This Spectr’d Isle

My mother has been to see me only a couple of times since she died The last time she visited she came with my grandmother, who died in 1954.

Now I ought to make it clear that on both these occasions I was quite poorly. Mother came once in early 2000, when I was very sick with complications after heart surgery, and then again a year ago, when I was running a high fever and hospitalized with H1N1 (Swine Flu). Both times she simply stood in the open doorway of my bedroom — last year, with my gran beside her.

The first time I saw her she was not smiling, and her apparition filled me with a terror that lasted for several nights. As I recall, she did smile at me last year, and the sight of her and gran standing there was quite reassuring.

As I don’t normally spend time with dead relatives, even close ones, these apparitions told me I was quite sick, so perhaps the look I saw on her face was the measure of how ill I was.

How uncomplicated life would be if all my experiences with ghosts could be put down to illness, a troubled state of mind, or, as Scrooge says, “an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato”. But that is not the case. Let me tell you what happened when I was living in England several years ago. (Don’t all the best ghost stories happen in this ‘spectred’ isle?)

Late one Saturday afternoon in February, just as dusk was drawing in (entre chien et loup as the French say), I took the bus from Brixton to Herne Hill, where I was living. There was a row of shops by the bus stop near the railway station, and seeing the barber shop still open, I went in for a hair cut.

Apart from the elderly barber the shop was quite empty. It immediately reminded me of the ones I went to as a youngster, before the words ‘unisex’ and ‘styling’ were associated with men and their hair; when a leather strop hung on the hook beside the sink to whet the cut-throat razor that was proof of the barber’s skill, and the walls were hung with photos of bantamweight boxers and their Lonsdale Belts that were proof of the establishment’s masculinity. The shop I entered was redolent of shaving soap, steamy towels, and bay rum mingled with the aroma of tobacco from long-extinguished cigars. Instead of my usual trim, perhaps being absorbed back into my own yesteryear, I asked the barber for a short back and sides. But not too short.

The red leather chair was comfortable, and the barber, who I now saw was quite elderly, had a skilled touch. I felt very relaxed, but I am sure I did not fall asleep. We were alone and our conversation was easy. We talked about out travels, and the barber told me he had come with his family from Cyprus. I knew people who had served in Cyprus with the British armed forces (I myself had been offered a teaching post on the base there in the 1970s), so we talked about Makarios and the the complicated politics that had driven so many to leave that small country.

The old man charged five or six pounds for his services — less than half the usual price of a London haircut. Hair nicely cut, neck and jacket brushed, I remember giving him a tenner and not asking for change.

The short back and sides served for a couple of months, and it was getting on for Easter before I went back one Saturday morning for another trim. This time, the barber was a younger man, and he was talking to a friend of about the same age, who was just leaving. I remember noticing for the first time a small television on the counter, tuned to a sports programme.

Overall, the interior was the same as before, but my impression of it was quite different — the colours seemed less subdued and a few changes were apparent. The TV set was one thing I noticed and another was the photo that hung close to the mirror. It showed a younger version of the old man who had cut my hair in February, together with what I took to be his family.

The young barber finished the conversation with his friend and seated me in the same red leather chair. We talked a bit about football and I mentioned that the TV set hadn’t been there on my previous visit. He said he didn’t remember seeing me and asked me when I had been there before. I explained that I had come in late one Saturday afternoon.

“That must have been a long time ago,” he said. “I don’t stay open on Saturday afternoons any more.”

“You weren’t here,” I said. “It was an older man — that man in the photo.” I went on to tell him how he had talked about his home in Cyprus and that he had decided to bring his family to England when things were so unstable there.

“That was my father,” the barber replied. “He’s been dead for five years, and I’ve been running the shop on my own ever since.”

I could only insist that I had been there just two months earlier, which he said was impossible. So who had cut my hair? I was convinced it was the man in the photo, but he had died years ago. And why did I find the shop open when its owner swears it would have been shut, and he and his friends would have been in Croydon watching Crystal Palace F.C. playing soccer?

The clincher was the price.

This time I had to rummage through my pockets for more coins when I was charged the going rate of £12 for my haircut.

“If you paid £6, it must have been an awfully long time ago,” said the barber, confident he had closed the matter to further discussion.

Did I imagine the whole thing or does time-shifting work in real life? I had the haircut to prove that I had been there, didn’t I? And I knew the old man’s story. How could this be? I still don’t know, but I have stopped trying to figure it out.

Makes you think, doesn’t it?