Dodger

today?’ At least, he
tried
to make this greeting cheerful, but you could see he didn’t have it in him. Never had Dodger seen such a woebegone face, apart from the time when Onan disgraced himself more than usual by eating Solomon’s dinner while the old man’s back was turned.
    Mister Todd was definitely not a naturally cheerful personality; the gloom was apparently laminated to him and he was obviously more built by nature to be someone like an undertaker’s mute, whose job it was to follow the coffin of the deceased, looking respectably mournful but not saying a word because that would cost tuppence extra. It wouldn’t have been so bad if Mister Todd hadn’t tried to ignore it by pretending to be cheerful; it was like putting rouge on a skull. Dodger was fascinated. Perhaps all barbers are like this, he thought to himself. After all, I’m only asking for a shave and a haircut.
    With some misgivings, he sat down in the chair and Sweeney swirled a white sheet over him in a way which would have been called theatrical if, indeed, Sweeney had really known how to do it first time. At this point, Dodger became aware of a dull, persistent smell coming from somewhere. It had the flavour of decay and it mingled with the smells of soap and jars of various lotions. He thought, Well, this isn’t a butcher’s shop, so I just bet his landlord has gone and knocked a way from the privy to the sewers – I really wish they didn’t do that sort of thing.
    A lot of the sheet ended up round Dodger’s neck, to be whisked aside by the luckless Sweeney with lots of apologies and assurances that it wouldn’t happen again. It did. Twice. Next time it fell around Dodger in a way that both of them could live with, and the sweating Sweeney turned his attention to the job in hand. At some time, somebody must have told Mister Todd that a barber, in addition to tonsorial prowess, should have memorized practically a library of jokes, anecdotes and miscellaneous rib-ticklers, occasionally including – should the gentleman in the chair be of the right age or nature – ones that might include some daring remarks about young ladies. However, the person that had given him this advice had simply not calculated on Sweeney’s terrible lack of anything that could be called bonhomie, cheerfulness, ribaldry or even a simple sense of humour.
    Nevertheless, Dodger noticed he did try. Oh my, how he tried, stropping his razor while messing up punch lines and, horror of horrors, laughing at the joke which he himself had so clumsily executed. But at last the razor was sharp enough for Sweeney and then there was the matter of the shaving foam, which the man attended to just as soon as he had laid the razor down so that its gleaming edge faced north, all the better to maintain its sharpness.
    Dodger, helpless in the chair, watched in something like awe, his mind springing to and fro from the spectacle of the barber’s preparations to a pleasing image of the admiration he hoped would appear on Simplicity’s face once she saw him scrubbed up so well, oh my, a proper young gent. Now he could see that the man’s hands had scars on every finger, although this slight problem barely showed up because Sweeney was briskly whisking up the shaving foam with all the manic enthusiasm of a circus clown. The stuff was falling out all over the place, and here and there, because it had been so suffused with air as to make it practically dirigible; it was floating away on the breeze as if it wanted to get out of there as much as Dodger did right now – especially since he was aware of that smell, that heavy and unpleasant smell, gradually permeating the shop.
    ‘Are you feeling all right, Mister Todd?’ he said. And, ‘Your hands are shaking a little bit, Mister Todd.’
    The barber’s face looked like steel, if steel could sweat, and he was swaying back and forth with his eyes like two holes in the snow, looking far away but at something else, somewhere else. Dodger began stealthily to extricate himself from the cloth, whilst keeping a sharp eye on the man. And, oh dear, and now Mister Todd started to mumble, the words blurred as they tried to get out one after the other, some of them so urgent to get away from the swaying man that they overtook themselves.
    Then Sweeney was between Dodger and the door to the street, waving the gleaming razor like a bride just after her wedding, straining to see who is going to catch the bouquet . . .
    Dodger, hoping