Series 2, Episode 4: The Schrödinger Impasse
‘You know what I hate,’ said Keanu McPherson, abruptly shattering a lovely silence. The silence of the seaside, on a still day, a flat, silvery-grey calm stretching away from them to the mainland, and the island of Little Cumbrae, and onto the distant horizon, and the southern passages to the tropics.
The men of the Millport barbershop were leaning on the promenade wall, taking in the view. In fifteen minutes, there’d been no conversation, and they’d only had to greet three or four people who’d passed them by. There had been others, but despite their reluctant worldwide fame, not everyone knew the men of the local tonsorium.
‘Arf?’ asked Igor, tonsorium assistant, quicker to the interruption to their tranquility than Barney Thomson, tonsorium legend, who was having to drag himself back from an idyl of sitting with Monk on top of Goatfell, looking west out over Kintyre, a bag of crisps, a glass of pinot, a smoked salmon and cream cheese on homemade granary.
‘End of,’ said Keanu.
He could have meant that he wasn’t going to say anything else, but they understood what he was getting at.
‘Hmm,’ said Barney.
‘Arf,’ agreed Igor.
They could have left it there, given they were all in agreement, but they understood that only by talking it through would Keanu exorcise the end of demon.
‘First off, it’s just ugly use of language, right? It’s blunt and unattractive. English can be wonderful and colourful and glorious, and it can be crude and vulgar, it can be sweeping, and it can be claustrophobic. End of is just, tight, and short, and sour. Look, I know tight can be good, but this isn’t good tight. This is ugly, constraining tight.’
‘I get you,’ said Barney.
He took a drink of coffee. That cup of coffee was certainly lasting a long time, and keeping hot too, almost as though none of this actually existed in real life.
‘And the presumption of it. I mean, I know a lot of people use it in a comedic way, and fine, on you go. But if you use it seriously, it’s like, who made you king? Who made you the arbiter of the discussion? Who said that you were so right that this isn’t worth talking about anymore? This world, the media, newspapers, everything, they demand everything is simple, black and white, reduceable to a five-word headline. But virtually everything is grey, so much in life is nuanced. And if something really is beyond dispute… I don’t know, like dark chocolate digestives are Satan’s work, or Brexit is moronically stupid, and someone’s disagreeing with you, you don’t want to say Brexit is ludicrous, end of, do you? You want to have it out.’
He was becoming agitated, which isn’t a good state to be in when looking at a calming view, so he took a drink of coffee to slow down, regaining his equilibrium.
‘What’s your plan?’ asked Barney.
To be honest, Barney never wanted to have it out with anyone. On the odd occasion that someone in the shop spoke positively about Brexit, for example, he would never engage them in conversation, and would generally have the haircut completed, to the highest specifications, in under two minutes, in order to get rid of them. Sure, he might find them so objectionable he’d want to give them a stinker, but that was unlikely to hurry anyone silently on their way.
‘To stamp it out?’ said Keanu.
‘Yep.’
They stared across the water in silence for some time. Gulls came and went, coffee was drunk. In the far distance, on the grey line of the horizon, the Ardrossan ferry appeared from behind the edge of Little Cumbrae, inching its way towards the mainland. Old Man Littleferry appeared on his mobility scooter to their right, shooting along the pavement, and he waved as he zipped past them, his few strands of hair blowing playfully in the wind.
‘I’ll be in on Monday for my Quaffed Pompadour Overlay!’ he called, as he went on his way.
‘George,’ said Barney, tipping his mug.
And once again, silence resumed.
‘Don’t have many options,’ said Keanu eventually. ‘One, in fact.’
‘Arf?’
‘Become an uber-famous writer, which I think I may well achieve with my new erotic thriller, The Princess and The Caveman, so that everything I do is analysed and quoted, and then through this medium I can spread the word. Stop using end of, or you will become what you despise.’
A gull swooped before them from on high, down into the water, abruptly coming away empty-beaked, and then it flew off into the air, flying up and away, quickly blending into the grey/white of the low cloud.
They drank their coffee, the waves continued to silently wash, never-ending, upon the rocks.
‘Aye,’ said Barney, after a while.
The first haircuts of the day. Too early yet to say how the day would turn, although only rarely in these coronavirus times would the shop be busy. People were wary. Well, some people were wary. Others were idiots. The unwary were the kind of people who would’ve gone on holiday to Belgium in October 1918, rather than leave it a couple of months.
Not that Belgium was the world’s premier holiday destination in December 1918, but at least there was less chance of getting shot if you lit a cigarette after nightfall.
There was a quiet, harmonious hum about the barbershop, the gentle sounds of a day going about its business. The click of scissors, the sweep of Igor’s brush, the rustle of a newspaper, the swish of cape fabric, the soft sound of a barber’s footfall as he moved slowly around the chair.
Barney was cutting the hair of Old Man Schrödinger, who had said he might want a haircut, or he might not, and so Barney was just randomly snipping away, doing enough to make the customer feel like he was getting something done, but not enough for anyone to notice any difference about his hair. Keanu was giving Old Man McCartney the same Mull of Kintyre cut he’d been getting since 1977. McCartney was reading the Independent – headline, Trump Looks To Baby Yoda In Last-Ditch Election Overturn Attempt – and Schrödinger was reading the Sun, headline, Prem Star’s Covid Babe’s Yuletide Sex Balm Cure.
On the customers’ bench behind them, a bench currently unoccupied by customers, was the remainder of that day’s pile of journalistic detritus. From the top, the Telegraph, headline, Bravura Boris In Barnier Buggeration Bruhaha; the Express, EU Fuckers Poison Hero Brits With Toxic Belgian Serum; the Times, leading with Patel Takes To Killing Immigrants With Bare Hands At Dover Arrivals; the Star with Hancock Even Bigger Asshole Than First Thought; the Mail with I Spit On Your Grave, Crows Raab, As He Steps Over Cold Corpse Of Overworked Civil Servant; and the National, with Sturgeon Accused Of Using Competence To Show Up Tories, were being left to languish, unread. Such was the fate of the newspapers in these times.
‘See yon Trump,’ began Old Man Schrödinger, indicating the newspaper with a small nod, then he allowed silence to return as he appeared to decide that seeing yon Trump was a beginning, a middle and an end of a discussion in itself.
Barney, naturally, would have let it go. Keanu, however, was not one to leave an itch unscratched.
‘What’s he done now, Mr Schrödinger?’ he asked after a few moments, smiling as Barney slung him the familiar rueful glance.
Schrödinger took a second, then he looked strangely at Keanu in the mirror and said, ‘Who?’
‘Trump.’
‘What about him?’
‘What’s he done now?’
Schrödinger looked animatedly baffled – Barney temporarily suspended the cut to avoid serious injury – then he said, ‘Fuck should I know what he’s done?’
‘You just said, see yon Trump,’ said Keanu.
‘Did I?’
‘Aye.’
‘Why’d I say that?’
Barney gave Keanu the same look, times a thousand. Keanu smiled broadly at Old Man Schrödinger.
‘We don’t know, Mr Schrödinger. You must’ve read something about him in the paper.’
Schrödinger turned away and looked curiously at himself in the mirror.
‘What was the last thing you read?’ asked Keanu, hoping to nudge him, as he didn’t seem to be doing the obvious thing of actually looking at the paper, albeit he had turned the page since he’d started what was quickly becoming known as “the Trump Affair.”
‘One of they Fifty Shades books,’ said Schrödinger, ‘though I don’t know what that’s got to do with it.’
‘In the paper!’ snapped Barney, unable to stop himself.
‘Oh, aye, which one?’ asked Old Man McCartney, joining the fun. ‘I love they books. My favourite’s Fifty Shades Anal.’
‘I’ve no’ heard of that one,’ said Schrödinger.
‘Got it in the library, but you can only find it if you go in through the back door,’ and then he chuckled.
Yes, in the blessed name of Dan Brown, he chuckled.
‘Help m’boab,’ muttered Schrödinger, ‘the neck of some people. Where was I?’
Barney was now standing with his arms folded looking at Keanu, who had his lips pressed together, trying not to laugh. Igor was sniggering at the back of the shop.
‘You were trying to remember which Fifty Shades book you just read,’ said McCartney.
‘No, you weren’t,’ Barney threw into the ring.
‘Fifty Shades Moister,’ said Schrödinger, nodding to himself.
‘Oh, nice,’ said McCartney. ‘Terrific lesbian scenes. Really gets me and Margaret going on a Friday night. I like to read it to her in the bath.’
‘Oh my fucking God,’ said Barney quietly to himself, and he ran the hand that wasn’t holding a pair of scissors across his face.
‘Erwin,’ said Barney, looking up, determined to bring the madness to a conclusion, ‘two minutes ago, or maybe it was two days, we’ve been here so long it’s hard to tell, you were reading the paper, on the page before the one you’re currently looking at, and you said, see yon Trump. Then, to the delight of most of us, but for some reason to the consternation of my young, soon-to-be former employee, you didn’t add to that. So, will you please, for the love of God, turn back the page, see what it is that Trump did to get you talking, and tell Keanu. And then I’m going to finish your haircut, and you can be on your way.’
‘Haircut? I don’t remember actually asking for a haircut.’ A beat, then he added, ‘Or, did I?’
‘Turn back the page, Erwin.’
‘I’m not going anywhere, by the way,’ said Keanu, smiling. ‘I’ve got rights.’
‘Arf!’
Barney gave them both a look, sighed heavily, then looked over Schrödinger’s shoulder, as he turned the page, to see the Trump article.
There were three news articles across the double page. Alien Monster Shark Discovered Off Dover ‘Not One Of Mine,’ Claims Patel; With Brexit In Mind, Man Eats Entire Horse To Lay Down Winter Fat; and New Edition Of Government Minister Top Trumps Gives Gove 0/10 In Every Category, Except Being A Cunt.
Schrödinger studied the page. Igor and Keanu craned their necks to have a look. Everyone read the headlines. Barney gave his colleagues the most side-eyed side-eye anyone ever gave anyone else in the long, storied history of the side-eye.
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Schrödinger. ‘Think you’re full of shite, Barney.’
Barney laid down the scissors, lifted the brush, quickly brushed off Schrödinger’s shoulders and neck, then whipped off the cape.
‘You’re done, Erwin. That’ll be ten pounds. You can pay Igor on your way out.’
Schrödinger stared at himself in the mirror, a little surprised. Although, to be fair, he quite liked the new haircut.
Or did he?
‘Hmm,’ he said.
‘Come on,’ said Barney, ‘up, oot. There’s a queue.’
Keanu laughed again and turned back to McCartney’s Mull of Kintyre. Igor, smiling cheekily to himself, bent once more over his broom. Barney walked to the back of the shop to turn the radio on. The shop went about its business.
And somewhere, out there, in the miles and depths of British coastal waters, Priti Patel’s alien monster shark bided its time.
Mid-afternoon. The day had continued much as it had begun, with customers sporadic, the silences long and golden. Barney and Igor found the situation not disagreeable. Keanu, as was invariably the case, was getting bored. He was looking for a little more action, and while that could have been a car chase along the front, a gigantic explosion at the nuclear power station on the mainland, or an invasion of a giant, crossbred aquatic species, bent on world domination, he would’ve settled for giving a few more people a short back and sides.
As it was, the men of the shop currently had no customers, and they’d taken advantage of the situation by once again standing across the road, leaning on the white promenade wall, looking out to sea, drinking a cup of tea. There was a chill in the air, a hint of winter, the taste of colder weather to come.
‘How long d’you think before we get this vaccine?’ Keanu threw into the silence.
Igor didn’t hear. Obviously, being deaf, Igor never heard anything, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t pick up conversations. The means by which he did this was unknown to science, however. Nevertheless, on this occasion, he was staring at the horizon, dreaming of the far away lands to the south, lands of warm sea breezes and a bright midday sun, so that the remote vibrations of Keanu’s words did not penetrate.
Which left Barney in the lurch, having to engage in conversation when he didn’t really feel like it. Sure, he was self-aware enough to realise that he was succumbing to the lockdown, that this year of lack of social interaction had swallowed him up and that soon enough he would be happy to never talk to anyone again. But was that a bad thing? Think how wonderful it would be if you never had to listen to anyone talk?
‘Sorry?’ he said, giving Keanu a glance.
‘How long d’you think before we get this vaccine?’
‘Hmm,’ said Barney, and he took a drink of tea, before indicating the great beyond with his mug. ‘So, they say they’ve got 800,000 vaccines arriving about now. Population of the UK is, what…?’
’66.65 million,’ said Keanu. ‘I looked.’
‘Did you do the maths?’
‘Aye. If you get 800,000 vaccines a week, that means 83 weeks.’
‘There are a few things to factor in there,’ said Barney.
‘Such as, will we actually get 800,000 vaccines every week?’
‘Aye.’
‘Since the government were such gloaty assholes about how brilliant we are, will the next lot of vaccines accidentally get redirected back into the EU?’
‘Aye.’
‘Once we produce our own, British flag vaccines, made from the distilled essence of Spitfires and baked beans, will we be producing a million a week, or eight million a week?’ A pause, Barney left him to it. ‘Or eight a week?’
‘Aye,’ said Barney.
They stared for a moment out across the grey-blue yonder, contemplating the future of humanity.
‘Seems to me,’ said Barney, ‘that we don’t have enough information yet to be able to make an informed guess.’
‘But we’re barbers,’ said Keanu, ‘we instinctively know stuff.’
‘Good point. I’ll say we’ll have everyone who wants or needs to be vaccinated done by summer.’
‘Which summer?’
‘2036.’
‘Arf!’ said Igor, having tuned in somewhere along the way, nodding in agreement.
With a flurry of white, and an unusually loud squawk, a gull landed on the wall a few feet along from them, and the men turned to look at it. Had the gull had a camera, it would have made a decent photo. The three guys in a row, all staring to their right, the perfect shot for an album cover. Keanu & The Deadmen, Show Me the Way to Millport & Other Songs.
‘What?’ said Barney.
The seagull cocked its head to the side, studied their mugs of tea and, having decided it preferred the idea of coffee, turned away, righted itself for push-off, and then soared quickly into the cold afternoon sky.
‘And there was you,’ said Barney to Keanu, indicating the gull, ‘thinking that nothing was going to happen today.’
‘Ha!’ said Keanu, then he made the banner headline gesture. ‘Gull In New Wall Outrage.’
‘FTSE Plummets After Gull Wall-Landing Shock,’ said Barney.
‘Stoned Gull Misses Sea, Narrowly Escapes Death In Wall Plunge.’
‘Gull Would Have Died Without Brexit, Says Gove.’
‘Trump Insists Gull Missed Wall,’ joined in Igor, in his own way.
‘Sex Shame Of Anti-Vax Fish Killer,’ said Keanu.
And so the afternoon passed.
‘Anything interesting happen in Millport today?’ asked Keanu.
The shop was closed, darkness had long since fallen, the men of the shop were sitting around, drinking the essential wrap-up cup of tea of the day, and had been joined by Detective Sergeant Monk, come to chew the end-of-the-day fat, before heading home with Barney for a night of flicking endlessly through a million different television viewing options, watching several hundred trailers, while not actually watching a single show. Such were the evenings of so many spent in these dark days, as the lights of civilisation dimmed.
‘Hmm,’ said Monk, and the men each gave her an interested eyebrow. There had been a lot going on in that single syllable.
‘Ooh,’ said Keanu, ‘this sounds promising. Did you break up a diamond smuggling operation or get into a helicopter chase and shootout with Columbian drug barons?’
‘Not today.’
‘OK, cool, cool. Go on.’
Barney and Igor drank their tea, a little more grounded in their expectations.
‘Well, it turns out Old Man Limburger still has the hand gun from his National Service days just after the war. A Browning. Never registered it, of course, because these people never did. Anyway, no one’s getting up in the grill of these old guys, because invariably those weapons are going to be kept in a shoebox in the loft, and their existence will only be discovered when they die. Except Old Man Limburger is a conspiracy theorist…’
‘Tell us about it,’ said Barney, ruefully.
‘Ah,’ said Monk, ‘you get to hear it, do you?’
‘He’s in here every couple of weeks, and he’s in on them all. Moon landing, JFK, Covid as a Chinese world domination tool, alternatively, the world is run by giant lizards…’
‘For a while he was pushing a theory that the Pope and Donald Trump were the same person, but he seems to have dropped that one recently,’ chipped in Keanu.
‘Good to know,’ said Monk. ‘So, Mr Limburger keeps his old gun polished, armed, ready to go. You know, in case the Russians invade, or the French, or, in fact, in case Constable Gainsborough and I decide to stage a takeover of the island.’
‘God, he hasn’t killed someone, has he?’ asked Barney, seeing where this was going.
‘It’s weirder than that.’
‘So, no one’s dead?’
‘No one’s dead.’
‘OK, good,’ said Barney. ‘I’ll relax and enjoy it. What’s the weirdness?’
Monk took a drink of tea, the storyteller’s narrative pause, nodded to Igor at its quality, and then continued. ‘Today he was sitting out the front of his house, you know at the back of Kames, and he was cleaning his gun. Looks like he does that a lot.’
‘I’ve seen him,’ said Barney. ‘Didn’t realise he was cleaning a gun.’
‘Me neither,’ said Monk. ‘Anyway, he accidentally discharged the weapon.’
‘Arf.’
‘Like I said, no one died. Or got injured. Here’s where it gets weird. The only reason we get to hear about this, because no one in the area reported hearing a gunshot, was because of young Billy Theroux.’
‘Top-down pompadour undercut,’ said Keanu.
‘That’s what you call it?’
‘Gave it to him three days ago.’
‘So, young Billy’s out for a walk. He’s got his walking boots on, as it’s been a bit wet recently, and he’s aiming to go round the bay, and up the hill behind our place, and, as we know, it’s pretty muddy scrambling up that hill at the moment. He has long laces on his boots. Every time he goes out, he doubles knots them. Says he did it before he went out, same as always, nice and tight. Old laces, once they’re tied, they stay tied. He’s walking along, something catches his eye, he notices the second knot has come loose on his left boot. That’s odd, he thinks. He bends down to tie it, and… boom… gun shot, he feels the bullet whiz pass the top of his head, misses him by who knows how little, and disappears into the trees.’
Keanu let out a long whistle. Igor looked suspicious.
‘And luckily,’ said Barney, warily, ‘as they say on Thomas the Tank Engine, no one got hurt.’
‘Yep,’ said Monk, ‘that’s the size of it. Young Billy, of course, is seeing a higher power at work.’
‘He hasn’t found Jesus, has he?’
‘Seems to be leaning more towards Slartibartfast. Meanwhile, Old Man Limburger is seeing some other kind of conspiracy, where young Billy is in league with this higher power, and that’s what saved his life. Nevertheless, given that he nearly accidentally killed the kid, he has to accept that no one really cares what he thinks.’
‘You take his gun off him?’
‘Oh, yes. He wasn’t happy, but you know…’
Story dispatched, she took another drink of tea, nodded to herself again, accepted that she’d imparted all the details she needed to, and then settled back. ‘And that was that for Millport today, really.’
‘Weird,’ said Keanu. ‘As you said.’
‘Yep.’
‘Maybe it was a metaphor.’
‘For what?’
‘No one knows. I mean, it’s a slightly surreal tale in the way you’d get in fiction, but not in real life. So, maybe if you bring a literary scholar into the investigation, they might be able to help you.’
‘It’s not actually an investigation.’
‘Well, if you don’t want to find out what really happened…’
He smiled, she shared it, and then together they drank their tea, and if it wasn’t just the thing, but they were all more or less finishing at the same time, right on cue to be ready to close up, leave the shop, and head home.
‘Tell me something, boss,’ said Keanu, throwing a last-minute conversational spanner in the works.
‘Hmm?’
‘Isn’t it weird that, even though you’ve never had children, you can quote Thomas The Tank Engine? How did that happen?’
Barney smiled. Igor sniggered to himself. Monk looked expectantly at Barney.
‘Good spot,’ she said. ‘He quoted Winnie the Pooh at me last week.’
‘That’s because I don’t write my own lines,’ said Barney. ‘The woman who does it must have kids. Pretty straightforward, really.’
‘Your lines are written by a woman?’
‘Possibly. We’ll never know.’
‘Kind of feel like you’d say more if you were written by a woman,’ said Keanu. Barney smiled, and Monk threw a silent fuck off across the shop.
‘Anyway,’ said Monk, ‘maybe you could get this woman to write you a few more lines. We’d all appreciate it.’
‘I’ll speak to her,’ said Barney, ‘see what we can work out.’
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was all she wrote…
The men of the Millport barbershop were leaning on the promenade wall, taking in the view. In fifteen minutes, there’d been no conversation, and they’d only had to greet three or four people who’d passed them by. There had been others, but despite their reluctant worldwide fame, not everyone knew the men of the local tonsorium.
‘Arf?’ asked Igor, tonsorium assistant, quicker to the interruption to their tranquility than Barney Thomson, tonsorium legend, who was having to drag himself back from an idyl of sitting with Monk on top of Goatfell, looking west out over Kintyre, a bag of crisps, a glass of pinot, a smoked salmon and cream cheese on homemade granary.
‘End of,’ said Keanu.
He could have meant that he wasn’t going to say anything else, but they understood what he was getting at.
‘Hmm,’ said Barney.
‘Arf,’ agreed Igor.
They could have left it there, given they were all in agreement, but they understood that only by talking it through would Keanu exorcise the end of demon.
‘First off, it’s just ugly use of language, right? It’s blunt and unattractive. English can be wonderful and colourful and glorious, and it can be crude and vulgar, it can be sweeping, and it can be claustrophobic. End of is just, tight, and short, and sour. Look, I know tight can be good, but this isn’t good tight. This is ugly, constraining tight.’
‘I get you,’ said Barney.
He took a drink of coffee. That cup of coffee was certainly lasting a long time, and keeping hot too, almost as though none of this actually existed in real life.
‘And the presumption of it. I mean, I know a lot of people use it in a comedic way, and fine, on you go. But if you use it seriously, it’s like, who made you king? Who made you the arbiter of the discussion? Who said that you were so right that this isn’t worth talking about anymore? This world, the media, newspapers, everything, they demand everything is simple, black and white, reduceable to a five-word headline. But virtually everything is grey, so much in life is nuanced. And if something really is beyond dispute… I don’t know, like dark chocolate digestives are Satan’s work, or Brexit is moronically stupid, and someone’s disagreeing with you, you don’t want to say Brexit is ludicrous, end of, do you? You want to have it out.’
He was becoming agitated, which isn’t a good state to be in when looking at a calming view, so he took a drink of coffee to slow down, regaining his equilibrium.
‘What’s your plan?’ asked Barney.
To be honest, Barney never wanted to have it out with anyone. On the odd occasion that someone in the shop spoke positively about Brexit, for example, he would never engage them in conversation, and would generally have the haircut completed, to the highest specifications, in under two minutes, in order to get rid of them. Sure, he might find them so objectionable he’d want to give them a stinker, but that was unlikely to hurry anyone silently on their way.
‘To stamp it out?’ said Keanu.
‘Yep.’
They stared across the water in silence for some time. Gulls came and went, coffee was drunk. In the far distance, on the grey line of the horizon, the Ardrossan ferry appeared from behind the edge of Little Cumbrae, inching its way towards the mainland. Old Man Littleferry appeared on his mobility scooter to their right, shooting along the pavement, and he waved as he zipped past them, his few strands of hair blowing playfully in the wind.
‘I’ll be in on Monday for my Quaffed Pompadour Overlay!’ he called, as he went on his way.
‘George,’ said Barney, tipping his mug.
And once again, silence resumed.
‘Don’t have many options,’ said Keanu eventually. ‘One, in fact.’
‘Arf?’
‘Become an uber-famous writer, which I think I may well achieve with my new erotic thriller, The Princess and The Caveman, so that everything I do is analysed and quoted, and then through this medium I can spread the word. Stop using end of, or you will become what you despise.’
A gull swooped before them from on high, down into the water, abruptly coming away empty-beaked, and then it flew off into the air, flying up and away, quickly blending into the grey/white of the low cloud.
They drank their coffee, the waves continued to silently wash, never-ending, upon the rocks.
‘Aye,’ said Barney, after a while.
* * *
Not that Belgium was the world’s premier holiday destination in December 1918, but at least there was less chance of getting shot if you lit a cigarette after nightfall.
There was a quiet, harmonious hum about the barbershop, the gentle sounds of a day going about its business. The click of scissors, the sweep of Igor’s brush, the rustle of a newspaper, the swish of cape fabric, the soft sound of a barber’s footfall as he moved slowly around the chair.
Barney was cutting the hair of Old Man Schrödinger, who had said he might want a haircut, or he might not, and so Barney was just randomly snipping away, doing enough to make the customer feel like he was getting something done, but not enough for anyone to notice any difference about his hair. Keanu was giving Old Man McCartney the same Mull of Kintyre cut he’d been getting since 1977. McCartney was reading the Independent – headline, Trump Looks To Baby Yoda In Last-Ditch Election Overturn Attempt – and Schrödinger was reading the Sun, headline, Prem Star’s Covid Babe’s Yuletide Sex Balm Cure.
On the customers’ bench behind them, a bench currently unoccupied by customers, was the remainder of that day’s pile of journalistic detritus. From the top, the Telegraph, headline, Bravura Boris In Barnier Buggeration Bruhaha; the Express, EU Fuckers Poison Hero Brits With Toxic Belgian Serum; the Times, leading with Patel Takes To Killing Immigrants With Bare Hands At Dover Arrivals; the Star with Hancock Even Bigger Asshole Than First Thought; the Mail with I Spit On Your Grave, Crows Raab, As He Steps Over Cold Corpse Of Overworked Civil Servant; and the National, with Sturgeon Accused Of Using Competence To Show Up Tories, were being left to languish, unread. Such was the fate of the newspapers in these times.
‘See yon Trump,’ began Old Man Schrödinger, indicating the newspaper with a small nod, then he allowed silence to return as he appeared to decide that seeing yon Trump was a beginning, a middle and an end of a discussion in itself.
Barney, naturally, would have let it go. Keanu, however, was not one to leave an itch unscratched.
‘What’s he done now, Mr Schrödinger?’ he asked after a few moments, smiling as Barney slung him the familiar rueful glance.
Schrödinger took a second, then he looked strangely at Keanu in the mirror and said, ‘Who?’
‘Trump.’
‘What about him?’
‘What’s he done now?’
Schrödinger looked animatedly baffled – Barney temporarily suspended the cut to avoid serious injury – then he said, ‘Fuck should I know what he’s done?’
‘You just said, see yon Trump,’ said Keanu.
‘Did I?’
‘Aye.’
‘Why’d I say that?’
Barney gave Keanu the same look, times a thousand. Keanu smiled broadly at Old Man Schrödinger.
‘We don’t know, Mr Schrödinger. You must’ve read something about him in the paper.’
Schrödinger turned away and looked curiously at himself in the mirror.
‘What was the last thing you read?’ asked Keanu, hoping to nudge him, as he didn’t seem to be doing the obvious thing of actually looking at the paper, albeit he had turned the page since he’d started what was quickly becoming known as “the Trump Affair.”
‘One of they Fifty Shades books,’ said Schrödinger, ‘though I don’t know what that’s got to do with it.’
‘In the paper!’ snapped Barney, unable to stop himself.
‘Oh, aye, which one?’ asked Old Man McCartney, joining the fun. ‘I love they books. My favourite’s Fifty Shades Anal.’
‘I’ve no’ heard of that one,’ said Schrödinger.
‘Got it in the library, but you can only find it if you go in through the back door,’ and then he chuckled.
Yes, in the blessed name of Dan Brown, he chuckled.
‘Help m’boab,’ muttered Schrödinger, ‘the neck of some people. Where was I?’
Barney was now standing with his arms folded looking at Keanu, who had his lips pressed together, trying not to laugh. Igor was sniggering at the back of the shop.
‘You were trying to remember which Fifty Shades book you just read,’ said McCartney.
‘No, you weren’t,’ Barney threw into the ring.
‘Fifty Shades Moister,’ said Schrödinger, nodding to himself.
‘Oh, nice,’ said McCartney. ‘Terrific lesbian scenes. Really gets me and Margaret going on a Friday night. I like to read it to her in the bath.’
‘Oh my fucking God,’ said Barney quietly to himself, and he ran the hand that wasn’t holding a pair of scissors across his face.
‘Erwin,’ said Barney, looking up, determined to bring the madness to a conclusion, ‘two minutes ago, or maybe it was two days, we’ve been here so long it’s hard to tell, you were reading the paper, on the page before the one you’re currently looking at, and you said, see yon Trump. Then, to the delight of most of us, but for some reason to the consternation of my young, soon-to-be former employee, you didn’t add to that. So, will you please, for the love of God, turn back the page, see what it is that Trump did to get you talking, and tell Keanu. And then I’m going to finish your haircut, and you can be on your way.’
‘Haircut? I don’t remember actually asking for a haircut.’ A beat, then he added, ‘Or, did I?’
‘Turn back the page, Erwin.’
‘I’m not going anywhere, by the way,’ said Keanu, smiling. ‘I’ve got rights.’
‘Arf!’
Barney gave them both a look, sighed heavily, then looked over Schrödinger’s shoulder, as he turned the page, to see the Trump article.
There were three news articles across the double page. Alien Monster Shark Discovered Off Dover ‘Not One Of Mine,’ Claims Patel; With Brexit In Mind, Man Eats Entire Horse To Lay Down Winter Fat; and New Edition Of Government Minister Top Trumps Gives Gove 0/10 In Every Category, Except Being A Cunt.
Schrödinger studied the page. Igor and Keanu craned their necks to have a look. Everyone read the headlines. Barney gave his colleagues the most side-eyed side-eye anyone ever gave anyone else in the long, storied history of the side-eye.
‘Don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Schrödinger. ‘Think you’re full of shite, Barney.’
Barney laid down the scissors, lifted the brush, quickly brushed off Schrödinger’s shoulders and neck, then whipped off the cape.
‘You’re done, Erwin. That’ll be ten pounds. You can pay Igor on your way out.’
Schrödinger stared at himself in the mirror, a little surprised. Although, to be fair, he quite liked the new haircut.
Or did he?
‘Hmm,’ he said.
‘Come on,’ said Barney, ‘up, oot. There’s a queue.’
Keanu laughed again and turned back to McCartney’s Mull of Kintyre. Igor, smiling cheekily to himself, bent once more over his broom. Barney walked to the back of the shop to turn the radio on. The shop went about its business.
And somewhere, out there, in the miles and depths of British coastal waters, Priti Patel’s alien monster shark bided its time.
* * *
As it was, the men of the shop currently had no customers, and they’d taken advantage of the situation by once again standing across the road, leaning on the white promenade wall, looking out to sea, drinking a cup of tea. There was a chill in the air, a hint of winter, the taste of colder weather to come.
‘How long d’you think before we get this vaccine?’ Keanu threw into the silence.
Igor didn’t hear. Obviously, being deaf, Igor never heard anything, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t pick up conversations. The means by which he did this was unknown to science, however. Nevertheless, on this occasion, he was staring at the horizon, dreaming of the far away lands to the south, lands of warm sea breezes and a bright midday sun, so that the remote vibrations of Keanu’s words did not penetrate.
Which left Barney in the lurch, having to engage in conversation when he didn’t really feel like it. Sure, he was self-aware enough to realise that he was succumbing to the lockdown, that this year of lack of social interaction had swallowed him up and that soon enough he would be happy to never talk to anyone again. But was that a bad thing? Think how wonderful it would be if you never had to listen to anyone talk?
‘Sorry?’ he said, giving Keanu a glance.
‘How long d’you think before we get this vaccine?’
‘Hmm,’ said Barney, and he took a drink of tea, before indicating the great beyond with his mug. ‘So, they say they’ve got 800,000 vaccines arriving about now. Population of the UK is, what…?’
’66.65 million,’ said Keanu. ‘I looked.’
‘Did you do the maths?’
‘Aye. If you get 800,000 vaccines a week, that means 83 weeks.’
‘There are a few things to factor in there,’ said Barney.
‘Such as, will we actually get 800,000 vaccines every week?’
‘Aye.’
‘Since the government were such gloaty assholes about how brilliant we are, will the next lot of vaccines accidentally get redirected back into the EU?’
‘Aye.’
‘Once we produce our own, British flag vaccines, made from the distilled essence of Spitfires and baked beans, will we be producing a million a week, or eight million a week?’ A pause, Barney left him to it. ‘Or eight a week?’
‘Aye,’ said Barney.
They stared for a moment out across the grey-blue yonder, contemplating the future of humanity.
‘Seems to me,’ said Barney, ‘that we don’t have enough information yet to be able to make an informed guess.’
‘But we’re barbers,’ said Keanu, ‘we instinctively know stuff.’
‘Good point. I’ll say we’ll have everyone who wants or needs to be vaccinated done by summer.’
‘Which summer?’
‘2036.’
‘Arf!’ said Igor, having tuned in somewhere along the way, nodding in agreement.
With a flurry of white, and an unusually loud squawk, a gull landed on the wall a few feet along from them, and the men turned to look at it. Had the gull had a camera, it would have made a decent photo. The three guys in a row, all staring to their right, the perfect shot for an album cover. Keanu & The Deadmen, Show Me the Way to Millport & Other Songs.
‘What?’ said Barney.
The seagull cocked its head to the side, studied their mugs of tea and, having decided it preferred the idea of coffee, turned away, righted itself for push-off, and then soared quickly into the cold afternoon sky.
‘And there was you,’ said Barney to Keanu, indicating the gull, ‘thinking that nothing was going to happen today.’
‘Ha!’ said Keanu, then he made the banner headline gesture. ‘Gull In New Wall Outrage.’
‘FTSE Plummets After Gull Wall-Landing Shock,’ said Barney.
‘Stoned Gull Misses Sea, Narrowly Escapes Death In Wall Plunge.’
‘Gull Would Have Died Without Brexit, Says Gove.’
‘Trump Insists Gull Missed Wall,’ joined in Igor, in his own way.
‘Sex Shame Of Anti-Vax Fish Killer,’ said Keanu.
And so the afternoon passed.
* * *
The shop was closed, darkness had long since fallen, the men of the shop were sitting around, drinking the essential wrap-up cup of tea of the day, and had been joined by Detective Sergeant Monk, come to chew the end-of-the-day fat, before heading home with Barney for a night of flicking endlessly through a million different television viewing options, watching several hundred trailers, while not actually watching a single show. Such were the evenings of so many spent in these dark days, as the lights of civilisation dimmed.
‘Hmm,’ said Monk, and the men each gave her an interested eyebrow. There had been a lot going on in that single syllable.
‘Ooh,’ said Keanu, ‘this sounds promising. Did you break up a diamond smuggling operation or get into a helicopter chase and shootout with Columbian drug barons?’
‘Not today.’
‘OK, cool, cool. Go on.’
Barney and Igor drank their tea, a little more grounded in their expectations.
‘Well, it turns out Old Man Limburger still has the hand gun from his National Service days just after the war. A Browning. Never registered it, of course, because these people never did. Anyway, no one’s getting up in the grill of these old guys, because invariably those weapons are going to be kept in a shoebox in the loft, and their existence will only be discovered when they die. Except Old Man Limburger is a conspiracy theorist…’
‘Tell us about it,’ said Barney, ruefully.
‘Ah,’ said Monk, ‘you get to hear it, do you?’
‘He’s in here every couple of weeks, and he’s in on them all. Moon landing, JFK, Covid as a Chinese world domination tool, alternatively, the world is run by giant lizards…’
‘For a while he was pushing a theory that the Pope and Donald Trump were the same person, but he seems to have dropped that one recently,’ chipped in Keanu.
‘Good to know,’ said Monk. ‘So, Mr Limburger keeps his old gun polished, armed, ready to go. You know, in case the Russians invade, or the French, or, in fact, in case Constable Gainsborough and I decide to stage a takeover of the island.’
‘God, he hasn’t killed someone, has he?’ asked Barney, seeing where this was going.
‘It’s weirder than that.’
‘So, no one’s dead?’
‘No one’s dead.’
‘OK, good,’ said Barney. ‘I’ll relax and enjoy it. What’s the weirdness?’
Monk took a drink of tea, the storyteller’s narrative pause, nodded to Igor at its quality, and then continued. ‘Today he was sitting out the front of his house, you know at the back of Kames, and he was cleaning his gun. Looks like he does that a lot.’
‘I’ve seen him,’ said Barney. ‘Didn’t realise he was cleaning a gun.’
‘Me neither,’ said Monk. ‘Anyway, he accidentally discharged the weapon.’
‘Arf.’
‘Like I said, no one died. Or got injured. Here’s where it gets weird. The only reason we get to hear about this, because no one in the area reported hearing a gunshot, was because of young Billy Theroux.’
‘Top-down pompadour undercut,’ said Keanu.
‘That’s what you call it?’
‘Gave it to him three days ago.’
‘So, young Billy’s out for a walk. He’s got his walking boots on, as it’s been a bit wet recently, and he’s aiming to go round the bay, and up the hill behind our place, and, as we know, it’s pretty muddy scrambling up that hill at the moment. He has long laces on his boots. Every time he goes out, he doubles knots them. Says he did it before he went out, same as always, nice and tight. Old laces, once they’re tied, they stay tied. He’s walking along, something catches his eye, he notices the second knot has come loose on his left boot. That’s odd, he thinks. He bends down to tie it, and… boom… gun shot, he feels the bullet whiz pass the top of his head, misses him by who knows how little, and disappears into the trees.’
Keanu let out a long whistle. Igor looked suspicious.
‘And luckily,’ said Barney, warily, ‘as they say on Thomas the Tank Engine, no one got hurt.’
‘Yep,’ said Monk, ‘that’s the size of it. Young Billy, of course, is seeing a higher power at work.’
‘He hasn’t found Jesus, has he?’
‘Seems to be leaning more towards Slartibartfast. Meanwhile, Old Man Limburger is seeing some other kind of conspiracy, where young Billy is in league with this higher power, and that’s what saved his life. Nevertheless, given that he nearly accidentally killed the kid, he has to accept that no one really cares what he thinks.’
‘You take his gun off him?’
‘Oh, yes. He wasn’t happy, but you know…’
Story dispatched, she took another drink of tea, nodded to herself again, accepted that she’d imparted all the details she needed to, and then settled back. ‘And that was that for Millport today, really.’
‘Weird,’ said Keanu. ‘As you said.’
‘Yep.’
‘Maybe it was a metaphor.’
‘For what?’
‘No one knows. I mean, it’s a slightly surreal tale in the way you’d get in fiction, but not in real life. So, maybe if you bring a literary scholar into the investigation, they might be able to help you.’
‘It’s not actually an investigation.’
‘Well, if you don’t want to find out what really happened…’
He smiled, she shared it, and then together they drank their tea, and if it wasn’t just the thing, but they were all more or less finishing at the same time, right on cue to be ready to close up, leave the shop, and head home.
‘Tell me something, boss,’ said Keanu, throwing a last-minute conversational spanner in the works.
‘Hmm?’
‘Isn’t it weird that, even though you’ve never had children, you can quote Thomas The Tank Engine? How did that happen?’
Barney smiled. Igor sniggered to himself. Monk looked expectantly at Barney.
‘Good spot,’ she said. ‘He quoted Winnie the Pooh at me last week.’
‘That’s because I don’t write my own lines,’ said Barney. ‘The woman who does it must have kids. Pretty straightforward, really.’
‘Your lines are written by a woman?’
‘Possibly. We’ll never know.’
‘Kind of feel like you’d say more if you were written by a woman,’ said Keanu. Barney smiled, and Monk threw a silent fuck off across the shop.
‘Anyway,’ said Monk, ‘maybe you could get this woman to write you a few more lines. We’d all appreciate it.’
‘I’ll speak to her,’ said Barney, ‘see what we can work out.’
And that, ladies and gentlemen, was all she wrote…
