The Beauty Room

by Regi Claire

  She sighs for real now, then glances over at Celia and renews the cold compress. That stalker story yesterday did sound a little hysterical. At the very least it’s a wild exaggeration, Cel’s always had a dramatic streak, even as a kid. Is this, maybe, an attempt to distract herself so that her mother’s death won’t hurt too much, too soon? Some weeks back Nita had read an article about endorphins in a sports magazine and been rather impressed by the fact that certain people’s brains produce these substances in vast enough quantities to completely block pain sensation.

  Half an hour later Celia is sitting up in bed with a cup of tea balanced on her knees (a ‘restorative secret blend of herbs’ from Christine’s kitchen garden). No one had thought to remove her contact lenses last night, and she’d been relieved to find them safely lodged in her eyes on waking. Celia stares at the framed photos of snowboarders and skiers which adorn the walls of the guest room. But the breakneck stunts and spectacular crashes, the smiling groups of learners practising stem turns in caterpillar formation or reclining on their gear in the snow are lost on her entirely. She is pondering what Nita had told her about the accident. A gently expurgated account, she’s sure. Her headache has almost gone by now, but she still can’t remember much beyond a sudden feeling of numbness, a bit like when she’d fallen out of the cherry tree as a girl. Her right hand is scabby with gauze and sticking plaster. Thankgod she hadn’t harmed anyone else; the knife must have been catapulted out of her grasp just in time. Whatthehell had she thought she was doing?

  Drinking Christine’s tea, Celia feels a keen flush of embarrassment.

  Through the gap in the red-and-gold striped curtains she can make out a few branches of the tall rowan tree she’d admired yesterday afternoon. What she hadn’t noticed then is the icicle sparkling from one of its forks, right in front of the window. A drop of water has gathered at the tip and now hangs trembling, barely clinging on. As she watches, Celia feels a strange tingle of empathy. For a moment she seems to become it. Perfectly self-contained. Refracting rather than creating light. Held together only by surface tension. No real skin. One nip of frost and the drop freezes, gets reabsorbed by the whole. One gust of wind, one prick of a pin and it bursts, scatters into atoms which will never even affect the general level of humidity.

  But that’s not the point, is it? There’s no need to have some great universal impact, a voice inside her insists. It’s enough to try and do something. Create light rather than refract it, for example.

  Celia finishes her tea, then dives back under the duvet, squeezing her eyes shut so she won’t have to see that drop. Won’t have to see it fall.

  When she walks into the kitchen at last, barefoot and still in her nightdress, the Babies? – No Thanks! fluorescent-red number, Nita is perched on one of the slick bar stools at the breakfast counter, gobbling bread and soup while leafing through the fat sports section of the Sunday paper. ‘Good to see you’ve made the vertical again,’ she says, looking up with a smile.

  Celia slides on to the stool next to her, in front of the powder-blue linen place mat and napkin, the gleaming cutlery. ‘Nita,’ she mumbles, ‘I’m terribly sorry … I’ll never forget your kindness. And you’ve even cleaned the blood off my jacket, I saw it hanging up in the bathroom. Thanks so much.’

  Nita shrugs, briefly lays a hand on her wrist. ‘S’all right. That’s what friends are for, no? Here, have some soup – Knorr’s de luxe winter veg. Help yourself to bread,’ and she fills a white porcelain bowl from the tureen at her elbow, sprinkles some greenery on top that Celia could have done without, but she won’t say anything. She’ll do her best to be good: nice as pie, her mother would have called it. She tears a slice of bread in half and begins to chew.

  ‘Hey, Cel, you really serious about that?’

  ‘What?’ Celia asks, splashing the first spoonful of soup back into her bowl and pushing her hair out of her face.

  Nita is nodding towards her red nightdress. ‘You know, no kids and all that? Isn’t your biological clock ticking overtime by now? Mine certainly is.’ She laughs, slurps more soup, then picks at a smear of leek that’s got trapped between her front teeth.

  Celia doesn’t want to offend her, doesn’t want to pretend either. ‘Well …’ she prevaricates and hastily bends over her food.

  The piece of leek removed, Nita says, ‘The difficult bit is finding a man that’s big, blond and brainy, and disposable. Who wants to be lumbered with the same guy all her life? What for? To end up unwadding his smelly socks before every wash?’ She giggles, pauses dramatically. ‘I’d keep the kid, of course.’

  Celia raises an eyebrow at her, ‘So Silvan isn’t going to be a proud father then, is he?’ Her spoon clinks against the side of the delicate bowl, far too loud.

  ‘Afraid not, Cel, he’s out on two counts at least!’ Nita winks, quite unconcerned. ‘How about yourself? Wouldn’t you like to have a dinky little baby one of these days, very soon?’

  Celia takes a deep breath, ‘Actually, no.’ She hesitates, reminding herself to tread softly, Nita is a friend after all. ‘I mean, I don’t feel I need a child to be happy.’ She gulps down some soup to stop herself; she’d rather scald her lips, preferably even her tongue, but the liquid isn’t that hot any more and all she can do is listen, with horrified gratification, to what she’s never before voiced in so many words:

  ‘No, I don’t need a child to be fulfilled. Or to be in touch with life. Or to be a real woman. Or a good Catholic. Or a deserving member of society. Or to provide for old age – or whateverthe-fuckelse people are always telling me.’

  In the silence that follows she suddenly becomes aware of her knuckles; they’ve gone as white as the porcelain bowl she is gripping: ‘Christ, Nita, I am sorry. I shouldn’t take this out on you. It’s just that I’ve been asked the question a lot lately – mother’s funeral was a prime occasion – and I’m sick and tired of that Whydontyouhavechildren? Istheresomethingwrongwithyou? Sick and tired of those suspicious glances, those fingers raised in warning like I’m some kind of renegade or betrayer. Sick and tired of those oily looks of pity which are so hard to wash off afterwards.’ She laughs nervously.

  Nita doesn’t join in. She is cradling her bowl in both hands and sipping from it, her eyes hidden behind the rim.

  ‘It’s a matter of choice,’ Celia pleads. ‘And I choose not to.’

  Carefully Nita sets down her bowl, then dabs at her mouth with the napkin. No, she is thinking, Not simply a matter of choice, a matter of responsibility too. Is this what Cel is shying away from? She crumples up her napkin and says, ‘Don’t worry. I understand.’ But does she? Until now she’d automatically assumed Cel would want to have a family. And after Franz’s death it had seemed only natural when she didn’t rush into a new relationship, let alone parenthood. Well, so much for trying to gauge other people …

  ‘Anyway,’ Nita rakes a hand through her short coppery hair, ‘if you’ve had enough soup, how about some coffee?’

  The Hauskaffee, tasting more of brandy, gin and herbal liqueur than water and cream, has the soothing effect of a peace offering. They don’t talk much as they stir and drink, stir and drink, then decide to go for a walk to clear their heads.

  The path has been snow-ploughed and zigzags along in the glittering sunshine, past a piste and a drag skilift hauling up children like sacks of flour, before it dips down through the shadows of fir trees and pines to skim the banks of the River Albula. The water has frozen over in parts, with black swirling channels under the ice.

  ‘Do I have to?’ Celia can’t help asking. They have reached a narrow slatted bridge – there are no railings, not even a rope to hold on to.

  The white hillside beyond is etched with the hieroglyphics of bird claws and punctured along its wooded edges by the hoof prints of deer. A train honks, far up-valley.

  ‘It won’t collapse under you, Cel, you’re quite safe,’ Nita smiles from the other side. ‘The authorities here are scrupulous about the maintenance of their
Wanderwege.’

  As she taps one foot in front of the other, testing cautiously, Celia chokes back the feat rising in her throat. She resists the urge to close her eyes and focuses instead on an old pine tree a little way off, where the path curves upward again. Beneath its snow-heavy branches the legs of a bench stick up, stumpy and aimless, the seating planks removed until the spring thaw.

  Just as they pass the big pine, a muffled shot rings out from the sunless gorge behind them.

  Like thunderclaps several mountain crows lift from the depths of the tree, cawing, flapping and scattering snow.

  ‘Hey, watch out!’ Nita cries and jumps away.

  For a moment Celia stands with her head bowed, wet and blinded, back in the nightmare of stalker and stalked.

  ‘What … was that?’

  ‘The police out on a manhunt,’ Nita replies nonchalantly. Then, noticing the haunted expression on Celia’s face, she laughs. ‘Only joking, Cel. Probably a poacher.’

  In answer Celia grabs hold of a branch and yanks it hard, viciously almost. More snow comes tumbling down in a silty sibilant rush that strokes her with ice-cold fingers. ‘What about avalanches?’ she says, letting go of the branch as abruptly. ‘Won’t the shots start avalanches?’

  ‘Not with all those trees in between. Come on, Cel, race you to the signpost!’ Nita points up ahead and spurts off in a cloud of snow.

  A metre from the post Celia catches up with her and wrestles her to the ground. They lie laughing and gasping. Later they roll apart to make angel shapes with crooked wings, like they used to when they were small and still believed in the magic of images. They’re blissfully unaware of the group of Japanese tourists in moonboots and padded jackets who’ve emerged from the Stübli Restaurant halfway up the slope and, bemused by the quaintness of local customs, zoom in on them with their Nikons and Minoltas.

  24

  AND NOW IT’S Monday night, quarter to nine. Celia’s just got off the train from the Alps and hailed a taxi to take her up to Anders Cemetery.

  Nita had persuaded her to stay an extra day – ‘You’ll be all the better for it, trust me, Cel!’ – and the answering machine at the office hadn’t complained when she left her message late on Sunday, after a bottle of Pommard. But she didn’t call Alex. Let the man wait a little, let him fret, whet his appetite, her last shred of pride had insisted.

  The impromptu holiday had seemed full of promise, like a vast playground with enough snow around her for a thousand snowmen and millions of snowballs. In the end, though, she slept till lunchtime, fixed herself a cheese-and-tomato sandwich, then sat out on the balcony, wrapped in a sheepskin, reading the paper, listening to Nita’s transistor radio and dozing, the sun hot on her legs. So hot, she’d felt weak with desire and climaxed right there, without even touching herself. And again, this time with her unhurt hand inside her jeans – a fierce follow-up dedicated to Alex. Mid-afternoon, Nita returned from the snowboarding school and they went for a snack at the Station Restaurant.

  The graveyard spreads like a terraced garden down the flank of Cemetery Hill, made for the living, not the dead. Celia tells the taxi driver to wait and he parks next to the chapel of rest, clicking on the interior light and pulling a crime paperback from under his seat. ‘Fine by me,’ he grins. ‘The meter’s running.’

  A few steps from the taxi the night closes in on her, frosty and dark with the blackness of a nearly new moon. The chapel of rest is where her mother had been laid out, three and a half weeks ago now. So wraithlike she’d looked, thin and tight-skinned as a girl, as if their roles had been finally reversed. For an instant Celia almost loses her footing on the iced-over gravel path.

  ‘Don’t be scared, Cel,’ she whispers to herself, clutching the carrier bag with the pine-tree branch she’s brought back from Albula. ‘Don’t be scared.’ And to prove she isn’t, she makes herself walk down to the front wall of the cemetery. There’s still some snow up here, clinging to the earth like a blanket for the dead. Below her the Thur Valley stretches wide and level as a plain, crushed smooth by glaciers ice ages ago. She can only guess at the sleek line of the river halfway across and Seerücken Hill in the black distance beyond. Here and there clusters of brightness illuminate the land like solitary beacons of humanity.

  Celia turns away and hurries off towards her mother’s grave. The waist-high lamps cast a greasy pallor over the snow, the bushes and headstones. Candles flicker inside red glass containers, left to burn themselves out alone. So quiet it is, so very quiet. There’s no one around.

  But the peace doesn’t last. A roar has erupted further up the hill and is dying away again into a sleepy growl. One of the lions at Plättli Zoo, probably. Handsome Henry had once told her that lions dream just like dogs, only more violently – their claws scrape against the floor of their cage and they snarl, gnash their teeth while they pursue imaginary prey across imaginary savannahs. She shivers, glad the savagery is contained.

  A bell tolls the hour from across town, then another, like an answering voice. The cemetery church and, the small chapel remain silent – as if the dead could be woken, Celia jokes to herself, before becoming suddenly serious. Although she doesn’t really believe in resurrection, she is terrified by the prospect of encountering some indefinable sign to the contrary. That’s why she’d put off visiting her mother’s grave. But now, after her narrow escape on the sledge run, she is determined to do away with irrational fears. From now on she will fight them. Or confront them.

  Rounding a clump of shrubbery, she stops short. Someone’s lit the candle, the white candle Uncle Godfrey had said was from him. Then she forces herself to go on, right up to the grave. Silly Cel, why be afraid? Confront and fight, remember?

  As she tugs the branch out of her plastic bag, the clean scent of resin seems to explode in her face. She wedges the stem through the tracery of snow at the foot of the temporary wooden cross, between a shallow clay pot set with erica and pansies and a plastic cemetery vase holding a bunch of frostbitten roses. No dead black tulips, mercifully. The wreaths have been spread out on the mound in front of her, snow-caked rings of fir twigs and evergreens with glimpses of gold lettering on satin, colour-sprayed cones, dried flowers, and yellow carnations, glass brittle.

  She doesn’t cross herself. Doesn’t even fold her hands. Instead she rubs some heat into them, careful to avoid the taped gauze, then bows her head to conjure up a happy memory of her mother.

  That’s when she hears the steps. From behind. She spins round, bracing herself for whatever. Whoever.

  No one. Nothing. Only the rasp of the night wind in the bare trees. Easy enough, of course, for someone to have ducked behind a bush or a headstone. Surely she isn’t so worn out by the events of the past few weeks she is hallucinating? Though that’s what Nita seemed to think. Her goodbye had been more like a pep talk: ‘Don’t worry about things, Cel. Give yourself time, and keep in touch.’

  She is about to turn back to the grave when the steps continue. They’ve begun to stumble and slide, and sudden apprehension knots her stomach.

  ‘Mamma! Mamma!’ A voice calls out.

  Celia shudders.

  ‘Where are you? MAMMA?’ The steps sound much nearer.

  No, she won’t run. Won’t hide. A rustle, and now the shape of a woman is coming towards her from one of the side paths, partly obscured by a hedge: a young woman with long hair, dressed in a patterned coat that has swung open at the front to reveal a tight top, a glittering necklace and jeans. Not exactly clothes for a cold night. Celia digs her hands into the pockets of her poncho. For a disturbing moment she wonders whether the girl is actual flesh and blood.

  Then she realises she knows the voice. Knows the girl.

  ‘Mygod, Angelina, what are you doing here? You a ghost or something?’ She’s pleased with herself for having managed such a humorous tone, in this place of all places.

  ‘Sorry?’ Angelina says, moving closer on her slippery-soled Italian boots. ‘Is that you, Celia?’


  ‘It is. Unless I’m a ghost too.’ Celia musters a laugh and involuntarily glances at Angelina’s small diamond-studded crucifix.

  ‘I seem to have lost my mother. She was at Nonna’s grave a minute ago, over there.’ Angelina jerks her chin towards the eastern corner of the cemetery. ‘You haven’t seen her by any chance, have you?’ She plucks at her necklace, flicks the crucifix between her fingers restlessly.

  Celia starts to say, ‘Perhaps she’s returned to the –’ when Angelina opens her mouth again to shout: ‘MAMMA! MAMMA!’ The corners of her eyes are gleaming with wet.

  ‘Let’s walk together,’ Celia suggests and reaches for the girl’s arm. Looking back at her uncle’s white candle, she sees the flame tremble, then steady itself.

  They’d had an argument, Angelina explains, and she’d gone off in a huff, leaving her mother to calm down beside the grave.

  Celia’s head has begun to throb. She’ll need another painkiller soon. They pass under the interwoven canopy of some willows and quite unexpectedly find themselves in a small gravelled space with a bench in the centre. Seated on it is a slumped figure. Angelina rushes forward, her arms outstretched.

  ‘MAMMA, I’m so GLAD!’ she cries, before turning to Celia and blowing her a kiss.

  Celia nods and smiles, mimes a flimsy ‘Goodbye’ that’s swallowed by the nocturnal shadows between them.

  ‘ANGELINA!’ she hears a rich dark voice behind her. ‘CARISSIMA!’

  All at once she feels terribly sad, much sadder than at her mother’s grave, and she retreats as fast as she can, blundering along the frozen paths, the throbbing in her head like a palpable presence.

  Alone cyclist is going past as Celia unlocks her street door. She picks up the travelling bag, then sketches a wave towards the taxi idling at the kerb, and it drives off. The street is dry now, with only a few floury patches of white left where the salt has accumulated.