Cyril's Haircut

                                                

Cyril Hennessy was a bitter man, a bitter man who wanted a haircut. The further he got down this street, in the sunshine, the more he felt the urge to visit his barber and have his hair seen to. In his head (those monologues he loved to conduct) Cyril made it sound as though he meant his man, some valet-like creature who’d come into being for the sole purpose of tending to the Hennessy tresses. How his mind meandered at times in idle fancy. And although Cyril was no self-obsessed dandy, he did place airs on certain mundane practices in his life. This haircut was a case in point. The clemency of the day, surprising as it was only March, added an extra urgency to Cyril’s need to see a coiffeur, crimper or whatever you care to call it.

Through a combination of pressing circumstances (one thing after another like cannon fodder) he’d neglected to have his hair looked at beyond his usual one-month maximum. The length of his locks combined with the warmth of the day was bringing way too much heat to Cyril’s head, way more than he was comfortable with.

As said, Cyril was no precious fop but had been a dapper gent throughout his time on Earth (no harm in that!) Walking along the street, still in the sunshine, the day growing warmer with some speed now, he did the little calculation—the cogs in his brain working in rhythm with the cogs of his frame bouncing, as it was, along the pavement—yes, it had been seven weeks since he had seen a barber. Cyril worked it out: seven weeks had passed since any cutter whatsoever had come near his hair. And in Ole Zork of all places, where the good town elders took such pride in the development of themed hairstyling shops! Where he was headed now, the area around Mint Street and South Street, was awash with places to go for a wash, cut and blow dry. And he’d left his hair growing for seven weeks. Cyril was surprised at himself. He was normally thoroughly precise as to when to have his tresses shorn.

For about a year now he’d been attending, each month, a woman called Doris, who ran a common or garden salon in Minusrat, Cyl’s part of town. He found the notion of going up for a cut to the themed barbershops around Mint Street and South Street distasteful, believing the whole area to be tacky and touristy on an epic scale. But curiosity was driving him to do so nonetheless, passing Mint Street everyday, as he did, on his way to his mortuary job. In the near two-month growth period that had just elapsed, his locks had taken on a most lengthy mien, stifling him now in the noontime heat. It had got to the extent, such was his desire to be shorn, that he’d go for the first barber he came upon. He wouldn’t care if Sweeney Todd himself was standing over the chair. In Cyril’s flustered, agitated state he wasn’t sure if the legendary Mr Todd had yet had a cutting shop rigged out to his repute. Although he was really of a mind to visit the Elvis barber and decided he would make today the occasion for his first trip to that renowned local shrine.

With his unruly mop and his resentful thoughts, Cyril knew about bearing a cross or two. And he was carrying two extremely heavy ones at that moment, trotting along, as he was, to the barbershop strip. The place where the now famed Jasper Keogh had started the scissors cutting, in a manner of speaking, in the establishment of a number of themed barbershops in this part of Ole Zork. Jasper, all six feet four inches and seventeen muscular stone of him (Cyril had read a recent profile in TressDresser Monthly and had seen an accompanying photo of Jasper’s bulk), was an obsessive Elvis Presley fan, whose father had left him the family cutting shop. His inheritance was, at first, an encumbrance to him, but once he’d perfected the techniques of the trade, he’d really taken to the job and had started adorning his father’s venerable old premises with statues and posters of the King. It helped his “vibes”, as he put it, “when I’m snippin’ a bonce”.

Anyway, the concept took off with the opening of a Buddy Holly barbers (proprietor Barry “Bopper” Bradley) two doors from Jasper’s. There were some faltering first steps when business thinned out (similar to some of the clients’ hair) but then tourists started making the trek to Mint Street on word of mouth and taking photographs of Jasper and Baz’s shops, and the coffers of the coiffeurs (to use a cumbersome turn of phrase) began maintaining a healthy state (to the delight and encouragement of the aforementioned town elders, who loved and championed tourist attractions and the knock-on financial benefits they brought. Not to mention the fact that they didn’t have to invest any of the town’s money in the upkeep of these attractions. Jasper and his fellow barbers more or less looked after and paid for the strip themselves).

Five years on from the fateful day, when Jasper had stuck his Love Me Tender poster in the shop window (under the cone), there were now seven themed shops on the half-mile. And Cyril foresaw that that bourgeoning number would continue to grow. It was the most bustling part of town now, none other than the BarberShrine half-mile (as Ole Zorkers had dubbed it).

As he walked on, Cyril visualized his hair as a willow weeping to be shorn, while his thoughts were like foetuses begging not to be born. Yet still the well-known barbershops played on his mind. He had passed their cones countless times as Mint Street, as I’ve mentioned, was a daily passing point for him going to the mortuary where he’d been employed for a year now (the T&Cs were actually far better than the hospice where he’d last held down a job. At this rate he often felt that he’d be off the planet by his next employment).

He had heard all the local tittle-tattle as to what a fine shrine to King Elvis Jasper Keogh (the cutter and proprietor) had erected. The TressDresser Monthly article had detailed everything in Keogh’s shrine, from the walls’ array of pictures of the King in various states of godlikeness (as the piece had gushed), right up to the names Jasper had called the cuts on his price board: number 1, the most expensive, was “The King E”. A case of the first cut being the dearest, Cyril mused (but wasn’t that Rod Stewart? and rather than answer that question he made a mental note to move on from such deliberations). He’d go to the Elvis barber.

He pondered the choice available to him around these parts regarding decorated and adorned barbershops, for the strip was filled with themed hair salons. For example, there was the Manchester United shop, ever popular with native and tourist fans alike and a sight to behold if reports were correct about its interior.

It had become the done thing now for any new hairdresser going into business in Mint Street or South Street or thereabouts to erect a mini-shrine to whichever famous person/institution/organisation the coiffeur or coiffeuse most fancied or whichever person/institution/organisation hadn’t already received the homage treatment (as a one-idol-one-shop policy operated in the hair management zone).

Oh, how the council loved this progress, chuffed by its drawing power for visitors into what had been a dilapidated area only few years back. Cyril had heard that the tourists, in nine times out of ten, merely entered a “shrine”, photographed it quickly and bounced out (as tourists do) leaving a gratuity to the cutter for the pleasure of snapping his shop. Most of the actual styling was still being done on local heads. Stood to reason, Cyril thought, after all who gets a haircut on holidays?

Cyril considered it further: tourists eager to see the bedecked and cluttered cutting shops; salons whose numbers had grown, along with the quality of their themed displays, in a few quick years. An air of healthy competition pervaded among these businesses, each one wanting to please visitors with eye-catching presentations of idolatry. They were being reported on to a wider and wider audience each passing month. The authorities of Ole Zork had hoped for a successful BarberShrine half-mile on Mint and South Streets and, in point of fact, their hopes had been exceeded. As said, an unwritten rule existed, along this half-mile, whereby only one shrine was permitted to each object of fanaticism (for want of a better way of putting it). There was only one Elvis shop, ditto Manchester United. Newcomers were told they’d have to come up with new ideas. Like the recently opened Heartpond FC barbers or the Tom Jones crimper on South Street. Jasper Keogh was lucky in inheriting his shop, that he’d themed it on the most popular singer of the 20^th century, ensuring a good flow of business up to his planned retirement. Cyril wondered if an Adolf Hitler barbershop would attract much custom (but soon chided himself for engaging in more silly speculation). He then began to consider if the council would finesse the strip further, demarcating crimpers in terms of their themes. Would one half of Mint Street wind up containing only those barbers who’d put up altars to exalt sport? The Heartpond FC shop beside the Oldkeep United and so on, with all the rock music altars further down on South Street? Say the Chrissie Hynde beside the Pattie Smith salon (two similar souls from the world of rock, that perennially popular sphere). Although Cyril had to concede that the town fathers would have a job in getting the muscular Jasper Keogh to move the short distance from Mint Street to South Street with a Compulsory Decamping Order. CDOs were Town Hall’s favourite weapon for rearranging Ole Zork whenever they had a brainwave (which was not often!).

This BarberShrine half-mile was proving such a good money draw that Cyril was sure his speculations would eventually unfold. The whole thing would be planned and regulated to an obsessive degree (at that point Cyril stopped himself, for again he was involved in rambling surmising. And there were things to be done!). He had yet to attend mass at Keogh’s Elvis altar but felt sure that it would suit his purpose on this growing-ever-more-divine day. But damn this heat! He’d left his abode some twenty minutes earlier and was about to hit Mint Street obsessed with having his haircut. And on top of that he had his bitterness to contend with. It had been eating at him since yesterday evening when he’d had a numinous flash: had seen Old Zork in his mind and it was full of pricks (a very sweaty milieu indeed). Cyril wondered if the self-hatred he was experiencing of late was a form of narcissism. At 32 he felt old and depressed (of course it was spectacularly young, but he didn’t know that then). The previous night, before sleep and stark dreams, he’d read the biographical summation of one Ken Spice (30). Fuck it, you had to envy Ken. The chap had packed a lot of living into his three decades. Cyril felt that events in the morgue, where average afternoons meant shaving the recently deceased and reaching for the chemicals to stave off putrefaction, would not amount to more than a vaguely memorable moment in Mr Spice’s earthly and natural. But Cyl consoled himself with the thought that one person’s achievement was another’s failure (was he risking glibness forming such thoughts?). He had nothing personal against this Ken chap, a noteworthy guy who’d turned up in a magazine he’d been reading before turning in for the night, who had an interesting life with many exciting deeds done. But just reading about them had triggered feelings of failure in the sorry speck of a godforsaken struggle that Cyril named his life (Cyl would often descend into bleak meanderings re the state of play in his own earthly and natural. He was prone to bouts of intense despondency).

Anyway, in his head Cyril had only good wishes for Ken. As they’d said at those awful meetings he’d attended “I wish you well”. But, as he thought of it, a voice in his head continued. If you need actors, Ken, after you’ve adapted the stories into feature movies (Ken was a writer), don’t hesitate to contact me. I’ll gladly whore myself if it means an end to penury (by Western standards, he wasn’t starving in the African desert after all) and tramp-dread. Not to mention feelings of complete uselessness and hopelessness (for the most part the sum total of his daily brain-feed). Yes, please call, Ken, Cyril thought and I’ll do whatever you want me to do.

And he’d thought that that was as bad as he would feel that prior evening. He was reaching for the razor blades when a Booker winner turned up on the next page, replete with her achievements. He could feel and hear bitterness, could almost taste it in fact, swirling inside him in the form of a rant. He wanted to remember and rail at the image of a certain witch he’d known a good number of moons ago, quite a roll of the ages back. But he knew also to be wary as such memories could tip him over the brink for good. How he’d shivered as the thought of her came back to him. He was liable to collapse altogether if he started pondering the past as he walked along; or to be more specific, started pondering her. He parked the memories of that witch, and the rant she would induce, for another time.

However, while he was on the subject of poison-thinking, Mr Hennessy considered sending his diary for the weekend into The Evening Lies. For the past three Thursdays he’s endured reading (had stoically put himself through the experience of taking) a column they’d concocted, wherein a local celebrity outlined the really quite whirlwind and eventful (nay, chockfull!) nature of their social programme over a typical weekend. Cyril had never seen such active living, so many ports of call, crammed into two and a half days. The thrice he’d read these pieces (someone had given them the original title of “My Weekend by _______”) he’d felt the whole effect was like that of an energy breakfast bar. These people were so right-on and packed full of bland living, but Cyl had laid the paper aside after reading it and just felt annoyed and cheated of anything to digest. Was that really all there was to it? Taxiing from one pub (or hotspot) to another (with some token cultural/retail activity thrown in, just so readers won’t think you’re a raving alcoholic!) drinking healthy, hearty, moral, self-regulated beverages and rejoicing at the grabbing, ugly, no-time-for-failure cosmos all about one? Mr Hennessy’s ire was fired up from reading this drivel. He wanted to submit his own rather less spirited diary for the perusal of folk. Let them see what it was like in his margin of experience, having nothing to prove to the Evening Liars. And now, with the fires of his rant stoking ever strongly, how would he put his schedule? Lemme see:

 

Four p.m. Friday: Walk home in the rain stopping at the Camden Casket for a euro bottle of washing-up liquid along with some kitchen towels for my kitchenette. I pay the diminutive Asian cashier, wondering to myself if this purchase of kitchen cleaning items indicates the rise of my femininity at the mo and whether last night’s full moon has anything to do with it?

 

and there his diary tapered off as Cyril found these latest reflections were bringing him on a thought-train that he, with real emphasis, did not wish to travel on. I mean would The Evening Lies people even raise a chuckle at the tame nature of his two-and-a-half-day programme before consigning it to their bin, shredder or incinerator?

And then he was back thinking of Winston Smith and the fabulous and accurate nature of Eric Blair’s clairvoyance. He couldn’t escape those screens and the reels of wars assailing his eyes. Last night, after the magazine and before his dreams of warships and POWs, as he was whiling away the time gazing into the park, he was keenly aware of the continuous buzz of the news show hitting home the importance of battles far afield, a malignant background drone. He could almost hear its tumescent thrum, now at noon, as he wandered onto Mint Street (God, is this street called after some ancestor of Randy’s? And the cover of that controversial book flashed into his mind: Elvis kissing his mother. But was it the innocent kiss of a devoted son?).

But returning to last night: it was dusk, and he had been looking at the trees and the grass. To determine if it was raining, he had looked at the roof of the municipal swimming pool, upon which a surfeit of drops was, it was plain, falling (author’s note: in an attempt to write in a style like some of my heroes I am trying to dispense with overused adverbs, hence “it was plain” rather than “plainly” in that last sentence). He remembered how he’d reached for his hat in days gone by, from similar (even just such) vantage points, when he’d lived in attics in the land of rain. Cyril thought of men he had known back then, classic minor functionaries, who could prove the most dangerous and destructive, abusing what small power they had. But alas, he’d continued, that was all in that place of precipitation and hunger quite some calendars back. And then he found that recalling the musings of last evening exasperated him the more (the heat and resentments were closing in on Cyril H’s head). Oh, for Chrissake let me to the Elvis barber post-haste, he thought, and hurried his footfalls towards that cone and that shrine. In the end it didn’t make sense for him not to have his haircut in one of these tourist attractions (after all, he’d been passing them, going to the morgue, for nigh on fifty-two weeks at this stage). KEOGHS! The one with the Elvis connection certainly attracted him. He threw his gaze each day on their cone as a private ritual. As well as daily casting his eyes on the film posters stuck in the shop’s window. Of course, the place grabbed his attention. Cyril had loved Elvis from a young age. Doris in Minusrat, and her average little shop, could wait awhile before he’d cross her jamb again. He’d get his barnet sorted and have a good glance around the shrine to boot. What could be better as a tonic to his ill-humour and malaise, on this most hot of days (for the middle of March)?

Averting his eyes from the now blinding sun (damn, he should have taken his baseball cap along), Cyril thought how much he wanted to look fresh, good, clean and new, as you do (that phrase “as you do” why did people use it!?).

As it grew nearer, he was beginning to visualise the barber shop as a plot of calm wherein he could, with a glad heart, plant himself (a crazy methodical part of him toyed with the idea of asking the barber if he might stay on after his cut just to soak in the calmness. Would save on those counselling bills the whitecoats had started to impose).

At this point in Cyril Hennessy’s life what he craved most was respite from flickering screens of 24/7 war footage. With a jolt, that brought his scurry down to a stroll, he thought how dead-on Eric Blair had been with his soothsaying. Good God, what are they up to on Lie TV? It never ends: Australasia is Aiding the Coalition in the Push for the Heart of Mesopotamia! Thus spake the bleating Tannoy into his brain all the latest developments. Cyril was convinced: this war was being brought to us, first and foremost, as entertainment. Spring and sunshine are nice, but my locks are too long and I’m too hot (not to mention the fact that I’m so pissed off with my life that I could weep right here on this street, damn the eyes of passing souls!). A plot of calm with mild conversation, a simple and pleasant place to be, is what I need. So went Cyril’s reflections, as went his reflection, looking decidedly longhaired (even a tad nervous) in the windows he passed, at brisk speed, going into town.

He caught sight of himself (and flinched) in the plaque of Skram & Recneps, those reputable and discreet Messrs, as he flew (by no means an angel though) past their stoop, hotfooting it. Things were becoming unclear in his mind. He forgot his purpose in the great outdoors. He was growing fearful, like an attack of the old agoraphobia was imminent. Then he snatched back his composure, remembering where he was and what he was about, though, having said that, he remained dizzy (in the more old-fashioned sense of that word i.e. just spinning, unable to take root). What a startling, dreamy night had elapsed. These steps, his quick paces, were therapeutic. This walk will clean up your appearance, all anodyne measure welcomed. That was the sheen he put on it in his near scrambled brain. Someone coughed behind him, a scrofulous hack that further spooked his spirit. He closed his eyes, partly against the sunlight and partly in mental pain. Behind his lids an array of enemies (files of them, with files on all of ‘em!). He felt his walk turning into a jog, a blessing of new stamina he was surprised to possess. In his mind’s eye a staircase led away from the baying mob. There were many stairs (stares). As Cyl figured it, take them. Anything was better than being chased (chaste). Then he opened his eyes and came upon it, could espy it four doors further up, that ancient cone nudging like a unicorn’s horn on the frontage. Red and white continuing in eternal spiral and looking not a little like, to C’s eye, a stick of seaside rock (albeit a very large stick, something a rich cousin might brandish at one in a dream). And KEOGHS, the name boldly splashed above the cone was just where he needed to go to relieve his sense of encroaching dementia. At the risk of sounding verbose let me say that Cyril craved the calmness promised by this place in the way an addicted doctor might crave a morphine phial. This will most certainly do, he thought (not the phrase “ah, sure, ‘twill do” so beloved of his compatriots but, it must be stressed, “will most certainly do”). It was just the ticket for the way he was feeling. So as the town clock struck the bells of twelve with the heat and the hair too much, along with the war footage, for Mr Hennessy to take, he gathered himself for a moment, tilting his head for a deferential look, and pushed open the door of Keogh’s barber (this action triggered a loud bell which threw Cyril for a second). But he knew he was safe, things were okay, and he left the street.

Inside: what is this, a chapel? Cyl suddenly felt tears welling up. Goodness, he thought, is this the beginning of one of my turns? You saw me crying in a chapel. It’s like another world. A quiet land full of grace, Graceland. Cyril saw, enough memorabilia adorned and cluttered the place. Cyril could see, very full on, what all the talk and the magazine articles had been about. Could see yes, that the barber (the often talked about Jasper) was a zealous (with a capital Z!) Elvis Presley fan. All Shook Up (how Cyl could relate to that song, the shaking part anyway!) jumped along like a jaunt, at low volume, in the air. Bless my soul this place is less a simple chapel more the Sistine. This is certainly worth a visit. Why have I waited so long to come in here, this interior of all things Elvisy? All the publicity it’s gotten, the people I’ve heard discussing it, Keogh’s Elvis shrine-cum-barbershop? I mean I knew, all those times I passed, that it was no ordinary hairdressers. I sensed it would be eye-catching and exciting. I didn’t expect a run-of-the-mill interior, like one finds in those RASP convenience stores that are springing up everywhere. Although, and a cautionary bell tolled in Cyril’s head, as he recollected how he’d once entered a barbershop as a boy and been attacked by a dog. One never knew what to expect anywhere. His friend Alan O’Reilly was fond of reminding him of this dog incident, just to see the startled fright in Cyl’s eyes as memory rolled out the scene.

Where’s the proprietor, I need service? Cyril gave a slight spin of his head to the right, then left. The King looked back at him in many ways: sorrowful saucer-eyed guises, youthful virile smiles. To a faint feeling of disgust Cyril even noticed a fat Elvis squinting at him from a small frame to the left of the raised TV set. To his surprise Lie flickered away the endless violent footage of the ongoing war: the smoke rising over a bombarded land. Cyril had expected to see Blue Hawaii or some such running on endless repeat from Keogh’s television. This latest war has captured everyone’s imagination for sure, even ultra-fanatical Elvis fans. This latest war was reaching into the holiest of shrines. The sanctum sanctorums.

Then from behind a door of hanging beads, which when unruffled displayed a young King at the Opry, up stepped Jasper Keogh the obsessed cutter. Cyril’s brain filled with thoughts of that book (he had actually read it himself), causing such a stir in all quarters now. Randy Mint, its author, had alleged (and outlined compelling evidence of) a huge mother fixation on the part of Mr Presley. The King and Mother’s Ming he’d called his scandalous tome and had written of the kicks Elvis had got (not on Route 66 but rather) in erotic daydreams of Gladys (Mint’s authorial skills made one think so anyway). Longstanding loyal fans were appalled! Longstanding fans, Cyril imagined, not unlike this muscle-bound fellow now approaching from out of the beads. Jasper the giant, whose voice now rose (to a considerable volume) and said:

 - “Howaya, wanna haircut?”

Cyril wrote an urgent mental note: Don’t mention the Randy Mint book! Cyril was jittery enough as it was. His dreamlife had crossed the line into his waking life, bringing a good deal of turmoil with it. He knew he could not take, mentally or physically, any sort of tussle with this Keogh fellow. He would have to, as the local parlance put it, “keep him sweet”. Last night, as he slept, he’d been somewhere, maybe it was Qatar, at a shipping intersection. A busy place in international terms, of strategic interest to many powers (perhaps it was the Suez Canal. He really had no idea of where he was dreaming of these days. Not being the most widely travelled of individuals, he wasn’t exactly picturing places he’d been to. Probably the dreamscapes were a mere composite of TV footage: Suez, Qatar, Jordan equalling too much BBC Newsnight rolled into one!).

And then with extreme clarity he’d dreamt of two hundred or so people in a yard out front of his living quarters. Awaiting processing (gassing!). A concentration camp. All are gassed only to awaken in a large brick house by a roadside, alive and journeying on some sixty years later. Is this possible? The house had been flashing up at frequent times in his dreams for months now. Cyril was bemused and unnerved. Who wouldn’t be? That house, those people. He was jittery, too, over the standoff ensuing between him and his dear friend Vic. In an attempt to lighten his friend’s mood, he’d written to Vic almost two months previously to tell him of the ill jazz mag he’d found full of doxies that would derange him. As Cyril texted it to him, they’d looked as good as Vic’s mother had in the cathouse on the day Vic was conceived. His friend took umbrage at these foul-fingered texts and, as a result, the two men hadn’t communicated to one another for seven and a half weeks. The attempt at humour was botched. Cyril wondered if the joke was too clumsy or explicit for Vic’s liking. Cyril had spent these weeks, in the main, engaged in bouts of chest-thumping and self-flagellation (much in the manner of an attendee at a Shia festival for that matter). And also, as I’ve been outlining, his hair had grown to quite a length in this period.

The stuff about the mother and the cathouse he had adapted from the aforementioned Randy Mint book on Mr Presley and his mother Gladys. Yes, The King and Mother’s Ming was the tome’s outrageous, nay egregious, title. What a mother fixation it had painted! Along with various other muddy (of the Mississippi kind, boom boom!) details of the shock! horror! wow! variety. Though C was neither shocked, horrified nor wowed by the extras (hadn’t Al Goldigger been over that ground already?). It was the mother fix that most interested and fascinated him. Randy’s other nuggets of insight weren’t that impressive at all. So what if Elvis had spent so much time worrying about his health that he’d made himself sick? Cyril too had often done likewise. And, although he was loath to admit it, he shared (or had the potential to at least) some of the nastier dietary habits of the King (right down to a fondness for battered pineapple rings, a treat he often like to indulge in after a tough day spent assisting the embalmers). Besides, Cyril knew Randy Mint’s type. He could imagine him right down to his breath (which probably smelt like an ill-lit public toilet, come to think of it!).

The mental note scribbled fast, Cyril looked at Jasper (goodness me he is a big lad, bigger in person than that magazine shot led me to believe, and I had thought he was huge on the page!) and delivered his answer:

 - “Er, yes I’d like a number 3 at the back and…”

 - “Eh hold on take a seat first. Then ya can tell me the details,” Jasper instructed, and who would disagree with that stature?

Cyril proceeded to a black leather chair (one of three) facing the mirrored wall. An American flag was stitched onto the chair’s back with a picture of Elvis sewn where the stars usually are. It’s the Star and Stripes, Cyl thought, as he assumed his position on this throne and looked at his reflection in the mirror and at Jasper’s image, too, the big man standing behind him. Jasper placed a standard barbershop gown around Cyril’s neck, the gown reaching down to the Hennessy knees.

 - “So, you were sayin’, what kinda cut?” Jasper spoke and his accent, C thought, was sooo Ole Zork.

 - “Yeah,” Mr H said. “I’d like a number 3 at the back and sides and if you could just feather it down at the top and front, that’d be fine.”

 - “No probs at all,” Jasper boomed. “Feather it down, I like tha’. Not many o’ me punters know the trade terms. Most o’ dem wud just ask ya to go easy on the top and front but feather it down. Shows know-how. D’ya know someone in the business or are ya just an expert yerself?”

 - Well, a-actually, no,” Cyril stammered. He was becoming a little put out by Jasper’s bulky presence and thundering voice (Cyl was sure the chap could be heard out on the street). “M-my last hairdresser used the term, so I guess I got it from her. I’d never claim expertise in the field of haircutting. You’re the expert there Mr Keogh. I read that piece on you in TressDresser Monthly. You came across as extremely well-versed in your trade I must say.”

 - “Nice of ya to say it,” the giant sounded, as he clicked his scissors and waved his comb in the air reminding Cyril, with some discomfort, of a man about to carve a Sunday roast. “I’m in this game a while now, it’s in me blood. Plus, you live and learn all kinds of things after yiv done a few thousand heads.”

Must please him, Cyril was thinking, say nice things. Massage his ego and don’t whatsoever bring up the Randy Mint book. Tell him you like the memorabilia; tell him you love Elvis.

 - “Love the way you have the shop done out. Elvis everywhere is fucking cool!”

Cyl instantly regretted using the expletive. Made him sound uncouth or, to use the Ole Zork term, he’d sounded knackerish (there again he suspected that the tonsorial artist was not the most pure-tongued of individuals himself, so why worry about how you sound to him? But Cyl was just a natural born worrier).

 - “You’re obviously a huge fan, Jasper,” he continued, and then feared he’d been over-familiar addressing the cutter on a first-name basis. But he plodded on like a blind man fencing many phantoms.

 - “I love the King myself. What a great soul! Compelled to fly in ’77. Bleak black August. In music maybe The Beatles equal him. But that voice can stop anyone in their tracks.”

Jasper was nodding in happy concurrence at Cyril’s paean to Mr Presley. Keep him sweet, the big ape, Cyril thought.

 - “And, heh, what a trend you’ve started here, all these themed barbershops in Ole Zork. The council owe you one for sure.” 

 - “Don’t mention those arse-wipes to me!” Jasper boomed, he voice having (incredibly) gotten louder. “It’s true what I started here and what do the cunts want me to do?”

Cyril shook his head indicating he had no idea what the town elders had in mind for Jasper Keogh (and just as he’d expected the swearing had started to spew from Jasper’s mouth making Cyril feel less of a knacker).

 - “Those bastards only want me to move me whole operation down to South Street. We are endeavouring to bring more order to the Mint Street South Street half-mile. That’s what they said when they wrote to me. They want all the music barbers together and all the sport barbers together etcetera et-bleedin-cetera. Wha’ I say is, it’s not broke so don’t fix it. Over me dead body I’m movin’ from Mint Street. This is where it all began and, as far as I’m concerned, this is where it all stays. Till it all ends!”

I’ll be damned, Cyril thought, am I becoming like Eric Blair? Is my gift prophecy? This is exactly what I speculated upon on my way here. I knew Town Hall would interfere and try to finesse things. They can’t leave well enough alone. Too well paid they are, with too little to do. And now this angry booming hulk here tells me they’ve already written to him to try to set their changes in motion. It’s uncanny but it’s just what I surmised. Weird! And Cyl felt slightly elated too; delighted that he’d been so right in his predictions about the council’s moves. He said a fast mental prayer that God would grant him the ability to foresee more events (but here Cyril checked himself again, as he was starting to imagine predictions of the Last Day. My oh my you must be insane, he thought, from guessing about Compulsory Decamping Orders to soothsaying Armageddon, in one instant! Stop it now while sanity remains!).

 - “I totally agree with you Jasper. Those council folk are completely anal. They want everything organised and regulated to the nth degree. Fuck ‘em (oh, the wildness of his cussing now!). Your father left you this shop. You’ve done him proud the way you’ve built it up. Don’t let those bureaucrats screw you around. They wouldn’t have so many tourists in Ole Zork if it wasn’t for you. Stay on Mint Street!”

 - “That’s exactly what I’m gonna do,” Jasper shouted (dear oh dear the man was loud!).

He began now to comb the Hennessy head in preparation for cutting.

 - “I love it here,” he continued. “It’s where me Da started the business. I couldn’t imagine working anywhere else. Only thing now is when I hear the name Mint Street, I think of that little shit who has that filthy book out. Randy bleedin’ Mint. Cheeky bastard! The things he said about Elvis. Not that I’ve read the book meself. I would in me arse. Just heard reports like. I’m actually sickened that my shop is on a street with the same name as that little swine. I tell ya, if I got my hands on Randy, he wouldn’t be randy anymore. Chop his prick off!”

Spitting this venom against the writer Mint, Jasper seemed to grow happier in front of Cyl’s eyes. His scowl softened to what could be called a gentle expression (if that were really possible on the vast menacing crag that was the barber’s visage).

Once again with practiced aplomb Señor Keogh brandished his crimping equipment and, without further ado, went goodo into Cyril’s barnet. Cyl could see the locks from the left side of his head hitting the floor at some speed, as Jasper combed and cut with the professionalism of a man who’d been years in the trade. Cyril was conscious of the mental note he’d made to himself about The King and Mother’s Ming. He wasn’t going to bring up that book in the presence of such a presence as Jasper Keogh. The guy was just too big and too angry. He was in fact the quintessential outraged fan.

Randy Mint had libelled the dead King with his smutty allegations of incestuous mother lust and thousands of people were aching to have Mint’s head on a plate. Cyril could think of no book in recent times (apart maybe from The Devilish Limericks) that had stirred such ill-feeling towards an author. Cyril in his wisdom had decided that mentioning …and Mother’s Ming in Jasper Keogh’s vicinity would only court trouble and had elected to keep schtum re the tome. Only problem now, as he sat in Jasper’s chair with the giant going at his hair and all the Elvis clutter thereabouts, was that Jasp himself had brought up the contentious book and now surely expected Cyril (his enthroned customer) to proffer a comment on Mr Mint and Elvis and Elvis’s mother’s ming. This would require some tact on Cyril’s part. Make a diplomatic comment and get off the subject. Try to get it across to Jasp that he (Cyl) had an antipathy to Randy Mint just like all the other upset Presley lovers out there (Cyril’s true views didn’t matter; why insult the hand that trims your tresses?).

But then Cyril said it. As people are fond of saying: “it just came out”. It was what he believed was true and so we may conclude that maybe Cyril was a fool, unable in his life to tell white lies. He was looking at Jasper’s pumpkin head in the mirror. The Keogh tongue protruded at the side of the fat-lipped mouth, a sign that Jasp was in deep concentration upon Cyril’s hair. And then Cyril piped up.

 - “Actually, I think Randy Mint was onto something about Elvis fancying his mother. Think he could have a point as a matter of fact. I’ve actually read The King and Mother’s Ming and Mint outlines the facts and the evidence very well. True, it’s not what people want to hear. I mean almost everyone loves Elvis. But you know the old cliché, Jasper: the truth hurts. Besides it shouldn’t take away from the quality of the music; only if you let it. Only if, when you’re hearing Heartbreak Hotel, you start thinking of him, well, you know, wanking off about Gladys…”

And with that the Hennessy voice trailed away as the expression on Jasper’s face told Cyl to shut it right there. Cyril mentally kicked himself. What the hell had possessed him to tell this huge cantankerous man and loyal King of Rock ‘n’ Roll fan, in whose chair he was ensconced, at whose mercy he was receiving a haircut, about his true views on the scandalous book so besmirching of the good king’s name? Did he like to stir trouble on purpose? Or had he actually been possessed? Had the words come down some ethereal pipe: Cyril, the conduit to show a diehard King fan that their idol had feet of clay? Then Cyl began to feel religious zeal. There was only one God after all, and he wasn’t (despite what some people thought) called Elvis Presley (but Cyril reminded himself to pause here. His bullshit detector was refining all the time, and he knew his thoughts were veering, at speed, into the realm of merde: a conduit for God? Honestly, pah!).

Anyway, there wasn’t going to be much time to think now, as listening to Jasper roar seemed the order of the day. The barber Keogh spoke (correction shouted!).

 - “What the fuck are you sayin’, you agree with Mint and his filthy ideas?”

Jasper lay down the comb and scissors and placed his hands on his hips. Cyril stayed rooted in the chair, looking with a wary eye, at Jasper in the mirror (was that steam coming from his nostrils?).

 - “Yiv got a bloody cheek. This is the Elvis shrine you’re in. No one talks like that in here!”

Cyril could no longer hold Jasper’s stare. So, he turned his gaze upon his own mirror image and instantly thought how ridiculous he looked as the cutting job was only half complete. Let’s hope he cools down and finishes my head. Don’t want to land on the street with a thatch looking like that. Better say something ameliorating:

 - “Look, Jasper…”

And that was as far as Cyril Hennessy got in his attempt to placate the renowned Jasper Keogh within the hallowed confines of his estimable Presley shrine, for the leviathan now bellowed.

 - “Look nuthin’. Get ourra me shop NOW! I don’t know who ya think ya are comin’ in here and insultin’ Elvis like that. I won’t have it!”

And Jasper whipped the gown from Cyril’s chest and spun the chair to face the door.

 - “Go on, gerrout! You’re getting’ away lightly. You’re lucky I don’t Sweeney Todd ya. Where’s me blade?”

And he shook his head in deep agitation.

 - “Gerrout I said. There’s the door. What the Jaysus are ya waitin’ for?”

For an infinitesimal moment Cyril considered a plea to Jasper’s softer side. There was, after all, his haircut to be completed. But Cyl quickly concluded that Jasp didn’t possess any fluffy sides to his being. Whatsoever! It looked like Mr H would have to hit the pavement with his barnet unfinished. To argue with this howling brute seemed out of the question.

So, Cyril gathered himself off the chair and darted onto Mint Street with Jasper’s last words ringing out behind him.

 - “Don’t show your face in here again ya little faggot. Yiv got some nerve. Some fuckin’ nerve!”

And so it was that Cyril Hennessy, still a bitter man, found himself walking, where Mint Street met South Street, in the town of Ole Zork, with a half-finished haircut on his head. He decided to pop into Bopper Bradley’s and get the job finished. He could see Buddy Holly’s big eyes, in those large frames, enticing him from a poster in Bopper’s window.

As for ever returning to Jasper Keogh and his Elvis shrine? Well, a song lyric leapt into Cyril’s mind: “That’ll be the day!”. 

© Brian Ahern 2003