EXCERPT :
The Rum Barber’s Baby
At 32 stone it was indisputable that Barry the barber was vast - he obviously had some form of congenital glandular disorder which had left him like a Sumo wrestler without the wrestle. But to the few customers who came down the gloomy alley of Haddon Close, half-hidden on the edge of London's Soho red light district, Barry still presented an unfailingly cheerful appearance. While he cut, he was always ready to listen. Yet there was one person who knew that, underneath it all, Barry hated himself, felt his great folds of fat to be an object of disgust to others and, ever since the article printed in the newspaper, Jim Claydon knew Barry needed a friend.
The article said that two vandals had snatched the few cans of shaving foam Barry had for sale and sprayed the cream in boot-high capitals over his shop window for all the world to see I'M TOO FAT TO - - CK, the paper generously omitting two of the capitals. Barry was resigned to almost everything, but not this. This would hurt him more than the barber's razor the numb-skulls were alleged to have used on him. For one thing was sure, Barry had never been able to attract a woman - not enough to stay with him, bare his child. His shop was his home and right now he had only one real friend.
‘Giving the ants their share are you Barry?’ Jim was looking at the remnants of Barry's cream doughnut which had dripped on to the alleyway as Barry sat outside his shop supported by his favourite stone bollard, biting into that squidgy confection as if it was his only consolation for working and living in the Godforsaken Haddon Close.
‘All right Alf?’ Barry mustered..
“Alf ” was Barry's little intimacy. It went with Alfred Einstein - an oblique reference to Jim's background in the Genetic Engineering Department some streets away on the respectable side of town near University College Hospital.
‘It's all right, take your time, it's only a trim I'm after today.’
But it was just clip-clip, snip-snip, once in the chair. Each time an attempt was made to tease something out of him about his attackers Barry seemed to move away from his mirror, embarrassed by the scar the vandals must have made down his face. Snip-snip, clip-clip.
‘Yep, yep, get all kinds in here, don't I? True, true!’ was his handy conversation-stopper. Snip-snip, clip-clip.
Something caught the corner of Jim's eye; the movement of net curtains hanging behind the lattice of grimy stained-glass windows in the partition to Barry's private quarters. The head darted back behind the drapes but not before he'd noticed it was a woman with peroxide blonde hair, dazzling crimson lip-gloss, oceans of mascara and brassy earrings which hung from her with a suggestion of police handcuffs. That face was familiar. It had been connected to a voluptuous figure in a bottom-pinching micro-skirt and fish-net tights, the whole ensemble trying to angle itself into a curb-crawler's car where Haddon Close met civilisation on the Tottenham Court Road.
Still, silence.
But what could Barry have said? That he was paying a prostitute to prove to those meat-heads they were wrong about his being too fat to perform as any red-blooded male who knew his Arthur from his Martha performed? The obvious was going to hurt him more when he faced it: the woman would have no more feeling for him than any of her other clients, just a mix of gratitude and contempt. She would be giving him no more than he'd paid for. Trying to prove something about his virility only made Barry seem a bigger fool. When that truth caught up with him it was going to hurt, really hurt.
‘What's this? Clip-clip, and no lip, eh Barry?’
Barry tried but failed to smile in the mirror. It was depressing to see him like this, all clammed up. When Barry the barber didn't have a word in him, the world didn't have a word in it, and this backstreet shop seemed... dispossessed, empty, except for that feeling of another presence... that woman behind the partition.
Barry had stopped cutting. Reflected in the mirror was his barrel of a body, shapeless in that grey polythene cutting overall as he wearily lumbered across the room. Jim glanced in the mirror to see him flip the CLOSED sign. Barry was sliding the half-curtains closed. Then he peered above them, left and right into the alley before lolloping back to resume his cutting. Perhaps he'd been worried about those vandals coming back to give more trouble. As soon as those scissors had done their job, it seemed, he had other business to attend to... behind that partition.
The silence seemed locked in. A joke was worth a try... the bawdy one which could always tickle Barry... about the decimal place being in the wrong position where he'd priced those packets of contraceptives on sale by the sink.
‘See you're still selling your packets of joy for £5.50 Barry! Does the lady come included?’
Clip-clip, snip-snip. The joke must have backfired. Perhaps he'd reminded Barry of his failure with women; the reason why Barry had let his appearance go; why he would never cut women's hair.
Jim felt his whole body being jolted up in the air, stage by stage, as Barry pedal-pumped the barber's chair.
‘What's that about my “packets of joy” ? What's that I heard?’
At last, Barry’s face had broken into a smile.
‘Don't know if I can let Einstein down if he's being a touch rude!’ he added.
‘Your pump-action’s a dubious pleasure, Barry!’ Jim said.
Barry pedal-bounced him down in the chair and amiably made to throttle him with his big fat arms. Jim leapt out of the chair. It was so rare, so good to be children for a moment, to wrestle each other around the shop.
Fun - until that partition got in the way, the whole frame swaying with the impact of Barry’s body.
Jim felt something like the cold cut of steel… slicing and ripping into his back.
‘That's for you! Bastard! Bastard! And that's for your dirty graffiti!’ the voice shrilled. ‘ And that's for 'urting Barry!’
More rips. It felt as if skin was being shredded from his back. Blood had already formed into a small pool at his feet, his head was swimming. He fell forward into what must have been Barry's fat arms. He felt himself being dragged back to the barber's chair.
‘For Christ's sake Sylvie! Put the scissors down - he's no yob! He's a mate!’ he heard Barry shout.
‘But he - he was - ’
‘He was only fooling with me! Are you crazy? For Christ's sake, don't just stare! Ring an ambulance! Drop the scissors! Ring! Sylvie? Don't hold back on me. This towel, it won't stop it - the blood, it just keeps coming! Pull yourself together! D'you want the man to - here, take the towel. Keep it pressed. Right here! Come on, press it! I'll ring.’
Jim felt the cold compress pulled away from his back as Barry's bulk moved away from him and stumbled across to his Sylvie. She'd taken to one of the salon’s benches where she lay on her back, heaving and gasping, her legs spread open. From the reflection in the mirror it was clear now; the woman was not only massively pregnant, she was having contractions.
Those meaty hands of Barry's were just fumbling in the air above her; as if looking for something to do with themselves.
‘What is it Sylvie? What is it Love? What d'you want me to do?’
‘For God's sake Barry! Can't you see? She's in labour! You've got to call an ambulance! Now! If I could get up out of this chair I'd - ’
But Jim knew he couldn't help and nor could any ambulance for he remembered now what he had left in his case on that wet and gloomy November day after a haircut from Barry in Haddon Close last winter.
He'd dropped in to see Barry between visits to different sites of Genetic Engineering's annexes. Barry had assured him that, while his “favourite customer” had his hair cut, the contents of the case would be quite safe from any undesirables who might walk in - providing he left the case in the room behind the little private partition. Barry had been trying to elicit what juicy tit-bits of information he could about the Genetic Engineering Department's research in relation to enhancing artificial insemination... it had all started as small-talk, conversation-filler while he cut. But he’d been persistent, searching.
A portable refrigeration unit containing a special flask of semen had been missing from the case when its absence was noticed later that day. On the phone Barry had denied any knowledge of the unit or the flask. The Department had assumed that nobody finding the flask would properly follow the instructions for maintaining refrigeration and the sperm would, slow but sure, die a gradual but discreet death.
As Sylvie lay there, her fingernails clawing the bench, that pale green discolouration of the skin on her legs was quite obvious, replicating exactly what Jim knew of the experiments carried out at the Westleigh Laboratories on rats shaven of their fur. In effect, Sylvie had been artificially inseminated with VP 5 the preserved contents of the flask Barry must have removed from the case.
The sweat trickled down Barry’s fat cheeks, his hands still fumbling helplessly above Sylvie. It was easy to imagine the way he must have fumbled with a standard AI kit to inseminate the woman the only way he might.
‘You'll need gloves, Barry, if you want your - your baby.’
‘Gloves?’ he asked, staring blankly at the beginnings of the birth.
‘You must have some rubber gloves?’
‘Gloves?’
‘Barry, use gloves !’
There was no time now to explain to him the dangers of what he would be touching but he might prolong Sylvie's life a little longer if he could pull himself together. The task seemed hopeless. Barry was seized up, reduced to a spectator on what was spilling... now beginning to crawl out of Sylvie and on to the bench.
At first it looked like after-birth. Maybe, mercifully, the product of VP 5 was stillborn. But then Jim could see why Barry was rigid with fear. There was a movement of its own in the substance... co-ordinated movement. The whole mass was thickening, gelatinous but tough and honeycombed with numerous tiny but clearly defined suckers not unlike those on an octopus, the whole rhythmic and developing with a rapidity which was quite astonishing.
‘I want to know,’ Barry began, ‘I want to know... whose this is,’ he said, trembling and not taking his eyes off the enlarging form which pulsed as it struggled for its oxygen.
‘That, Barry, is the result of what you took out of my case, last November. I'm sorry. You're looking at the growth of VP 5. Eventually, the product of Semen VP 5, whatever shape it takes, is going to have a toxic chemistry - very much so. If you're not going to use gloves you'd better get away from that bench before - before full development.
‘Toxic?’ At last Barry turned. ‘You mean poisonous?’
Jim looked at him gravely. Words seemed irrelevant.
‘Nothing - nothing of Sylvie's is poisonous!’ Barry pronounced. What d'you mean ! “Poisonous”? What are you saying!’
‘Let’s say “venomous”, Barry.’
Jim felt Barry was staring right through him, ‘ “Venomous” ?’
‘Yes mate, mammal, venomous, prehistoric, Semen Type 5,’ Jim said.. ‘Found preserved on the bodies of two - ’
Jim had to stop, bite his lip. The pain of the wound Sylvie had given him with those scissors was still shooting up his back. He knew he was weakening.
But Barry should hear something of the truth about what he'd taken from the case, he should know something of the pain he'd caused.
‘I’m sworn not to say anything but I’m going to tell you this much Barry: VP5 was found on the bodies of two copulating Xyantheporous - as the team have christened them – found in Iceland, frozen and perfectly preserved. They must have been caught in a hot geyser. Sodium salts had reacted with their fat to form glycerol which perfectly preserved the semen when they must have tumbled into ice. That flask you took from my case. Controlled re-heating - ’
‘No! It's science talk! That’s all. Science talk!’ Barry said, cringing as he allowed himself to take the briefest glance back over his shoulder. His baby was now little more than a heap of bubbling, rapidly multiplying offal. He couldn't watch it any more. He cradled Sylvie's head so far as his fat arms would allow, refusing to see that she'd died in giving birth.
‘You'll be okay Sylvie! You just rest now. I’ll – I’ll work something out,’ he said patting her corpse. You’re going to be… fine! That's all that matters - isn't it Sylvie? Just you and me? Being fine?’
But then those great arms jolted. Something was being hammered noisily against his shop window. Two grinning masks appeared over the rim of the half-curtains and the aerosol can was smacked down on the window again.
‘Barry boy? Barry boy-ee !’
There was an inane chuckle from one of the mouths.
‘Remember us Barry boy? We remember you! We know you're in there - Barry boy!’
His huge frame, parked on the bench, panting and still clutching Sylvie to himself, Barry's bloated face and neck streamed with sweat. Confusion and defeat were written in every movement of his eyes as he looked first at one mask and then the other.
Again the aerosol was smacked against the window where this time
an ugly crack rent the whole pane.
‘Yes, Barry boy! We've come to do your window. Just for you! ’
From the veins swelling in his neck it was obvious Barry had already worked out what filled the four spaces that the vandals had sprayed after the words: I'M TOO FAT TO - - - -. Still staring at the words, Barry was propping Sylvie gently so that she sat on the bench and was supported by the wall. He produced a yellow rubber glove out of each of the pockets in his cutting overall.
‘ “Venomous” you said, Jim? You said - that which comes from semen, VP-whatever-you-called-it, it’s venomous?’
‘Leave Barry! If you still care about anything, just forget your - move away from it! Barry!’
But Barry was already trying to hold on to the knot of offal, his face drawn with disgust and wonder, as if he was wanting to deny what kept slipping between those yellow gloves, wanting to believe his Sylvie had born him a normal, bonny child, into a world which stretched free of Haddon Close, where there were no more vandals, no more pimps.
The shop door burst open where one of the masked men had shouldered it. Barry must have seen them too, but he'd just managed to conceal the birth beneath the flap of his cutting overall, his arms folded to support its bulk. The youths, annoyed that he'd just stood his ground in his little barber’s shop and apparently unmoved by their graffiti, looked as though they were going to play with him, manhandle him where his weight made him slow, give him the beating that would humiliate for life.
But Barry was tugging the mask off the bigger of the two. His cutting coat flapped open. The first vandal to see it had just enough time to run back out of the shop but the bigger one jerked his hands away from Barry's lapels.
‘You like my baby?’ Barry insisted, pushing the birth forward.
The hoodlum couldn't move.
‘You like it, eh? Say you like it! Show us how brave you are now. Say it! You low-life! I want to hear it ! I - LIKE - YOUR - BABY!’
But it should have been obvious to Barry. The youth couldn't bring
himself to speak, even if he'd wanted to - for Barry had squashed the pulsing knot that had come from Sylvie square into the vandal’s gaping mouth. It had already started exploring and probing relentlessly with those fatty cilia, the young man struggling as his neck rippled like the gullet of a snake obscenely bloated on a large kill.
Jim screwed his eyes closed. When he looked into the reflection of the mirror again it was evident Barry had also been compelled to take another look. The whole knot of cilia, now attached by its numerous suckers to the vandal’s face, was unyielding in its rhythmic movement. Where its transparent bulk concentrated in what appeared to be the first stages of a head, the birth pulsed most powerfully. Sure enough, just as the rat trials had shown, there was the expected greening of the youth’s skin spreading down to his neck as the venom from the product of VP5 must have concentrated and diffused.
It wasn't possible to turn away from its reflection in the mirror now, Jim thought. He was still a researcher in the field. In any case, after ages of preservation near that Icelandic geyser nobody, not even those funded to spend their days researching the contents of the flask, had seen how VP 5 would behave, conceived and ready to use the venom sacs in its suckers.
A draught of cool evening air blew into the shop where the door still hung open on the alley. People were approaching, perhaps to satisfy their curiosity about the shouting, the smashed shop window and the forced door, but still they were people and, best of all, Barry was still smiling as his baby sucked.
He must have still trusted in what he'd said while he wrapped his big arms around the body of Sylvie and believed he was bringing comfort to what was cold, stiff and unaware…
‘Everything's going to be all right Sylvie. You just see. You're still going to come off those streets, make a family with me !’
Soon, he would have to return down that long road to reality, find an answer to his conscience, answer for Sylvie.
But for a moment, just a moment, as their baby sucked, his smile was broad and childlike; etched seraphically in all the blubber from his face to his double chin; a smile he’d never before dared to wear inside the grimy little shop that tried to look out on the narrow side street where once Sylvie chanced to pass.
Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk
NOOK KOBO ( W H Smith )
Smashwords Google