Sleeping Beauties Read online

  She looks around the salon. Perhaps warm ice-cream does hit the mark. But it is pretty and feminine, and flatters all the senses. The chandelier catches a sunbeam – so fetching that Venetian glass – so charming the little angels in the frieze – just like a bit of paradise. But even as she thinks this, out of the corner of her eye she notices again that cupid and the cheeky obscenity of its trumpet. Thank God Jo-Jo is not coming – she’d spot it straight away and point it out to the customers.

  Jo-Jo! Oh dear.

  Jo-Jo is Chloe’s Antipodean Beautician friend. Originally here to do a Remedial Camouflage Diploma for her fellow-countrywomen’s rocketing carcinoma rate – and more’s the pity, never gone back. Now settled here, she speaks proudly of her homeland’s beauty salons and thinks Tabitha should Get Real. She has many stories to tell of a Getting Real nature, apparently, which Chloe absorbs with relish. Tabitha considers her a youthful incubus so far as the gentling services of the Boudoir are concerned and would, if she could, ban Chloe from the taint of her, just like the curry. But that would be tyranny – it is not in her nature.

  Hence Betty. Rather go back in time than forward to one such as that.

  ‘Jo-Jo was really sorry she wasn’t needed,’ calls Chloe.

  Can the girl read minds? Her beauty is certainly particularly ethereal today.

  ‘Really?’ says Tabitha noncommitally, giving the immutable cupid one last hopeless yank.

  ‘I said she shouldn’t mind.’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘She told me a good story about lipstick.’

  ‘Chloe,’ says Tabitha warningly.

  ‘I wasn’t planning on telling it to the clients,’ says Chloe defensively, crossing her pretty fingers.

  ‘Just remember Mrs Pargeter and Mrs Baker.’

  Chloe still looks defensive. ‘Quite,’ she replies, finding satisfaction in the mimicry.

  Tabitha raises an eyebrow. ‘Not to mention Miss O’Rourke.’

  That’s not fair, thinks Chloe, who casts down her beautiful lashes and looks the perfect picture of contrition.

  ‘That’s where your Jo-Jo stories can get you ...’

  Poor Miss O’Rourke.

  The unspeakable Antipodean was banned from the premises after that.

  Poor, poor Miss O’Rourke.

  Her of all people. A twice-a-month manicure who sold whisks for a living and who, being a young woman of startlingly pure mien, was not up to much excitement and even found the Bible too raunchy. She was also a good Catholic; sexual aberrations were not part of her conversational agenda and were certainly not the kind of subjects she expected to learn about in Tabitha’s Beauty Parlour. To her Tabitha’s Beauty Parlour was as much a sanctified retreat as her church.

  But this was a little on the abstruse side for Chloe who, much taken with Jo-Jo’s tale, felt obliged to pass it on. She had always thought this particular twice-a-month manicure needed a good laugh. She would give Miss O’Rourke the full blast and benefit; a little earthy good humour was just what was needed to tickle her up. If the Antipodean Beautician spared nothing in the telling to Chloe, Chloe – a generous girl in many ways – spared nothing in the passing of it on.

  Miss O’Rourke, who had arrived looking slightly sleepy and with eyes of a standard shape and size, gradually developed an ocular paleness and circularity not dissimilar to polo mints. Chloe took this as a remarkably good sign that the tickling up was a success. It was, after all, a very good story. Even if Chloe said so herself.

  Antipodean Jo-Jo, newly come to Sydney from the Wild and Woolly West, was working in a salon in that city. One day the salon’s owner said that they were going to be working flat out on depilations for the next couple of weeks, and if anyone wanted it, there was plenty of overtime. Jo-Jo, already intent on coming to London, did indeed want it – and put her name down. Only to find that instead of the rarified feminine atmosphere usually prevailing in Diana’s Dainty Box, the place was suddenly swarming, after hours, with men.

  Not, it is true, Real Men. Not men who would be ashamed to be caught eating quiche, and certainly not the kind of men whose realness in terms of their desire for women might encompass a few beers on a Saturday night followed by stallion notions with rubber duck reality. No – these were men who loved men – or at least men who loved to attract men – and they wanted to attract in the most aesthetic and delightful way that they could – with a view to cramming in (sic) as much sex as possible, while having the time of their lives in the Sydney Carnival.

  According to Jo-Jo the Sydney Carnival is legend. The Sydney Carnival makes the Rio Mardi Gras look like a pub with no beer; the Sydney Carnival is for Real Gays with plumage on their minds and a great deal of interest in physical gratification. Rubber shares soar. Tourists and straights come to snap, camcord, goggle. The male participants come to look like the Bluebell Girls and to behave like rabbits. The links between the desire and the spasm were the overtiming beauticians, hot wax at the ready to smooth, so to speak, the Gay Bluebell Path.

  Jo-Jo told the giggling Chloe, and Chloe passed it on to the goggling Miss O’Rourke, how the Antipodean Beautician would wax the backs, bums and legbacks of queues of beautifully proportioned men, all of whom lay face down on her couch and none of whom, surprisingly, required anything but their rears rendered hairless. The Antipodean Beautician offered to do their fronts too – but the men, gritting their teeth at the removal of a rich growth of buttock hair, stoutly refused.

  They had, Jo-Jo assured Chloe and Chloe assured Miss O’Rourke, every inch of hair removed from their rearward viewpoint and were stoical about the pain. ‘Now!’ they would cry, and their buried screams would vibrate through the couch, throughout the salon. Waxed, plucked and lotioned they left the salon as smooth and shiny as mythological woman. But only from behind.

  Jo-Jo being an inquisitive Antipodean, a commendable Australian trait, finally cracked. ‘Why?’ she asked a particularly Ramboesque pair of haunches, ‘do you only have your backs done? Why not your fronts? Don’t you want them to be smooth and beautiful too?’

  She had, you may remember, just come to the city.

  Ramboesque haunches shifted on the couch, twisted his neck, looked up at her with fluttering eyelashes that hid eyes heavy with sarcasm and said, ‘Because, dear, they never look at the fronts when they’re fucking the backs. Why take more pain than we’ve got to? Silly bitch.’

  At which point both teller and listener were both supposed to fall about laughing. Chloe certainly gave it the full Scheherazade treatment. But Miss O’Rourke, instead of falling about laughing, went completely white and absolutely rigid, feeling she was in the presence of the Anti-Christ. Despite having one hand stuck in the cuticle softening pot, she rapidly made a sign of the cross and began invoking quite a lot of Latin.

  Chloe, to whom Latin was not second nature, mistook this for lack of comprehension and was just spelling out the main thrust for a second time when Tabitha, fortunately now free, passed by cubicle number two. On the fairly sound assumption that – generally speaking – clients tended not to go casting out devils in a salon situation, she came to the rescue. Comfrey tea was produced, the jungle music turned up, and the manicure finished in silence, and on a pair of hands that were going to wobble with their whisks all day.

  Tabitha recoils. And now Chloe says she has heard another one, about lipstick! Tabitha shudders. No more tales of Jo-Jo. Never again. But can she be sure? Just for a foolish moment Tabitha thinks that maybe she could hide herself away somewhere, perhaps in the broom cupboard, so that if anything untoward does occur she can come to the client’s rescue.

  But reality shakes its head. She could hardly leap out at the first intimation of anything unseemly, now could she? One thing for a makeover to be lying on the couch feeling a little on the wound-up side because the Trainee is cutting a verbal dash with raunchy Jo-Jos; quite another to have the Beautician suddenly leap out of a dark cupboard screaming ‘J’accuse, J’accuse.’

  No, she mu
st leave Chloe to it as promised. And it will be All Right.

  ‘Remember,’ she says to her protégée as she wheels her vanitory unit towards her for inspection. ‘Remember that within the intimacies of the boudoir there is a veil of silken knowledge between Server and Served. The true Beautician will read her client as a living book – she will know her – she will not impose gauds where there should be subtleties, nor constraints where there should be freedom. And above all, she will know that the bond begins and ends at the salon door.’

  Chloe, eyes flicking back and forth at the display she has just created, nods. Her mind is only half engaged. She is building up to telling Tabitha something Very Important. Otto has been kind. Well, in some respects he has been kind, though there were certain practices of his ... However, he was prepared to be generous if she was, and everything was a trade really. She rather felt she had the better part of the bargain. She smiled and cleared her throat.

  ‘Tabitha?’ she said in a sweet, clear voice, ‘I have something to tell you.’

  Tabitha immediately thinks Chloe is pregnant and sits down. To begin all over again with someone new, just when she is ready to retire. Just when ‘Una Paloma Blanca’ coos to her, when ‘Viva Espagna’ clicks its castanets, when Time has turned porcelain to paper. Cells that do not renew. Now this. It is too cruel.

  ‘What?’ she says sharply. But she is sure she knows.

  ‘Tabitha – if you were ever – I mean – should you decide to – that is – if you are going to sell the salon – I would like to buy it off you.’

  Perhaps, thinks Tabitha, I do not know.

  ‘What?’

  Chloe repeats it more succinctly: ‘I have enough money to buy the salon.’

  ‘How?’ says Tabitha, amazed.

  ‘Tightened my belt,’ says Chloe. That bit at least was true, she thought.

  Tabitha is touched. Chloe seemed the kind of girl for whom belttightening would never be invoked for anything, save the illustrating of a neat little waist.

  ‘You’re not pregnant?’

  ‘Oh no,’ says Chloe unabashed. ‘We use – er – ’ She realizes what the question was, draws herself up with dignity. ‘Certainly not.’

  Tabitha thinks she must be losing her grip. How could she have thought such a thing; how indelicate to have mentioned it.

  ‘Shall we check your trolley?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes please,’ says Chloe humbly. ‘And you’ll think about the other?’

  ‘I certainly shall,’ says Tabitha. And she certainly will. It would be the perfect solution to everything. Perfect. She looks at Chloe. Chloe is beautiful. She smiles at her. Encouragingly.

  Pink cards?

  Chloe nods.

  These strawberry-pink cards look as official as medical records. They are divided into categories so that no possible skin condition, aberrant or otherwise, can escape detection. When a client sees these she understands, perhaps for the first time, the seriousness of her case:

  Name of doctor

  Smoke

  Drink

  On medication

  Asthma, Hepatitis, Diabetes, Allergies

  Skin assessment

  Seborrhoea

  Open pores

  Blocked pores

  Comedones

  Acne

  Delicate

  Dry

  Dehydrated

  Mature

  Ageing (not above fifty to be written down even if they are)

  Suntan

  Pigmentation

  Dilated capillaries

  Skintags

  Moles

  Scars

  Slack

  Superfluous hair

  This is Tabitha’s invention. In order for it to be completed the client must be stretched out on the couch while the Beautician pinches a little of the facial skin to feel its elasticity, judge its sheen for collagen levels. She will then cleanse the face, scrutinize it under bright lights with a magnifying glass, at which point every client will become deeply apologetic. Here, Tabitha suggests, it is allowable for the Beautician to tut. Tut tut tut. And they will be ashamed.

  The Beautician will then smile encouragingly and explain that the condition of the skin is controlled by both physiological factors, such as diet, skin-care routine, poor health, bad work environment; and emotional factors, such as stress, anxiety, general depression, fatigue.

  The categories of diagnosis being:

  Age

  Pigmentation

  Skin imperfections

  Skin balance (natural oils and moisture)

  Skin temperature

  Acid/Alkaline

  The main assessment of emotional factors being:

  Age

  Need to please

  Loneliness

  Insecurity

  Vulnerability

  Low self-esteem

  (Sex/Love/Men not shown)

  Once their pink card is filled out they will exist in salon terms. And they will feel a touch of humility about themselves, the first step towards redemption.

  Why then, Tabitha finds herself wondering as she looks at the strawberry-pink cards, did those three women go away so light of step, with smiling faces. Where was the humility in that?

  The Thumbs Up?

  Worrying.

  She will never know. The broom cupboard not being an option, Tabitha reconciles herself to never knowing. Out she must go, and soon, and leave the girl to her clients. How delightful she looks as she counts off the contents of her trolley on the tips of her pretty little fingers. Hands, perhaps more than any other part of the female body, save elbows and knees, denote the passing of age. Tabitha’s have just begun to show signs. Chloe’s sparkle in their smooth whiteness. To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose.

  Chloe mutters to herself as she checks each item:

  Cleansing milk for dry skin (nutrient emulsion)

  Cleansing milk for greasy skin (cucumber, lemon)

  Cleansing cream for mature or delicate complexions

  Tonic for refining, normal

  Tonic for refining, delicate

  Astringent for oily, unblemished

  Astringent for disturbed, blemished, seborrhoea

  On it goes, so much to get right:

  Lash extension kit

  Foundations

  Powders

  Lipsticks

  Eye make-up

  Cheek blushers

  Shaders

  ‘All done,’ she says.

  ‘Sure?’ says Tabitha.

  Chloe looks, checks, nods.

  ‘And your mask mixing lotions?’

  Sod it, thinks Chloe. Out loud she says, ‘Oh dash!’ another of Tabitha’s favourites, and collects them up.

  Time.

  The salon is silent save for the musical tinkling of water on foliage.

  The air smells prettily of verbena.

  The pink and cream surroundings glow in the diffused sunlight.

  The Venetian glass gleams, eternally beautiful. Tabitha looks from it to Chloe, remembers for a fleeting moment the Venetian Giorgione, has the sensation known colloquially as someone walking over my grave – and waits for Betty to arrive.

  The hour is nigh.

  Escape.

  At any price?

  Ping!

  Tabitha jumps.

  But it is only Chloe moving the timer aside to open her Beautician’s Bible:

  Demonstration is a wonderful way to promote the beauty therapy business ... A technically qualified beauty therapist with a full knowledge at her fingertips can make the audience believe that almost anything is possible. This feeling can then be converted into real salon or cosmetic sales revenue if the opportunity is grasped.

  ‘Yup,’ says Chloe happily. ‘I’ll go with that.’

  Nothing wrong there, thinks Tabitha firmly, nothing wrong at all. It is a business they are running, after all.

  And the other thought that crosses her mind is that it is not too late to r
ing the three women up and cancel them. But of course she doesn’t.

  I must be getting jealous in my old age, she decides. After all, these women are only coming in to have their faces made over, not their lives ...

  17

  Margery crossed to her wardrobe. Somewhere in his house Reginald Postgate would be waking and dressing and she wondered what he would wear. She had never seen him in anything but his Dental Regalia and it was hard to imagine him in shirt and trousers.

  Or, as the little beautician had said with a wink, out of them.

  From the wardrobe she at last took the gingham frock. It rustled and floated as she swung it off the rail, swished seductively as she gave it a whirl around the room, crackled excitingly as she held it up to her chin before the mirror. When she smiled she saw that she was really quite beautiful against the pretty lilac checks. As that young lady at the salon said, ‘Give It All You’ve Got. Wear something exciting – married men get into a rut. Leave me to do the rest.’ Margery was very happy to oblige.

  The taxi was due at any minute. She folded the dress very carefully and placed it, with as much reverence as if it were a bridal gown, into a large plastic bag. The hallway was almost full. Baskets, bags, boxes lined the way to the front door.

  Margery went over her list one more time: pots of honey, the honey cakes, special honey to sweeten his tea, and the hydromel, which looked a bit funny but fizzed encouragingly and smelled wonderful – all yeasty and sweet like a warm summer’s night. There were honey sandwiches, honey biscuits and honey-glazed ham; she had even found little golden tomatoes, honey sweets, and a circular white tablecloth with a motif of honeybees.

  All this, she thought happily, was Giving Him What He Wants. The next best thing to having a hive to nestle in.

  Beaming at the sunkissed world she gave the name of the Beauty Parlour to the taxi driver and said, leaning back, that after today she would never be the same again.

  *

  Caroline had not slept well. The night before she had been to see a film – part of Feminist Fortnight at the NFT. The film was about women bandits, living in the Indian hills, who selected only male travellers as their robbers’ meat. Literally. For not only did they steal from them, but they also salted them down and, apparently, ate them. The point being that these bandits were now liberated women, free from the domestic drudgery of washday in the Ganges or sweating over a hot khali.