Sleeping Beauties Page 21

  She waited.

  Would he actually say his wife didn’t understand him?

  No. What he actually said was, ‘We haven’t been happy for some time. Ever since our son was born. No sex.’

  ‘Separate bedrooms?’ Had her voice gone up a few octaves?

  He looked shifty. ‘Er.’

  OK, she thought, try this. ‘When are you moving in with me?’

  He looked even more unattractive.

  She shook her head pityingly. ‘Why did you do it?’ She was as close to tears as a woman can get without spillage. Why did I do it? she thought. And her friendly alter ego stepped in to remind her that they were not here to discuss that.

  ‘I want to leave. I just need some kind of fulcrum, that’s all.’

  Some kind of fulcrum?

  Sounded like a gynaecological implement.

  ‘I got a lot of replies, you know,’ he said defensively. ‘And I chose you top of the pile.’

  She licked her lips. A moment ago that would have given her silly female heart quite a lift. Now she wanted to cry.

  He went on, ‘You are so game. So uncomplicated. So well stabilized –’

  Christ, she thought, now he thinks I’m a bloody boat.

  ‘Up for a bit of fun. Thoroughly independent. Free.’ He leaned forwards. He lowered his eyes and then his voice. ‘You have the sexiest lips,’ he said, and added with winsome regret, ‘My wife never wears make-up.’

  ‘Poor woman,’ said Gemma, and meant it.

  Then she moved towards him, raised her face and gave him the kiss of her life, and very probably his too. She took his breath away completely, and most of hers. She moved her lips in a rubbing motion, pressed them deep into his flesh, licked and sucked and smacked her chops until he looked liked a dying man haemorrhaging. And then she walked away to her car, slowly, aware that the Joseph silk clung to her in wonderful erotic counterpoint. Over her shoulder she called, ‘You’ll just have to go for number two on the pile now, won’t you? Bye.’

  *

  Back in the flat she wondered how long she had sat in the dark. At least a couple of hours, maybe more. She had been wakened by a noise coming from the bathroom. She stood up, went to the door, looked down the passage and saw Jim padding — naked — out of the bathroom towards the kitchen. From the opened door of Megan’s bedroom came the sound, so familiar, of her flat-mate’s gentle snores. Mirror, Mirror On The Wall...

  In the reflected light from the kitchen she peered at her face. Smeary and pinkish from the residual lipstick. She took the sleeve of the Joseph jacket and rubbed it all over her mouth and cheeks, removing what she could. The pearl-grey silk looked violated and for some reason that satisfied her. Then she removed the lipstick from her bag, very carefully reapplied it to her mouth, smiled once into the mirror, turned its face to the wall, and took a slow sashaying walk towards the kitchen. Once inside, she pushed the door closed behind her very softly, smiled up at Jim, then pouted as she let her eyes move slowly down his body towards his already half-aroused penis. ‘Kiss Kiss,’ she said. ‘Kiss Kiss.’

  26

  By the time Tabitha left the stolid marble frontage of the gallery the summer’s night was well advanced. The air was still warm despite the lateness of the hour, and the city was in a gentler frame of mind, less crowded, more peaceful. Tabitha wished she could say the same of herself.

  As she made her way home she wondered why she had done it. The handbag had damaged nothing, bouncing off the opulent frame like a badly-aimed penalty. The image remained unmarked, exactly as its creator painted it. Grieving Woman: Ageless: Beautiful to Behold. Titian or not, Tabitha wished she had made a hole right through that lovely face. She had said as much as she was hauled off to see the Superintendent. ‘Travesty,’ she repeated to her captor as he marched beside her holding out her handbag like a mace, smiling ecstatically and unaware that it looked, to the dwindling evening visitors, as if the gallery was holding a very silly Art Event.

  ‘Yes, well’ he had said proudly. ‘Yes, well – I’m not very fond of it myself – seen better on the railings outside – but you still can’t go around chucking missiles. Public property, and worth a packet.’

  ‘Wish I’d really damaged it,’ she said fervently.

  ‘So do I,’ he echoed, with equal fervour. ‘I could have sold my story to the Sun.’

  And then, from the Superintendent she had been taken to the very Head of the Museum Himself. It could have been God for all she cared.

  ‘We will have to wait until the Restorer can be located. It depends on his verdict,’ he said loftily. ‘Charges may be pressed.’

  ‘You can press anything you like,’ said Tabitha wearily. ‘Only hurry, because I have to get back to my salon.’

  She had then turned to the stony-faced Museum Director, raising her chin as if scenting prey. Her eyes glittered. ‘Meanwhile, can you tell me why Giorgione chose to paint an ageing woman, and not an ageing man?’

  She did not pause for answer. She advanced. The attendant, standing close, moved with her, perhaps hoping she would pounce and attack. And she did, indeed, bring up her finger and poke the Museum Director rather hard in the ribs. He gave a little grunt, still dignified, and the attendant looked quite pleased.

  ‘I’ll tell you why,’ she continued. ‘He did it because he was painting a tragedy as well as a morality. And it just wouldn’t be the same if he had painted an old man. If he had painted an old man it would have been a picture about mortality ... Whither the soul? ... The Big Issue.’

  Poke, poke, she went.

  ‘But paint an old woman and it’s about the death, not of the soul, but of boring old Beauty. And until we redress that disparity, Sunshine, all the arts in the world are false. All based on untruth.’

  The stony-faced Museum Director was rather amused. Perhaps no one had ever called him Sunshine before.

  ‘Giorgione?’ he asked, puzzled. ‘The Gender Issue? But I am planning a show by Mandelstam – you know Mandelstam?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘A modern master who has captured the gap between the idea and the object rather well, using gold-plated hosepipes. No gender issue there, surely?’

  Tabitha bit back a rather rude comment. She could see he was congratulating himself, and wondering what on earth Giorgione had to do with an Ageing Woman?

  ‘Hosepipes!’ Tabitha was disgusted.

  ‘Don’t bring your scissors, will you?’ said the Museum Director, and it was impossible to tell whether or not he was joking.

  A restorer had been summoned. ‘No real damage?’ he was asked.

  The restorer, who had been wrested from a Camden Town dinner party, shook his head, peeved. Apparently he was missing the bream, which they never used to get in Pinner.

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Even the frame is unmarked. Built to last.’

  The Museum Director looked relieved, side-stepped Tabitha’s finger, and pursed his thin little lips.

  Charges need not necessarily be pressed.

  No harm done.

  ‘No?’ said Tabitha. She had raised her immaculate eyebrow as superciliously as possible. It quite often put Chloe in her place. ‘No?’ she had demanded, taking a step forwards. ‘None?’ She leaned towards him, hands on hips. ‘You’d be surprised.’

  The pink-with-pleasure attendant had been eager. ‘There may be,’ he said. ‘Shall I go and have another look?’

  ‘Oh, fuck off,’ said Tabitha, which seemed a satisfactory arrangement.

  The Museum Director gave a hint of a smile. The restorer and the attendant were dismissed. The hint of a smile turned to the glimmer of a twinkle. ‘No harm done,’ he pronounced firmly. ‘Charges will not be pressed.’ He took her jutting elbow and escorted her to the museum exit.

  No. No charges pressed. No damage done.

  And he stood to watch her running down the steps, out into the darkening summer’s night. When she turned once, mid-flight, she saw that he was smiling appreciatively at her le
gs.

  She had hailed a cab. ‘As fast as you can,’ she urged.

  With the streets being almost empty the journey was short. Big Ben rang a sonorous single chime as they circled Parliament Square and she knew she was far too late. Too late to do anything. Futile, futility. For the first time her heart sank at the sight of the salon.

  The swathed satin curtains perfectly puffed.

  The overnight light giving a faint rosy glow of promise.

  The golden door-handle gleaming, inviting.

  Her salon. Tabitha’s Beauty Parlour. Her very own creation. As Chloe was her very own creation. Both so beautiful, weren’t they?

  She let herself in. The air was sweet, the scent seductive. She closed her eyes and drew in a fragrant breath. With the door shut behind her the world was banished again – no traffic, no loud mouths, no barking of dogs or calling for alms.

  Empty.

  Betty had gone.

  Chloe had gone.

  The three clients had gone.

  A pile of books sat neatly on the table surrounded by the fan of magazines. Smiling cover-girls, perfect creatures, not a blemish to hide.

  Monstrous perfections.

  Too late.

  Tabitha stood there, panting, scanning.

  No one.

  Could have been the Beauty Parlour on the Marie Celeste.

  Except that Betty had left a note.

  ‘Chloe did very well. Clients happy. Roman women depilated by using the blood of a wild she-goat mixed with sea-palm and powdered viper or she-goat’s gall. Hare’s blood was used to stop the hair growing again. Certainly would on the hares, Chloe said. Interesting girl...’

  We learn from history that we learn nothing from history.

  Betty had trained her.

  She had trained Chloe.

  The long tradition stretching back thousands of years. Secrets of the Boudoir, Woman to Woman – Betty’s Great Work, her text, created to Illuminate the Efficacious Virtues Inherent in the Perpetuity of These Secrets (it said in the foreword).

  Solidarity of Sisterhood?

  Wisdoms of Womanhood?

  All mythology. All myth.

  She leaned on her elbows and stared at the profane little cherub.

  Well quite, she said to the thickly scented air.

  She had always supposed it was a positive thing: that the very skin she worked on responded to the creams and oils and lotions; and that the minds and hearts which that skin held together responded in kind and softened too. Softened for the Positive. Softened to make pliable. Softened to temper the steel of the world.

  Wrong, Tabitha, she told herself. Wrong.

  She slumped down on to the couch and passed a tired hand across her forehead. She felt faint and pushed her head between her knees. She might be sick. Perhaps it was the powdered viper and she-goat’s gall? She could do with a nice hot cup of jasmine tea. Damn it. She could do with a nice stiff whisky. She looked up. And why she-goat? she asked the Venetian chandelier indignantly. Surely that was keeping the Boudoir within the Sisterhood a bit too rigidly. Why not he-goat since that was the gender supposed to like all this smoothness?

  She looked down at her own legs and stroked them – they would be just about ready for a waxing when she went to Spain. It was too late to have any regrets about passing the salon on to Chloe. For Tabitha, bringing her head up slowly to see if the faintness had passed, understood that she herself had been supremely arrogant.

  Suddenly supremely arrogant.

  There she was, considering herself so sensitive and caring towards her women with her sweet, calming voice. Training Chloe’s voice to be less like a cracked tin bell found in the gutter and more like her own, lulling them. Lulling them; teaching Chloe to lull them. Lull. Lull. Correcting Chloe in matters of taste, creating a soft and secret dream world that had nothing to do with Out There.

  Make-up for your:

  First Job.

  First Date.

  First Fuck.

  First Fuck-Up.

  And Wedding Make-up.

  For God’s sake, Wedding Make-up.

  Why?

  If he didn’t like you the way you were, naturally, at that point, you hadn’t a snowball’s chance in hell with all the rest.

  She scratched her head. Do you know why? she asked the eau-de-Nil carpet, because I’m sure I don’t.

  She suddenly remembered seeing the young rabbits in the market, stretched out lazily on the fat knees of the stall-women who stroked them lovingly.To keep the meat sweet, they whispered through their blackened teeth. Calmar Calmar, stroking, stroking with their strong, coarse hands until a buyer came along and those same hands snapped their little necks.

  Best when they are young and tender, the women would wink with their wall eyes and wrinkled lids. Who wants them when they are old and tough? They knew what they were talking about. They’d seen it all.

  Tabitha looked up. She was beginning to hate the pale green of the carpet and to feel ill again. She tried to imagine the activity taking place here today without her. Three women, stroke them, Calmar Calmar.

  Snap, snap, snap.

  What, she wondered, was happening to them now? Best not think.

  Chloe with her little dream trolley.

  Betty with her Grand Old Story.

  Cosmetics, cosmetic, from the Greek kosmetikos, to adorn.

  Adornment equals Useless Beauty. Ephemeral, like women’s strength – all gone into the curl of a lash, the curve of a painted smile.

  She gazed at the cupid. Vanity, lust, folly and foolishness. And she had the nerve to blame Bronzino?

  It was quite a shock to the system.

  So, for that matter, was the whisky.

  *

  Chloe lay along the black leather couch and let him manoeuvre her into the required position. She ran a fingertip along the line of his hairy back, avoiding running it down and round to where hung his great fur sack of a belly. Not that she minded. Men did not have to mind if their bank balances matched their underhang, but he was a little self-conscious regarding its girth.

  She and he were in perfect accord about it and pretended it did not exist, even when it got in the way during some of the more complicated positionings. Chloe shifted to accommodate something slightly more unusual that he was in the process of choreographing. He watched a lot of movies; studied a lot of books.

  She thought about the salon. Well, she’d studied a lot of books too, and at the end of the day, what did they tell her? No more than what she half knew: that Beauty was a business just like everything else – always had been, always would be – and that people were prepared to pay a lot of money for it, both to offer it, and to own it. Like Otto. She looked at him, his face in fleshy folds of concentration. Pathetic. She smiled.

  Lift arms above head and stretch, cross ankles, keep the smile, half close eyes (certain ecstasy), wait. Smile the question, smile his answer. Let him take her crossed ankles in his huge hairy hands and swing her upwards so that she dangled from his grip, powerless, her buttocks bumping against his great belly which, of course, was not there to bump against.

  Now what? she wondered idly. What does he intend to do now he has me hung up like a piece of game? Put my head in a paper bag? She nearly laughed out loud, but clenched her jaw and buttocks against it. This was no laughing matter.

  Reaching behind her she gave his joystick a tweak. That was probably all right. She was never quite sure how much to participate in these shenanigans of his. Tweak, tweak – that seemed acceptable. Even at full thrust it lived in the shadow of the belly above, and it was a bit of a prawn – but then – she tweaked it again and made little bubbling noises of pleasure with her mouth – it scarcely needed to be any bigger with six noughts to play around with. There was nothing like telling someone a lie often enough for them to believe it, and to see the disproof and still believe it. Ooh you are so big she would say, and grunt a bit. So very big.

  He believed.

  That was all th
at mattered.

  She pretended, in return for his pretending the money for the business was a loan. And so she had done very well. She knew that and she was utterly, utterly happy. I give it to him, she repeated to herself as she hung there. I give it to him.

  Soon he would let her down, and then she would twine her legs in a very interesting cat’s cradle around and about his girth. I give it to them too, she thought, for something interesting to dwell on while all this was going on, and she remembered each of those three women and how wet they were before she got to them.

  Wet as water, as her granny would say.

  Puerile, puerile – she was cultivating words, good words like that, so that one day she would be as good as Tabitha, with never a fucking this or bugger that if she dropped something. ‘Oh how puerile’ Tabitha said of a nutter who popped his head round the door and gave them the finger the other day. Oh How Puerile sounded so much better than Chloe’s immediate response. The man had looked quite upset at Tabitha’s comment – words could obviously be powerful. As well as money. She looked up at Otto. Concentrating, he looked like a schoolboy playing with cars – but he had power; he had money. She wriggled a little in the hopes he’d get on with it. Money, she thought. He has the money. Men have the money. Egyptians ... Now there was a thought.

  She closed her eyes. She had done very well really. She tweaked at his cock again, heard him grunt, swung herself a little in an ecstatic manner even though the blood was rushing to her head (good for the circulation). Yes, she had done very well.

  Only the day before yesterday she had sat round the table in her mum’s kitchen, listening to her elder sister Viv telling her Gran that you could make a very economical curry out of a tin of pilchards, a tin of tomatoes, an onion and some curry powder. Hah! Very nice I’m sure, she thought, but not for me. Oh no – for her it would be king prawns at the very least. Which reminded her.

  She tickled his scrotum.

  He liked that.

  She was a beautician after all, and knew a lot about pleasing people with her hands. Just the male was different, that was all. If she went on hanging here for much longer she’d vomit. Better finish him off quick. You could always get the better of them in the end.