Series 2, Episode 2: Crows Eat Brains
Just after nine a.m. on a nothing kind of dull Friday morning in Millport in November. Low, white cloud, the sea still, barely a wave to speak of. The men of the shop were standing at the window, their familiar position, looking out on the world. Keanu and Igor were eating pastries, Barney was reading a press release that had arrived in the shop that morning, a regular occurrence among the detritus of the day. And they were all, as ever, drinking the finest Colombian coffee.
‘I like mornings like this,’ said Keanu, as usual the one to introduce unnecessary conversation to the mix. ‘Bleak. Still. That eastern European movie vibe. You know nothing’s going to happen all day, and it’s cool. Nothing’s supposed to happen.’
He was burbling. It wasn’t entirely clear whether either of the others was listening to him.
‘What have you got there?’ he asked, glancing over at Barney. ‘Not like you to give a press release more than two or three seconds.’
Barney took a sip of coffee, continued to read the sheet of paper in his hand. On the other side of Igor from Keanu, with the paper lifted, Keanu couldn’t see what it was, although the rear of it seemed to show a photograph of Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, in modern times, walking the familiar crossing outside Abbey Road studios.
‘The Beatles Are Back, And This Time They’re A Shaving Foam,’ said Barney. ‘That’s what it says.’
Igor and Keanu looked at him, each with a speculative eyebrow, then they turned and stared back out at three seagulls sitting on the white promenade wall across the road. In a strange quirk of fate, one of those seagulls was also deaf and mute with a minor spinal deformity, though the gulls were not drinking coffee.
‘Arf?’ said Igor, and Barney turned the page towards him so he could see that the title of the press release was indeed as Barney had read.
‘Go on,’ said Keanu, ‘read it out.’
‘Fine,’ said Barney. ‘Gillette, through their new ecologically-sound subsidiary Eco-man, are delighted to enter into collaboration with Sir Paul McCartney and Sir Richard Starkey, to produce the all-new Beatles range of men’s hygiene products. The line will launch in January with Eco-man Beatles Shaving Foam, a worldwide campaign, and While My Skinguard Sensitive Shaving Foam Gently Weeps, the first new Beatles single since Real Love in 1996… blah blah blah… stuff about how amazing the Beatles were… blah blah blah… Sir Paul is losing his shit over how great this will be for the planet… blah blah blah… Ringo himself hasn’t shaved since 1967 but some of his best friends shave… blah blah blah… the new single’s based on a tune George left in the fridge so that his wife hears it every time she has cheese and biscuits… blah blah blah… all-new Beatles shaving foam will come in four varieties… spice, because George liked India, Cinnamon, because Paul is fluffy and warm, Unicorn – whatever that is – to match Ringo’s sense of fun, and Lemon, because John was caustic and bitter.’
‘Arf,’ said Igor, sniggering.
‘You’re making that up,’ said Keanu, and he held his hand out for Barney to give him the press release.
Keanu nodded as he read it, then he handed it to Igor, who instantly scrunched it up, threw it over his shoulder, and landed it squarely in the middle of the bin.
‘You’re not making it up,’ said Keanu. ‘Wow. And I see Sir Paul and Sir Ringo are doing in-shop appearances to promote the product. Will we get them in?’
‘I thought we’d bid for John’s ghost, or perhaps the George hologram.’
‘Might be a bit weird having an actual, living ex-Beatle in the shop.’
‘Not ex-Beatle,’ said Barney, indicating the binned press release. ‘Current Beatle. They got back together.’
‘Arf!’
‘Indeed,’ said Barney, taking a drink of coffee, ‘if those two don’t get the Beatles back together, no one else will…’
* * *
Unusually, both Barney and Keanu were cutting hair, while Igor diligently swept the floor at the rear of the shop. Mid-morning, the first two customers of the day arriving at the same time. Thumper Ackroyd, in for his monthly Berlin Duck Schadenfreude Curly Quiff, and Tony Six Ears, another regular, in for the edgy aesthetic of a Fukuyama fauxhawk.
Both customers had lifted a newspaper off the small, usually undisturbed pile on the bench, and the haircuts were progressing in conversational silence, accompanied by the quiet click of scissors, the occasional buzz of the clippers, the old-fashioned rustle of newspaper pages, and the monotonous, yet comforting, sweep of Igor’s brush. Ackroyd had fallen asleep reading the Telegraph – headline, Johnson’s Near Invisibility As PM Adds To Mysterious Aura Of Omnipotence – while Six Ears was reading the Scotsman – headline, Nicola Remains Stern, As Scotland Enters Lockdown 4.0, Clause 9, Section 19, Subsection 2c, Chapter 126, Paras 14f-71d.
‘Fuck’s sake,’ muttered Six Ears, and Barney had to pause for a moment while Six Ears shook his head. Ackroyd stirred in his sleep, but didn’t fully wake up. Barney waited until the head movement was finished, then began cutting once more. Keanu glanced over, a familiar smile on his lips, waiting to see if Barney was going to take Six Ears up on his offer of conversation, unsurprised that he had no intention of doing so.
‘Jesus,’ grumbled Six Ears. ‘The shite you read in these papers.’
‘What’s that, Mr Ears?’ asked Keanu, and Barney slung him a low-key side eye.
‘See when I’m king,’ said Six Ears, even though, frankly, he was currently not even in the top three hundred and twenty-nine thousand in the line of succession, so his chances were slim, ‘see when I’m king, first thing I ban is the term ‘wild swimming’. I mean, that there, those two wee words, are literally everything that’s fucked up about life.’
Barney continued to cut hair, imagining that, at that very moment, if Paul McCartney was standing in the corner singing I Want To Shave Your Beard, or All You Need Is Foam, it might be awkward, but at least he wouldn’t have to listen to Six Ears talk about wild swimming. Even though he knew he was going to agree, roughly, with everything he was about to say.
‘I quite like wild swimming,’ said Keanu. ‘Sophes and I often nip round Fintry Bay. Deep as fuck pretty quickly, by the way, so you’ve got to not let your imagination run away with you. Who knows what kind of leviathans lurk in the deep, dark canyons of the Clyde, eh?’
Six Ears slung Keanu an annoyed look, then glanced at Barney – who’d once again paused the cut – before settling back in position.
‘It’s just swimming, though, in’t it?’ said Six Ears. ‘Swimming. When I was a wean, I went swimming. That was it. The first time you hear the term ‘wild swimming’, you’re like, fuck’s sake, that sounds brilliant. I’ll have me some of that. Wild Swimming sounds like you’re going to be, I don’t know, swimming with bears, or, or, swimming through an Icelandic waterfall as you plummet a thousand feet through the air. Turns out it’s none of that. It’s just swimming. Like you used to do when you were a bairn. You saw a bit of water, you said, mum, can I go swimming? and she said, aye, all right, but be careful, and try not to get wet, and that was it. Now there are articles and shows and radio programmes, and books with instructions. How to go wild fucking swimming? Really? Take yer kit off and jump in the water, for fuck’s sake.’
He looked angrily at Barney, as though everything that was wrong with society was Barney’s fault. Barney, however, had seen much in the world, he had lived lives, he had the collected knowledge and wisdom of Gandalf, Elrond, Dumbledore and Alex Ferguson. Looking harshly at Barney, was like staring into the Total Perspective Vortex.
Six Ears shuddered, then turned back to Keanu, Barney patiently waiting his moment to resume the cut.
‘And see they dry suits and wet suits and whatever. Seriously? Just get in the fucking water, you numpty. See when I was a wean, you’d swim out there in the middle of January if your mum let you. A wee pair of trunks, and off you’d go. No one gave a fuck. Nowadays, all these precious little fuckers, called Hugo and Abigail and Tyler and fucking Chardonnay, from the chavviest fuck to the posh rich-boy tory cuntbasket, they’ve all got the swimming gear of the fucking day. Everything’s got a name, everything’s got equipment, everything’s packaged and sold and squeezed into a perfect little marketing bubble. I’m like that…’
He shook his head, continuing to stare harshly at Keanu, who wasn’t really giving him anything in return, then Six Ears glanced quickly at Barney, accepted he wasn’t getting anywhere, and settled back down into the cut, thinking like everyone else in the shop – except Ackroyd, who was still sleeping – that the quicker they got it over with the better.
Barney resumed the cut, determining that he could get Six Ears up and out within three or four minutes, Igor laughed quietly to himself and resumed sweeping, which no one had really noticed he’d stopped, and Keanu too returned to his cut.
Keanu left it a moment, another, one second to the next, and then with perfect comic timing said quietly, ‘I quite like wild swimming.’
* * *
The quiet, post-lunch period. To be honest, every period was quiet at the moment. The men were drinking a cup of tea, leaning on the white promenade wall across the road, looking out over the shore and the small islands in the bay, the grey-blue chop of the waves, stretching away to the mainland on their left, the island of Wee Cumbrae on their right. In between, the horizon to the south, the passage through the islands to the distant lands of south Ayrshire, from where the great whaling vessels out of Girvan would voyage down the Irish Sea, on down past France and Portugal and on, on, past Senegal and Guinea, deep down to the south Atlantic and the Antarctic Ocean, where the trump whales lay on beaches of ice waiting to be hauled on board, harvested at sea, their enormous orange blubber returned to the great whale carcass factories of Turnberry.
Autumn was in the air, and behind it – in the way a whisper of oaky liquorice might appear from nowhere at the end of a sip of red wine – a hint of winter, carried from the north.
‘Funny,’ said Keanu, after a while.
Barney, his mind drifting away in a Mitty-esque fantasy of him and DS Monk taking off across the oceans, detaching themselves entirely from society, barely heard.
‘Arf?’ asked Igor.
‘Life these days seems this bizarre juxtaposition. On the one hand nothing’s happening. There are endless days like this. I mean, we’re not alone leaning on a promenade wall, drinking tea, staring at the sea, busy doing nothing, right? Even if some of the other people doing it are only metaphorically looking at the sea. So, there’s this kind of phony-life period, but that’s the analogy. Like the phony war of 39-40. It’s like there’s something waiting to happen. Something huge and momentous, and truly cataclysmic. So much bad shit going on out there in the world, and here we are, and plenty others like us…’ and he finished the thought by lifting his mug and indicating the great beyond.
He took a drink.
‘Juxtaposition,’ said Barney, repeating one word, as if to indicate that he’d switched on enough to listen.
‘Don’t you think?’
‘Aye,’ said Barney. ‘I was agreeing with you, rather than questioning. Nice way to put it. How’s your horror writing career coming on, by the way? It’s not like you don’t have plenty of time.’
Keanu took another drink, accepted that Barney obviously didn’t want to discuss the strange dual timelines of life on earth in late 2020, as the world entered what felt like the two hundred and fifty-seventh month of the year, and once again randomly indicated the air.
‘I’ve started a follow-up to Crows Eat Brains,’ he said. ‘That book’s doing OK on Kindle, after all.’
‘Sales made it above five hundred?’
‘Whole different ballgame the horror novel, you know. Should’ve thought of it years ago. So far sales are over three thousand. Placed a couple of ads, I’ve got my gruesome, bloody cover, and I’ve got my great new tagline. People love that shit.’
‘What’s the tagline?’
‘Just when you thought it was safe to run naked into the woods at midnight…’
He looked at them expectantly, smiled, and then took a drink of tea.
‘That’s your tagline?’
‘Yep.’
‘And the follow-up?’
‘What’s it called, or what’s the tagline?’
‘I meant the former, but if you’ve also got the latter…’
Keanu took another drink, and then framed the title with a left-to-right movement of his hand, as he stared solemnly out across the sea.
‘The Feasting Of Crows,’ he said. ‘Tagline: they’re back, and this time they’re ravenous.’
‘Nice,’ said Barney.
‘Arf,’ agreed Igor, nodding.
‘Ravenous is a good word,’ said Barney. ‘Powerful.’
He had no idea whether that was a good title and a good tagline. He didn’t understand the public, and therefore had no conception of what they’d react to. He himself had had enough horror in his life to never want to read the bastard terror children of Keanu’s imagination.
‘Thanks.’
‘What’s the plot?’
‘Greedy mining executives, spurred on by corrupt government officials, dig deep down into the earth, where they shouldn’t go.’
‘Like the dwarves at Erebor?’
‘Exactly.’
‘And they find crows? Deep in the earth?’
‘Aye. Giant, carnivorous, troglodyte crows, living in caverns thousands of feet beneath the surface.’
‘I think I might have seen that movie,’ said Igor, though it emerged as ‘Arf.’
‘But not with crows?’ said Keanu, looking a little concerned.
‘Arf.’
‘OK, well that’s all right. I mean, how many actual original horror ideas are there in the world? It’s a tough business. Crows Eat Brains wasn’t entirely original, and, yes, fair enough, neither will this be. But needs must when opportunity knocks.’
‘Just need a movie deal now,’ said Barney. ‘And then you’ll hit the big time.’
‘I don’t know. I was thinking I might try to make the movie myself. Those low budget horror movies have a cool niche.’ A beat, a drink of tea, then he said, ‘I could be an auteur.’
‘Sounds good,’ said Barney. ‘You think you’ll film on Millport?’
‘Great location. I’ll direct it myself, try to get some funding together, wait for all the coronavirus shenanigans to pass, and then we can see when George Clooney and Scarlett Johansson are available.’
‘Oi, you lot! Any chance a cunt can get a haircut around here?’
The men of the shop turned. Outside the door stood Old Man Hickenlooper, leaning on one stick, brandishing the other stick in the air.
Barney smiled, lifted his mug of tea.
‘Better get over there before he falls over,’ said Keanu.
Barney laughed, Igor smiled grimly, and with the sight of the McBrooker twins on the horizon, heading their way with long hair flowing extravagantly in the breeze, the extended lunch break was over.
* * *
End of the day, another one biting the dust. Another Friday in the bag, another week nearer the end of the Great Pandemic of 2020, the precursor to the Even Greater Pandemic of 2021, both of which would be dwarfed by the forthcoming Mother Of All Pandemics of 2022, and 2023’s Last Great Pandemic On Earth.
Keanu and Igor were sitting by the window, drinking a cup of tea, but they were quietly seeing out the day, as it was now dark outside and there was nothing to look at but the reflection of the shop. There would have been little to see outside in any case. The clouds had not moved, those choppy waves seemed to be set on repeat, the same waves slapping up against the same rocks, the tide neither coming nor going. Inside the shop, too, little had changed. Igor and Keanu unmoving, the clock on the wall reluctant to click from one second to the next. Bar the first couple of customers of the day, none had bothered to place their hand into the septic tank of the newspaper pile, and all that shit went unscooped. The Mail’s Raab In Isolation After Contact With Empathic Human, the Times’s Trump Machine-Guns Cheering MAGA Crowd, Gains Power From Drinking Victims’ Blood, the Sun’s Boris Congratulates Trump on Fake Win With Gift Of Queen Victoria’s Porcelain Anal Beads, the Star’s Hancock Commits To Starving 10,000 Children To Death By Christmas, the Guardian’s Patel Sacrifices Gove During Weird Three-Way Sex Ritual Involving Chicken, and the National’s Sturgeon Cross, But No One Entirely Sure Why lay in a neat and undisturbed pile.
The only sound, bar the occasional slurp at a mug of tea, was the click of Barney’s scissors as he cut the hair of the final customer of the day, Old Man McGuire, who’d squeezed in just under the wire at five twenty-nine. McGuire had humphed a couple of times but had yet to engage any of them in conversation.
Of course, he’d only been sitting there for two minutes, seventeen seconds, so it was never likely to be long in coming.
‘So,’ he began, and Barney looked over the top of McGuire’s wavy Ivy League cut and looked wearily at him in the mirror, ‘they say Trump’s going full tired-three-year-old-not-getting-sweeties-at-the-supermarket.’
Barney sighed inwardly. They’d been doing well not talking about the orange wankturnip, as news of his slow death gripped the world, and he’d been enjoying the peace. At home, Monk was glued to the news, the slow-changing graphics, the breathless commentary, which to Barney seemed a bit like people getting excited during the afternoon session of the fifth day of a rain-affected Test Match that was still in the first innings. His dipping in and out, not looking for several hours, casting an occasional glance, reaped a few more benefits in watching the gradual change from red to blue.
‘That was inevitable,’ said Barney, reluctantly joining the fray.
‘You did say last week. Of course, you said he was going to lose heavily.’
‘He might yet, once the dust has settled,’ said Barney, saying the right things, words leaving his mouth one after the other. ‘Maybe not as much as it should’ve been, but the trouble with democracy is, as we know, people are idiots. What can you do?’
‘You’re fucking right about that,’ said McGuire, nodding, and Barney raised the scissors for a moment to avoid disaster.
‘And here we are,’ he said, ‘just people discussing the idiocy of our fellow humans, who are at this very moment somewhere else, doing something not so different from us, discussing our idiocy.’
McGuire gave Barney a familiar eyebrow, then glanced at Keanu to see if he was going to join the fray. Keanu was smiling, nodding to himself, as the last cup of tea of the day drew towards its end.
‘What are you smiling at?’ humphed McGuire.
‘Classic Barney,’ said Keanu. ‘That deep philosophical shit. I love it.’
‘Deep! You could paddle in your boss’s philosophy and no’ get the soles of your shoes wet,’ tutted McGuire. Barney and Keanu laughed, bringing an even bigger disgruntled frown to McGuire’s face.
‘Arf,’ said Igor, and that at least was something they could all agree on.
‘Anyway,’ said McGuire, ‘the jury’s still out on your prediction, son, so you’re not out of the woods yet.’
‘Which one?’ asked Barney.
‘You says last week Trump would resign rather than hand over power.’
‘Oh, that.’
‘Aye, that. I put fifty quid on that, so you’d better be right.’
‘Seriously, what d’you do that for, Frank?’
‘You’re a sage!’
‘You keep saying I talk shite!’
‘Calm the fuck down, son, it’s only fifty quid. I’ll buy you a doughnut if it pays off.’
‘What odds did you get, Mr McGuire?’ asked Keanu.
‘50-1 on.’
Barney and Keanu glanced at each other, Barney rolling his eyes.
‘Aye, all right, son, could’ve been better. Turns out everyone thinks Trump’s going to resign.’
‘So, if he resigns, you win a pound.’
‘Aye.’
‘Good luck, Frank. There were no other better bets you could’ve made?’
‘There were others, didn’t fancy any of them.’
‘Arf?’ asked Igor, looking over the top of his mug. Igor himself was not impartial to taking a wee chance online, but he largely bet speculative money on Scotland to win games of football, so lifetime he was down three and a half million pounds.
‘100-1 on that Trump uses the word fuck during a press conference.’
‘Seems fair,’ said Keanu.
Barney might, under other circumstances, have stopped the cut to let the conversation play out, but it was the end of the day, it was a Friday, and he was looking forward to going home, sitting down to dinner with DS Monk over a bottle of wine and a tuna steak, and hoping that someone might have been brutally murdered in Millport that day so she had something to talk about other than the American election.
‘250-1 on that he goes full scorched earth, burning down as many of the institutions of the state as he can on his way out the door.’
‘Hasn’t he been doing that already?’ said Keanu.
‘The bookies think it’ll get worse. Oh, you do get a favourable 15-1 that he moves to Arkansas and marries Ivanka, but I’m sceptical.’
‘Aye, she’ll cut him loose soon as look at him. That is a one-way lust, by the way,’ said Keanu.
‘You’re done,’ said Barney, stepping back, and whipping the cape away from Old Man McGuire’s neck.
McGuire looked angrily at himself in the mirror. Of course, he hardly had any hair, and there was nothing to see, so he was in no position to complain. But Being In No Position To Complain And Still Complaining was his middle name.
‘The fuck?’ he said.
‘Frank, you’re done. It’s the end of the week. We all need to go home, open a bottle of wine, and watch the Mandalorian.’
‘The fuck is that?’
‘It’s a show, Frank. Come on, up, oot!’
Old Man McGuire reluctantly accepted his fate, dragged himself to his feet, dusted off his shoulders, looked at himself in the mirror, and then took his coat from the hook above the bench.
Barney lifted the mug of tea he’d left hanging, took a quick swallow, winced at the fact that it had inevitably long gone cold, and then looked around the rest of the shop, as the others rose and the end of the day settled upon them.
‘As CJ used to say, that’s a full lid,’ said Barney, and he took the mugs from Igor and Keanu, and turned to the back of the shop to wash up.
‘The fuck is CJ?’ barked McGuire.
‘See you next week, Frank,’ said Barney.
‘The fuck is CJ?’ asked McGuire more quietly, directing the question to Keanu.
‘No one knows, Frank,’ said Keanu, ‘no one knows.’
And with that, Igor began to sweep up the last hairfall of the day, Keanu went about the business of wrapping up the shop, Old Man McGuire headed out into the chill of evening, once again leaving without paying – McGuire never paid – and somewhere, far beyond their understanding, the show’s theme music started up and the credits began to roll…
