Sleeping Beauties Read online

  If she had ever doubted the efficacy of booking a makeover at that beauty salon, those doubts now vanished. She needed every ounce of help she could get. This – this creature before her was lethal – absolutely lethal. Still – she might have a little bit of a game with Bernie now, before giving in. Who, she thought, could blame her? Not that tough little beautician, that was for sure. Why, she could almost feel her clapping her on the back and telling her to Go For It – a favourite phrase of hers, it seemed.

  Rita was certainly setting up hostilities and Caroline would have to be swift. Even the trilling of the doorbell was a part of Rita’s pincer. It was the concession Rita had made to Caroline’s request, put through Bernie since it was his house, that his ex-wife should announce her presence before being let in, like anybody else.

  Now all they got was the sharp noise of the bell, which usually made them jump, followed by the swiftest entry possible. Bernie had done his best. Dark thoughts might lurk in Caroline’s heart, but she could do nothing about them. Except walk away from Bernie of course, and she was not prepared to do that – yet.

  ‘Why hallo,’ said Rita to Caroline, with infuriating surprise, ‘you’re early.’ She turned and smiled at Bernie, caught her reflection in the mirror, and stood on tiptoe to pat her hair. Tiptoe to remind him of her weak and female tinyness. All Caroline could do was cheer herself up by reminding her brain to be on guard because scorpions, those deadly arachnids with lobster-like claws, could be female and tiny and there was nothing weak about them, nothing at all.

  ‘Tea, Rita?’ she said lightly.

  But Rita was already there, saying, ‘You sit down – I’ll make it.’

  And Caroline, who until then was unaware she had a violent side, gave a passable shoulder tackle and managed to win the try.

  ‘No, no,’ she said sweetly, ‘I’ll make it, you sit down. You look exhausted after the gym.’

  Rita’s little smile sagged. ‘Do I?’ she said, and hopped to the mirror.

  ‘Mmm,’ said Caroline, filling the kettle. ‘I think you may have overdone it. Don’t you, Bernie?’

  He agreed wholeheartedly, feeling it was safe.

  ‘A bit drawn,’ he said.

  ‘Perhaps a spot more rouge?’ called Caroline. ‘Maybe it all came off on the aerobike?’

  She refused to look at the bags and their contents. Waiting for the kettle to boil she kept up a cheerful chattering with Bernie that would not be easy for Rita to penetrate.

  Rita popped her head round the kitchen door and gave a little Oh! of delight, clapping her hands. She fell upon the plastic bags as if they were Christmas stockings. Caroline had never seen such a disgustingly amateur piece of quasi-paedophile’s delight. Rita went from thirty-five to about eight in less than a picosecond: Violet Elizabeth Bott could have done no better. All she needed was the lisp.

  She knelt at the bags and took out celery heads, pimentos, the fronding herbs, an artichoke – and called to Bernie, ‘Well done! How lovely, lovely!’ And then to Caroline, sotto voce: ‘He was always so good at doing the shopping ... ’

  With shaking hand Caroline poured out three cups of tea, wishing she had the odd spoonful of strychnine about her person, and shoved one steaming beverage as close to Rita’s nose as she dared, sloshing as much as possible on to the lycra. In the sitting-room Bernie smiled at her nervously, took the preferred tea, and sat down in a corner of the room, as far away from her as possible.

  Caroline pursued him. He cowered. She knew that this was no way to win this particular battle. Bernie was not one for arguments, let alone the pyrotechnics of a hearty row. Rita might step down and not come to dinner, let alone cook the sodding thing, but it would be a Pyrrhic victory.

  Caroline took the only route possible under the circumstances. She cradled Bernie’s cheek in her hand, bent and tickled his ear with her tongue, and said in a voice warm with affection: ‘So, what is Rita going to cook for us on Friday?’

  And Bernie, looking as relieved as if he had an excess of air let out of him, reached and squeezed her thigh and said, ‘You don’t mind?’

  Caroline crossed everything and said, ‘Not at all.’ She felt Rita’s presence as her hackles rose.

  ‘I’ll need him to help me in the kitchen,’ said Violet Elizabeth Bott, a little too sharply.

  ‘I’ll need him for about a couple of hours in the afternoon first,’ said Caroline firmly.

  ‘Oh that’s all right,’ said the munificent Rita. ‘We’ll get everything done the night before and leave it ready. I’m in Bournemouth on Friday, cake icing. I must say you could have chosen a more convenient date.’

  Bernie sat there looking from one to the other as they doled out his time. He sipped his tea, and tried to concentrate, which was hard after what Caroline had done to his ear.

  ‘I’ll bring the wine,’ said Caroline, wanting to contribute something that could not go wrong.

  ‘No need,’ said Rita, ‘I’ve ordered it from my wine-merchant friend. He gives me a very good deal.’

  ‘Fizzy fucking water, then?’ Caroline muttered under her breath, but out loud said, still smiling, ‘Remember last time I cooked, Bernie? Those awful crabs, the gloopy gnocchi?’

  He smiled and nodded, and added cheerfully, ‘Those dreadful sunken islands,’ so that Caroline nearly brained him.

  But she took a grip. This was no time for self-indulgence.

  ‘And remember afterwards,’ she said, ‘when they’d all gone home? How you laid me down on the table and covered me with the whipped cream and then licked it off very slowly? You said I was the best pud you’d ever had ...’

  Bernie took at pull at his tea as if it were raw whisky.

  Rita gave a little chirrup that could have been amusement but might have been disgust, and returned to the food bags, exclaiming as each new item was brought forth.

  ‘I’m so looking forward to cooking for you properly again,’ she called. ‘Remember how you used to love it when I brought my little offerings home for you, Bern?’

  Little offerings? thought Caroline, wishing to vomit.

  Bernie could not reply, for in Rita’s absence Caroline had taken the opportunity to drape herself across his lap and clamp his mouth very positively to her own. Battle Plan A seemed to be moving along satisfactorily.

  She could hear the little beautician urging her on.

  Give him more tongue, she seemed to hear.

  So she did.

  15

  No phone-call for Gemma. And Megan’s sympathy had become sickening by the time Monday morning arrived. So much so that Gemma was glad to climb into her neat navy suit, button her white cuffs and drive off to the clients on her list.

  As soon as she got in the car she felt, if not cheered, at least liberated. If Megan had given her one more sympathetic grunt, or offered her one more milky cup of cocoa, she would have thrown up. One thing to tell a friend you are feeling vulnerable, quite another to pretend you are not and have them realize it anyway. Especially after that bloody little beautician talked about her as if she needed excavating.

  Just about the only thing that kept Gemma from going off the deep end was her pact with God (or the Devil) to have Jim for retribution. As she negotiated the traffic on the South Circular she hoped with all her heart that the deed would not be necessary. Apart from anything else, she didn’t remotely fancy him, and she rather wished – as the likelihood of the required telephone call grew more and more remote – that she had chosen crawling to Canterbury barefoot as penance, which she would have much preferred.

  She closed her eyes and pictured Jim and herself At It. It was not a pretty thought.

  M. Le Château. She would be really good for him; she just knew it. Mature with a sense of fun – just what he needed. She braked for a woman with a pushchair. Always amusing the way they shove those things out into the traffic first, she thought. If the children survive, it must be safe for the parents to cross.

  She had even begun to dream about him. Curi
ous dreams in which she appeared in floaty white frocks or gorgeous taffeta gowns, walking along the crenellations of a building. He held her hand, speaking low. In each dream Gemma’s newly beautified face glowed in the moonlight, perfectly lit, not a line in sight and clear-eyed with happiness. Quite obviously he had not only taken her to his château and made a woman of her, but he had paid off her credit cards as well. In the dream she was happy; when she woke she was miserable.

  Hence Megan’s overweening sympathy. More Fool You, she read in every line of her flat-mate’s expression, for I have a man, and you do not.

  M. Le Château, telephone me please.

  The day, like all days recently, was slow. Well, it was hardly an inspiring job in the first place. You were trading on other people’s hopes or fears when you did what she did; either you sold them a golden future, or you insured them against the loss of one. Either way, it was to do with hope, and hope was always in the future. Hope was never now. And there were too many bloody couples in the world – look at them all out there just Being.

  She drove aggressively to see if that would buck her up. Sometimes she played a game, selecting a particularly pompous-looking young male driver and nudging right up close behind him so that he had to drive a bit faster than he wanted – than the traffic in front of him allowed – and check his mirror constantly with a nervous, darting look. Or else he had to grow horns and Not Take That Sort Of Thing From Anybody and be even more aggressive than she.

  Amusing. Dangerous occasionally – but life was too bland – and it was never seriously dangerous – not in London traffic where thirty miles an hour was speed.

  But today she could not even raise the steam for that, and she let a perfectly selectable Vauxhall Astra with coathook and jacket go dreaming on – of the area manager’s job, the little house in Chorley Wood, and the holiday to come in Benidorm.

  In the secret recesses of her soul, even that lot didn’t sound too bad.

  The Loire, though! That, of course, was the insidious thing about hope – it fed the arteries of desire, swelled the veins with dreams and pumped up the capillaries all ready for action. And she’d got it circulating through her, making her perk up at the thought, die away when she suppressed it.

  Telephone please.

  Swinging off the South Circular at last, she thought that if she were going to cede the joy of life, she’d rather do it stuck in a loveless marriage amid crenellations in the heart of the Loire, than in Chorley Wood.

  She indicated and moved into the outside lane. South London, here I come, she thought grimly.

  Deeply depressing thought.

  The Today programme was discussing the Equal Opportunities Commission. Such poppycock! All it meant was that in the office you had to be ready to swing a right hook when a chap spotted the unmistakeable outline of a bra clasp beneath your shirt, and had the liberated thought that it would be fun to twang it. This game had become noticeably more prevalent since the resurgence of Wonderbras. Gemma knew exactly what she would do when the time came and her bra elastic went Wham! After the right hook, and while his mind was on his throbbing proboscis, she would twang the elastic of his underpants and smile winsomely as she cried out Snap!

  She switched off the irritating pronouncing voices. Of course she wouldn’t. Not really. Jobs were too scarce. It would have all been so different with M. Le Château. Only it wouldn’t now. She sighed. Let the day begin. First call a Lambeth woman, recently widowed, needing pension advice. Dizzy, glorious heights. If she has dark hair, he will ring. If she has light hair, he will not.

  The woman was grey. ‘Damn,’ said Gemma when the door was opened to her.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ said the elderly client.

  And so you should, thought Gemma sourly. Perhaps she should pass on the card for Tabitha’s Beauty Parlour. Might as well – it was beginning to look increasingly as if she wouldn’t need it after all.

  Lambeth, Mitcham, Raynes Park, Streatham and home. A real touch of the Eldorados. She climbed the stairs. He would not have rung – he was not going to ring. And she might just as well abandon all thoughts of having a makeover to go for the kill. Depressing. She had not realized how very much she missed the whole business of pupa into butterfly and wearing the ornaments of seduction. But you couldn’t clap with one hand.

  She knew that if she went and had a makeover just for herself, and then came back to the silent, empty flat (devoid of Megan’s overnight bag) she would merely be pathetic. Somebody famous once said To Be is to Belong. True, she thought, and pushed open the door.

  *

  There are some to whom bells are merely the sound of the Angelus, the summons to prayer. There are some who would mock poor Quasimodo as he swings through the belfry, crying with pain, in search of a way to be as beautiful as the sonorous sound. And others, of course, who will deny the rumour that each death knell in the land Tolls For Thee and say they never heard one.

  But those effects are nothing in comparison with the profound experience awaiting Gemma as she turned the key in her lock, pushed open the door, and heard that first, familiar, beloved ping, that denoted the machine was about to spring into life.

  She stopped, then, galvanized, she ran, took three full breaths and let it ring three times, before picking up the receiver and saying, cool and languorous as any couch-curled female, ‘Mmm? Hallo.’ And giving her number.

  He did not apologize. And Gemma decided this was not rude: it was cool. A man at ease. He had been busy. Which explained everything. Busy, of course. And he was just checking everything was still on.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said easily. ‘And I can be late. In case we want to – um – go on somewhere afterwards.’ Why beat about the bush?

  ‘So can I,’ he said.

  She dropped her voice and said, ‘Good.’

  ‘I’m looking forward to it,’ they both said in unison, and the telephone receiver was replaced.

  Technology.

  Wonderful, beautiful thing.

  When Megan arrived with Jim in the kitchen, Gemma dared to look him up and down. He, stringbean, staring floorwards, cords still muddied at the bottom over large black outdoor boots, had the air of a man condemned. But not, Oh not, by me, thought Gemma. Thank you God, she muttered. I will be good in future.

  Last chance, last chance, came whispering through her mind. ‘Did you speak?’ she said testily to the voice.

  ‘No,’ said Jim, who was sitting rather cautiously at the other end of the kitchen table, about as far from her as he could get.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Just thinking out loud.’

  Later, when Megan returned, she found Gemma grunting her way through crunchies and sit-ups on the floor, with weights from the kitchen scales sellotaped to her ankles.

  ‘Christ,’ was all Megan could find to say. ‘I hope he’s really worth it.’

  Gemma smiled to herself, despite the pain. Of course he was.

  If she’d had any puff left she might have said that he was a good deal more worth it than Jim. But she couldn’t speak. A crunchie too far, she thought, and laughed her socks off.

  Life.

  Hope.

  Go for the burn.

  Go for the Beauty Parlour!

  16

  The cupid has been stuck back crookedly. Tabitha pushes at it idly with her fingers but it is held fast, apparently blowing its trumpet up the unsuspecting dimpled rear of another little cherub in front. She pushes again, feebly.

  ‘Superglue!’ calls Chloe proudly from the other end of the salon. ‘No end to its uses.’ And clatter, clatter, bustle, bustle she goes, Preparing The Way.

  Tabitha could wish it had been employed momentarily on all the other items in the salon which have been moved, turned, placed awry in Chloe’s current efforts to Be Prepared. She whisks her dainty self around the place like a shining pin-ball, hitting her target, moving on, hitting the next, until Tabitha feels quite dizzy.

  There is a fan of magazines on the low table where onc
e the jade plant stood; cushions that offered themselves as a delicious nest of artfully arranged marshmallows were now scattered haphazardly in the manner Chloe calls casual.

  Tabitha, resisting interference, nevertheless balked at the cassette entitled ‘Up Yours’ and whose songs seemed, largely, to be all about sucking. Chloe substituted Madonna for three bars, but this was even more swiftly rejected; sucking was tame by comparison. Chloe gave in to Tabitha without a grudge. Perhaps Tabitha had a point – it would be no good if the client started tapping her toes or getting into the rhythm while she was wearing a mask or having her nails painted. Sometimes it paid to listen.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, ‘for the advice.’

  Have faith, thinks Tabitha, your protégée is all right.

  Chloe now begins the final joy, busying herself with her trolley, which she calls her vanitory unit, and the rattling and clunking denote serious activity. Tabitha watches her and realizes that Chloe is like a child with a doll’s house.

  Towels are pulled out of cupboards and the remainder pushed back indiscriminately. Three robes hang over a chairback, draping their empty pink sleeves forlornly across the eau-de-Nil. Tabitha has a momentary, terrible vision of them actually containing forlornly draped clients – a vision she banishes. Those three women looked perfectly capable and realistic. They knew what they were coming here for, and they knew what they were getting. A Makeover. Nothing more, nothing less.

  Besides, Betty had agreed to come in and stand by. An offer which did not please Chloe at all; in fact she sulked for a while.

  She wanted Jo-Jo to come. But on this, Tabitha stood firm. A bad influence that one. She shudders to think of it. Betty might be a bit ancient but she had the right gentility. Jo-Jo was to Beauty Parlours what Alternative Comedians were to the Townswomen’s Guild. Maybe even worse. Thinking about it, certainly even worse. She would prefer not to think about it and puffs up the satin swathes of the blinds vigorously. Outside it is another glorious summer’s day. Lucky her to be out roaming free.