The Beauty Room

by Regi Claire

  ‘Poor Uncle,’ Celia whispers now, seizing the broad black patent-leather belt that’s hanging over the side of the bed, ‘how times have changed.’ She must go and visit him again. He had looked so miserable at the funeral. Clomping along on his crutches, with that unfriendly new home-help gripping his arm.

  ‘The woman’s the worst cook in the world, Celia dear. I couldn’t possibly ask you here for a meal. You should have seen today’s chicken fricassee: a mushy swamp of peas, mostly. And yesterday she fried my breakfast egg so long it crackled all the way down my throat.’

  These were his most recent ‘horror stories’. Celia suspects he invents whole catalogues during the boredom of his aimless days, to liven up their Sunday telephone calls. He always chuckles with glee when she responds by ugh-ing and mygoodness-ing and generally clucking in disgust. Poor old Uncle. The fish farm had been his life. Especially after her father disappeared. And then Walter emigrated …

  It suddenly occurs to her that Uncle Godfrey hasn’t once commented on Walter’s absence from the funeral. Hasn’t, in fact, mentioned Walter at all in their last few conversations. He must know about the row they had, that’s the only explanation. Walter is sure to have rung him, moaning and complaining. But not too much either because he wouldn’t want to jeopardise his share of Uncle’s property.

  Celia sinks down on the bed. She almost wishes for another onslaught of those snakes. The length of black patent leather has come to rest across her knees.

  Her mother had been wearing a belt rather like it that hot and cruel August Sunday. As soon as they got in the door of their flat she’d sighed, ‘Mm, this feels good,’ and unbuckled it. Then her fingers played a silent tune all the way down the front of her sleeveless pale-yellow dress, pressing and releasing buttons. The smooth fabric slid off as if by itself. And revealed a deep five- centimetre-wide red mark, wetly glistening, which seemed to split her body in two. Celia had stood rooted. Tentatively, she’d stretched out a forefinger and ran it along the edges, wincing at their knife-sharpness. ‘Mum,’ she said in a hushed voice, ‘have you got a skin belt now?’

  In the coolness of the corridor her mother’s face opened up, the worry lines on her forehead and about her mouth filled out like the petals of a desert flower unfurling to the first glitterings of rain. Celia made her hands all narrow to fit into the groove of weeping flesh, then laid them one on either flank and began stroking, gently, to and fro. To and fro. Ever so gently. Gazing at her, still smiling, in just her bra and panties and high-heeled sandals, her mother took a step closer … and, moments later, started to shiver and shake, her skin covered in goose pimples. The smile had vanished, the petals were sealed dry and papery again, tightly into place.

  Celia’s hands had been paralysed; she couldn’t lift, couldn’t tear them away from the glass-brittle belly underneath. As if they’d become part of her mother once more, bonded now not by blood and oxygen but by a filigree tracery of ice crystals.

  ‘Don’t be LIBIDINOUS!’

  There wasn’t time to inquire about the new word which had exploded in such a tight fury of syllables. Her hands were ripped away – it felt like patches of skin and half her heart line were left behind. Then something swished. Her arm stung. A door crashed shut, and a key grated in a lock.

  When her mother walked into the lounge a little later, she was wearing a sacklike dress and her house shoes with the surgical footbed. Her voice was steady, controlled even to the last quavers and quarter-tones: ‘Well, Celia, reading again? I wish I still had the patience for that, or the leisure. How about a bite of supper? Some rice salad à la créole, perhaps?’

  Celia knew what that meant, of course. Yesterday’s leftovers chopped and mixed and bashed up together, with a fresh-fried egg thrown in for good measure, the yolk ruptured and bleeding thick drops all over. It must have been the sound of the phrase à la créole that appealed to her mother and the glibly exotic chaos it suggested, certainly not any experience of the real thing. Her mother had never travelled far from Anders: the Black Forest to the north, Lake Constance to the east, the beaches of Italy to the south, and Lake Geneva to the west – after her apprenticeship she’d briefly worked in Lausanne, brushing up on her French and developing a more refined taste for beauty and extravagance, – before being summoned back to start work at her father’s antiques shop, which to all accounts she had hated; hated so much she’d snatched at the first offer of marriage, no matter that the man, an archivist for the council, was ten years older than her and spent most of his spare time down caves.

  In bed that night Celia overheard her mother on the phone: ‘Innocent, you’re saying?’ A pause. ‘My God, that’s rich coming from you!’ Another pause. ‘Don’t laugh. It isn’t funny, Margaret. Not funny at all.’ Then, after another much longer pause, the voice had dropped to a murmur and Celia, exhausted by the heat, had fallen uneasily asleep.

  Celia’s palm hurts; she has been clutching the strip of black patent leather as if her life depended on it. Not much of a snake, is it? Dead and fangless. When she lets go, the belt slithers to the floor. But it doesn’t keep still. The end that’s not weighted down by the buckle has curled back on itself to where the wardrobe rail has left its pinch, and now it’s bobbing up and down. Up and down. Slowly. Obscenely almost.

  She crosses her legs. From the lounge come faint frantic scrabblings. More like the patter of mice inside a food cupboard than Lehmann and his assistant rushing to get the ceiling finished.

  Mice, yes …

  Celia had been told that during her mother’s last night, she’d rung for the nurse on duty and said, fully conscious: ‘Oh, I’m glad it’s you, Thommy. I dreamt there was a mouse in my bed. But there isn’t, is there?’ She’d even managed a smile apparently, while dabbing at the blood from her nose with a paper tissue.

  The nurse pretended to check under the covers and pillows, then he put the drinking straw between her lips so she could sip some tea, and said not to worry, he couldn’t find a thing – not a whisker. And anyway, didn’t she think mice were really very nice creatures, all soft and bright and lively?

  How peaceful to die after hearing words like these, uttered by a hunky male nurse – Celia feels she herself couldn’t ask for more when her own time comes.

  Thommy had been dressed in white, spotless white. Unlike the decorators. Celia idly wonders whether underneath their overalls Lehmann and his assistant wear belts at all. Indulging herself she imagines them in shirts, washed-out blue jeans and heavy silver-studded leather belts – the buckles loose, enticingly loose, pulled down a little by the weight of the metal, and almost level with her face. A bit more daring now, she gets the men to unstrap their belts, slip them from their hips and try on an even broader more substantial variety, the kind that has to be slung a lot lower, with the buckle right over the groin. She has just allowed herself to give Lehmann’s buckle an appreciative final tug, remarking, ‘Great build,’ when his voice shouts from the front door:

  ‘Okay, Frau Roth, we’re off! Have a nice weekend!’

  Then the door closes, and she’s alone.

  No, not alone, she corrects herself, not exactly. She’s free. And in her superior-secretary voice she declaims:

  ‘Celia, hey, you’re free! I am free. Free. Free. Free. Like in “trouble-free”, “duty-free”, “childfree”.’

  Autosuggestion even works for dogs. Tell a mongrel he’s beautiful often enough, and he’ll start strutting around on bandy legs, pig’s tail and foxy old head held high. So, she decides, she’ll go out tonight. Not only go out, but go to the Métropole.

  The Métropole. She knows she’ll have to return there some day, she can’t delay it forever, and now is as good as tomorrow, next week or next month. Another decision made, she says to herself with almost awe and a sense of deep heartaching relief. Life’s getting easier and easier.

  Then, swiftly, unceremoniously, she stuffs the tangle of belts on the bed into one of the binbags she has brought for her mother’s clothes
.

  The Métropole, on the fringes of the pedestrian precinct between the castle and St Nikolaus’s Church, is the café where she and Lily used to hang out after school, watching and gossiping about the passers-by, boys especially, over an ice cream. It’s also where Celia first met bearded Franz, her scrawny brawny mountaineer, smitten with him even before she’d seen more than half his face and ponytail. He’d never been quite so smitten with her, she doesn’t think. On bad days it had felt like he preferred the lichen on rocks and boulders to her freshly bathed and perfumed skin. After his accident she’d avoided the Métropole. But that didn’t stop the nightmares. Not for years.

  As she stoops to pick up the patent-leather belt at her feet, Celia’s eyes are drawn towards the open wardrobe. The clothes on their hangers are pushed up tight against each other, rubbing shoulders and sleeves in atrophied stillness. For a moment she scans the folds of lilac and light beige, of faded eggshell blue, parched yellow and watery green, of twill and tweed, peau de soie, crêpe de Chine, unbleached linen, Italian cotton. Then she shakes her head. No, she won’t be a caring citizen just yet – no Salvation Army for that lot. No salvation at all. They’ll have to go the way of the shoes, sorry m’loves.

  She pictures them flying off into space, doing a lap of honour at the roundabout by the Co-op maybe, piece after tailored piece: the eggshell-blue skirt with the beige blouse hovering above it untidily, hastening to keep pace, the lilac trouser suit next, girdle aflutter, then the stubble-yellow dress with its buttons down the front stained a darker smellier shade, and all the dull-drab rest of them flitting behind like so many ghosts or angels in disguise, hard on the heels of those bunioned old suede shoes.

  Celia laughs softly to herself – she’s just seen a pair of oyster-grey trousers overtake a pleated skirt – and strokes her satin-sheathed thighs till she feels the heat on her skin. How she’ll enjoy the screech of the hinges when she raises the container lid, the dead-earth thud-thud-thud as each bag drops into oblivion, and the metal clanking shut!

  6

  AS SHE RUNS the few steps back upstairs, empty-handed now and light-headed, Celia pretends to herself she is gate-crashing her own home. Breathless with excitement she bursts into the lounge. And stops short.

  The ceiling is a dusky red-purple that seems to float between the darker centre rosette and cornice. Perhaps it’s the failing light, but she could have sworn that the tulip shapes, set in relief, had squirmed and quivered just now, looking for an instant like live figures with curiously tortuous limbs. And although the walls appear grey and lifeless, merely lined with paper so far, Celia is suddenly aware of an invisible presence in the room.

  ‘I love you,’ she mutters, blowing a kiss. She has no idea what she means, or who, and doesn’t care. Then she attempts a cartwheel along the free side, past the window, and half-flops over, giggling at her awkwardness.

  Two hours later the spare bedroom has been stripped to an echoing bareness. It’ll be its turn for redecoration soon. The damask coverlet and the chartreuse curtains have been shoved into the wardrobe – with the radio clock, a tasselled floral lampshade, some pictures of lake views and various glass ornaments bundled up in their folds, and the lace-trimmed waste-paper basket balancing daintily on top. The waxplant was quite a job to ease off its hooks along the wall and is now draped over the bookshelf in Celia’s own bedroom.

  She had always marvelled at the artificial elegance of this plant. Its leaves are dark-green pointed ovals, fleshy and polished to a sheen; its flowers stiff clusters of pink-tinged stars which seem to be fashioned from wax, velvet and a sweet scent that fills the air on summer nights. One hot evening when Celia was small, she’d caught sight of her mother standing with her face almost touching a fist-sized cluster of the flowers. Knowing better than to interrupt and risk being told off, she’d flattened herself against the outside of the half-open bedroom door.

  All at once her mother had whispered, ‘Pearls of nectar’, and the red tip of her tongue darted up against one of the flowers, then another, and another, until the whole cluster, the whole stem with all its leaves, the whole plant even, rasped in fits and starts against the wallpaper.

  Celia had quietly tiptoed back to her own room, guilty and shaken to the core, as if she’d just witnessed something unspeakably and intensely wrong.

  A few minutes afterwards Walter came home from Uncle’s, and the familiar slosh-slosh-slosh of his pailful of trout approaching up the corridor set her teeth on edge.

  ‘Anybody in?’ he shouted. ‘Gabrielle?’

  He’d begun to call their mother by her first name and she didn’t seem to mind – if anything, she was flattered by it. Which puzzled Celia because when she herself had imitated him, vaguely hoping to charm her mother also, she’d been firmly told off.

  ‘In here, Walter!’ her mother shouted back. ‘Want a taste of something special?’ Her voice sounded sugary from all the nectar she’d had.

  As Walter closed the bedroom door behind him, Celia could hear low laughter and the words ‘Queen of the Night’.

  Now, gazing at the rich foliage cascading over her bookshelf, she vows that when the scarred woody spurs bear the next generation of flowers, their beauty and fragrance will be pleasure enough for her. She’ll never want to suck them dry.

  On her way to the kitchen Celia has a last glance into the dismantled room. The old walnut bedside table is the only thing she hasn’t had the heart to tackle yet. Its single drawer is locked, she tried it earlier. Locked for a reason, no doubt. And there’s a time for everything. In the light from the corridor the gold-plated drawer handle resembles a mouth: it curves and gleams and leers.

  After some stewed apple and pancakes, quick and healthy, though not the most sensible meal before a night out in the coldest month of the year, Celia is almost ready. She’s still wearing the emerald leggings and has given her blouse a steaming-over (heeding the assistant’s advice). Her face is made up to go with the clothes: jungle-green eyeliner, charcoal mascara, a dash of Or Baroque on lids and brow bone, coral-red lipstick. Now all she needs to feel complete is her opal pendant. The last time she wore it was at the funeral. Two weeks ago yesterday.

  The opal had been a gift from Eric on the occasion of her tenth anniversary in the job, some three years previously.

  ‘Not the legendary pot of gold but the rainbow itself, gathered into a stone,’ he’d said. ‘That’s what Australian Aborigines believe, anyway.’ Then he’d turned away abruptly and started to pat Lapis, who was teetering on his haunches, front paws out in pathetic supplication. Celia had to pull her boss round physically for a thank-you kiss on his cheek. The memory makes her smile even now.

  Entering her bedroom, she sees her reflection in the antique gilt-edged mirror she inherited from her grandfather. The smile has faded from her face but her lips have remained parted, her eyes crinkled and screwed up as if in anticipation of future delights. How she longs for a younger man and his presents – perfumes, flowers, chocolates! How she longs to feel beautiful, and desired!

  Celia reaches for the white-lacquered jewellery box on top of her chest of drawers, beside the African violet that seems to bloom all the year round in constant vivid-pink celebration of itself, and the jade statue of Buddha (a reject of Eric’s due to a fracture on its left buttock – not something that worries her unduly as the figure sits meditating with its back to the wall).

  The pendant she wants lies sprawling like an ancient iridescent beetle at the bottom of the box, waiting to be cradled between her breasts – it’s rather unusual, designed specifically for the small black opal cabochon whose colours burn like pins of fire: red and green and yellow and blue. She acts with the swiftness of habit. And that should have been that: a simple case of removing the pendant from its box, clicking shut the hinged lid, threading one of the leather bands through the loop, clipping it on, et voilà – as her mother would have said. But it isn’t enough. Not any more.

  Ever since her mother died, Celia has left
her gemstone collection alone. She isn’t sure why. Unless, perhaps, it’s a way of making herself feel sadder at her ‘sad loss’. Because not seeing or touching her stones for so many days and nights, not rubbing the chunk of Russian amber until it releases its secret smell of the past, of forests long been and gone, not letting the beads of rock crystal trickle through her fingers like a rosary that’s come unstrung, is nothing short of punishment, hurtful to the quick.

  Still, Celia has been adamant with herself. She’s resisted the temptation to switch on the art-deco lamp with its wide disc of green-flecked white nephrite, another costly heirloom from her grandfather, which stands to attention next to the chest of drawers. She hasn’t once taken the key from its hiding place under the African violet. Hasn’t once unlocked the lowermost drawer to disclose the inlay tray bought at a discount from Eric’s supplier, including the colour-of-her-choice lining, a dusty rose velour she adores, even if it doesn’t do full justice to her gems.

  But now she can’t restrain herself any longer: a flurry of movements and she is kneeling in the nephrite lamplight like a true worshipper. Her penance of self-denial is over at last.

  They’re all there, each stone in its own cushioned compartment, gleaming, sparkling, glitzing with the concentrated fury of twenty days spent in utter darkness. She catches her breath – it’s like being assaulted. The eyes of the bloodstone stare at her, inflamed and angry. The moss agate has flushed dark green from held-in passion, demanding to be lifted into the light instantly, to show off its fibrous innards.

  Celia has already picked up the ruby, without thinking and a little too rashly. Because set in the centre of her palm the redness will begin to drip on to her skin again – how could she forget? – and the stain will spread. For a moment she weighs the stone in her hand; real Burmese ‘pigeon’s blood’. She knows its carats to a fraction, electronically gauged and verified, and her fingers would recognise the slippery-sharp feel of its flawless step-cut anywhere. It’s her most valuable piece, after all. And her most hateful.