Waiting for Godalming

1

Now you don’t really see barber’s shops any more. They’ve gone the way of the Pathe News and Raylbrook Poplin, the shirts you don’t iron. But once, in a time not too long ago, the barber’s shop was a very special place. A shrine to all things male.

Here men of every social order gathered for their bi-weekly trims. The gentry rubbed shoulders with the genetically deficient, princes with paupers, wide boys with window dressers. Here was egalitarianism made flesh. Here was a classless society. Here all men were equal beneath the barber’s brush.

A mile due north of Brentford, as the fair griffin flies, the Ealing Road enters South Ealing and for a space of one hundred yards becomes its high street. And here, in the high street, hard upon the left hand path, betwixt a wool shop, where the wives of wealthy men felt yarn, and a flower shop where they fondled floral fripperies, there stood at the time when our tale is told, a barber’s shop that went by the name of Stravino’s.

And Stravino’s was a barber’s shop as a barber’s shop should be.

Above the door and rising proud as a porn star’s pecker, the red and white striped pole, encased within a cylinder of glass and powered by an unseen engine, spiralled ever towards infinity. The front and only window, bathed on rare occasions by bob-a-jobbing Boy Scouts, displayed in ten-by-eights of gloss-gone monochrome the fashionable haircuts of a bygone day. The face of King Gillette, creator of that famous blade of blue, stared sternly from a box of safety razors. And dead flies, belly up, arrayed themselves in pleasing compositions.

Bliss.

Ah, perfect bliss.

But if ’twere bliss to view it from without, then what of it within?

Ah, well, within.

’Twere poetry within.

For

Stravino’s shop was long and low

With walls of a nicotine hue.

The floor was ankle-deep in hair

And if you dared to stand and stare,

That hair would soon be round your leg

And filling up your shoe.

The Greek himself was a colourful man

Who rejoiced in the name of Smiling Stan

And worked his trade with great élan

And sang some opera too.

There were hot towels in a chromium drum

And a row of cinema chairs

Where the patrons sat to await their turns

And savour the screams from the hot towel burns

And open the old brown envelope

And dodge the flying hairs.

For the Greek could snip with incredible zest

He’d have at your head like a man possessed

And few could help but be impressed

By his knowledge of cosmic affairs.

And so on and so forth for many verses more. But we have not come here to versify. We have come here with a purpose and that is to meet the hero for our tale.

For the present, he is unaware that he is the hero. Indeed, by the looks of him, he seems hardly cut from that cloth of which heroes are tailored. He is slender, slightly stooped and sits with downcast eyes, patiently awaiting his turn for a trim. He speaks to no-one and no-one speaks to him. He is eighteen years of age and his name is Icarus Smith.

It’s a good name for a hero, Icarus Smith. Encompassing, as it does, both the mythic and the mundane. But other than his having a good name for a hero, what can there be said about the man who bears this name?

Well.

If you were to approach young Mr Smith and ask that he recommend himself, he would like as not ignore you. But if the mood to communicate was upon him, as seldom it was without a good cause, for he rarely spoke to anyone other than himself, he would probably say that he considered himself to be an honest God-fearing fellow, who meant harm to no man and called each man his brother.

His brother by birth, however, might well choose to take issue with this particular statement, letting it be known that in his opinion, Icarus was nothing more than a thieving godless ne’er do well.

But then that’s brothers for you, isn’t it? And Icarus, for his part, considered his brother to be barking mad.

So can any man be truly judged by the opinions of others, no matter how close to the man himself those others might be? Surely not. By a man’s deeds shall you know him, said the sage, and by his deeds was Icarus known.

To most of the local constabulary.

He did not consider himself to be a thief. Anything but. Icarus considered himself to be a “relocator”. One who practised the arts and sciences of relocation. And to him this was no euphemism. This was a way of life and a mighty quest to boot.

To Icarus, the concept of “ownership” was mere illusion. How, he argued, could any man truly “own” anything except the body that clothed his consciousness?

Certainly you could acquire things and hold on to them for a while and you could call this “ownership”. But whatever you had, you would ultimately lose. Things break. Things wear out. Things go missing. You die and leave the things that you “owned” to others, who in turn will “own” them for a while.

You could try like the very bejasus to “own” things, but you never really truly would. And if you didn’t hang on like the very bejasus to the things that you thought you owned, then like as not you wouldn’t “own” them for very long.

For they would be relocated by Icarus Smith. Or if not relocated by Icarus Smith, then simply stolen by some thieving godless ne’er do well.

Now for the cynics out there, who might still be labouring under the mistaken opinion that relocating is merely thieving by another name, let this be said: Icarus had not become a relocator by choice. He was an intelligent lad and could have turned his hand to almost anything in order to earn himself a living. But Icarus had dreamed a dream, a terrible dream it was, and this dream had changed the life of Icarus Smith.

Icarus had dreamed the Big Picture. The Big Picture of what was wrong with the world and the method by which he could put it to rights. And when you dream something like that, it does have a tendency to change your life somewhat.

In the dream of Icarus Smith, he had seen the world laid out before him as the Big Picture. People coming and going and doing their things and it all looked fine from a distance. But the closer Icarus looked, the more wrong everything became. The Big Picture was in fact a jigsaw puzzle with everyone’s lives and possessions slotted together. But it was a jigsaw that had been assembled by a madman. A mad God perhaps? The more closely Icarus examined the pieces, the more he became aware that they didn’t fit properly. They were all in the wrong places and had been hammered down in order to make them fit.

Icarus realized that if he could take out a piece here and replace it with a piece from over there and move that other bit across there and shift that bit up a bit and so on and so forth and so on and so forth and—

He had awoken in a terrible sweat.

But he had seen the Big Picture.

And he had found his vocation in life. As a relocator.

Icarus realized that the world could be changed for the better by relocating things. By putting the right things into the right people’s hands and removing the wrong things from the wrong people’s hands.

It was hardly a new idea; Karl Marx had come up with something similar a century before. But sharing out the wealth of the world equally amongst everyone had never been much of an idea. Anyone with any common sense at all realized that a week after the wealth had been distributed, some smart blighter would have wangled much more than his fair share from the less than smart blighters and the world would be back where it started again.

It had to be done differently from that.

But Icarus was working on it. For, after all, he had had the dream. He had seen the Big Picture. He was the chosen one.

He realized from the outset that he would not be able to do it all alone. The task was far too big. It would be necessary to take on recruits. Many many recruits. But that was for the future. Everything had to start in a small way and so for the present he must go it alone.

And it had to be instinctive and not for personal gain. He had to eat and clothe himself and attend to his basic needs, but above and beyond that there must be no profit.

Icarus also knew that the “powers that be” would not take kindly to his plans for changing the world. The powers that be thrived on the concept of ownership. Icarus, in their eyes, would be a dangerous criminal and subversive who could not be allowed to walk the streets.

A few early run-ins with the local constabulary had taught Icarus discretion. And, having read a great deal on the science of detection and seen a great many movies, a very great many movies, Icarus had become adept at covering his tracks and leaving no clues behind at the “crime scene”.

But, as relocating had to be instinctive, rather than premeditated, there was always a margin of error. And the possibility of capture and internment was never far away.

On this particular day, being the one on which our epic tale begins, Icarus sat in Stravino’s shop in the cinema seat nearest the door. Sunlight, of the early morning spring variety, peeped down at Icarus through the upper window glass and grinned upon his hairy head.

The seat that Icarus occupied was number twenty-three and had once been number twenty-three in the three and ninepenny stalls of the Walpole Cinema in Ealing Broadway.

But the Walpole Cinema had been demolished and, during the course of that demolition, the rows of seats numbered from twenty-three to thirty-two had been relocated.

By Icarus Smith.

In fact there were a great many items to be found amongst the fixtures and fittings of Stravino’s shop that owed their presence to the science of relocation. An understanding existed between the barber and the relocator and Icarus Smith was assured of free haircuts for life.

Today he thought he’d have a Tony Curtis.

There were three other clients in the shop of Stravino. One sat in the barber’s chair, the other two upon the relocated seats. The one in the chair was Count Otto Black, a legendary figure in the neighbourhood. Count Otto possessed a genuine duelling scar, a Ford Fiesta called Jonathan and a bungalow with roses round the door. Count Otto was having his mustachios curled.

Two seats along from Icarus sat a soldier home on leave. His name was Captain Ian Drayton and he was a hero in his own right, having endured sufficient horrors to qualify for a medal. Between Captain Ian and Icarus Smith sat the third man. He was not Michael Rennie.

The third man’s name was Cormerant and Cormerant worked for a mysterious organization known as the Ministry of Serendipity. Cormerant wore the apparel of the city gent, pinstriped suit and pocket watch and bowler hat and all. Cormerant muttered nervously beneath his breath and shuffled his highly polished brogues amongst the carpet of clippings. On his lap was a black leather briefcase, containing, amongst other things, a pair of black leather briefs.

Icarus Smith was aware of this briefcase.

Cormerant was unaware of his awareness.

At the business end of the barber’s shop, Stravino went about his business. He teased the tip of a mustachio with a heated curling tong and made mouth music between his rarely polished teeth.

“Living la vida loca in a gagga da vida,” sang the Greek.

“Cha cha cha,” sang Count Otto, in ready response.

It might well be considered fitting at this point to offer the reader some description of Stravino. But let this only be said: Stravino looked exactly the way that a Greek barber should look. Exactly. Even down to that complicated cookery thing they always wear above their left eyebrow and the shaded area on the right cheek that looks a bit like a map of Indo-China.

So a description here is hardly necessary.

“Hey ho hoopla,” said the Greek, breaking song in midflow to examine his handiwork. “Now does that not curl like a maiden’s muff and spring like the darling buds of May?”

“It does too,” agreed the count. “You are za man, Stan. You are za man.”

“I am, I truly am.” Stravino plucked a soft brush from the breast pocket of his barbering coat and dusted snippings from the gingham cloth that cloaked the count’s broad shoulders. The professional name for such a cloth is a Velocette, named after its inventor Cyrano Velocette, the original barber of Seville.

Stravino whisked away the Velocette with a conjurer’s flourish and fan-dancer’s fandango. “All done,” said he.

“Your servant, sir.” The count rose to an improbable height and clicked his heels together. “It is, as ever, za pleasure doing business with you.”

“One and threepence,” said the Greek. “We call it one and six, the tip included.”

“Scandalous,” said the Bohemian count. But he said it with a smile and settled his account.

“Captain,” said the Greek, bidding the count a fond farewell and addressing his next client. “Captain, please to be stepping up to the chair and parking the bum thereupon.” Captain Ian rose from his seat and made his way slowly to the barber’s chair. It had to be said that the captain did not look a well man. His face was deathly pale. His eyes had a haunted hunted look and his mouth was a bitter thin red line.

Stravino tucked the Velocette about the captain’s collar.

“What is it for you today?” he asked.

“For me today?” The captain gazed at his ghostly reflection in the tarnished mirror. The mirror was draped about with Spanish souvenir windmill necklaces and votive offerings placed there to honour St Christopher, the patron saint of barbers. On the glass shelf beneath were jars of brilliantine, shaving mugs and porcelain figures, statuettes of Priapus, carved soapstone marmosets and Stravino’s spare truss.[1]

“Do what thou wilt,” said the blanched soldier, who had studied the works of Crowley.

“Then today I think I will give you a Ramón Navarro.”

Outside a number sixty-five bus passed by.

The driver’s name was Ramón.

Stravino took up his electric clippers, held them close by his ear, thumbed the power and savoured the purr.

Icarus snaked his hand around behind his seat and sought out the brown envelope. There are many traditions and old charters and somethings attached to the barbering trade. The brown envelope is one of these, but one which few men know.

In the days before the Internet and the invention of the video, the days in fact in which this tale is set, there was little to be found in the way of real pornography. There was Tit Bits and Parade and the first incarnation of Playboy magazine, which was far too expensive to buy and always kept on the top shelf of the newsagent’s. But there was only one place where you could view real pornography. Real genuine down-to-business smut. And that was in the barber’s shop.

And that was in the brown envelope.

Today things are different, of course. Today the discerning buyer can purchase a specialist magazine dedicated to his (or her) particular whimsy in almost any supermarket.

But way back when, in the then which is the now of our telling (so to speak), there was only the brown envelope.

Icarus peeled back the flap and emptied the contents of the brown envelope onto his lap. There were four new photographs this week. The first was of two Egyptian women and a Shetland pony. The second was of two blokes from Tottenham (who can tie a knot’n’em). The third showed a midget with a tattooed dong and the fourth a loving couple “taking tea with the parson”.

A musician by the name of Cox would one day write a song about the first three. He would sadly die in a freak accident whilst trying to engage in the fourth.

Icarus perused the photographs, but found little in them to interest him. Cormerant glimpsed the photographs and turned his face away. Icarus became aware of Cormerant’s most distinctive watch fob.

“Babies,” said Stravino, his clippers purring towards the crown of the captain’s head. “What do you think about babies, then?”

“I don’t,” said the captain. “Why should I?”

“You can’t trust them,” said Stravino. “They pee in your eye when you’re changing their nappies. And do you know why that is?”

“I don’t,” the captain said.

“Ancestral voices,” said Stravino. “All that gurgling they do. That’s not gurgling. That’s an ancestral tongue. You have to keep babies apart, you can’t let them chat, there’s no telling what they might plot amongst themselves.”

“Twins plot,” said the captain.

“Exactly,” said Stravino. “Because they were together as babies. Twins are all weirdies, deny that if you can.”

“I can’t,” said the captain. “I have a twin sister.”

“And she’s a weirdie?”

“No, she’s a unisex hair stylist.”

“I spit on those, whatever they are,” said Stravino. “And also I spit upon architects. They will be the death of us all.”

“Because they design blocks of flats? Ouch!”

“Sorry,” said Stravino. “I just took a little off your ear then. But not enough to affect the hearing. But blocks of flats, did you say? Well, that’s right, but it’s not for why you think.”

“How do you know what I think?” the captain asked.

“I interpret,” said the Greek. “But answer me this. Why do you think the world has all gone potty mad today? Why are people all stony bonker and devil take their hindparts? Answer this.”

“A lack of discipline,” the soldier in the captain said. “Or a lack of hope,” the man inside the soldier added.

“No no no.” Stravino hung his electric clippers on their hook, took up a cut-throat and gave it a strop. “It’s the houses,” said he. “And I am a Greek, so I know what I say. The Greeks were famous throughout the old world for their classical architecture. Am I right or am I barking up a gum tree?”

“The Greeks were famous for many things,” said the captain, peering ruefully at the reflection of his ruined right ear.

“I put the styptic pencil on that,” said the Greek. “But many things, you’re right as tenpence there.”

“Notable shirtlifters,” said the captain. “Their armies had platoons of them. No offence meant, of course.”

“And none taken, I assure you. But when they weren’t lifting each other’s shirts, they were building great temples and amphitheatres and harbours and hippodromes,”

“Hippodromes?” said the captain. “The Greeks built music halls?”

“Race courses,” said Stravino, now taking up a shaving brush and lathering the captain’s head. “Hippos means horse in Greek. Dromos means race. Did they teach you nothing at Sandringham?”

“Sandhurst,” said the captain. “But where is all this leading?”

“Architecture, like I say. It is all in the proportions of the buildings. The size and shape of the rooms. You go in some houses, you feel good. Others and you feel bad. Why is that? Don’t tell me why, because I tell you. The proportions of the rooms. The rooms are wrong, the people in them go wrong. People need the right sized spaces around them where they live.”

“There might be something in what you say,” said the captain.

“More than you know,” said Stravino, now applying his cutthroat. “And babies are little, so to them all rooms are big. Deny that if you please.”

Cormerant opened his mouth and spoke. “I have an urgent appointment,” said he. “Will I be kept much longer?”

“Do you eat out?” the barber enquired.

Cormerant made the face that says, “Eh?”

“Do you insult the chef before your soup is served? The chef he spit in your soup, I’ll wager. I not care to dine with you.”

“Eh?” said Cormerant. “What?”

“Look at this poor soul,” said Stravino, pointing to the captain in the chair. “This man is my friend, but by the caprice of fate, he has all but lost an ear. Think what might befall the man who hurries up his barber.”

“I think perhaps I’ll come back another day.”

“No no,” said the Greek. “I’m all done now.” And he wiped away the shaving foam and dusted down the Velocette and hummed a tune and smacked his lips and then said, “What do you think?”

Captain Drayton stared at his reflection. His stare became a gawp and his gawp became a slack-jawed horror-struck stare. Of his hair little remained but for an unruly topknot.

“But,” went the captain, “but …”

“But?” asked Stravino.

“But,” the captain went once more, “you said a Ramón Navarro. Ramón Navarro doesn’t have his hair cut like that.”

“He does if he comes in here,” said Stravino. “Two and sixpence please.”

Cormerant declined the offer to become the next in the barber’s chair. He left the establishment in a fluster and a hurry. He dropped his bowler hat and he tripped upon the outstretched feet of Icarus Smith and fell down on the floor amongst the clippings and the fluff. Icarus helped him up and dusted him off and opened the door and all. Cormerant hailed a passing cab and Cormerant was gone.

Icarus Smith did not have a Tony Curtis that day. He left Stravino’s only moments after the departure of Cormerant. Some might say, when the coast was clear. But then some might say anything.

Some might for instance say that it was yet another caprice of fate that Mr Cormerant tripped. And some might say that his watch and his wallet fell into the hands of Icarus Smith by accident. And some might say that Icarus took up the black briefcase that Mr Cormerant had inadvertently left behind in the confusion in order to run after him and return it. Along with the wallet and the watch of course. And the most distinctive watch fob.

Some might say any or all of these things.

But then some might say anything.