Sleeping Beauties Read online

  As a matter of fact, the very thought of any man coming near her made her nauseous, so in Tunisia she sat beneath the metallic palm trees alone – save for a bottle and the rolling of the waves. Any man who so much as smiled at her, even the rather nice and beautiful waiter, she looked away from, pursing her lips to show she was not ready after all. And she did not send her beautician a card.

  Even thinking about it gives Chloe the shivers. She was put back on low-grade duties, and made to wear the humiliating plain buff overall that did not show the marks. Tabitha had always said she would train Chloe exactly as she was trained. One mistake of a substantial nature and back to square one. Like a Beauty Parlour game of snakes and ladders – and Mrs Pargeter had certainly been a bloody long snake. Chloe will never forget the weeks that followed. Indeed, it was during this exile from grace, and while she was on all fours in the window, in the disgusting plain buff overall and moving the Declarine products about, that she finally made up her mind. One day she would be the Boss. There is nothing like humiliation and degradation for spurring on those bitter twins of ambition and lust for power.

  When Tabitha eventually persuaded Mrs Pargeter to come back, with an invitation for any free treatment she chose, Chloe gave her the best hand massage and manicure of her life. ‘Going anywhere nice this summer?’ she asked, in that neutral tone so inculcated by Tabitha.

  ‘Scotland, I think,’ said Mrs Pargeter firmly.

  Chloe went on trimming the cuticles without so much as a blush to her face or a falter in her gentle grip. She was not going to get caught out like that again. ‘Nice,’ she said, delicately rubbing away the dead flesh from her client’s fingertips. And she congratulated herself on resisting the urge to quip, ‘Don’t forget the tartan condoms,’ which sprang to mind.

  After a reasonable period in Salon Purgatory Tabitha felt cautiously optimistic about Chloe once more. And now little Sonny’s puppy has nearly blown it. From now on, thinks Chloe, I really must watch it.

  Tabitha suggests that the Baker incident illuminated a gap or two in Chloe’s capability. It is apparent that she is not quite ready yet. Perhaps some sort of test should be devised? Tabitha will go home that night and Sleep On It.

  Chloe, going home that night, cursed Mrs Baker in her Maureen tongue, and knew that she was ready. She was deeply frustrated, deeply cross and she told her boyfriend about the Baker’s Puppy incident with many a spade-like expletive. He was very sympathetic until he had a lager too many inside him and then he looked at her, burst out laughing and said, ‘Woof woof’.

  Chloe smacked him in the eye, breaking another nail and this time glad of it, and walked out of the pub. She would never see him again, huh, and if he wanted head he could whistle for it. So saying, she whistled for a cab and asked it to take her to Mayfair, where she knew of a classy club. She had more skills to her fingertips than an ability to give a good deep kneading to the Anterior Tibialis. Time to use them.

  In Chloe’s book, when lovely woman stoops to folly she only does so in order to leave the youth carbuncular and seek out the rich Smyrna Merchant.

  Tabitha, meanwhile, lay in bed considering the future with impatience. How can I be sure of her? How best to go about testing if Chloe is a suitable heir? For the truth was that, quite suddenly, in this sweet green springtime, herald of summer, Tabitha was yearning to be free. How could Chloe prove herself, she yawned, so that some other poor woman did not souffrir pour être belle? For unless she got it right, some other poor woman undoubtedly would ...

  5

  Some other poor woman like Caroline ...

  Caroline always said to Bernie that if she could ever be of help to him, she would be glad to return the favour.

  ‘More than a favour. Favour seems an inadequate word to describe the kindness and support you have given me,’ she said. ‘You, Bernie, have quite restored my faith in men.’

  It had been a very messy divorce, a very unkind sundering, and Bernie’s large frame had stood by her like a rock, sometimes quite literally sheltering her from the prying eyes in the staff-room when she got the shakes, or when the tears fell unexpectedly. He reminded her of Dobbin in Vanity Fair – solid, kind and reliable.

  I hope, Caroline thought to herself, that he never finds himself in that kind of horror story. It didn’t seem very likely – pretty little wife, lovely house, clearly settled in for life. Caroline sighed. Though whether for envy at Bernie’s security, or whether for regret, she was not exactly sure.

  She looked in the mirror and stuck out her tongue. Well, at least she was her own woman now. And her ex-husband’s New Woman in high heels and a frilly red skirt at the back of the court. Frilly red skirt? Oh really! He used to love her freedom from all those silly constraints. That she could shin up a mountainside as fast as him, or take a little tumble off-piste without a murmur. Frilly red skirt, indeed. Absurd.

  Ah well. No accounting for change. She shrugged at the mirror and her own ruddy-cheeked reflection. She kept forgetting to moisturize, though she had a bottle of stuff somewhere ... She leaned further towards the reflection, peered. Perhaps she’d better start.

  Lucky old Rita, Bernie’s wife, for he was devoted. And Rita clearly knew how to moisturize every day, if not twice; you could see, just from looking at her, that she knew how to take care of herself. No wonder they made such a perfect couple. But then, she had thought the same, once, about her own marriage.

  You never could tell.

  Nice man Bernie.

  Lucky wife Rita.

  Now where was that bottle?

  *

  Bernie and Rita were living as brother and sister. Rita had suggested it quite a long time ago.

  ‘I think of you as a brother nowadays,’ she said one day, bored in the bedroom, after which any remaining conjugal rights were spirited away. Bernie made the best of things. He convinced himself that it would change again one day, and carried on accordingly.

  But around about the time he finished the Amazing Re-creation of their Victorian house in Putney, lovingly changing it from decaying ruin to four-bedroom, two-bathroom, architecturally detailed, landscape-gardened, hugely valuable asset, he realized that, despite the perfection of its family space, there were no plans for a nursery.

  Rita was very snappish about it. Now they could sell the house, take the colossal profit, buy something cheaper to live in (Bernie could do it up), and spend, spend, spend ... But separately. Meanwhile, she would do a cookery course – haute cuisine, cordon bleu – something with real status. It would give her a proper job for when the time came to part. Rita thought this might be quite soon.

  Now, with the Putney house sold, they lived in a boring little villa in Maida Vale. Bernie had no heart for it, after the dream-that-was-Putney and had, indeed, found tears springing to his eyes when they finally moved. But he loved Rita. He still found her daintiness meltingly feminine, her ways lovely and desirable, her occasional bouts of helplessness quite delicious – and so he lived in hope. Besides, he feared loneliness. Disheartened but obedient, Bernie did up Maida Vale in mediocre, careless fashion, and suffered in silence.

  He could not bring himself to tell anyone the truth. Sometimes he thought he might confide in Caroline, as she had done with him, but it would be a betrayal. Besides, he felt rather ashamed of living such a lie.

  Rita took her cookery course and was highly successful. Now it was only a matter of time, and she plotted accordingly. Meanwhile, she fed Bernie upon the riches of her prowess, brought back from the cookery school – exquisite canapés, fluffy little cakes, beef Wellington, delectable breads, pâtés, compotes and moulds of sculptured artistry.

  He was enchanted by her success, enchanted by the food, ate and grew large – the reverse of a Sultan fattening his concubine. She fattened Bernie, who ate, worked, and was entertained by her stories. She Scheherazaded him with herself as heroine, and he repeated her stories proudly to Caroline who said that she could not cook at all. Oh to be loved like that, was what she real
ly wanted to say.

  The Putney money was safe in the bank.

  ‘When my course is completed,’ said Rita firmly, ‘we can decide what to do with it.’

  ‘Go travelling together?’ asked Bernie hopefully.

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Rita.

  He had a vague notion that once on the road they would revert to the passion of their youth. He hinted this to Caroline, saying as much as he dared about staleness and how liberating it would be to step off life’s dreary treadmill. Pastures new.

  ‘Ah,’ she said, ‘I shall miss you.’

  ‘We’re not going yet,’ he laughed, patting her shoulder.

  ‘You must both come to supper,’ she said. But somehow she never quite got around to issuing a firm invitation. She felt just a little too depressed.

  Thus it continued.

  Rita cooked and schemed.

  Caroline sat lonely, night after night.

  Bernie ate and mourned.

  And the once humble Kitchen Goddess Venus, nowadays enthroned and crowned as the mighty Queen of Love, perchance remembering her own distant connection with the simpler delights of domesticity, decided to raise her exalted head. Tiara or no tiara, she was bored. Perhaps her ancient connection with cookery and provender made her aware of her pretty little nonpareil below – or perhaps it was that Rita fitted so appositely the words that spring from powerful Venus’s name: vain, venereal, fain and win.

  Whatever the reason, the Queen of Love fancied a touch of the star-crosseds. A little sport. A diversion. Thus was ruthless, calculating Rita selected; thus was ruthless, calculating Rita brought low.

  He arrived in the form of a visiting lecturer in organic foods at the cookery school. Tall, dark and handsome – the very epitome of Heathcliff, Rochester, or Venus’s own Adonis, though with peatbog under his nails and on his mind. He spoke with passion about real meat, real veg, and Rita could not keep her eyes off his strong hands, his chiselled features, his mane of black hair and his muscular thighs. A pushover, she fancied.

  ‘I want to know more,’ she cried. ‘I want to know everything about organic farming and real meat and llama wool.’ She clasped her hands beneath her little pointy chin, looked into his eyes and fell – disastrously – in love. The more so since he seemed peculiarly unresponsive to her feminine wiles.

  She invited him to have lunch with her the next day at Maida Vale, at a time when Bernie would be safely in school. She made up the spare bed, carefully closing the door of the marital bedroom and locking it, and she removed all traces of husband Bernie from the house. She even remembered to hide razors, extra toothbrushes, letters addressed to Mr and Mrs.

  Rita tripped and chirruped around, making these preparations, like a little golden canary, a very confident canary, flexing her pretty tail and sharpening up her fine little beak. He would be a pushover, just like all the rest. A twist of her burnished head, a pleading look in those wide blue eyes and they were sunk. Look at Bernie. Why this morning he had taken a box of her Viennese Fancies into school for everyone to share in the glory that was his wife. It was too easy really, candy from a baby.

  The Organic Lecturer arrived.

  Rita gave him smoked venison, artichoke hearts and crème brûlée, and afterwards lay across the settee as provocatively as she could. So far nothing had happened between them and he seemed impervious to her covert seductions. A conundrum, a frustrating conundrum.

  And then, at her despairing inducement to ‘tell me all about your farm’, she understood. For immediately, in that irritating way of men, he did. He became fired with agricultural passion: hormones, free-ranging, and the beauties of a well-manured cabbage. He was expanding, he wanted to expand more, he wanted his piggies to go to their deaths with a smile on their faces, his lambs to bleat joyously with a view of the distant Nirvana hills, and his happy little peas to go singing arias into the pot. And he wanted to make llama wool freely available.

  What he needed, quite simply, was the money to do it.

  ‘I have some money,’ she found herself saying, and she shrugged and fluttered as if money to her was as remotely understood as the properties of a good weaner pellet.

  After this she ceased to feed Bernie with delectables, or anything much at all. Caroline noticed that he had begun to lose weight and she took to bringing him in a sandwich or two which they shared together, in these early spring days, while sitting in the park. He said he thought Rita was under a lot of stress. Caroline thought that perhaps Bernie was, too.

  Venus worked on. Rita was hooked. A farm in Wiltshire and those thighs seemed too good, too wonderful to be true.

  When she confirmed the loan, the Organic Dream kissed her resoundingly on the lips. ‘We’ll be very good together,’ he insisted. ‘And you must come and visit the place when lambing’s over.’

  Salt had been sprinkled on her little canary’s tail. She waited obediently for the summons. And Venus chuckled.

  ‘I want a divorce,’ she said to Bernie that night. Love had made her foolhardy. Her pretty eyes, that used to beguile him, stayed cold. Her little hands were iron-fisted and quite still. Her body was rigid.

  ‘Why?’ he asked. And the eyebrow that she raised at his question, that little, perfectly plucked, enticing eyebrow, was cruelly dismissive. He reached out for her, put his arms around her and kissed her as, he now realized, he had longed to kiss her for years.

  ‘No,’ he said into her twisting head. But she pulled away from him.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, firm as a nanny and quite matter-of-fact, ‘because I have fallen in love with somebody else.’

  Which in Bernie’s book was pretty final.

  ‘You can join the Photographic Society,’ she said. ‘You always wanted to. And we can still be friends.’

  No valediction to love more cruel.

  Bernie felt a sharp pain in his diaphragm, something that no ointment or distalgesic was likely to reach.

  His shoulders drooped, his face sagged, he needed a drink. He abandoned the light fitting and went out, blinking in the too-bright evening light. Everything seemed to hurt. He felt that he had suddenly lost his skin, the hide he had grown to sustain him all these years. He walked, but the pain in his diaphragm did not ease. He needed a drink, but the pubs were full of very happy people. He could not go to see their friends, the Couples, because he could not bear to see dual harmony.

  He arrived on the doorstep of Caroline’s flat because she had known the pain herself, and because – suddenly – he understood what she had been suffering when he helped her. She said he had been her rock. He felt he could claim the debt.

  She came to the door looking dishevelled and grubby. Cleaning out the cellar, she said, because she was going to start making a few things. Keep herself busy. Then she looked up at him, directly into his eyes, and reached out her arm to pull him gently across the threshold. Caroline’s flat. Sanctuary. He no longer felt ashamed, and told her everything, she not saying a word. She had a smear of dirt across her cheek, he noticed, but did not feel it was his place to rub it away. Her eyes were tender and encouraging.

  He drank rather a lot of red wine and ended up staying the night in a wonderful, warm bed where the flesh was exceptionally willing and the concomitant spirit was joyfully weak. And he woke to find a face smiling across a pillow at him. A hand somewhere below the duvet’s horizon did gentle things to his anatomy, while another fed him grapes from a wooden bowl. At that precise and darkling hour in his life a new light had entered.

  They stared at each other across the pillows. He knew she was not beautiful, yet he liked to stare, and he wondered what was in those grapes since they had taken the pain away completely. He asked her, half joking, half serious, whether the homeopathy clinic up the road had been advised of their analgesic qualities. At which she laughed. Not a tinkling little laugh, not an eyebrow raised trill, not with a fan of dainty fingers, but a generous gurgle from the back of her throat.

  Walking home in the morning he found himself sin
ging. The air was bracing, his street looked cheerful, and as he let himself in the second-rate new pine door no longer irritated him. And as he met up with his wife he found himself smiling into her raised eyebrow, shrugging as she questioned his whereabouts, and he reassured her.

  ‘Friends,’ he said. And kissed her frowning forehead. ‘I have found someone else too.’

  Which made Rita feel piqued, for some odd reason, and took away some of her own newfound delight. That had not been part of the calculation.

  Venus smiled while Mars shook his shaggy locks at her wickedness and thought about having a little fun himself. Love versus War, with Cupid well out of sight.

  6

  Tabitha and Chloe were spring-cleaning the Beauty Parlour. Late spring-cleaning, much to Tabitha’s shame. Somehow this year she had been lax, a laxity she put down to the unseasonally warm, damp weather they had experienced throughout most of the winter. What she liked was a good biting cold (with plenty of aloe vera rubbed into the exposed bits) to get the circulation going and kill off the bugs. Winters like this one, a non-event winter, had no liveliness to it, no dash – and it was that pervasive sluggishness she felt now.

  She could quite understand why people ran around naked in the snow in Finland, and rolled themselves in its cold purity. She almost said this to Chloe, who was on her knees at the reception desk polishing cherubs, but decided it was best not. Chloe had her own way of looking at things and – well – there was the question of being beaten with birch twigs afterwards. Chloe might have very forthright views on that. And express them to the Cathiodermie, who was due in a minute.

  She made a note that they had run out of juniper oil and were very low on clary sage. Both particularly useful at this time of year for their stimulating properties. Best play that down. She was about to take Chloe off the foot massage and move her on to full massage. After all, she certainly had the technique. She was very good with her hands. But she needed to be aware of the soothing qualities of some of the thirty-two oils they carried as well. She was clearly very keen. Tabitha had found her jotting down the particular benefits of ginger root and black peppercorns – the one so good at fortifying and resuscitating tired bodies, the other so good for stimulation. All the same, an understanding of the more gentle uses of, say, tea tree, might be appropriate. At this stage, birch twigs were best completely forgotten.