13 minute read
THE STORM by Jacob Parker
The Storm by Jacob Parker
It was Wednesday morning and I was getting a haircut. This was in France. A small town in France by the sea. I didn’t live there or anything - I was just passing through. I’m not French either and I don’t speak French. But I needed a haircut. Needed something to steady me. A haircut is always good for that.
I found a small barbershop on the road heading out of this little town. It had one of those traditional red and white twirling signs outside. Inside the place was all done out in a retro style—that exposed brickwork on the walls, two vintage leather chairs, and a yellow and white vesper in the window all restored and polished.
There were no customers, just the two barbers sitting there, waiting. One of these guys was older. He had a large, full beard—all glossy and waxed and trimmed with the mustache ends curled up. His hair was done in the fifties style—very short on the sides then with a long swept over side parting, slicked down. He wore round, black-rimmed glasses and a denim shirt, carried that kind of intellectual look.
The other guy looked much younger. He was one of those guys that will never have much facial hair. He had a very soft mustache. He was wearing a baseball cap, but I could see he had really soft, thin hair beneath the cap as well. Like a baby’s hair. I thought that was odd for a barber—not to have your own facial hair to style, and wearing a baseball cap to hide your hair. He was a lean guy though. He wore a tight black t-shirt and had all these beautiful tattoos coming down his arms.
“I need a haircut,” I said. “I don’t speak French.” I said all this in French. I’d translated that on my phone beforehand. Thought I wouldn’t need to say any more.
The young guy, the one with no facial hair and the tattoos, stood up and showed me a chair. The guy with the beard and denim shirt watched on quietly, didn't say anything. I sat down and the young barber lay the cape over my body, tied it gently around my neck. I started to try and explain what I wanted, but he put his hand up to stop me, as if to say, no—there’s no need. He started to run his fingers through my hair, moving around me, thinking, getting the sense of the cut before. Of what it had been, where it had come from. I felt my shoulders begin to soften, my body deepen into the chair. And I closed my eyes. I closed my eyes and felt the fingers moving through my hair.
I thought of Tanya then. I thought about how we’d started going for walks along the canal on our lunch-breaks. How for quite a while it was all normal with her. Nothing odd about it—just two colleagues on a lunch break. Then suddenly it wasn’t normal. These things, you know, I hadn't intended—the thought just happened in an instant. And that was it really, after the thought of it. There probably wasn’t ever any going back after that.
I started going back to her place after work. Telling Jane I had to work late. She wore big silver hooped earrings, Tanya, and would tuck her hair behind her ears with her fingers when she talked. I thought that was just magnificent.
The water in the canal on these walks—it was really clear in the summer. Looking up along the canal you’d only get light and reflection off of the surface. But if you stopped and looked directly down into the water, the surface just disappeared. You could see everything then, crystal clear. Everything in the water and on the bottom of the canal. All the shit down there. Shopping trolleys, old bikes, the odd moped. Traffic cones, glass bottles, cans, bricks. And dark green weeds swaying heavily in some current. Of course through the water it all looked sort of beautiful. All calm and silent, held in that green-blue. Kind of safe. Or maybe that was just Tanya and how I was feeling at the time and everything. I don’t know. But I also knew that if I were to put my hand in—my arm—and pull something back out from down there, it was going to be rank—covered in canal slime, cold, slippery as an eel.
This young barber though—he really was good. Really gentle. He knew how to handle someone. And I’ve been to plenty of different barber's in my time, and plenty of them can be a little rough. A bit brusque with you. But this guy—for example, when he tilted my head to get a better angle it was the gentlest touch. Firm enough so I knew how he wanted me to move my head, but not one bit too forceful. He got it just right. Just let me know in the touch what to do. I don’t know if I've ever had a barber get it right. Been touched like that.
The barbershop was nice and quiet too. Only the sound of an occasional car going by, and the other barber, the guy with the beard and glasses, turning pages of a magazine now and then. I felt alright then, I did. I felt okay. I listened to the steady clicking of the scissors and this young guy working away.
I suppose that was the thing about Tanya. It was tender. There was nothing forced in it. Jane though. We were pretty cruel to each other, Jane and I. Plenty of times in those years that followed. There was one time though with Jane. On our honeymoon. We’d gone to some of those islands off the coast of Scotland. And we were driving around a lot, driving all round these islands. And one day we’d gone way down this small lane, miles down this single track, to find a beach that we’d been told about. The beach was nice and everything. Enormous and empty. But on the way back in the car, going back along this single track, suddenly there were these rabbits everywhere. Little rabbits. Probably young ones. And absolutely all over the place—in the grass and sitting all over the road. It was like in the time we’d been at the beach they’d all just hatched or something. And now they were sitting everywhere, all dozy and oblivious—and just all over the place.
I’m sure these rabbits had never seen a car before, because they had no idea what to do. They wouldn’t hop out of the way. Not even when I pressed the horn. I drove really slow, edging along. They’d move out of the way of the wheels, reluctantly. But the others in the middle of the road would stay sitting there and let the car pass right over them.
There must have been thousands. But then after a while I had to just drive. We were miles from the hotel and we were never going to make it back otherwise. There was no way we could have walked. What else could I do? So I just drove. And we could hear all these little rabbits kind of popping under the wheels. And as the car passed over the ones in the middle, they’d jump now and we could hear their little heads hitting the underside of the car. I must have killed hundreds. Hundreds.
That’s a disgusting story, I know. And this barber, this young guy working away with such concentration—so careful, so attentive to me—I was relieved he’d never know that about me. What I’d done with the rabbits. I’d felt awful at the time, just awful. And Jane—she’d been so good with me about that really. She’d put her hand on my shoulder as I drove and looked at me and told me that it was okay, it wasn’t my fault. It wasn’t my fault.
So different to how we drove together later on. Years later that is—driving to view our new house for example. With the kids in the back now, and Jane and I arguing about something. About nothing. Just arguing all the time. I think that was it then, the moment I knew—or the moment I’d decided in some way—that I was going to leave them, Jane and the kids, and make a new life for myself somewhere.
This new house we were going to see was still being built, way out in the suburbs. And when we got there and we were looking around, all the rooms felt enormous to me. The half-built kitchen seemed vast, with all these shining surfaces—a kind of dark marble—and then white walls everywhere. It felt more like an ice-rink somehow. And I couldn’t see how we were going to fill all these cupboards. Couldn’t figure out what we were going to put in all of them.
Tanya was the way out of all that with Jane. For a bit. Until then of course she wasn’t and that all ended. That was when the transfer to the Singapore office seemed…Well, there was no reason not to by then.
There’s a sort of warm numbness you get from all that wealth and business luxury, like I got in Singapore. And it keeps you going for a while. Maids cooking and cleaning for you. Fresh pressed shirts. Silk sheets on the bed. And the money pouring into your account each month, more than you could ever spend. A lot of time there was spent living behind big thick, clear windows—where the temperature inside was different to outside. Like a fish tank. Like, perhaps, what I imagined a place of knowledge to be.
I used to go to the night zoo there in Singapore. For something to do. They had crocodiles, some small wild cats, a few apes, and a couple of elephants. But then one time I was there I realized why it was a night zoo. It was because the enclosures were tiny. They were using the lighting and the dark to make it appear like the animals had these huge, unenclosed, free areas to be in. But looking really close I could see the walls or bars of their cages just a few feet back in the dark, hidden by plants or bushes. After that, the whole thing just made me sick. One of the elephants stood there, its head nodding up and down. Up and down. Completely lost its mind. No way out of there—and with their long memories and everything. I couldn’t stand it after that. It put something awful into me, the whole thing, and I couldn’t shake it. And then I was glad to leave Singapore not too long after.
It seemed to me that this young barber should be finishing up soon, felt like I’d been there a while. But he wasn’t. He was still snipping. Going over and over my hair. Getting different scissors, checking the length with his fingers, adjusting. He was so careful, so attentive to every detail. Completely absorbed in his work. His eyes almost vacant in concentration.
You know what, I remember selling that car—the one Jane and I drove to our new house in. I sold it before I went off to Singapore. The guy that came to buy it from me was really thorough about everything as well. He checked the whole car over, in lots of detail. Drove it round and round with me sitting there in the passenger seat with him. He checked the electric windows, the lights, all the service history. He was there for a couple of hours, testing and checking. He was so careful, so precise. Then a few days after he’d bought it, I remembered I’d left a CD in the player. I’d forgotten to take it out. And it really got into me that did—I was so annoyed with myself. I’d checked everything getting it ready to sell as well. I'd been careful with this. And the guy had been really thorough too. And then I’d gone and forgotten the music. It was Springsteen’s Born To Run album that I’d left in the car. I remember that. I loved that album. I listened to it a lot at that time, through all of that stuff with Jane. It was all going forwards that album, all momentum—wonderful music to drive to. That feeling of going someplace—really going someplace—putting all those miles behind you. Going out there to find something. Like that time in Singapore—I'd been sure I was going to find something there.
Then the young barber did stop his cutting. Suddenly stopped cutting, just like that. And he did something. He laid his hands on my shoulders—evenly, gently—and he leant down, he bent down low so his head was level with mine, our ears almost touching, and in the mirror, finally, he looked straight at me. And in that instant there, I felt completely transparent. Like he’d seen right through me. Or down into me. And it put that terrible feeling into me again—the thought of the world still out there, waiting for me. My life waiting for me. And how there’s no going back. No starting again. That’s almost unbearable to me sometimes you know.
And then it was done. The final, familiar motions. The small mirror to show me the back. The soft brush around my neck. He didn’t look at me once again, this young guy. Not once. I raised myself out of the chair and he got to tidying up straight away. It was the other guy, the guy with the beard and the glasses, who'd been sitting there like a sentry the whole time—he took my payment. He looked at me, looked at me like he knew.
Seemed strange too, somehow, that I’d never see this young barber again. Never know him better than I knew him right then. That we’d never sit down together and go over all this stuff properly, talk it all through carefully.
Outside on the street I felt a chill around my ears. It would be Autumn soon. Autumn in France. I looked up the street, the way out of the town. The road in the distance curved around a bend, disappeared. And I thought about how I’d get out of there, how I’d get on the road again, and of all the things still up ahead of me out there. And I thought too, about those two guys, back there in the barber's, already forgetting me.
