chair. The hand with the razor rested on his hip. His feet were firm on the floor.
‘Now, what’s the strength of it?’
‘Well, I suppose its main object is to see that everybody gets a share of all the things that make life worth while. Only the rich get them now,’ I replied.
‘Does that mean we’ve got to divide up our money? That’s what these coves said. Now, say you had a thousand pounds,’ he said to the labourer.
The latter immediately sat a little more erect as if, having been given an important part in some drama, he felt he could not do it justice without a change of attitude.
‘And you had a thousand pounds,’ he pointed the razor at me, ‘and I had a thousand pounds. And say you,’ he addressed the labourer again, ‘gambled yours away on horses and women, and I boozed mine away, would you,’ he looked at me, ‘have to divide your thousand quid with us?’
‘Good Lord, no!’
‘Now, that’s what I wanted to know. I don’t believe in condemning anything,’ he continued, placing four ‘Merry Widow’ packages into the outstretched hand of a fat man that had appeared in the doorway, ‘without first of all—one shilling thank you—without first of all getting the low-down on how the scheme works. I believe in giving a helping hand to my fellow-men,’ he said, replacing the ‘Merry Widow’ box, ‘but don’t believe in accepting anything till you get the strength of it. Now I know.’
A thin urchin with a prematurely aged face pattered in on bare feet. His body was held on a slant to counterbalance the immense bundle of Heralds he carried. His front teeth were decayed stumps.
‘’Eral’, mister?’
‘Run out, son. Run out. Next, please.’