Free Winston’s War by Michael Dobbs Page A

refugees. “It is a privilege to be able to serve gentlemen such as yourself. This may be the only time in a hectic month you get to relax. A chance to put aside all those worries.”
    “People often shout at you?”
    “We have all sorts of busy gentlemen—businessmen, politicians. Sometimes they shout, sometimes it's nothing but whispers. We don't take offence. And neither do we take liberties, of course. We help them relax. Then we forget.”
    “You get politicians here?”
    “Had Mr. Duff Cooper in here the other day, when he resigned. Not a surprise, it wasn't, sir. He'd been complaining to me about the state of things for months. Rehearsed bits of his speech with me, so he did, while he was sitting in this chair. But you get all sides,” Mac hastened to add, anxious not to offend. “Even the Prime Minister has to have his hair cut sometimes, sir. Foreign Secretary, too, and members of the Royal Family.”
    “They all have their stories.”
    “Indeed they do.”
    “And your story, McFadden. What's that?”
    “My story, sir?”
    “Where d'you get the gammy leg?”
    “No story at all, really. A crushed pelvis. Unfortunate, but…” He shrugged his shoulders.
    “An accident?”
    Mac continued cutting, concentrating in silence as though he'd found a particularly stubborn tuft, shifting uncomfortably on his damaged leg. But the eyes told the story.
    “So, let me guess. If it wasn't an accident you must have been attacked. Beaten up in some way. Maybe injured in the war?”
    “A little while after the war, sir.”
    “Where?”
    Mac didn't wish to appear impolite or evasive, but neither did he want to lay himself open. This wasn't how the game was played. It was the customer who kvetched and prattled, and the barber who listened, not the other way round. Still, English gentlemen were so extraordinarily anxious aboutdisplaying their ignorance in front of the lower classes that Mac felt confident he knew how to put an end to the conversation. “Somewhere you'll never have heard of, sir. Abroad. A little place called Solovetsky.”
    “Fuck,” Burgess breathed slowly.
    “Beg pardon, sir?”
    “The gulags.”
    Mac started in alarm and dropped his scissors. “Please, sir.” He glanced around nervously, as though afraid of eavesdroppers. “It is a thing I don't care to talk about. And in an establishment such as this…”
    “You poor sod.”
    Mac was flustered. He fumbled to retrieve his scissors from the floor and almost forgot to exchange them for a fresh pair from the antiseptic tray. He stared at Burgess, his face over-flowing with pain and a defiance that even half a lifetime of subservience hadn't been able to extinguish. Burgess stared straight back.
    “Don't worry, McFadden, I've no wish to embarrass you. I'm sorry for your troubles.”
    Mac saw something in Burgess's eye—a flicker, a door that opened for only an instant and was quickly closed, yet in that moment Mac glimpsed another man's suffering and perhaps even private terror. This man in his chair understood. Which was why, when Burgess suggested it, he agreed to do what no barber who knew his proper rank would dare do. He agreed to meet for a drink.
    The entrance to Shepherd Market stood just across from Trumper's. It was a maze of alleyways and small courtyards hidden in the heart of Mayfair. Here a hungry man could stumble upon a startling variety of pubs and restaurants, mostly of foreign origin, and if he stumbled on a little further he could find narrow staircases that led to rooms where he might satisfy many of his other cravings, too.
    When Mac arrived Burgess was standing at the bar of the Grapes, as he had said he would be. He was smoking, cupping the cigarette in the palm of his hand, and drinking a large Irish whiskey. The barber levered himself up onto a bar stool. Mac was short, wiry, his shoulders unevenly sloped as though to compensate for his crooked leg, with a back that was already bent, perhaps through stooping over his