Sleeping Beauties Read online

  She finished the oils and found, with some alarm, that the frankincense had almost gone: so good for rejuvenating and toning mature skin. Had she used that much? Then time was truly running out.

  She looked at her assistant. Chloe was certainly putting her back into it. Straight as a reed. She was a lovely girl, really, if a little wayward at times. Tabitha moved on to sorting the metalware. Amazing the number of pairs of tweezers the salon owned, and the number of times she could not find one. What they needed was a new system. A new broom, when it came, would wish to sweep clean. She looked at Chloe again. But not, it was to be hoped, entirely clean.

  Perhaps she should take this Sunday opportunity to do some more on the educational side? Chloe was certainly willing, more than willing, to be educated – eager even. Tabitha stopped sorting the metalware for a moment and closed her eyes. Very eager. Those books for instance. Hard to define what was wrong, because nothing was really wrong – only nothing was really quite right either.

  And it was very odd to have her trainee waft in of a morning saying things like, ‘Nothing can be beautiful which is not true,’ and then adding derisively, ‘Who is this John Ruskin bloke kidding?’

  Then there was her detailed interest in classical subjects. After Helen of Troy, her views on why Ariadne was really tied to the rocks by Jason left – well – very little to the imagination. Quite a Girl, Chloe called her. And Cleopatra, who was apparently more likely to have been executing a snake dance at the time of her decease was just – well – unlucky.

  Tabitha had begun to dread her arrival in the mornings. And she had flatly refused to have the Ancient History book back in the salon at all. It made her uneasy, though she could not, exactly, say why. All of it made her uneasy. It was education, yes, but it didn’t, somehow, feel quite right.

  On the other hand, maybe she was just losing her touch? Maybe her mind was becoming as stiff as her hands? She returned to the aromatherapy cabinet and placed a drop or two of lavender oil on her fingers, rubbing it well in.

  Last week, for example. She let the lavender oil waft about her to soothe the thought. Last week Chloe had started to talk about the Apple of Discord to one of the sunbedders, who was most surprised, and apparently quite interested. But then, once you were in a sunbed you were more or less trapped. If someone wanted to lean on their elbows and discuss the merits of Ancient Greek Beauty Competitions you couldn’t do very much about it. Except by being rude.

  Chloe had got a bee in her bonnet over the whole Paris thing anyway.

  ‘I think I could fancy him,’ she said conversationally to the woman in the dark goggles. Hard to know what the woman thought, but she nodded.

  What could Tabitha do while giving electrolysis, which needed a steady hand? She couldn’t be forever leaping into the middle of Chloe’s conversations with clients, especially when there was, ostensibly, nothing wrong with them.

  ‘It seems to me,’ Chloe had gone on positively, ‘that the whole thing was a lot of hot air anyway. Those three girls had been eyeing each other up secretly for ages, feeling jealous – you know how you do?’

  The black goggles, nodding, apparently did.

  ‘Well, we all do, don’t we? I mean, we say nice things but underneath we’re thinking What a Tart with those small hips ... or, she fills her Wonderbra out a little bit too nicely – you know.’

  Tabitha consoled herself. The sunbedder was young, too – perhaps this was the right kind of approach? Move with the times, she thought, and went back to her client’s hairy chin.

  Then Chloe’s voice went dreamy. She was about to speculate. It was these dreamy speculations coupled with the Ancient History book that made Tabitha feel ill-at-ease, though again, she couldn’t exactly say why.

  ‘I wonder,’ crooned Chloe, ‘if it’s the same for men? Is anything the same for men?’

  The black goggles made a tentatively negative movement.

  Apparently not.

  ‘Well I’ll bet it is.’

  The black goggles instantly gestured positive.

  Apparently it was.

  ‘Only it won’t be about all their bits and pieces. Biceps and what not. That’s just cover. All they’d stand in a line to be judged on, the only thing that bothers them really, is the size of their, erm’ – her eyes met Tabitha’s – ‘organs. Who’s got the biggest and is mine too small? I know that for a fact.’ She nodded sagely. ‘Well – we do, don’t we?’

  The movement of the black goggles indicated that they certainly did.

  ‘Otherwise they’d have their own beauty parlours, wouldn’t they? But they don’t. Quite happy to be bald and blotchy as long as they pass the ruler test. And do we care? No we do not. Get out your wallet and –’

  ‘Chloe!’ called Tabitha.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Chloe loudly, ‘all I was saying was that these three women with the funny names – you pronounce every letter by the way, give it all you’ve got –,’ she ticked them off on her fingers, ‘Hera, Athene, Aphrodite – sort of Goddess Super-Models really – also known as Juno, Minerva and Venus for some reason –’

  ‘Chloe!’

  ‘Would you like me to tell you?’ She looked down at the now prawn-pink creature. Who nodded. She looked up at Tabitha. ‘I’ll just finish this off,’ she said good-naturedly. ‘She wants to know.’

  Tabitha took a deep breath. Generation gap? Perhaps she had grown dull? She let it go. Concentrate, she told her fingers, since you are just coming up to the lips.

  ‘Paris again,’ said Chloe. ‘He doesn’t half get about. Well – the whole point of the stupid story is that until this Paris came along with his Apple of Discord, on which someone had written “Let it be given to the most beautiful”, they were all supposed to be good pals and never compared anything they’d got. I ask you. And then he dangles the old fruit and bob’s your uncle. From then on he’s supposed to be the reason we girls like to look our best. Once he’d given it to Aphrodite – or Venus if you prefer – I must say that’s the only one I’d ever heard of – remember Venus in Furs? –’

  She rolled her eyes. Very possibly the black goggles also rolled her eyes too. Certainly her eyebrows seemed to twitch a little.

  ‘Oh, that book!’ said Chloe. ‘I remember when one of my boyfriends said he’d found it behind a lavatory on Waterloo Station – honestly – men – the things they say – I mean – why couldn’t he say he was into all that –’

  She paused to collect her thoughts.

  Tabitha knew nothing of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, nor his doughty heroine, and assumed the title was, very properly and philosophically, Venus Infers. She was therefore silent.

  Chloe went on. ‘Well – once this Paris had said that Venus was the corker, it was supposed to have let loose the Discord – that’s to say Bitchiness to you and me – but it’s all – erm – tosh. Because if those girls hadn’t known what it was all about in the first place, and hadn’t – really – always thought they were best – they wouldn’t have stood in line. They wanted to win. All three – or is it six – of them. And it wasn’t the Apple that was the prize ... Now was it?’ The goggles were nudged and smiled weakly. ‘Ha Ha. Oh no – it was the sodding man.’

  She stood back, pretty hands on perfect hips. ‘Well – am I right, or am I right?’

  Tabitha looked at the naked chin before her and smiled. ‘All done,’ she said gently.

  ‘Did I swear?’ asked Chloe, catching Tabitha’s look and widening her own lovely eyes. ‘Sorry.’

  Watching the sunbedder depart, and seeing that she was – perhaps – a little pinker than might be expected, though not fiercely so, Tabitha felt that creeping unease again. It was at that point she suggested, firmly, that the Ancient History book go back to the library.

  ‘Right-ho,’ said Chloe. ‘I was getting bored with it anyway.’

  But it still left Poetry. ‘To His Coy Mistress’: ‘What’s the point of having a mistress if she’s coy?’

  History of Art. Of the Ve
nus de Milo: ‘She looks armless – Ha Ha.’

  And A Beautician’s Bible: ‘Skin lacking in moisture is often referred to as dry skin.’ ‘Geddaway – really? They must think we’re all thick or something.’

  On the whole, it was not quite the sort of educational programme Tabitha had in mind. She was extremely glad that the Ancient History went back to the library and sincerely hoped that Chloe had forgotten all about the Gorgons.

  She had read out loudly, and with relish: ‘Their faces and figures were beautiful with arching golden wings, but they were terrifying as they were lovely, with scaly skins, hair of hissing serpents and a gaze so powerful they could paralyse with a look.’

  And then said, in that dreamy way of hers and quite devoid of criticism, ‘Sort of punk really.’

  But since then things have been calmer. Praise where praise is due, thinks Tabitha, and says, ‘You have been very good this week Chloe. Not one piece of bad language since the sunbed. And you’ve done those cherubs marvellously.’

  Chloe looks pleased. ‘Ever thought of giving the Beauty Parlour a bit of an update?’

  ‘Oh no,’ says Tabitha, ‘I like it the way it is. Peaceful, kind and caring. It will be for my successor to decide on alterations.’

  ‘Successor?’ says Chloe sharply.

  ‘Why yes,’ says Tabitha. ‘We’ve all got to go sometime.’

  ‘When the hour is nigh, we are called,’ says Chloe, smiling.

  Really, sometimes she had a beautiful turn of phrase.

  Tabitha will educate. ‘While you sort the cosmetics,’ she said, ‘I’ll test you on your essential oils.’

  Chloe nods. Very important. And she begins to go through the eyeshadows. All so pale and wishy-washy. Even the browns and golds. What this place needed was a bit of zing.

  ‘Melissa?’ calls Tabitha.

  ‘Of honey’ replies Chloe. ‘A gentle, soothing oil to balance the emotions.’

  ‘Correct. Lavender?’

  ‘A relaxing and anti-bacterial oil useful in skin preparations. Blends well with other oils. Can be used directly on the skin. Strong.’

  ‘Well done. Black pepper?’

  ‘Useful in massage to relax tired muscles, gives a sense of well-being, livens the mind.’ She hides a little smirk. ‘Stimulating.’

  ‘Good – and –’

  But Chloe is going through the lipstick display, which reminds her of a story she heard in the Dog and Duck last night.

  Lipstick!

  Better keep it to myself, she thinks. Just for the time being.

  ‘Jasmine?’

  ‘Has an exquisite scent and a sensual and luxuriant effect on the emotions.’ Tabitha nods.

  ‘And it turns you on,’ she adds under her breath, ‘if you use your skills right.’ She runs her fingers over the display, from palest pink to vermilion. Oh yes.

  You can teach anyone how to do it, she thinks, smiling to herself, if they want to know.

  7

  Even someone like Gemma.

  Gemma had worked extremely hard in the eighties, which had brought her all the expected rewards: Gold Card, quite nice flat, Golf GTI, designer clothes, up-front sex with men of similar age who earned similar rewards, a little line of coke now and then, Barbados at Christmas and the happy belief that the gravy train never stops.

  Then the eighties went away, taking the Gold Card, GTI, designer clothes, up-front sex, the expensive white stuff, Barbados at Christmas and hope with them. Gemma was left with the nice flat which she could just about afford if she shared it; a job selling financial services for a bank which gave her a Ford Escort and low basic; a very thin wardrobe; Christmas with her aged parents in Morden; and a deep, depressing sense of loneliness.

  Sex was still available sporadically if required, but the men were no longer quite so young, nor quite so fleshy, and were certainly not up-front about anything much any more. Mention security to them and they would curl their lips cynically and maybe spit into the gutter.

  Many of them had sought oblivion in humble jobs, marriage and babies. Some had sought oblivion in drink, or daytime television, or working out a computer scheme for winning on what they still called, shades of their past, the geegees. Their striped shirts were frayed; they had dark circles beneath their eyes that no longer carried the honourable stamp of too much champagne at Stringfellows; they were worried about genital herpes and AIDS; and they grew flabby for want of the tennis club and the gym.

  They also did not want to be reminded of their more glorious days. Someone like Gemma was an embarrassment; where once they had wined and dined her, or she them, they could do so no longer. If their eyes met across a crowded pavement, they would look away. She who had been dashing, thirty-something, desirable, was now moderate, forty-something, avoidable.

  And Gemma felt the same about them. Those days were over, she counselled herself, no use pining for them. This is it, possibly for ever, and you’d better just get on with it my girl.

  Life was now working for the bank, driving to customers as they directed, turning up on doorsteps, selling the mundane to the mundane, the new wave for the nineties. She knew she was lucky to have a job; she knew she was lucky not to have married one of those depressed City rejects; she knew she was very lucky indeed to have the plump and accommodating Megan as flat-mate and thereby have kept her home.

  But she also knew she was unlucky, very unlucky indeed, in her loneliness. Even a woman in a low-key lifestyle (the kind reviled, ignored, dismissed in the time of Plenty) needs someone to share her misfortunes with. It seemed to Gemma that her kind of guy, whatever that was, had gone with a whole load of other suitable men to live on top of a mountain. A very remote mountain and one, certainly, that Gemma could never find on a map. True, she too worried about herpes and AIDS, but she worried more about being lonely, and most of all about not having any love.

  Even flat-mate Megan had a boyfriend. The lookist in Gemma found this monstrous. The single in Gemma found it enviable. Megan had met him in the park one day when she was jogging – huge breasts pumping up and down, belly and buttocks jellying the air – and he went for it. He was the gardener, keeper of the municipal tennis courts, shooer-off of dogs. They spent the night together, and they were happy. So why wasn’t Gemma?

  The wretched man even tended their window-boxes with the most exuberant results. Now, looking out of the window across the roofs of Wandsworth on a spring morning was made perfectly surreal by the explosion of flowers as foreground.

  With sighing frequency Gemma did indeed look out at those roofs of Wandsworth – and often came close to having a panic attack. Forty-one, she said to herself, forty-one and the looks have begun to go. And I AM FUCKING LONELY. She said this out loud, to the jonquils and narcissi that bowed and bobbed their heads in silent applause. In the old days, she thought acidly, one of her up-front lovers would have reached out, plucked them from the window-box and eaten them. Thus did they once have their fun.

  Saturday morning, Megan in the park with Jim, Gemma on her own indoors. She stretched. She looked at the telephone which never rang for her. She looked at Megan’s Daily Mail whose salacious moralizings failed to amuse. I want, she thought, a real newspaper – or rather, I want the newspaper I used to buy every day, along with my FT, the cost of which meant nothing to me.

  For once she did not let her stringent budget prevail. Out she went, along the springlike street, and bought a Times, carrying it back as preciously as once she might have carried a new Versace jacket. She made coffee, pinching Megan’s, sat cross-legged on the floor and leaned against the settee luxuriously. For a couple of hours she could forget everything and just be the woman she once was.

  The Times on Saturday. Who would have thought it could end up being a luxury? She would read every bit of it, cover to cover, slowly, savouring every line – the sport, the classifieds, even – God help her – the poetry reviews. Those little boxy advertisements for men’s underwear she would save until last; those, she thought with
sour amusement, would just about be her only thrill this weekend – she’d have to make the most of it.

  After the rise, the fall;

  After the boom, the slump;

  After the fizz and the fat cigar,

  The cigarette and the hump.

  Not even a packet of ten a week, so no early death. It used to be Marlboros all round – packs on the table – help yourself.

  Oh for a glass of Krug and the beautiful people. Where, oh where, had they all gone?

  8

  Margery had begun to look at advertisement hoardings with a new eye. Wherever she looked she saw the bright and beautiful smiles of women whose teeth shone out unashamedly; with beauty and teeth like that you could be thrilled by anything – soap powder, life insurance, dog food. Soon she would be like them. Soon. Thanks to her beloved dentist.

  Beloved?

  Oh yes, no doubt about it, Margery now loved Reginald Postgate. And he nearly loved her. No man, thought Margery, could give a woman’s molars such time and attention if he did not feel strong emotion. She lived for the moments spent in that dental chair, though once thrust back and mouth agape, communicating her feelings was not easy.

  But Reginald was very good at finding things to say, one of which, fairly early on in the treatment, was about honey. So significant, since it was the very reason she had come to him in the first place. Honey, she thought, he is interested in honey. And he is interested in me.