England and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

while with a crazy bunch who’d made the journey before me. Then I settled down to be a barber.
    And now I was the same age, give or take, as this man whose head was in my hands. And yes, in however many years it was, I’d seen his hair grow thinner and greyer, more pink showing through. But of course never said.
    There’s a joke in the barber’s trade: ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’
    When my wife died and I went to see her, I mean in the chapel of rest, she was covered right up to her chin in a cloth. All I saw was a head. You can’t get away from some things.
    I went back to snipping. Outside people were hurrying home. Lucas, one of my juniors—it’s what I call them, ‘juniors’—was sweeping the floor.
    Your turn to speak, I thought. But he didn’t. For a second or so I thought: He’s just glad of the touch of my fingers, through his hair, on his scalp, the flick of my comb. The smell of shampoo and talc, like the smell of being a baby again.
    Vangeli. It means ‘angel of good news’, but I don’t like to explain this to people, because of the jokes. I don’t like to explain that Irene, my wife’s name, is really a Greek name too. It means ‘peace’.
    Peace!
    There’s another moment when you reach for the hand mirror and hold it up to the back of their heads. And once again you have to look, both of you, straight into the big mirror, as if you’re a pair who go together. It’s the moment when it’s almost over. Then there’s the moment when you pull away the cloth and brush them down and they stand up and you give them the paper towel, then they wipe their necks, put on their jackets and pay. You give them back any change, if they don’t tell you to keep it.
    Then there’s the moment when they turn, and you—or at least I always do it—give them a little pat, a little pat that turns into a squeeze, just half a second, on one shoulder. It means thank you, thank you for the tip, but it also means: there, that’s you done, that’s you all fresh and ready. Now go and live your life.

H AEMATOLOGY
     
    Roehampton, Surrey
    House of Eliab Harvey
    7 th February, 1649
    Colonel Edward Francis
    The Council of Officers
    Westminster
    My dear cousin,
    Well, Ned (if I may still so call you and if you will deign to hear from me), we have lived through extraordinary times. Were there ever such times as these? And now I must cede to you that you are of the winning party and may lord it over me who was the close attendant of kings, nay of our late—of our very late—king. Or would you have me name him, if I have it right, ‘tyrant, traitor, murderer’? Would you daub me with the same charges, for having been so privy to His Majesty—but must I not call him that?—for having ministered to his agues, fevers and coughs? Would you have me place my own head upon the block for having been such a bodily accomplice to tyranny? Then it would be seen, would it not, if my argument of the blood’s motion held true? Physician, prove thyself!
    But was it not proven when that royal blood—may we even call it that?—spurted forth but a week ago at Whitehall? And is it not proven when any man’s head or limb is severed from his body, as has been the lot of many men—nay, of women and children—in these late times? A king is but a man like any other. Has it needed seven years of war and a trial by Parliament to determine the matter, when any such as I might have attested to it? Anatomy is no respecter. I have dissected criminals and examined kings. Does it need any special statute to claim the one might be the other?
    That, Ned, was my grounding and my ground, long before those of your party set out to curb the King’s powers, then overthrow him. There are tyrannies and tyrannies, and treacheries and treacheries. There are some even now of my party—I mean among the party of physicians—who would not blench or lament to see my old head removed from my body, to see me cut down for having raised my standard against