The morning lay draped in a kind of gilded calm, the sort you only find in Hyde Park at seven o’clock, before the bankers had finished their protein shakes and the tourists had unclenched their guidebooks. The chestnut trees stood like patrician sentinels, polished by dew, while the gravel paths gleamed with the faint glimmer of rain from the night before. Swans in the Serpentine moved with the measured insolence of duchesses.
Arthur Cavendish and Benedict Montrose, both twenty-eight, both inheritors to far too much land and far too little purpose, were running side by side in expensive Lycra that gave them the look of overpaid mercenaries. Their trainers made the gravel crackle.
“Dash it, Ben,” Arthur puffed, “did you see that blasted study about men and barbers? Apparently we are more faithful to the chap who trims our hair than the woman who shares our bed.”
Benedict snorted, cheeks flushed, curls damp with sweat. “Faithful? It’s bloody ecclesiastical, you pompous arse. I’ve had Nigel at St. James’s clip my hair since Eton. The man knows the ridges of my skull better than I do. My ex, on the other hand, couldn’t have told you which side of the bed I favoured if you’d tattooed it on my arse. Damnable business.”
Arthur laughed, nearly tripping on a root disguised as virtue. “And yet—here’s the irony, you hopeless cad—Nigel never once texted me with: We need to talk. He simply gets on with the business of shearing me like a prized Southdown. That, my dear fellow, is fidelity without the infernal dramatics.”
They pounded past the Italian Gardens, fountains sparkling like champagne spilled by angels. The air smelled faintly of wet leaves, dog fur, and the sort of artisanal coffee only ever drunk by hedge-fund managers pretending to be poets.
“You know what it is?” Benedict said, spitting onto the grass with blue-blooded derision. “Trust. You let a man hover a pair of scissors by your jugular for seven straight years without cocking it up—that’s intimacy of the highest bloody order. A girlfriend? Oh, she’ll flounce off the moment you forget an anniversary, but Nigel—Nigel never forgets the grade of my fade. God bless the man.”
Arthur wheezed, half with laughter, half with exertion. “So you are saying marriage should model itself on the barber’s chair? Quiet, dependable, once a month, no blasted quarrels?”
“Precisely,” Benedict replied, slowing near a rose garden, “sit you down, warm towel, soothing silence, job well done. None of this incessant prattling about feelings. Christ on toast, it’s the very model of domestic bliss.”
Arthur bent double, laughing, his breath mingling with the perfume of damp roses. “For God’s sake, Ben, you are making me want to propose to Nigel. Imagine the vows: In scissors and in clippers, till death or baldness do us part.”
Benedict grinned wickedly. “And you’d damn well mean it. Though Nigel deserves better than you, you simpering goat.”
Arthur swatted him with the back of his hand. “Better than me? Ha! You vain peacock, the poor devil would retire after one fortnight of your incessant prattle about hairlines.”
At which point, as if conjured by their mock-litany, a tall figure emerged from the mist ahead. Clad in a neat navy tracksuit, jogging with the steady rhythm of a man who cuts hair as precisely as he breathes, came none other than Nigel himself. The Nigel. Scissors’ own high priest, prophet of the perfect taper.
Arthur stopped dead. “Bugger me sideways. Speak of the barber and he shall appear.”
Benedict froze too, suddenly as reverent as an altar boy. “Nigel Montmorency—by Jove, it is him. The Michelangelo of the fringe. The Rembrandt of the razor.”
Nigel gave them a polite nod as he approached, sweatless, serene, the sort of man for whom even sprinting appeared an act of immaculate craftsmanship.
“Morning, gentlemen,” he said in his steady baritone, as if announcing the beginning of a haircut.
Arthur blurted, “Nigel, old chap, we were just—er—discussing our undying loyalty to you.”
Nigel raised one eyebrow, with the calm disdain of a man who has endured aristocratic confessions before. “So long as you book your appointments on time, Mr Cavendish, loyalty is assumed.”
Benedict nearly swooned. “You see, Arthur? No drama, no bloody melodrama. Just cold, dependable certainty. The man is a philosopher in clippers.”
Arthur straightened, flushed. “Nigel, if society collapses, if governments fall, if marriages fail—promise me you’ll still be there on Jermyn Street with your scissors.”
Nigel allowed himself the faintest smile, which on any other face would have been rapture. “Hair grows regardless of civilisation, Mr Cavendish. One must always be ready.”
With that, Nigel dashed on, disappearing into the mist like some barbering demigod, leaving the two young men trembling with a kind of comic awe.
Benedict exhaled a shaky laugh. “Christ alive, Arthur, I feel as though we’ve just seen God.”
Arthur wiped his brow. “Not God, you fool. Better. God never got my parting straight.”
The pair jogged on, grinning like schoolboys who had glimpsed eternity through a pair of scissors—until both their pockets began to vibrate. The cheerful ringtone of duty.
Arthur groaned, yanking out his phone. “It’s Amelia. Bloody marvellous.” He thumbed it on. “Darling?”
Amelia’s voice came crisp, imperious. “Arthur, where the devil are you? The decorator’s arrived early, and he’s threatening to paint the drawing room a shade called ‘Tuscan Blush.’ If you’re not back this instant to veto it, I shall drown myself in the Serpentine.”
Arthur winced. “Yes, darling. On my way. Immediately. Don’t touch the bloody blush.”
Meanwhile Benedict had lifted his own phone, rolling his eyes heavenward. “Yes, Charlotte?”
Charlotte’s tone was sharper than cut glass. “Benedict, you left the Pomeranian without breakfast. He’s whimpering like an orphan and I’ve a Pilates class in twenty minutes. Get back now or the poor creature will perish of neglect.”
Benedict mouthed silently to Arthur, for Christ’s sake, before answering meekly, “Of course, my love. I’ll run, sprint, bloody teleport.”
Both men ended their calls in sheepish silence. The park, once filled with swanlike serenity, now felt like a stage on which they had been caught out, two clowns dragged back into the comedy of real life.
Arthur sighed. “So much for eternal fidelity to Nigel.”
Benedict shook his head, already turning towards the nearest exit. “Bugger loyalty, old boy. Domestic tyranny trumps barbers every time.”
Arthur muttered as they broke into a reluctant jog, “Nigel would never have stopped a run for bloody Tuscan Blush.”
“And he’d sooner starve himself than whimper like that damned Pomeranian,” Benedict added darkly.
And so they went, heirs to dynasties but prisoners to decorators and dogs, trudging back not to the temple of Nigel but to the altar of modern love—its scissors blunt, its towel stone cold.
