Winston’s War

‘Damn you, Burgess!’

‘Oh, I probably shall be, but I’ll not be the only one. Because you know what I’m thinking? That the reason you can’t tell me why Churchill has been banned is because you don’t know – or don’t want to know. Those that told you didn’t have the courtesy to trust you with an explanation. You’ve just been told to vaseline your arse and keep him off the air and that’s that. Just obeying orders, are we?’

‘Rot in hell! What do you know about such things?’

‘Enough to know that even you aren’t normally this much of a shit.’

‘Look, Guy – these are difficult times. Damned difficult. Sometimes we have to do things we don’t care for.’

‘So not your decision?’

‘Not exactly …’

‘How far up does this one go?’

‘Guy, this one comes from so high up you’d need an oxygen mask to survive.’

‘Know what I think?’

‘Face it, Guy, right now nobody gives a damn about what you or bloody Winston Churchill thinks.’

It was then that Burgess had thrown himself across the desk, his face only inches from the Controller’s. The Controller tried to pull away, partly in surprise but also in disgust. He could smell the raw garlic.

‘Seems to me it’s about time you queued up for your party cap-badge, isn’t it?’ Burgess spat.

The Controller was speechless, unable to breathe, assailed by insult and foulness.

‘Sieg-fucking-Heil!’ Burgess threw over his shoulder as he turned and stormed out of the door, kicking it so hard that a carpenter had to be summoned to repair the hinge.

That was why Burgess decided to get drunk. He’d get drunk, get obliterated, then he’d see what Chance threw his way. But as yet it was a little too early, even for him. He didn’t like to get drunk before noon. He briefly considered going to ease his frustrations in the underground lavatories at Piccadilly Circus, but they’d just stepped up the police patrol so there was no question of his being able to get away with it. Too risky, even for him. So instead he’ll kill some time. Get his hair cut. At Trumper’s.

Which was how he met McFadden.

‘You’ve got good thick hair, sir’ – although in truth it was already beginning to recede and looked as if something was nesting in it. ‘Nice curl. But you should get it cut more often.’

‘There are many things I should do more often,’ Burgess snapped.

‘How would you like it cut, sir?’

‘Preferably in silence.’

Burgess felt suddenly miserable. He’d been unjustifiably rude to the barber, which in itself was no great cause for regret. Burgess had a tongue honed on carborundum and his rudeness was legendary. But McFadden had simply soaked it up, dropped his eyes, shown not a flicker of emotion or resentment. As if he were used to the lash. Which cut through to a very different part of Burgess, for his was a complex soul. Yes, he could be cruel and could find enjoyment in it, particularly when drunk, but there were few men who were more affected by genuine distress. While inflicting wounds freely himself, he would in equal measure give up time, money and his inordinate energies to help heal wounds inflicted by others. And the whole pleasure about insulting people was that it should be deliberate and give him a sense of achievement and superiority, a sort of twisted intellectual game. Kicking a crippled barber was way below his usual standards.

He sat silently, guiltily, listening to the snipping of scissors. Then he became aware of a voice from the next booth, a deep, rumbling voice that evidently belonged to a banker in the City who was coming to the end of a troubled week. ‘I probably shouldn’t mention this, but …’ the financier began as, layer by layer, he discarded the burdens of his business, any one of which might have helped a sharp investor turn a substantial profit. But there was no danger, of course, because there was only a barber to overhear him, and other gentlemen.

Suddenly Burgess understood how much like a confessional these cubicles were, with their polished wood, the whispered tones and almost sepulchral atmosphere. You relaxed, closed your eyes, drifted. Yet when you looked up again the face staring back at you from the mirror would not be your own, not the youthful, virile self you knew so well and took for granted. What you saw instead, and more and more with every passing month, was the face of your long-dead father as though from another world, the spirit world. A world of different rules, where there were no secrets, where everything was shared. It sparked his curiosity.

Burgess stirred himself. ‘Sorry,’ he apologized to McFadden. ‘Bad day.’

‘That’s what we’re here to help with, sir,’ Mac responded, bringing out the words slowly in a voice that was evidently of foreign origin but not immediately traceable, one more accent in a city which in recent years had become flooded with refugees. ‘It is a privilege to be able to serve gentlemen such as yourself. This may be the only time in a hectic month you get to relax. A chance to put aside all those worries.’

‘People often shout at you?’

‘We have all sorts of busy gentlemen – businessmen, politicians. Sometimes they shout, sometimes it’s nothing but whispers. We don’t take offence. And neither do we take liberties, of course. We help them relax. Then we forget.’

‘You get politicians here?’

‘Had Mr Duff Cooper in here the other day, when he resigned. Not a surprise, it wasn’t, sir. He’d been complaining to me about the state of things for months. Rehearsed bits of his speech with me, so he did, while he was sitting in this chair. But you get all sides,’ Mac hastened to add, anxious not to offend. ‘Even the Prime Minister has to have his hair cut sometimes, sir. Foreign Secretary, too, and members of the Royal Family.’

‘They all have their stories.’

‘Indeed they do.’

‘And your story, McFadden. What’s that?’

‘My story, sir?’

‘Where d’you get the gammy leg?’

‘No story at all, really. A crushed pelvis. Unfortunate, but …’ He shrugged his shoulders.

‘An accident?’

Mac continued cutting, concentrating in silence as though he’d found a particularly stubborn tuft, shifting uncomfortably on his damaged leg. But the eyes told the story.

‘So, let me guess. If it wasn’t an accident you must have been attacked. Beaten up in some way. Maybe injured in the war?’

‘A little while after the war, sir.’

‘Where?’

Mac didn’t wish to appear impolite or evasive, but neither did he want to lay himself open. This wasn’t how the game was played. It was the customer who kvetched and prattled, and the barber who listened, not the other way round. Still, English gentlemen were so extraordinarily anxious about displaying their ignorance in front of the lower classes that Mac felt confident he knew how to put an end to the conversation. ‘Somewhere you’ll never have heard of, sir. Abroad. A little place called Solovetsky.’

‘Fuck,’ Burgess breathed slowly.

‘Beg pardon, sir?’

‘The gulags.’

Mac started in alarm and dropped his scissors. ‘Please, sir.’ He glanced around nervously, as though afraid of eavesdroppers. ‘It is a thing I don’t care to talk about. And in an establishment such as this …’

‘You poor sod.’

Mac was flustered. He fumbled to retrieve his scissors from the floor and almost forgot to exchange them for a fresh pair from the antiseptic tray. He stared at Burgess, his face overflowing with pain and a defiance that even half a lifetime of subservience hadn’t been able to extinguish. Burgess stared straight back.

‘Don’t worry, McFadden, I’ve no wish to embarrass you. I’m sorry for your troubles.’

Mac saw something in Burgess’s eye – a flicker, a door that opened for only an instant and was quickly closed, yet in that moment Mac glimpsed another man’s suffering and perhaps even private terror. This man in his chair understood. Which was why, when Burgess suggested it, he agreed to do what no barber who knew his proper rank would dare do. He agreed to meet for a drink.