The Toff And The Stolen Tresses

CHAPTER SIX

Donny

Donny’s was luxury.

Across the road were small, dingy houses with drab curtains and blackened chimney pots. Two doors away was a newsagent’s shop with a window which hadn’t been changed for years, and dust lay thick on the old dummy cigarette cartons. On the nearest corner was a fish and chip shop, with a huge sign reading: FRYING TONIGHT. To the right and the left and all about this district there was the poverty of parts of the East End, and the roughness of most of the rest. No one knew better than Rollison the quality and the oddness of many of the people, or that the squalor remained only in patches; but there was little polish on the East End of London.

Except at Donny’s.

Not far away were London’s docks. Along this very street came lascars and sailors from the four corners of the earth, some drunk, some perverts, some broke, some with money spilling out of their pockets. From the thousands of little houses which rose like mushrooms made of bricks, the stevedores left for their daily work, rough, hardy men whose labour made them dirty and whose wives were often hard put to keep their homes and their families clean. Their only sight of luxury was through a television set and visits to the pictures—except at Donny’s.

It was like stepping out of a coaling barge into a first class liner.

Coming out of a doorway on the right was a little woman with a flushed face, her flowered cotton frock obviously Sunday best, high heeled brown shoes which needed mending, and the look of a poor man’s wife. Her greying hair was a mass of lustrous curls, and a glow in her eyes told of a woman who had realised a dream. She went to a small office with two windows, like a cinema’s cash desk. There a young woman with auburn hair and wearing a pale pink smock sat like a queen.

“Well, ‘ow do I look, dearie?” the flushed-faced woman said.

“You look very nice indeed, Mrs. Taylor,” said the queen behind the desk. “I haven’t seen you looking any better.”

“I will say this,” said the happy-looking woman, “Donny’s boys and girls know their job! Lemme see, two pun fifteen shillings, ain’t it?”

“That’s right, Mrs. Taylor.” The queen spoke like one, too, and contrived to conceal from her customer that she was highly intrigued by the man who had just stepped inside the shop, but had not gone straight into the men’s salon through a door clearly marked: Gentlemen’s Coiffeur. This door like all the doors was painted duck egg blue and gold. The carpet was thick and yielding, and also a pale blue. Around the walls were pictures of film stars with remarkable hair styles, most of them from historical pictures.

The queen handed out five shillings change, smiled sweetly, and said:

“Thank you very much, Mrs. Taylor. You will tell your friends about our special sessions, won’t you, and remind them that you save eight shillings on a permanent wave and one and sixpence on a set if you come between ten and twelve and two-fifteen and four-thirty.”

“You bet I will,” said Mrs. Taylor, and bustled past Rollison.

The girl at the cash desk gave him her sweetest smile.

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“Hallo,” said Rollison, and beamed at her. She looked a little dazzled, as most young women would when the Toff smiled quite like that. “Is Mr. Sampson in?”

“I think he is engaged, sir. The manager of the gentlemen’s department will be very glad to see you, though.”

“I’d like to be done by Mr. Sampson in person,” said Rollison, keeping a straight face. “Ask him if he can fit Mr. Rollison in?”

“Mr. Who, sir?”

“Rollison.”

“R-O-Double-L,” began the girl behaving as if she had never heard of Rollison, which was unusual in this part of Whitechapel and did much to suggest that she had been imported from different climes. Her voice was really pleasant, the refinement not really overdone. She lifted a telephone. “I won’t keep you a moment, sir, if you will please sit down.”

“Thank you,” said Rollison.

He sat in a chair more comfortable than the one at his West End barber’s. By his side was a small table with several magazines, including the Society glossies; every one was the current issue. By the side of these a little journal looked almost pathetically out of place, and because of that he picked it up, and read: The Hair Stylist. He glanced through the poor quality paper at the badly printed heads of women, and came to the back page of the cover, with the announcement of a competition. He read with interest, and into a distant corner of his mind there sank a single fact: that the only condition of entry was that you should have your hair dressed by a member of the Hair Stylists’ Association. That sounded fair enough.

The girl had spoken to at least three people on the telephone, keeping her voice low so that Rollison could not hear her words, and Rollison made no attempt to get nearer. Then he saw her smile, put the receiver down, and lean forward; a pretty thing indeed.

“Mr. Sampson will see you in a very few minutes, Mr. Rollison.”

“Thank you,” said Rollison, very politely.

Donny was as good as his word. He appeared through one of the duck egg blue and gold painted doors, and although he was not really a stranger to Rollison he made a considerable impression. He was dressed in a white smock with a high collar, and the close fitting garment would have served a Spanish dancer, so small was Donny’s waist and so elegant his carriage. Yet it was his face and head which impressed one most. He was less handsome than distinguished, his complexion was perfect, and the years had mellowed his features, so that he no longer looked austere. He had beautiful silvery hair which waved a little as it swept back from his forehead; such a man would have held Michelangelo enthralled.

He smiled, courteously.

“Mr. Rollison, this really is a pleasure. It is over a year since I saw you last.” He held out his right hand.

Rollison took it.

“We mustn’t let that happen again,” he murmured. “I’d like to make a fortune, too.”

“Sufficient for the day,” said Donny, and his amber eyes turned towards Rollison so intently that it was hard to see evil here, or even associate with evil. Those eyes suggested too, that his hair had once been golden coloured; and it was still a lion’s mane. “I find it hard to believe you have come simply for a haircut.”

“I’d like a little chat, and know I need a trim,” said Rollison. “Can you and will you?”

“For you, of course,” said Donny. “This way, please.” He turned and glanced out of the front door, and Rollison did also; and what Rollison saw did nothing to reassure him. He might not have been followed, but plenty of people knew where he was. Across the road were several of the youths whom he had already seen once that day. They just lounged about, obviously interested only in Donny’s.

“Friends of yours?” inquired Rollison.

“Not friends, simply customers,” said Donny with a deprecatory shrug and a wave of his pale hands. “It isn’t always possible to pick and choose one’s customers, and you will admit that the young men’s hair looks well cared for.”

“By Donny’s?”

“I imagine so,” said Donny.

He led the way past a line of six barbers, each busy on a man’s hair, to a small room with only one chair. Here were all the appurtenances of a beauty parlour, and it was reserved for men. Here were the pomades and the lotions, the sprays and the powders, the special waves in the hair of unbeautiful would-be beaus. Round the walls were photographs of masculine heads of hair, all magnificently groomed.

“Please sit down,” said Donny, and when Rollison obeyed, went through the customary ritual. Rollison looked at his own reflection, which was rather like a member of the Klu Klux Klan without a witch’s hat. “I see that you have an excellent barber, and that your hair is naturally so good that you hardly need aids,” Donny observed.

“No aids to waves,” agreed Rollison, and saw the scissors glint and then snap in the man’s white fingers; a surgeon’s fingers. There was Donny’s reflection, too. “Donny.”

“Sir.”

“I didn’t know you were a bad man.”

“Perhaps we don’t mean the same thing by that expression,” the hairdresser said. “I didn’t know that I was, either.”

“And it’s unnecessary for a brilliantly successful man like you.”

Donny snipped and shrugged.

“I have done well, yes, but I am not yet a millionaire, Mr. Rollison. The secret of success lies in hard work.”

“And no competition.”

“One buys out competition.”

“Or drives it out.”

“Ah,” said Donny, and paused to look hard at Rollison’s reflection in the mirror; it was a strange way to meet a man’s eyes. a begin to understand what has brought you.”

“I don’t like to think of you hiring men like Tiny Wallis and Mick Clay,” said Rollison chidingly. “No one deserved roughing up like that because he wanted to buy a barber’s shop in your district.”

Snip.

“It was,” said Donny and paused and snipped; “unfortunate.”

“Do you know what happened to the man?”

“I am sorry,” Donny said, and kept snipping. “I was able to help him and his wife a little, and I do not think he will suffer very much.”

“Why employ Wallis at all?” asked Rollison, still mildly.

“Perhaps it was a mistake,” said Donny. Tut he had no instructions to use violence, only persuasion.”

“Under threat of violence?”

“I don’t think you always avoided violence,” murmured Donny. Rollison chuckled quite spontaneously, picturing his own wall and the many trophies of violent action. “All right,” he conceded. “I agree that there are times when action speaks louder than words. Why are you so anxious not to have any barber near you?”

Snip.

Pause.

“Mr. Rollison,” said Donny, “I think I ought to say that I do not recognise your right to ask such questions, and that I feel under no obligation to answer.” His reflection made him look rather like a saint. “However, I have no objection to making the picture clear for you. I am a family man. I have four sons and three daughters, and three of the sons and two of the daughters are married, while the others will be soon. Except for one son, all of my family is in the business. Each son and daughter and each in-law learns the trade, and then becomes a shop manager. With so many children, so many shops are needed.” He stood back, comb in one hand and scissors in the other. “It is a good thing that the grandchildren are not big enough yet.”

Rollison didn’t answer, and made no attempt to smile. Donny looked disappointed, but went on with his work. For several minutes there was nothing but the snipping, broken occasionally by the hum of an electric clipper. Donny worked quickly and with the grace and effectiveness of a master. When he had nearly finished, he stood back.

“Mr. Rollison,” he said, “you and I began life in very different ways. I was the son of poor parents, my mother was an Italian immigrant, my father spent much time in prison. When he was home, he was a barber. When I was ten, I was cutting the hair of the children of the neighbourhood, and when I was fifteen, I was in charge of the shop. I have been cutting hair in this part of London for over forty years, and I have seen my business grow and grow. It is not an exaggeration to say that it brightens the lives of many who would otherwise be drab. I turn no one away. I have special prices for those who cannot afford my normal charges. But I don’t want competition in this neighbourhood, Mr. Rollison, and if I can avoid it, I shall not have any. Once an old established barber wishes to give up, I pay him well for his business, and then either take over or close his shop. Is that unreasonable?”

“Breaking into a man’s home, smashing everything he possesses, kicking him so hard that he has three ribs broken and needs over twenty stitches in his head, terrifying his wife and probably scarring her mind for life—is that reasonable, Donny?”

There was a long silence.

“Just a little more off here,” said Donny, and snipped and stood back, and smiled; more like a picture-book saint than ever. “I think your regular barber will be satisfied—it is satisfying to work on a really good head of hair. I congratulate you, Mr. Rollison.”

“Yes?”

“I hope we are not going to be bad friends.”

“I hope not, too.”

Donny shrugged and whipped off the sheet, and brushed with a soft brush, talking all the time.

“Is there anything you would like, Mr. Rollison? Haircream, tonic, razor blades, shampoo lotion, toothpaste—anything at all?” He was smiling as he opened the door of a cupboard and showed a mass of expensive-looking goods. Rollison saw that most of them were marked in a way which he knew well: a monogrammed double J, in script writing; it was the monogram of Jepsons. “Or even,” went on Donny, “a wig?”

Rollison stood up.

“Not yet,” he said, “but I’ll know where to come if I want one, Donny.”

He broke off, for he heard a door slam. That seemed almost a sacrilege here. Then came running footsteps and voices, and a girl crying on a high-pitched note. Donny stepped swiftly to the door and opened it. A girl appeared, her eyes ablaze with rage and yet despair, a girl who would have been pretty but for her expression and for the disaster which had overtaken her hair.

She had been shorn.

Someone had hacked off her hair, as if with a pair of garden shears. One cut, close to the front of her head over the right eye, actually showed the white scalp beneath; one lock fell over her left ear.

“Look what they’ve done to my hair!” she cried. “Look what they’ve done to my hair! What am I going to do? Tell me, what am I going to do? I can’t stand it, I just can’t stand it, what am I going to do?”