Sleeping Beauties Read online

  Gemma smiled, knowing that she had saved the woman.

  Graham Prothero dripped. He turned towards Gemma with a ghastly smile upon his face.

  ‘You gave me no time to introduce you,’ he said witheringly, ‘but you have just met my wife.’

  28

  ‘The keys,’ said Tabitha, ‘are yours.’

  She put them down, rattle rattle, on top of the reception desk. Out came Chloe’s hand like a painted claw. Chloe had plans. Big plans. Plans that she would not reveal to the current owner. Not until she had signed on the dotted, official, which would be soon. Very big plans. Otto was delighted. And Chloe just knew it was whacky enough to work.

  But Mum’s the word.

  For now, she must stay very civil. She must appear quite cool, quite calm. Not even hint that Tabitha looked, especially today, well past her sell-by date. Do not rock the boat which will soon be hers to rock.

  Meanwhile, she must service the woman who was still her employer – the woman who needed (Chloe eyed her critically) eyebrows tidied, face deep-cleansed, complexion enlivened with a quick knock-up of fuller’s earth, magnesium and rose-water (when Tabitha had gone Chloe would no longer mix her own – time-consuming – she’d buy them in bulk), a good pore treatment, much needed, manual cleansing, vapour, herbal or ozone steaming, vacuum and manual massage, setting mask and corrective toning.

  That’d sort her out, deal with those open pores, relax her so the lines showed less. And get those hairs off her legs.

  She’d neglected herself lately. She must not, she must not, she must not.

  Chloe repeated it like a mantra under her breath. That was why women went wonky – neglect. Look after yourself and you’d be all right. Look at Joan Collins. Compare her with Mum. Mum had legs and feet where you couldn’t make out where the leg stopped and the ankle began – all sort of bluey and mauve.

  Sometimes, when she’d had a drop, Mum’d lift one of these up and say, ‘Pretty colours, eh?’ And they’d all have a good laugh, especially Gran, who would then lift hers up too – skinny in comparison and not quite so colourful, but the same idea all right, as if a kid had come along and done some blurry finger painting with the blue/pink palette. Chloe never wore blue or pink or mauve – bad colours – reeking of decay and old slippers. NOT FOR HER. Neglect was a very bad thing and unnecessary. Look at Joan Collins. Look.

  Behind her, in the softly-lit mirror, Tabitha observed herself. She could see no reason to relinquish her role – no lines, wrinkles, bags, pouches, thin dryness or dullness of eye. In that pink-tinged light she looked completely smoothed out, beautiful. But in her gaze – oh in her gaze – what light of knowledge shone. Ancient wisdoms, she thought. Anciently wise.

  The pocket of her pristine eau-de-Nil overall felt immeasurably lighter by the handing on of its contents and – did she mistake it? – as Chloe clutched them up did not her hand have a sudden look of age? Not quite the rosy paw of flower-petal girlhood? Tabitha shivered. She could feel Chloe eyeing her as if she were inert flesh waiting for the cleaver. Treatment Day. All arranged. Before Spanish lift-off.

  Snap, snap, snap.

  She remembered. You’re No Oil Painting. She smiled. A compliment now.

  She looks at Chloe. Chloe who laughed. Chloe who shrugged as Tabitha relayed to her the outcome of her three telephone conversations: madness, exile, revenge.

  ‘So?’ she had said. ‘Plenty more fish in the sea.’

  You cannot paint cosmetics on the heart.

  Now Tabitha waits for her own Makeover. Her first and last at Chloe’s hands. The girl winks. ‘I know a joke about Joan Collins,’ she says, young green shoot. ‘It’s a good one. Want to hear it?’

  Tabitha waits, listens.

  ‘What?’ says Chloe smiling, beautiful, ‘is the similarity between Joan Collins and a parakeet’s cage?’

  Tabitha shivers. Already the girl approaches, her hands outstretched to pinch her flesh and feel its shortcomings.

  ‘Give up?’ she smiles to soothe and comfort, so that the body may go gently on its journey.

  ‘Need a clue?’

  Tabitha’s face is pulled tight into a permanent smile, as if she were a rabbit, held up by long silken ears.

  ‘Have a guess.’

  Tabitha watches, turning away from the soft pink light to see how Chloe prepares her bed for her with its soft pink towels.

  ‘Give up?’

  She nods.

  Chloe laughs. ‘The similarity between Joan Collins and a parakeet’s cage is that ...’

  She turns on the huge, raking arc light that will shine down upon Tabitha, prone, and reveal that nothing can be hidden, that all roads lead to and from the Beautician’s Couch.

  ‘... they’ve both had a cockatoo in them.’

  Ha Ha.

  ‘Get it?’

  *

  Chloe smiled through the glass at Jo-Jo and nodded for her to Switch On. She then folded her arms across the uncompromising décolleté of her gold-trimmed overall and looked up at the sign with satisfaction. ‘Isn’t it,’ she said, ‘great? Now that is Beauty for you.’

  Myopic beside her, Betty blinked. If the lettering was blurry the colouring was sharp and clear – a very hot pink indeed – she peered closer – a mouth by the look of it – and above that a pair of startling electric-blue eyes with deep black fringes, one of which – she blinked again and – yes – it blinked back – or rather it winked back – one startling blue eye slowly closing while the pink mouth seemed to part its lips and smile.

  Chloe took a long drag on her cigarette and as she inhaled, the carcinogens and dehydraters within the tobacco began their work, accelerating the ageing process of her skin. She found it very enjoyable. She really was going to live for ever.

  ‘The thing is,’ said Chloe, ‘that you have to catch the passing trade.’

  ‘I think,’ said Betty weakly, ‘that you will do that all right ...’

  ‘Because,’ said Chloe, ‘you can’t rely on customers coming back. None of my Makeovers came back. Not one. After everything I did for them. And none of them was exactly an oil painting when they came in, as you know.’

  ‘Nor when they left,’ muttered Betty to herself.

  ‘Pardon?’ said Chloe.

  Betty shook her head.

  Chloe looked back at the salon with pride. The name CHLOE’S PLACE blazed forth. ‘Well?’ she said, ‘how’s that for tricks? What do you think?’

  Betty stepped back, nervously clutching her manuscript to her ancient bosom. ‘How does it do that?’ she said wonderingly.

  ‘Neon,’ said Chloe proudly. She walked towards the window and posed, hand on hip. ‘Do you see how my overall matches the pink?’

  Betty could scarcely miss it.

  ‘Yes dear,’ she said, ‘but what does it say?’

  ‘It says – UNISEX’ said Chloe. ‘Don’t see why the men shouldn’t have a Bit of the Boudoir too.’

  Betty stepped back even further, opened her mouth, was about to say ‘No, never – you will destroy the mysteries, you must never let them in, never, never ... ’ when Chloe advanced, the light of true evangelism in her beautiful, clear, blue-white eyes. She raised a finger, wagging it at no one in particular, and spoke warningly, ‘Yup,’ she said, ‘why not? I’m all for equality.’ The finger wagged harder. ‘But nothing puerile. Strictly proper. I’ve told the girls – no quick handjobs on the side. Not those sort of tricks. Oh no. Well, at least, not on the premises like. You agree with me, don’t you?’

  But the question was rhetorical, for Betty had fainted clean away.

  And the Eye went –

  Wink, wink, wink.

  29

  Well, it was very nice around the pool, Tabitha decided. Not too hot, nice breeze in off the sea, no sand to get in your sangria – talking of which – she raised a lazy finger – she needed another one. The waiter smiled, acknowledged, was gone. Tabitha smiled back. A full, stretched, show-every-line smile. Why not – the brightness was
like an arc lamp anyway – no point in pretending.

  She ran a finger down the line of her shin-bone. Shocking, for she could feel the hairs. She ran the same finger over her knee and up towards her bikini line. Shocking, for she could feel the fluff. On she traced it, past her most private swelling towards her neck, negotiating the naked channel between her unharnessed breasts, then gently, in circular motion feeling her way around jaw-line, cheeks, eye sockets, nose bridge and forehead – a greaseless journey that told her what only a Beautician’s fingertips could say.

  Her body was growing as it chose, her eyebrows were untidy, she had not anointed her skin with costly unguents – myrrh, frankincense, odours of the tomb – just a bit of Ambre Solaire to keep the cancer out. And drinking alcohol in the noonday swelter with no thought for capillaries or geranium oil. She smiled comfortably to herself.

  No more shall she souffrir pour être belle — she had said as much to the advancing Chloe.

  She said, ‘NE faut PAS souffrir pour être belle, Chloe,’ and Chloe, still waiting for her to laugh at the Joan Collins joke, said ‘Yew wot?’

  Well quite.

  ‘It is puerile,’ she replied.

  Chloe looked confused, then hopeful, then enlightened. And went on to tell her the Jo-Jo lipstick story.

  ‘No more!’ Tabitha held up her hand. ‘Begone and do your worst.’

  So Chloe left her alone. As one who is mad is left alone.

  Not the new green shoot upon the bough after all – merely Maureen, dew of the sea, brackish and undrinkable, soon to be reclaimed by the heartless ocean. Plenty more fish, Chloe – plenty more fish. Your time, my lovely, will come too.

  She sat up, shading her eyes to look at the sea beyond the hotel gardens. It looked very beautiful in the sunlight. And the boats on the horizon moved towards the shore elegant as a fleet of swans. She would wander down there later and greet them as they landed. They might even offer her a sail some day. She was open to the experience. Perhaps she would sail home again, show her face exactly as it was. But not yet. Not with Chloe in charge ...

  A shadow fell across her. A cold glass was placed in her outstretched hand, the hand which had a most noticeable change of age about its fingerjoints. So be it. She smiled up. Above her a dazzling row of white teeth smiled back down. Just a Spanish waiter. But she did not look away. Neither, for that matter, did he.

  Vanitas Vanitatum, she thought, and she twirled her drink so that the ice moved delicately. Cheers, Brenda, she said, raising the glass high. Cheers Bren, wherever you are. This one’s to you.

  And the ice in her glass clinked like the glass of the salon chandelier –

  Clink, clink, clink.

  An extract from Mavis Cheek’s

  THREE MEN ON A PLANE

  ‘You’ve got a ladder in your tights,’ said The Girlfriend, quite without emotion.

  Since conversation with The Girlfriend was as rare as contentment in a bikini, Pamela Pryor did not rise but took it, gratefully, as a conversational gambit. Accordingly she began to burble.

  ‘It’s my nails,’ she said. ‘Always were weak and splitty. Never managed to grow them.’ She stared at the ten offenders as if for confirmation, gave The Girlfriend an apologetic smile, and ended in a rush with the highly philosophical confidence that she always forgot to eat a square of jelly a day.

  More silence.

  The Girlfriend looked at her blankly.

  Pamela shrugged and gave what she hoped was a girl-talk smile. She was twenty-seven years older than this ladder-spotter, so she ought to be able to cope. ‘Gelatin,’ she added sagely, as if pronouncing a great truth. ‘Gelatin.’

  More silence.

  Twenty-seven years made no difference after all. The Girlfriend was a superior being and ever would be. Pamela moved her leg surreptitiously to hide the disgrace.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ she said with spirit, ‘they are stockings.’

  Despite feeling like a trussed turkey in them, stockings and suspenders reminded her that somewhere underneath it all, she could still display a mean and womanly thigh top. Stockings were sexy and functional as opposed to just functional. She nearly added this to the conversational package when she realized that it was not the kind of thing one said in front of one’s departing son and his Girlfriend. Apart from anything else, she did not think The Girlfriend needed any help in that department. If her skirt got any shorter and her top got any smaller, she’d be naked.

  The train began to whirr.

  Pamela jumped and gave a bright smile. She was close to tears. Hard enough to lose a son; harder still to feel this combination of sadness and liberation. It reminded her of the time she had her plaits cut off in the name of growing up. She had cried for a week and felt blissfully happy. Life did not seem to have moved on much since then in terms of clarification.

  Margie would say that it was psychological, the turning up at the station with a rip in her hose. Margie would say it was deeply psychological. Margie said everything was psychological, even what you put in the bloody salad. ‘Watercress? Ho ho, Pam –’ Which she pointedly ignored. Margie also said it was psychological when she decided not to open another bottle of wine at two a.m. and packed her friend off to bed in the spare room. Psychological, Pam, she would say, sinking into the duvet and falling instantly asleep. Until now Pam had thought it was daft, but maybe it was true? She was going to have time to ponder things like that from now on. The thought was supposed to be celebratory.

  The train continued to whirr.

  ‘Oh, where is Peter?’ she said, not so much enquiring as desperate.

  She looked around her at the high echoing roofs and the trolleys of ragged packages, as if hoping that the father of Daniel would suddenly appear from some hideaway and swoop down to rescue them all. That she should think this now, she thought sourly, when he had never done such a thing in his life, showed the measure of her turmoil. Of course he would not. As ever, she reminded herself, where Daniel is concerned, you are on your own. So she sighed, merrily, she hoped, and moved the one leg a little further in front of the other, thinking it probably was very psychological indeed.

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ said Daniel.

  He said it in the same voice he had used when she once asked him the rules of football. He had been twelve then, twenty-two now. A lot of water had flowed since. She swallowed very hard at the thought. Life, she told Margie, on the telephone last night, is beckoning. Margie agreed. ‘Great,’ she said.

  But since life had only beckoned Margie as far as a little cottage near Newbury and the teaching of drama to juniors, it seemed rather a fulsome response. ‘Get out there and give it to them,’ she also said, as if Pamela were some kind of trainee boxer.

  She watched a draggled pigeon crap benignly. At least it hadn’t hit her. Small comfort. She felt like offering it a thank you. Nothing felt right now, standing here. The beckon did not seem quite so encouraging. More like a finger wagging at her and reminding her, All That Glisters. . .

  Euston Station certainly made the whole experience rather brisk. Pamela Pryor, mother of Daniel, now dared to look at her son and he looked back.

  ‘Oh, Mum,’ he repeated softly. But made no move towards her.

  Behind him the train to Liverpool whirred again and began to make a few acceleration noises as if it were practising for the off. She could do nothing beyond continue to stand there, at least a foot and a half away from her son. The Girlfriend had her arm tucked so securely through Daniel’s that even had Pamela dared to embrace him, she would have got all tangled up and ended by entwining and hugging both and probably kissing the wrong one. The Girlfriend would then have rolled her eyes and added this to her private list of Pamela’s madnesses.

  Oh, nothing was ever said, of course, but it was just a fact that a twenty-one-year-old beauty who was tall, blonde and skinny enough to have stepped off the catwalk, would naturally think her boyfriend’s forty-eight-year-old not-entirely-gazelle-like mother was a well-meaning idiot. A we
ll-meaning and ancient idiot, who knew nothing whatsoever about anything of importance. Neither of fashion nor sounds, neither of love nor sex. Especially, Pamela felt sure, the latter.

  Pamela knew this because one evening when they were all watching television together and the programme on Cuba showed clips of Che Guevara, she told them how she used to fantasize about being naked in the jungle with him. Just to shock a little. The Girlfriend had eaten her way through an entire box of chocolates while Pamela had only dared eat two, so Pamela was feeling a bit uppish. The Girlfriend gave a polite smile of total disbelief. ‘But he’s dishy,’ she said simply, as if that closed any likelihood of Pam knowing what she was talking about. Thinking of her only as The Girlfriend was a small but necessary compensation.

  The train whirred harder. The last passengers began hurrying along the platform. Pamela shrugged and gave a little smile. And Danny did the same. And then Pamela leaned forward, put her hand on the bony shoulder (would she feed him? would she?) and kissed his cheek.

  He bore it. At least he bore it. Even if he did look acutely embarrassed. The Girlfriend just looked bored.

  ‘Dad isn’t coming,’ he said shortly. ‘He rang this morning. Biked me over this.’

  He held up a mobile telephone. Stars shone out of his eyes. Pamela nearly grabbed the thing and tossed it under the train. ‘How lovely,’ she said. ‘What a lovely thought.’

  Daniel was pressing bits of the little dark creature and making it beep.

  ‘Cool,’ he said.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said The Girlfriend. And with a definite look of kindness, she turned to Pamela. ‘Bye,’ she said, through her sweetly youthful mouth.

  And suddenly they were on the train.

  ‘Only three hours,’ said Pam, as they leaned out at her through the open door. ‘And you’ll be there.’

  ‘Less,’ said Daniel. ‘We’ll be there in two and three quarters.’

  Pamela had an urge to shake him. It was exactly what his father would say. What was a ruddy quarter of an hour when he was her son and they had spent twenty-three years together, not counting the nine months in the womb, and it was about to end?