Sleeping Beauties

by Mavis Cheek

  ‘What about changing them so that they revere higher things?’ asked Margery, secretly sure that Ronald did – mostly. And also thinking that the gingham frock wouldn’t hitch all that well. ‘Some might.’

  ‘Some what?’ asked Chloe, puzzled.

  ‘Er – men.’

  Higher things? Chloe shook her head, confident in her wisdom. ‘Nothing,’ she said, ‘is higher than a prick in erection. While that’s buzzing about we are talking Snowdon, Everest...’ here her geography ran out ‘Er ... Box Hill.’

  A little surprising, this latter, but Margery accepted it.

  ‘Prick?’ said Margery wonderingly.

  ‘Well, you’ll have to get to grips with it,’ says Chloe.

  Margery tried to imagine what Reginald’s was like. Something akin to an elongated beehive perhaps? Filled with honey. And in return she would give him honey, too, and she would take him into the countryside, away from his cares, and she would give herself to him in gingham and clover. She left the salon as if the deed were accomplished – pink of cheek and light of step. Chloe’s eyes met Tabitha’s, clear and innocent as a summer pool.

  *

  ‘Prick?’ thought Caroline. ‘How inadequate a term for what that wonderful creation actually does.’ She was thinking sadly of Bernie’s noble erection which was seriously under threat, and had even wilted a few times recently as he recalled the sadness of his wife. She was also thinking sadly of his wife. She would, she thought, quite like to poison her.

  ‘Not a bad idea,’ said Chloe, tapping thoughtfully at her beautiful cheek.

  Rita had even wangled herself into their dinner party.

  Bernie had insisted Rita be invited and at first Caroline thought that she herself would not go. She just would not. That would teach him. But – ah – would it?

  ‘You’d be cutting off your nose to spite your face,’ said Chloe firmly.

  ‘She’ll cook. She’ll cook successfully.’

  ‘So what?’ said Chloe. ‘It’s what you give him after the pudding that counts...’

  ‘It’ll have to be on the same day that I see you.

  ‘No probs.’

  Whichever one of them cooked the wretched meal, she would have to look as good as she could. Either by way of apology, or by way of diversion.

  She felt afraid of the battle, but Chloe had an idea. An idea which offered Strategy, Timing, Artillery, in a rather outrageous form. It was devoutly to be wished, quite suddenly, that Rita would flex her cordon bleu talons after all.

  *

  ‘Can be applied both to name the sexual member and its owner,’ said Gemma absently, still thinking hard about friend Jo-Jo’s lipstick story. And then she put such deprecating thoughts behind her. If he turned out to be a prick, she just wouldn’t notice, that’s all. Chloe was encouraging. Make-up could give you any image you wanted.

  ‘How about a cross between Madonna and Grace Kelly floating around the turrets of a château?

  Sure.

  ‘Definitely the mouth,’ said Chloe, scrutinizing her as if she were palaeolithic.

  Gemma said nothing. She would come back here, with all her archaeological promise, and grit her teeth at such impudence. And afterwards? Afterwards? Why, on with the dream. Forgetting entirely her promise that once she turned forty, she would have neither dreams nor expectations again. But still, she could not wait to return.

  *

  Tabitha feels heartened. She will have her lovely day of leisure. Perhaps even visit an art gallery after the Spanish Embassy. It was a long time since she had looked at painters’ views on Beauty. She would have fun. She would. And anyway – she looked at Chloe – she had to keep her promise.

  Only one thing niggled.

  One very small thing.

  Hardly anything at all, really!

  Why did Chloe give each of them the Thumbs Up as they left?

  She looks at Chloe. Chloe looks back innocently. Maybe thumbs up is the modern way?

  ‘Well done, Chloe,’ she says.

  Chloe smiles, so sweetly.

  ‘May I read you this?’ she asks, holding up her Beautician’s Bible.

  Tabitha sighs.

  ‘Of course, please do.’

  So the trainee reads, in a firm, clear voice: ‘Part of the responsibility of the beauty specialist is to sell what is needed to the person who needs it, and not decide for clients what they should spend, or how much they can afford, otherwise she is robbing the client of the pleasure of purchase...’

  She nods her head, heavy with significance, as she closes the book. ‘Ann Gallant said that. I think she’s blooming marvellous. Don’t you?’

  Tabitha nods.

  Chloe has just quoted the Guru, so why this unease?

  Mrs Spencer’s collagen?

  The Thumbs Up?

  She traces the wonky cupid with her fingertip.

  She shivers.

  But the air in the salon is not remotely cold.

  13

  Now or never, Margery told herself as she approached the surgery. The days were continuing warm and golden, but they would give her no pleasure until her plan had been accomplished. She hoped he would set aside honour for the greater good – she certainly would. She clutched her cardigan tighter around her; it was the colour of honey and soft as a bee, and wearing it gave her courage.

  Through the dear, familiar doorway she stepped, the beautician’s voice in her ear: ‘Give it all you’ve got.’ She fully intended to.

  Reginald Postgate felt the unfamiliar pall of boredom. Sometimes his irreproachable gentlemanliness got him down and he yearned to brush a knee or touch a hand – dentistry being so tantalizingly intimate. This is why he had decided to specialize in older women, for he had once found himself looking yearningly at a plump young rosy throat and thinking it would be fun to bend and kiss it – with all the horrors of professional mayhem such an act could bring.

  Even now, waiting for Margery, he shivered at the memory. But he still, dammit, felt bored. Mrs Postgate was rather more into curtains than she was into his body. Come to think of it, he was rather more into curtains than he was into her body. And mostly, given the golf and tennis and the adulation at work, that was acceptable. Today just seemed like the kind of day for having a little bit of fun. Nothing serious. He whistled. He found he was whistling ‘Where the Bee Sucks’ because it had been on Radio Two that morning – a rather nice, easy-listening version by the Mike Sammes Singers.

  Margery heard it as she came through the door, and it was the signal she sought.

  ‘I shall miss you – er – Miss – ,’ said Reginald, as he came out to the reception area to greet her. And there was something in the placing of her feet, something in the curve of her proferred hand, something in the light in her eyes – which all added up to a little, a very little bit of fun.

  ‘Margery please,’ she said boldly. And she smiled at him so broadly that it made her ears ache.

  Reginald Postgate nearly lost his resolve at the sight but he rallied, took her hand and looked into her eyes, ‘Margery then.’ He paused and said, more softly, ‘Margery. I shall miss you very, very much.’

  ‘And my teeth?’ she found herself saying. It sounded rather odd.

  ‘Those too,’ he said, slightly puzzled at the somewhat offside nature of the statement.

  Karen seemed to be having a mixture of a gargle and appendicitis.

  Sometimes he could wish for a change of staff in that department, but she was his wife’s niece and he would not under any circumstances disturb the domestic status quo. Generally, life was good. A little society, a little golf and tennis, and he was content. All he ever had to do was give Mrs Postgate another couple of catalogues to peruse, a free hand with the Visa card, and he could be gone for a week almost without her noticing.

  But today Margery’s adoring gaze tickled his boredom.

  He ushered her into the surgery and sang ‘Where The Bee Sucks’ as he closed the door. Margery flopped into the chair. Now
or Never, she told herself, and joined in with the words. She must startle him into submission. The pretty little beautician said that she should.

  ‘Now lie back’ he said when the duet was over, ‘and let me take a little teeny look at you.’

  He said it as if she were naked, and felt the throbbing of her pulse as his hand rested gently on her neck. He tested the teeth and then he tested the throb.

  ‘All in order,’ he said as he tapped. ‘What a dear little honey hole.’

  Eroticism is a strange phenomenon to the uninitiated.

  Why the phrase honey hole should make Margery pull her knees together with a jerk was a mystery to her, and where Reginald got just the right words at just the right time, would, had he thought about it, have been just as much a mystery to him (and very possibly to Mrs Postgate too) – but so they both did, and it fused into an erotic thrust which made Margery pink with pleasure, and Reginald a good deal less bored than when he had first arrived at the surgery.

  A little flirtation works wonders.

  ‘I shall miss you too,’ she said, emboldened by the knowledge that there was no going back. ‘And I shall never think of honey or bees again without thinking of you.’

  She looked into his upside-down eyes and he read the seductiveness of victim in hers.

  ‘Oddly enough,’ he said, looking into all her naked longing for him, ‘oddly enough in olden days they used honey as a healer. The village tooth extractor would come along, pull the offending one, and then stuff honey in the hole to help it heal.’

  He tapped her teeth again playfully. ‘Not knowing, of course, that while it healed the hole left by one, it was already beginning to eat away and damage all the others. Either that, or he was a very shrewd practitioner ... ’ He laughed, much taken with the idea. She loved to hear him laugh, watch those shoulders heave up and down, hear the bass notes; it was very masculine.

  She sat up. ‘Very amusing,’ she said enthusiastically, seeing her cue. ‘And did you know that bees read shapes and can pass on the information?’

  Reginald had grown a little bored with this bee stuff of late, but today he was prepared to embrace it; anything to keep the game going.

  ‘Tell me all you know,’ he said, deepening his voice and speaking directly into her ear so that she squirmed with pleasure. He watched the pulse in her neck with fascination. He had never dared go quite this far before – it was thrilling – made you feel powerful – took you to the edge.

  He forgot it was Margery at this point and went into a fantasy world where the woman in the chair beneath his hands was someone quite, quite different – all Margery saw was the light of something excited in his face. She thrust on.

  ‘Yes, yes. An experimenter put sour food on a square shape and sweet food on a round shape, and the worker bees learned which was which and went back to the hive and told the others, so that they only came and took from the round shape. And then, when the experimenters swapped it around so that the sour was on the circle, the sweet was on the square, the bees continued to feed from the round.’

  ‘How obedient,’ said Reginald Postgate. He liked the idea of obedience.

  ‘Very,’ said Margery. And in that atom of a second she decided to go over the top. ‘Narbonne or Sicily or Minorca are said to produce the best honey, wild honey that is, but I think the best honey to come from around here is clover.’

  Not surprisingly, Reginald’s eyes popped with surprise. ‘In Knightsbridge?’ he said.

  ‘Not exactly – but not far, not far.’ She put her hand beseechingly on his arm. ‘Not far at all. Just a little way down the M4.’ She dared to squeeze his forearm. ‘I know a field where clover grows. We could go there, you and I...’

  Reginald was uncertain if this was the line of a song or not, and very nearly said, ‘You hum the tune and I’ll pick it up.’ But instead, he brought his hot breath close to her neck and said, ‘Tell me why’ – closer to her neck – ‘clover’ – within lip-brushing distance – ‘is the best.’

  Margery very nearly passed out. This was a great deal easier than she had thought.

  ‘Clover makes the best honey,’ she began, and then she stopped and smiled. ‘Ah no,’ she said, ‘you should judge for yourself.’ Clever, she congratulated herself. ‘Will you come?’

  ‘Is it far?’ he said, leaning wickedly against the wall and crossing his manly arms.

  ‘Not far as the bee flies,’ said Margery happily. ‘And I would feed you hydromel in a horn and honey in a cake – if you would come and be my guest.’

  The hydromel had been a bit tricky, but she had finally found a reasonable recipe for it in an 1883 encyclopaedia which also quoted it as Odin’s favourite beverage. That it should be the number one favourite of the God of the Dead was not very edifying – apparently it was thirsty work keeping a charnel house – but she put this to one side in pursuit of the greater good: Reginald.

  You needed water, egg whites, honey, cinnamon, ginger, mace, cloves, rosemary and yeast – all of which made quite an interesting fragrance in Margery’s house. But it seemed to be bubbling all right in the airing cupboard. The horn, she would have to tell him when appropriate, was merely a romantic figure of speech. She beamed at him anew.

  He gave her the benefit of his profile.

  ‘It sounds wonderful,’ he said, and then shrugged his usual sad smile, slowly turning his face towards her, ‘but I have no time – busy, busy every day –’

  ‘After surgery on Friday,’ said Margery promptly.

  ‘My wife ...’ he shrugged.

  Margery winced.

  He looked long and deep into her eyes, from the right way round, and almost laughed out loud. Margery hyperventilated. Reginald Postgate knew what it was like to be Errol Flynn.

  ‘I shall take everything there by taxi. You would not need to bring a thing.’

  ‘Sounds like – heaven,’ he said, and gave another of his self-deprecating shrugs, which said, ‘If only ...’

  ‘It is very near the honey farm where we can Tell The Bees together. And they will tell us if anybody comes.’ She fished around in her pocket and took out a piece of paper. ‘I have drawn an exact map. You wouldn’t go wrong. Will you come?’

  He looked at her and smiled. ‘I should love to,’ he said.

  ‘Oh good!’ said Margery, and sat back relieved.

  And then the buzzer of his intercom went.

  He answered it.

  Karen discussed a broken bridge with him, rather an urgent one.

  ‘I’d better come out and have a look,’ he said, dumping Errol Flynn and donning Reginald Postgate again. He turned to the smiling Margery.

  ‘Rinse and spit and I’ll see you in reception,’ he said.

  After she had rinsed and spat she put on her coat, humming happily to herself, ‘You are my honey, honeysuckle ...’ and she knew the little beautician would be proud of her.

  Out in reception Reginald was already scooping his arm around the frail shoulders of a woman of pensionable age.

  He gave Margery a bright smile, the smile of one whose mind is elsewhere.

  ‘See you on Friday at four,’ she said softly.

  He assumed it was an appointment. Then recollected it was the evening of the annual Practice barbecue, held at his home, for the best of his clients. Either way he nodded – his mind on the tricky bridgework.

  Margery was perfectly happy.

  ‘Will you come?’ she repeated under her breath as she signed her last cheque at the reception desk. ‘I’d love to,’ she replied, remembering his every inflexion. She handed the payment to Karen and went on her way.

  This time, waiting for the bus, she found she was humming ‘The Bee’s Wedding’ – which, quite suddenly, seemed to be her most favourite piece of Mendelssohn in the whole world.

  ‘I’d love to.’

  He agreed.

  Ah Margery, sorrow, sorrow.

  For what he had forgotten to add, of course, was that little, all-powerful, all-destructi
ve word – ‘but’.

  Followed by.

  ‘I can’t.’

  14

  At least, thought Caroline, they were on their own, even if Bernie did have that hunched look about his shoulders that boded no good. She was sitting on the window-ledge, staring out, waiting; he was standing by the kitchen door holding several plastic bags and looking decidedly miserable.

  In the old days when Bernie had hunched shoulders like that she used to help him out. ‘Come on,’ she’d say, ‘tell me about it.’ She didn’t this time.

  His shoulders had gone up as soon as he saw her, and as soon as he saw that she was holding a cookery book. And her entire set of vertebrae had seized when she saw what he was holding: the plastic bags full of dinner-party food; the perky tail feathers of two brace of pheasants poking up; pink little onions pressing tight against the plastic. They had not even discussed the menu yet. Rita’s fait accompli.

  And she knew that he knew that she knew. That was what the shoulders were all about. People first, food second was her dinner party motto. He knew that and would say that this dinner was too important to be ruined. She heard him put the bags down in the kitchen. She waited. He returned and came towards her, trying to look at ease.

  ‘You’re early tonight,’ he said.

  She swung off the window-ledge and kissed his mouth. Tense.

  ‘I thought we’d better discuss the food for Friday,’ she said, deciding to be cruel. ‘See – I’ve brought my Larousse. What do you think they’d like? There’s a wonderful starter in here made with lemons and yoghurt and tahini. What is tahini I wonder? And for the mains – we could give them a whole baked salmon – easy –’

  He moved away.

  There was a trilling of the doorbell, followed by the sound of a key in the lock and a little ‘yoo-hoo’, and Rita was in – fresh from the gym, golden hair shining, smiling face all rosy, every symmetrical detail of her perfect little body outlined in neat black lycra and finishing in dainty pristine trainers.

  Caroline, instantly depressed, studied her. And suddenly perked up. This woman hadn’t been anywhere near the fucking gym – she had just dressed the part. She was clean and sweet-smelling as if from a bath, and her make-up was exact, subtle, fresh. Caroline went to a gym. Caroline knew how women looked after a gym. This woman looked fresh as a morning daisy – a morning daisy one would willingly tread on with one’s not-so-fresh boot.