‘I simply try to do the job exactly as I’d want it done to me.’
‘Treat folk the way you’d want to be treated and you can’t go far wrong, my father used to tell me. Seems our jobs are different after all. Aim o’ mine is to do to the other man exactly what I’d least enjoy.’
‘Are you ready?’ The Mayor had silently drifted closer and was looking at the pair of them in the mirror.
Lamb shrugged. ‘Either a man’s always ready for a thing like this or he’ll never be.’
‘Good enough.’ She came closer and took hold of Faukin’s hand. He felt a strong need to back away, but clung to his blank, bland professionalism a moment longer. ‘Any other jobs today?’
Faukin swallowed. ‘Just the one.’
‘Across the street?’
He nodded.
The Mayor pressed a coin into his palm and leaned close. ‘The time is fast approaching when every person in Crease will have to choose one side of the street. I hope you choose wisely.’
Sunset had lent the town a carnival atmosphere. There was a single current to the crowds of drunk and greedy and it flowed to the amphitheatre. As he passed, Faukin could see the Circle marked out on the ancient cobbles at its centre, six strides across, torches on close-set poles to mark the edge and light the action. The ancient banks of stone seating and the new teetering stands of bodged-together carpentry were already boiling with an audience such as that place had not seen in centuries. Gamblers screeched for business and chalked odds on high boards. Hawkers sold bottles and hot gristle for prices outrageous even in this home of outrageous prices.
Faukin gazed at all those people swarming over each other, most of whom could hardly have known what a barber was let alone thought of employing one, reflected for the hundredth time that day, the thousandth time that week, the millionth time since he arrived that he should never have come here, clung tight to his bag and hurried on.
Papa Ring was one of those men who liked to spend money less the more of it he had. His quarters were humble indeed by comparison with the Mayor’s, the furniture an improvised and splinter-filled collection, the low ceiling lumpy as an old bedspread. Glama Golden sat before a cracked mirror lit by smoking candles, something faintly absurd in that huge body crammed onto a stool and draped in a threadbare sheet, his head giving the impression of teetering on top like a cherry on a cream cake.
Ring stood at the window just as the Mayor had, his big fists clamped behind his back, and said, ‘Shave it all off.’
‘Except the moustache.’ Golden gathered up the sheet so he could stroke at his top lip with huge thumb and forefinger. ‘Had that all my life and it’s going nowhere.’
‘A most resplendent article of facial hair,’ said Faukin, though in truth he could see more than a few grey hairs despite the poor light. ‘To remove it would be a deep regret.’
In spite of being the undoubted favourite in the coming contest, Golden’s eyes had a strange, haunted dampness as they found Faukin’s in the mirror. ‘You got regrets?’
Faukin lost his blank, bland, professional smile for a moment. ‘Don’t we all, sir?’ He began to cut. ‘But I suppose regrets at least prevent one from repeating the same mistakes.’
Golden frowned at himself in that cracked mirror. ‘I find however high I stack the regrets, I still make the same mistakes again and again.’
Faukin had no answer for that, but the barber holds the advantage in such circumstances: he can let the scissors fill the silence. Snip, snip, and the yellow cuttings scattered across the boards in those tantalising patterns that looked to hold some meaning one could never quite grasp.
‘Been over there with the Mayor?’ called Papa Ring from the window.
‘Yes, sir, I have.’
‘How’d she seem?’
Faukin thought about the Mayor’s demeanour and, more importantly, about what Papa Ring wanted to hear. A good barber never puts truth before the hopes of his clients. ‘She seemed very tense.’
Ring stared back out of the window, thick thumb and fingers fussing nervously behind his back. ‘I guess she would be.’
‘What about the other man?’ asked Golden. ‘The one I’m fighting?’ Faukin stopped snipping for a moment. ‘He seemed thoughtful. Regretful. But fixed on his purpose. In all honesty… he seemed very much like you.’ Faukin did not mention what had only just occurred.
That he had, in all likelihood, given one of them their last haircut.
Bee was mopping up when he passed by the door. She hardly even had to see him, she knew him by his footsteps. ‘Grega?’ She dashed out into the hall, heart going so hard it hurt. ‘Grega!’
He turned, wincing, like hearing her say his name made him sick. He looked tired, more’n a little drunk, and sore. She could always tell his moods. ‘What?’
She’d made up all kinds of little stories about their reunion. One where he swept her into his arms and told her they could get married now. One where he was wounded and she’d to nurse him back to health. One where they argued, one where they laughed, one where he cried and said sorry for how he’d treated her.
But she hadn’t spun no stories where she was just ignored.
‘That all you got to say to me?’
‘What else would there be?’ He didn’t even look her in the eye. ‘I got to go talk to Papa Ring.’ And he made off up the hall.
She caught his arm. ‘Where are the children?’ Her voice all shrill and bled out from her own disappointment.
‘Mind your own business.’
‘I am. You made me help, didn’t you? You made me bring ’em!’
‘You could’ve said no.’ She knew it was true. She’d been so keen to please him she’d have jumped in a fire on his say-so. Then he gave a little smile, like he’d thought of something funny. ‘But if you must know, I sold ’em.’
She felt cold to her stomach. ‘To who?’
‘Those Ghosts up in the hills. Those Dragon fuckers.’
Her throat was all closed up, she could hardly talk. ‘What’ll they do with ’em?’
‘I don’t know. Fuck ’em? Eat ’em? What do I care? What did you think I was going to do, start up an orphanage?’ Her face was burning now, like he’d slapped her. ‘You’re such a stupid sow. Don’t know that I ever met anyone stupider than you. You’re stupider than—’
And she was on him and tearing at his face with her nails and she’d probably have bitten him if he hadn’t hit her first, just above the eye, and she tumbled into the corner and caught a faceful of floor.
‘You mad bitch!’ She started to push herself up, all groggy, that familiar pulsing in her face, and he was touching his scratched cheek like he couldn’t believe it. ‘What did you do that for?’ Then he was shaking out his fingers. ‘You hurt my fucking hand!’ And he took a step towards her as she tried to stand and kicked her in the ribs, folded her gasping around his boot.
‘I hate you,’ she managed to whisper, once she was done coughing.
‘So?’ And he looked at her like she was a maggot.
She remembered the day he’d chosen her out of all the room to dance with and nothing had ever felt so fine, and of a sudden it was like she saw the whole thing fresh, and he seemed so ugly, so petty and vain and selfish beyond enduring. He just used people and threw them away and left a trail of ruin behind him. How could she ever have loved him? Just because for a few moments he’d made her feel one step above shit. The rest of the time ten steps below.
‘You’re so small,’ she whispered at him. ‘How did I not see it?’
He was pricked in his vanity then and he took another step at her, but she found her knife and whipped it out. He saw the blade, and for a moment he looked surprised, then he looked angry, then he started laughing like she was a hell of a joke.