The admiral’s teeth have been giving him gyp. He’s had to have all his real
ones out. The new ones hurt. He’s been told to keep them in so he’ll get used
to them. But they won’t stay in place. His gums are tender. He can’t bite. So
he’s not wearing the artificial teeth. They’re in the pocket of his overcoat. I
don’t blame him. He showed them to me. They’re held in place with a spring
and look like they belong in the mouth of a merry-go-round horse.

He says he hates having to suck on meat for nourishment. I suggest eggs,
porridge; all the mushy foods I can think of. It isn’t just his face which
seems to have become smaller since he’s had his teeth out. His whole body
seems to have shrunk.

No one round here is supposed to know who he is. But I twigged pretty
early on. Not that I let on, mind you. I dare say he can be tetchy; though
he never has been with me. He has a soft spot for barbers. His father had
been one.

Every inch the seafaring man, his appearance has led some local tykes to
christen him ‘Puggy’. Affectionate though it sounds, it’s not a moniker
you’d use to his face. Still, there’s an arm’s length to the nautical nickname.
Those who thought it up don’t know anything about him. And that
suits him well enough.

He lives not far from here in a cottage close to the river. A much younger
woman lives with him. She’s from the coast, Kent or somewhere – Mrs
Booth. She’s probably the one who, in good weather, hangs a songbird’s
cage from the arched trellis by their front doorway.

My celebrated customer removes his enormous belcher-neckerchief – it’s
as red as a poppy – then looks expectantly at me, seems to be waiting for
something. White stubble covers his lower face. Some days he asks for a
shave. But today – what with the damage wrought by what he calls ‘that
hell-hound tooth-drawer’ – his jaw and cheeks are still paining him. He
stands scowling, almost wincing. Then I realise, and enquire, ‘Piccadilly?’

‘Piccadilly it is …’

And he seats himself in the big black chair.

This is our way of starting a haircut. It has been for a few years.

The stench of burnt naphtha was still in the air when the admiral first entered
my shop. About six years ago that would have been, not long after
the terrible blaze at Bethel’s over in Nine Elms. The pitch at the creosote
works boiled right up out of the cisterns and poured into the river. It looked
like the Thames itself was on fire. I remember him sniffing his way in, as
though expecting to find the air inside the shop to have less of a stink to it
than that in the street. Whether he found the air more breathable, I don’t
know. But what was clear from the off was that he approved of the shop’s
layout. At the front there’s a large window of the kind used in alehouses.
Keeps anyone from seeing in. To the right as you come in there’s a counter
and just ahead a door set into a partition which reaches to the ceiling. The
bottom half of the partition is wood, the upper half thick glass that looks
as if it’s had a flurry of thumbs gouged in it from top to bottom. There’s
no seeing through that pane either. Nothing happens in the area where the
counter is. It’s there to put some distance between the haircutting parlour
and the street. I suppose this need for privacy goes back to the days when
for many men a visit to the barber didn’t so much involve the dressing of
actual hair as the tending of false. Not something you’d want merrymakers
on their way to Cremorne Pleasure Gardens gawping in at.

Bristles – that’s how we got onto the subject. I’ve never come across anyone
so knowledgeable about brushes. On his second visit to my shop he
told me – whisking his wrist in the air as he did so – how his father had
applied a badger brush. He spoke of the strength, care and maintenance of
bristles. And what makes a good brush. Qualities that are the same whether
you’re lathering a face or painting in oils. If it hadn’t been for the dried
flecks of blue, red and yellow on his scalp and in his hair, I’d have thought
he must have made his living in the same way I do.

As a boy he had accompanied his father to the houses of men of rank and
fashion. ‘Very eminent, some of them were,’ he recalled, as if the notion
of eminence was something he couldn’t take seriously even at the age of
eight. ‘In those days any man of consequence possessed three wigs, two for
the week and one for best, a Sunday wig.’ While his father was attending
to a patron’s hair or, more often, lowering a wig onto an important rumpled
pate, the boy would occupy himself by sketching. Many of ‘the quality’ had
paintings on their walls. His father’s shop had pictures on its walls, too. The
drawings pinned there were for sale at one shilling to three shillings each.
Not bad, that. The cheapest of the boy’s labours went for three times the
cost of a haircut.

More often than not, the admiral is talkative with me, jovial even. The most
sombre I remember him being was a couple of years ago, when recalling a
story about the ‘artist of renown’. The first time he mentioned this fellow I
thought he was talking about someone else. Now I pretend not to know it’s
himself he’s talking about. Anyway he described how, at the gallery in this
artist’s house – the townhouse with rain coming through the skylight these
days – two potential buyers stood in front of a picture, inspecting it and
saying as how they’d heard tell that the painter applied chocolate powder,
snuff and all manner of materials to his canvas. One of the gentlemen made
so bold as to lick his finger and was about to use it to ascertain whether the
mast of the ship in the picture would disappear if rubbed slightly. His wetted
fingertip never got as far as the canvas. From somewhere, someone was
emitting a low rumble of anger.

I couldn’t help but laugh when the admiral told me the artist of renown had
been watching the pair through a peep-hole in the wall.

My customer squinted at my merriment. Then, seeing it might indeed be
amusing – two discerning men about town beating a hasty retreat without a
single word being uttered – the admiral parted with a reluctant chuckle. But
it was definitely the chuckle of one who, if he had to, would growl again.

When he’d come here enough times for me to think of him as one of my
regulars I took the liberty of mentioning my younger brother and his drawings
and paintings.

‘Get him to bring me some of his work,’ he said.

So I did, and Francis took some of his most recent sketches and watercolours
to the cottage beside the ginger-beer shop. The admiral was gruff but
he liked what he saw. And that was how my brother came to be taken on
as his assistant. Well, I say ‘assistant’. All Francis seems to do is stretch
canvases and run errands.

Every morning a grey dray decides to come to a stop a little way down the
street from here. I don’t know why but it does. Could be the creature is
frightened of something. Maybe it’s had enough pulling. A gang of lads always
forms to goad it. But the nag stands stock-still and won’t budge until
it’s good and ready. Of course, I can’t see any of this; only hear it. You get
to know the sounds that make up the routine beyond the windows. When all
you can see is the inside of a place, you can hear all the clearer what’s going
on outside. And it’s while the boys are making a commotion about the
halted horse that the admiral says, ‘I like it here by the waterside. But when
there’s work to be finished, I’ll venture up west.’ (No ‘artist of renown’ this
morning; is the ‘I’ a slip or, maybe, confidence in my discretion?) But he
doesn’t speak up. Never has. What with his frayed, changed mouth and the
racket of the boys outside, I don’t catch much of what he’s saying. ‘First in,
last out – that’s me. I enjoy the vanishing days. Fewer people, more peace.
Less tripe talked.’

Not sure how to respond, I keep quiet. How do you reply when an elderly
gentleman tells you he enjoys his vanishing days? Inclining slightly, I nod,
respectful. What else can I do?

Even though he’s worked for the admiral for the past three years, my brother
calls him ‘Mr Booth’. Mr Booth has retired from a life at sea and now
paints all day. Perhaps he suspects my brother knows otherwise but between
them they keep up the act. As do I.

After guessing who ‘the admiral’ must be, I thought of his work, what I
knew of it, and of the people who must at that very moment be looking at
one of his paintings. I felt a bit wide-eyed. But then I pulled myself together.
If he was a miner, I’d not be dwelling, amazed, at the total of all the coal
he had ever smashed free. Or if he was a barber I’d not be in awe of all the
hair he’d ever cut; as if it was there, the sum of it, in sacks heaped behind
him. With the admiral there is just the morning, and me carefully combing
the remaining strands of hair over his delicate, soft scalp. That is quite
enough. He is the man I know at this moment; the poor devil tormented by
not being able to chew and who fortifies himself with several pints of milk
every day, milk enlivened by a few goodly splashes of rum.

How curious it must be for this customer to go into town; where everyone
knows his name but few know his face. Over a dozen years ago, when Victoria
came to the throne, three artists were knighted. Landscapes, portraits
and history were what they painted. I’d never heard of any of them. That
the man known hereabouts as ‘the admiral’ had not been one of those honoured
was shocking. It was seen as a piece of spite, a scandal.

Since getting to know him I think I see why he wasn’t one of those chosen.
And I’ll bet you any money that the three who got the regal sword tapped
on their shoulders know the correct knives to use – and the correct order to
use them in – at a royal do. And if they were born in the countryside, they’d
have taken the steps necessary to get rid of their twang or burr. Imagine the
admiral taking voice lessons! He’s broader Cockney than I am. He’s kept
his rough edges. He hasn’t had time not to.

Fine white hairs fall gently from the scissors onto the back of my hands.
The admiral recovers from his brief lapse – saying ‘I’ not ‘he’ – and continues
telling me about the precious time the artist of renown spends with a
picture before it is put on show. That is when he adds the last touches. Or,
sometimes (and here the admiral’s eyes twinkle with mischief) he decides
to ‘elaborate’. Then, finally, the varnish. It dawns on me; what he said a
few minutes ago – the remark I couldn’t hear properly because of the racket
the boys were making as they yelled at the horse – wasn’t connected to his
mortality. He didn’t say ‘vanishing’ days. It wasn’t the remainder of his life
he was talking about but the time when he must leave a painting be and call
it ‘finished’ – then apply varnish.

I didn’t tell you why the admiral waits to be asked ‘Piccadilly?’ before he
sits in the chair. That started after he told me about the time the artist of
renown had spent all day at the Royal Academy finishing a painting shortly
before that year’s exhibition was due to open. As he was leaving, a younger
painter hurried to accompany him down the steps. Having heard the rumour
that the older man no longer lived in his house near Oxford Street,
the more callow of the two was bursting to find out where he did live. On
the street, the respectful young fellow couldn’t be restrained from hailing a
hackney coach for his senior.

‘Where to?’ he enquired as a cab pulled up beside them.

‘Piccadilly,’ snapped the artist of renown as he climbed in, ‘I’ll give him
directions from there.’

I brush the stray little locks of fallen hair from his neck and shoulders.
Some men are impatient with this. They squirm or move away. They want
to be off. But the admiral stands still while I perform this courtesy.

He looks up slightly while fastening that endless neckerchief of his. Then
I help him on with his coat. He puts on his battered top hat, pats his coatpocket.
(The terrible teeth make no noise. I imagine they’re wrapped in
something.) The look on his face becomes more disgruntled, as if this expression
is as necessary as a muffler for venturing outside. While reaching
for his umbrella he tells me that, apart from his father, I am the man who
has cut his hair most often. I don’t know what to say. He wishes me an
abrupt ‘good morning.’
Still at a loss for words, I manage to return his pleasantry. I don’t get to
the outer door in time. He opens it himself. I watch as he sets off along the
street. His shoulders are raised. His gait is guarded, brisk. No one keeps
himself to himself quite like Mr. Turner.

I go back inside, fetch the broom and start to sweep the floor. Damp snowy
trimmings drop from my toecaps. And once again I feel decided pleasure at
being a keeper of Puggy Booth’s secret.