The Beauty Room

by Regi Claire

  ‘Or you late,’ he says with a smile that would have appeared easy from several metres away. But he is standing in front of her now, close enough to touch her if he wanted to. He’d been spying on her for a good couple of minutes, fascinated by her total absorption, debating with himself what to do. Whether to clear his throat or cough, rap on the door or sneak back down the corridor, then make one hell of a noisy entrance. They need to talk. At least, he does.

  Celia has decided to ignore him and glances down at her watch. Shit, nearly twenty to eight!

  ‘I won’t delay you, Frau Roth – I mean, Celia,’ Alex falters, his eyes straying to the sheet of paper she’s dropped and which is lying tented half on the carpet, half on the drawer. ‘I just wanted to apologise for the other night. I haven’t told anyone, don’t worry, and Dominic’s away at the workshop, finishing the shutters.’ The paper tent is slipping, collapsing under the weight of his stare. ‘Celia, I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have taken advantage of you. I promise it won’t happen again. I must have been mad …’

  Celia’s mouth twitches, but she can’t get a word out. Her tongue feels bloated and heavy, dead.

  He fiddles with his curls, then finally looks at her, noticing a crumb stuck to her cheek like an untidy birthmark. ‘If you prefer to employ another firm, I can understand. In that case, your advance payment will be refunded in full. Compliments of –’

  She’s slapped him across the face without warning. His hand’s been knocked aside and there are a few blond hairs caught between his fingers. He can taste a trickle of blood and the soft sponginess of flesh.

  ‘Paying me off, are you?’ Celia is shaking with anger and hurt. ‘Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, that kind of thing?’ The breakfast crumb’s gone, and she has begun to tear off the embroidered black blouse she’s wearing. The bra is pretty much see-through but she slings it after the blouse just the same.

  ‘Well?’ she demands, swanking up to him, her breasts out. Feeling powerful now. Fuck him and his pin-prick pupils, his ashy passionflower. Tohell with shame. For the moment everything’s been swept away by this flash flood of power.

  Alex wipes his lips with deliberate slowness. Mad, he keeps thinking, mad, mad, mad, and moves towards the door. He doesn’t want to blow a fuse, never struck a woman before, and he won’t start now.

  The phone is ringing. ‘I’ll get it,’ he shouts, on his way already. ‘Probably your boss. What shall I say?’

  She doesn’t answer.

  He picks up the receiver. ‘Hello, Lehmann speaking. I’m –’

  ‘Could I have a word with Frau Roth, please?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’ll –’

  ‘Wait a minute, no need to call her. Tell you what. Ask her whether she liked my little present. Thanks.’ A click, followed by the dialling tone.

  Bloody odd, but none of his business; Alex replaces the handset quietly, to buy a little more time. His initial rage has evaporated and instead he’s feeling stunned. Certainly not intimidated, not in the slightest. No woman ever intimidates him. In the oval mirror he scrutinises his lips, satisfying himself that the cuts can hardly be seen and that the faintly numb puffiness isn’t unattractive, on the contrary … He grins at himself and pictures Celia’s full breasts.

  Afterwards he examines the new crimson wallpaper, running the flats of his hands over it with professional pride. Dominic’s done a damn fine job; the join’s practically invisible. The overall effect, though, is rather grim, like being inside a body. It reminds him of how his mother used to threaten him with the Jonah story whenever he’d done something wrong, and how the whale’s terrible stomach-red would pursue him into his dreams.

  When Alex returns to the spare room, Celia is lying on the bed, her face buried in her arms.

  ‘On the phone just now they –’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbles, remaining quite motionless. ‘I didn’t mean to hit you. Or insult you. But that bloody flower was the last thing I needed … Sorry, Alex.’

  As if on cue the room is suddenly swamped with winter sunlight from the two corner windows, bringing a gleam to her bare skin, pearly and fragile.

  ‘What flower?’ Alex fingers his swollen lips and admires the seahorse curve of her spine from a safe distance.

  In reply she states simply: ‘This was my mother’s bed,’ and her arms lunge out to hug the mattress. Like a swimmer in danger of drowning, he thinks. Hasn’t she heard him? No, not a swimmer, he corrects himself: a mermaid. Naked to the waist, dark damp tresses, legs twined together into a fish’s tail by the longish skirt.

  She’s raised her body a little to pull something from underneath. ‘And this,’ she says, ‘is my father’s old map.’ She waves it in the air like a sail and the water image is complete. Alex smiles in spite of himself; that fall the other night must have cracked her head all right. Then he tells her about the phone call.

  ‘Damn, I ought to have known.’ Celia sits up abruptly and stares at the empty wall where the waxplant has left smears of sticky nectar and dust. ‘How stupidstupidstupid of me!’

  Alex is about to shrug dubiously when he sees her glance down at her breasts.

  ‘Of course I won’t change decorators,’ she says as if to herself. ‘Why should I do that?’ A small pause, then her eyes are on him, seaweed-green: ‘Unless you want me to? Actually, I loved being with you, loved every second of it. No question of you taking advantage.’ She blushes, laughs. ‘I guess I’d better get dressed.’

  There’s an intimacy between them, tangibly awkward.

  Eventually Alex reaches for the piece of paper she’s put back on the bed. ‘Map?’ he asks, ‘Map of what?’ and makes a show of studying it to screen her from his view.

  The radio noises from the kitchen seem to crackle with static and fill the room.

  Her blouse safely buttoned up, Celia inches over to him and says, ‘He was crazy about caves, my father. Went down into the Hölloch one day and never came back …’ Tears are in her voice all at once and she sniffles, uses her sleeve, then both sleeves, hiding her face in her hair. ‘I’m sorry, I’m just being silly. No use crying now, after all these years. I hardly knew him anyway …’ And to herself she adds, hardly knew my mother either.

  Alex’s hand is on her arm, warm and strong and stroking her gently. ‘Easy now. Easy,’ she hears him whisper. So he hasn’t given up on her altogether, thankgodforthat. He’s produced a packet of tissues from his overalls and started dabbing at her wet cheeks, murmuring, ‘I can understand. I lost my mother seven years ago and it’s still painful.’ He doesn’t elaborate and for a moment they’re silent, and very close.

  Finally Celia asks, ‘Do you mind?’ With her fingertips she traces his sore-looking lips, then quickly kisses him. ‘I do like you,’ she says, ‘a lot.’

  By the time she arrives at the office, having taken the Golf to save at least a few minutes, it’s after ten and they’re all there, enjoying the Friday patisseries. She had rung earlier to explain how she’d been held up because of a misunderstanding with the decorators painting her flat.

  Salesman Martin’s eternal-boy crew cut seems to have got even shorter since she last saw him, on the day before her mother died. ‘My heartfelt condolences, Celia dear,’ he says between dainty bites from a tartlet aux vermicelles. She thanks him, trying in vain to ignore the wriggles of chestnut purée on the pastry, greyish-brown, like earth intermixed with snow …

  When Angelina offers her the plate of cakes, she waves it away with a smile that feels all lopsided and trembling. Don’t cry, silly Cel, someone says inside her head, in her mother’s inflection. Angelina is still looking at her and Celia hastily pretend-pats her stomach and nods towards Lapis, whose salivating mouth has already slid into position on the arm of his leather seat.

  Yes, her mother had wanted a burial; now Celia almost wishes she’d been cremated. Ash is so much less real, so much less corporeal. One breath of wind and it ceases to exist.

  ‘Got the colours for your rooms sorted then
, have you, Celia?’ Eric asks, startling her back into the world of life, and work.

  The rest of the day is encrusted with gemstones – an order of diamonds (Piqué II and III) and another of turquoise cabochons for a manufacturer of exclusive fashion jewellery, some weighing and cross-checking to get the annual stocktaking under way, and a request from Herr Q for a couple more tourmalines, 1 ct. each, mixed cut, dark green, please (the two blue-and-green specimens had been promptly returned by courier, but not the watermelon type, much to Celia’s surprise, and satisfaction).

  Encrusted with gemstones set in thick layers of gossip or, in Celia’s case, fuzzy dreams of Alex. Alex with a dribble of blood on his mouth; Alex holding her father’s map to hide behind; Alex smiling back at her, saying, ‘I like you too,’ and the tip of his tongue touching hers, very lightly; Alex sucking at her lips, his Vandyke rubbing up against her chin; Alex lying on her mother’s old bed, fully clothed except for the overalls on the floor and the unzipped jeans she’s leaning over (no time for belt buckles now), teasing his hard-on first with her hair, then with a lick, then another and another, swift and darting and making him groan, grab her head …

  Things had veered wildly out of control after this. It was only once she’d cleaned her teeth, washed her face and was bent over the bath, sluicing off the shampoo, that she began to regain a sense of herself. The first clear image was an upside-down one of Alex – standing barefoot in the doorway in just his Levi’s, his chest and round thin-nosed face tinged crimson by the sunlight slanting in through the narrow arched window at the end of the corridor.

  While he stood there waiting for her to finish rinsing her hair, he kept brandishing something she couldn’t quite see, and shouted, ‘Found this in the lounge. How about one before you’re off, Celia?’

  That’s when she recognised the silvery chocolate box, and gasped. After that business with the ash, she’d stuffed the silk flower back in, squashed down the lid and thrown the lot on to the coffee table – sick at heart. But now that she knew Alex had nothing to do with it, she couldn’t very well go on playing her game. Or could she? Carefully draping one of the freshly laundered Beauty Room towels round her head, she coaxed, ‘Mm, yes, open it.’

  And he did. Started to exclaim, ‘What the hell –?’ as a few wispy-grey flakes drifted to the floor, then concluded in a much calmer tone: ‘So this is it, the “little present” your caller was talking about. Your “flower”. Want to tell me?’

  Alex is looking at her even now, though his eyes seem a lot darker suddenly and not needle-sharp either.

  ‘Celia?’ a voice says, but it isn’t his.

  And again, a bit louder, ‘Celia, are you okay?’

  Martin’s voice. His head craned forward, he grins at her from the other side of her desk. She notices the Gemmologists’ Compendium in his left hand and a flicker of reflections coming from his right. He must have tried flashing one of Angelina’s little mirrors, counting on her vanity to spring to attention.

  She blinks. ‘Fine, yes.’

  ‘God, you were miles away!’ Chortling, he slips the blue mirror back under the clasp inside the book. Then he says, ‘Eric’s asked me to do a spot of research for him, but this editon here is years out of date. Maybe you could show me some websites?’ With a wink he adds, ‘Angelina is busy – strictly professional, of course.’ He points to the reception area where the girl’s brown hair is cascading over two pairs of shoulders, hers and Handsome Henry’s, as they pore over what appears to be a very tiny magazine indeed.

  Celia smiles at him: ‘No problem:’ She logs on, banishing Alex and the passionflower from her thoughts – for the moment, at any rate.

  20

  UNCLE GODFREY’S HOME-HELP stares, mouse-faced: ‘Goodness, Frau Roth, what are you doing here? Some warning and I’d have bought more food …’

  Her tone is too shrill and she seems nervous without reason, guilty almost. But perhaps Celia only imagines it. A classic example of projection, as her friend Jasmin would have said, going into therapy mode, and she’d probably be right because, yes, Celia hasn’t been to see the old man in months.

  Managing to fake a smile, she says, ‘Well, hello, Frau Keller. Is Uncle in?’ A superfluous question; of course her uncle’s in. He can’t go anywhere much on his own any more. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t be staying for supper.’

  Briskly, she tries brushing past and inside, but Mouse Face proves astonishingly strong. Her thin arms shoot out, wiry as a climber’s rope, and bar the way. ‘Now, just a moment, please.’ The ‘please’ flips into a near-squeak. Then, with a thud, the door is pulled to.

  Bloody insolence, she is the man’s niece after all, not some prowling stranger; Celia can feel herself getting hot despite the dusky winter cold that’s begun to creep up on her, frosting the house walls and shrubs and her rapidly cooling Golf in the drive.

  Shreds of mist are rising from the disused fish ponds and the river at the bottom of the garden; like tattered white ghosts they’re encroaching on the former hatchery at the edge of the lawn. The snow lies deeper out here in the country, though not quite deep enough to cover the longest of the grass blades, which are sheathed in ice like diminutive frozen swords.

  What’s keeping the woman, forgodsake?

  A light breeze is scraping over the glitter-hard ground. The forsythia bunched around the drain pipe by the entrance swishes very faintly, and every so often its stiff bare twigs scratch against Celia’s head. Their touch reminds her of the Carnival night when she and Lily had squatted in the dark outside the casino; there’s the same sense of forbiddenness, and of foreboding.

  The door opens as abruptly as it had been shut. ‘You can come in now. He’s in the living room.’ The home-help’s voice has dropped an octave, in a futile attempt to regain some dignity. But her eyes are as keen and beady as before, and her smile, which succeeds only in sharpening the points of her chin and nose, exposes the small jagged overbite. Then Celia notices that Mouse Face has put on lipstick. LIPSTICK! A livid shade of mauve.

  She hurries into the house with a thank-you flung over hep shoulder to avoid any further discoveries.

  The lounge door is open and she slips inside with a cheerful, ‘Hello, Uncle Godfrey.’

  He is seated in the familiar wing chair she remembers from way back. Originally upholstered in red, it went through a green, then a yellow period. By now it’s well into the blue one, and he is running out of primary colours.

  ‘What an unexpected pleasure, Celia dear. How are you?’ Is she imagining things yet again, projecting her own emotions, or does he really sound a little furtive? Her impression isn’t helped by his quick glance round the room before he holds out an arm; the other is cradling Mitzi, the tabby cat, who lies curled into a silent ball on his lap.

  For a moment it’s as if she is gazing into her mother’s eyes: deep-set moss-green eyes with unusually large pupils. His face is still handsome, big-boned and generous, with a certain aristocratic elegance that’s enhanced by the pouchy crinkly skin and the flesh sagging on his cheeks. But his body sprawls heavy now and aimless.

  As they kiss, Celia wonders why he looked around like that, like he wanted to check on the three doors, see whether they were all closed. Two of them are. She had swung hers shut on entering; and the double doors of amber-stained glass connecting with the dining room appear firmly wedged and locked, judging by the key. Only door number three, concealed under the wallpaper opposite, between the antique pitch-pine sideboard and the window, is ajar. She wouldn’t have thought it in much demand these days, for it merely leads to the small bedroom where Walter used to sleep as a boy when spending the weekend. Has the home-help made it her boudoir, maybe? The idea of Frau Keller scurrying into there to daub her lips with that mauve, then rushing out again to smile her mouse smile, has something ominous about it, and Celia quickly draws up a chair. Her uncle’s hand is gliding over Mitzi, stroking and stroking.

  ‘There’s something wrong with her,’ he says. ‘Old
age, no doubt. Like me.’ He ignores Celia’s clucking noises, then finally rallies himself: ‘Anyway, what brings you here, my dear? I’ve been thinking of you.’

  With a jolt Celia realises she forgot to ring him back after his odd rushed call on Sunday. What with those damn black tulips and work, and Alex – bad-boy Alex and his fantasies, and hers …

  Not waiting for an answer, her uncle carries on talking, getting into his stride, ‘Frau Keller was pretty upset just now. No decent food in the house, she complained. What’s new, eh, Celia?’ He frowns mockingly. ‘Though I’m sure she’d be happy enough to feed you some of her Chicken Chew. Or a fossil-boiled egg, haha –’

  A door has crashed shut somewhere at the back of the house and he flinches, his eyes black, as if swallowed by pupil. The cat lets out a pitiful miaou.

  ‘What’s the matter, Uncle?’ Celia has half-risen out of her chair and pats his arm. Mitzi stares at her for an instant, her triangular face gaunt and reproachful, before rearranging her body in a series of furry ripplings.

  ‘Turning a bit jittery, I’m afraid,’ he says, fidgeting. ‘Can’t abide loud noises any more, bangs and shots, you know.’ He giggles. The moss-green colour has trembled back into place and his gaze shifts from her over to the framed photographs on the sideboard.

  There are at least a dozen of them. Several sepia-tinted ones of her uncle and mother as children, posing in front of their parents – Celia’s grandmother kindly and wrinkled even then, her grandfather younger, almost like a boy with that big moonface of his. Two of the pictures show herself, both in colour. One is a studio shot of her and Walter shortly before his move to the Schlosshotel – the photographer had asked her to stand on one of his Greek-style plinths so she’d be the same height as her brother, with the result that more than ever she resembles a piece of badly done sculpture, all angles and rough chipped corners; Walter, dashing in his new suit, is smirking past the camera towards where she remembers their mother hovering on the sidelines, smoking a Muratti Ambassador, a habit she’d started and kept up for a time after he’d announced he was leaving home. The other picture, with herself flanked by her mother and uncle at table, had been taken a few years later, during one of their summer Sunday lunches on the patio here. Her face is out of focus; her eyes, nostrils and mouth are dark wavy blurs because she’d caught sight of two dragonflies skittering across the lawn just as the old housekeeper clicked the camera; like opalescent darts they’d been swooping and leaping, nearly colliding, away towards the river. Her mother, perfectly made-up, is smiling with photogenic charm over at Uncle, who is grinning at a large trout he is holding up by the gills.