The Best of Fiona Kidman's Short Stories (9 page)

M
AURICE AND
A
NTON
are running late and they are fractious. Their quarrels are public but never permanent; nor do they appear to carry weight. It is doubtful whether either of them is strong enough to bear the burden of a long quarrel.

‘Head back, Madam, head back,' Anton says testily to the elderly pile of salmon-pink flesh in the chair at the basins. The voluminous neck arches painfully back into the black plastic headrest. The feet teeter dangerously in mid-air.

Mrs Blump grunts. ‘The water's cold,' she says, punishing him. She does not want to punish him; he makes her, and it hurts her more than him. She wants to find him kind and affable and indiscreet; otherwise she's wasting money; she cannot be made beautiful and she knows it. Keeping her
self-respect
, she calls it, and no doubt that is true, but the larger truth is the excitement of the familiar faces, the whispered confessions from cubicle to cubicle, the cups of coffee she pays double for having them brought to her with humble deference, the flattery — these are what she's really here for. Yet today Anton is fractious and may deny her the weekly allowance which sustains her from one appointment to another.

‘It's keeping its shape well, don't you think? You cut it so well last time,' she says, hoping to please him as he kneads the shampoo in.

‘The ends are splitting — but there, Madam should have conditioner more often,' says Anton, implying that she is mean.

‘Rub harder,' she snaps, punishing him again, and hating herself. ‘What's wrong with your fingers, Anton? They're like jelly'

‘I did five perms yesterday. My hands are sore, Mrs Blump.'

At last he leads her to the chair, head cowled by the mopping towel. She sits, ashamed, hating him because the mirror tells her she is at her ugliest and he is quite beautiful. He stands beside her, letting the contrast sink in. Slowly
he dons his onyx rings which he has discarded while he was shampooing; he draws them carefully up his slender fingers; flicks a tendril of his free-fall, shock-sheen hair into place; fingers his client's so very thin dripping grey wisps; dries his hands; and adjusts his paisley scarf a little to the left.

‘How would Madam like it set?' he asks languidly.

‘I trust your judgement, Anton,' she murmurs, humbled. ‘As always.'

Maurice ushers Mrs Fish from the basin to the seat beside Mrs Blump. She is unlovely too, though much younger, with pale eyes
and oatmeal skin, and hair that must be styled, she says, to suit her husband and never herself. Her teeth are covered with lipstick. She bares them ecstatically as Maurice scoops her hair through the comb, but she is looking at herself like a stranger. Behind the comfort of her own bedroom mirror she is a tolerable figure, but here, under the cold lights and Maurice's eyes
,
she becomes someone she would rather not recognise. ‘It's the light; this vulgar fluorescence,' she tells herself. She would not tolerate it at home. There the lamps are shadowed and roselit.

Because of the rush Maurice does not talk to Mrs Fish either. She and Mrs Blump glance at each other. They have come for the same thing. Last week Maurice had told some delicious gossip. ‘Of course, dear Mrs Fish, I know you won't breathe a word of this to a soul,' he had whispered, and Mrs Fish had listened, palms sweating, lips moist, excited. Every day since then had been beautiful. She had dialled her fellow retailers of scandal and they had repaid her quite splendidly.

‘Would you like me to hand you the rollers?' she said.

‘No thanks, Mrs Fish,' Maurice replies absently. ‘It's quicker just to grab them myself.'

She sighs.

Then inspiration strikes. ‘Anton,' she chimes out.

Anton looks up from the tiny knobs of hair he is scrabbling over.

‘Who was that pretty girl you were dining with last Friday?' she calls.

There is silence, lapping over them, absorbing them all, drawing them on into something that has begun and cannot be stopped. Maurice's hands hover over Mrs Fish's hair. Instinctively he is caressing her cheeks, marking time. She quivers, partly at his touch, partly at the mounting unspoken excitement.

‘Me?' says Anton. ‘Mrs Fish, I'm sure you're mistaken. It can't have been me.'

‘But do tell us what you thought you saw, Mrs Fish,' says Maurice.

Mrs Fish glows as the conversation gathers around her. She has caught them; they are listening; and the pace of the salon has perceptibly slackened, for which everyone will be grateful. Her mouth puckers over the big teeth.

‘But of course it was you at the Maytime on Friday, Anton. You and the girl, so pretty in her long green dress. I said to my husband, Isn't she pretty? Who? he said. The girl with Anton, I said. Who's Anton? he said. He's at my salon, I said. It was our wedding anniversary. We've been married fifteen years, though he says you wouldn't believe it, and I can still wear a bikini in spite of the stretch marks. She's lovely, my husband said, though of course I'd rather have you. Go on, you wouldn't, I said. Yes I would, he said. But what about you, do you fancy that Anton? I nearly died. Men are funny, aren't they? I'm sure it's him, I said. He wears onyx rings. That's him then, my husband said. Don't you think his girl's pretty Maurice?'

The dryers are roaring all around. Maybe Maurice hasn't heard. Could their heat be too much for him? He is gasping for air, his face red, then pale.

‘Must be such fun,' says Mrs Fish archly, ‘living together, you two. I wouldn't like to go out with one of you. Bet you swap notes.' She giggles, snuggles down into her chair. ‘That's if I was younger of course. Not that women of my age don't have something to recommend them. That's what my husband says. Looks at all those saucy magazines!' She claps a hand to her mouth, glances at salmon-coloured Mrs Blump. ‘You know what I mean. And I say to him, Any time you feel like a fling. Not me, he says. I know when I'm well off.'

The silence has thickened, in a frightening and sickening way. Suddenly Mrs Fish knows something has gone wrong but she does not know what it is. ‘I guess I'm lucky,' she says, her voice as bleak as she looks. And her reflection twists grotesquely — her big teeth, protuberant eyes, and wet hair shining spotlessly back at her.

‘You said you were taking your nephew to the Maytime, Anton,' says Maurice above her.

Mrs Blump, pink and porcine, touches her forehead briefly. She is old; nobody pretends to her any more that she is, could be, or might ever have been at all beautiful. She has felt Anton's hot tears as he bent over her. It's been worth her money today. ‘Don't hurry, Anton,' she says. ‘Why don't you have a rest? Nobody's really in a hurry.' Suddenly she is kind. Mrs Fish receives her malevolent stare and flinches. Innocence excludes her from some dark secret.

‘Thank you, thank you, Madam. I'll be back in a few minutes.'

As Anton retreats, the dryers' switches flicker from hot to medium, medium to cool. The hot women under them wait to be released, the agony columns in their magazines long since read.

‘I haven't all day to wait, Maurice,' snaps Mrs Fish.

‘No,' says Maurice. ‘No you haven't.'

Frail Anton has gone. Mrs Blump appears to be asleep. Maurice stands and contemplates Mrs Fish, then says, ‘But I think you deserve something special today.'

Flick, his comb is dashing, twisting, coiling; a strand deftly wound there, a roller adjusted, shifted; the intensity of his expression does not alter. He is the maestro, the artist at work. Then Mrs Fish is ready for the drier.

Anton reappears, and soon Mrs Blump is ready to submerge, steaming, under the drier too. His eyes
avoid Maurice's. Maurice avoids him. They accidentally collide. Maurice apologises with exaggerated care. Like automata, they extract their cooked victims, fling rollers into the trays, comb, tease, take money. Faster and faster they work. At last it is time for Mrs Fish to come out.

Maurice leads her back to the mirror and sits her down as if she was really special. It could be the national championships he is competing in, maybe the world championships. His face puckers with concentration and his hands are very sure.

Anton finishes Mrs Blump. Her finger waves are as immaculate as they have been for thirty years, just as rigid, just as regimented, and she is just as pleased. She is the complete Mrs Blump again. ‘I'll see you next week, Anton.'

He nods and writes her name in the book. She smiles gratefully as she pats her hair. ‘It'll be all right,' she whispers.

‘Do you think so?' he says forlornly. She nods in reassurance.

Still in her chair, Mrs Fish gasps, ‘Whatever are you doing, Maurice?'

‘Madam will be beautiful,' he murmurs.

‘But my husband …!'

‘Will be delighted,' he says, soothing her.

Higher and higher the curls mount — frothing, twisting, intricate; a tuck, a pin here; a flick and fall there. Never before has it shone like this; the dull metal is burnished; the face is taking on new contours. Incredulous, Mrs Fish watches; the colour in her face mounts; her eyes
sparkle; her mouth relaxes. She is pretty. She hears her friends saying, ‘Well, of course, whatever her features, she knows how to make the best of herself.' Transformed, Mrs Fish watches the miracle taking place. Never before has Maurice's talent flowered so brilliantly.

At last she is done. Maurice stands by the till, a solidly reassuring, elegant figure. She looks up at him.

‘How can I ever thank you — I just needed someone to help me — I didn't know — !' She is incoherent; words fall clumsily, blotchily, from her mouth. ‘How much do I owe you?'

‘Nothing. There will be no charge.'

‘No charge? Look here, this is very generous but I don't understand.'

‘It's quite all right, Madam.'

‘Well — it's — very kind of you — but it puts me under an obligation — and I want to make an appointment for next Thursday. I want to stay like this for — well, forever.'

‘I'm afraid we can't take Madam next Thursday.'

‘Oh … Friday then?'

‘I'm afraid that's not possible.'

‘But I come every week. I'm one of your regulars.'

‘I'm sorry, Madam.'

‘Maurice, what is this? I don't understand — Anton then — I don't expect you to spend so much time every week — I mean I did offer — I'd pay — anything — to look like this — but if you can't spare me the time, then Anton …'

‘Anton's time is fully booked, Madam.'

‘You can't do that

‘But I can. This is my salon. He is my employee.'

‘Then — when?'

‘I would suggest that Madam looks elsewhere for someone to dress her hair.'

‘You mean you won't take me here again?'

For a long moment she looks at herself in one of the brilliant mirrors, face gone ugly and strained. The never-to-be-recaptured moment of beauty is fading even as she watches; the exotic hairstyle looks ridiculous, like a borrowed wig. Maurice inclines his head in answer to her question. He is wishing she would leave, the malice is draining out of him as if his body had become a sieve.

She tries again. ‘Something I've said?'

He is impassive.

Mrs Fish stumbles for words of anger, knowing that her freshly applied lipstick is catching on her barbed teeth, that she is being watched on every side, from under dryers, from the mirrors, by Anton. Most of all by Anton. The three feet to the door are a vast corridor rimmed with tears.

Anton comes over to Maurice.

‘Maurice,' he says. ‘Maurice.'

‘Yes,' replies Maurice, looking weary. He wishes he could take the day off and go home to sleep. His work of art has demanded too much of him, his anger and its wickedness have left him cold and sad. He stands apart from himself, scarcely understanding the ugliness he has wrought in the last hour.

‘Maurice,' says Anton again, not daring to touch him, there, in front of
everyone. ‘I had to try it you know. Just — to see what it was like.'

‘I know you did, Tony, I know.'

‘I came back though.'

‘Yes, Tony.' And such an agony of love passes between them that they cannot bear to look at each other.

T
HE TORCH LIT THE WHOLE WORLD
. For a short while it shone brightly, then flickered, and finally faded away in the memory of most people.

There were underground films being made at the time. One or two would filter through to the West, and in time to come Vlado would watch Jan Palach's funeral on the television. Dry eyes, because all his tears had been shed. People were recording in words what happened, but remarkably little printed matter would come to light outside Czechoslovakia in the years that followed. The pattern of history has changed; once it endured, now it is instant history, like art, a series of happenings. How fanciful to think that the history books might remember Vietnam like Culloden, or Waterloo.

So, also, in two or three years people would say — ‘Oh, yes, who was he, this Palach?'

And Vlado would light a cigar, fill a glass of wine, and say, ‘Ah well, it was in the past, all in the past you know. Share a little wine with me, the
compliments
of the management. How do you find your coq au vin?' While madam smiled back, white teeth glittering and tearing into the succulent meat, white breasts bared invitingly to the permissible limits of their cleavage, a little tipsy from drink and Vlado's smile.

But this would be in the future.

Vlado's restaurant was just beginning. There were so many regulations which had to be met, and forms to fill in, in his English which was good enough, except when faced with officialdom, that it seemed like a
superhuman
effort. But there it was, all done. He and Eileen, his Irish-born wife, had worked for a dream and made it come true. A surprising pair some might think, these two immigrants, one so fair and wide-featured, the other tiny, restless and dark. They had some stormy passages, especially with her believing that if you worked hard enough there was nothing the world wouldn't offer you, and he believing that if you worked hard enough the world was bound
to take it away from you; but they were both of the faith which helped of course.

And how was she to know what it was like to slip away over the wire to a freedom which stretched like incomprehensible nothingness before one? When you thought of what was left behind? Father, ailing mother, little brothers and sisters. Yet, as he had walked steadily, without turning, because to turn might have been to look a gun's barrel straight up its hollow eye, he had known he would not see them again, and they would not know him, nor say, ‘Vlado, mend this wooden doll', ‘Vlado help me with my sums', ‘Vlado watch me march in the parade …' March in the parade! March. March. He had marched all right.

Walked on and on, right to the other side of the world to a wife and a restaurant. There he and his Eileen sewed purple velvet to cover the windows, and hemmed lace; learned to lay tables, hired a band for Saturday nights — and peeled potatoes, chopped a thousand cabbages, and half out of memory and half out of books, Vlado had cooked.

Thus they had made a restaurant.

It was not busy that night early in '69. He had competition in this little town, so that never, never could he slacken. Nice for Eileen though, who could stay home. He had met her soon after his arrival, and himself not much more than a boy. After they married, there had been one son, whom they loved so much it was beautiful each morning to wake and know he was there. Then another boy came, who was sickly and difficult, not that they loved him any the less for what he couldn't help. And it was true that in time he came to be a good boy and a hard worker like his parents, but never shining like the first. That one they had lost, under the wheels of a car, on his first bicycle. It seemed like the right time for them both to throw heart and soul into the long talked of business.

Vlado took on a wine waiter, or rather several in succession for they tended to come and go, and Leonard was the latest, and Valerie, to wait on tables. And now Eileen was pregnant again, at just the wrong time, except that it had to be the right time if there was ever to be a baby again. He would rather work with Eileen but he knew she must rest and, at least, he had staff. Good times and bad. He thought of the big gangling son who was at home with her poring over his science books. He would never work in the restaurant. The father wondered if the other one would have done so, and felt a stab of guilt for the dark one. He would try to love him even harder. Yet would the new one be like the first? He had a vision of a square-cut, blunt face, with blond hair falling straight and silky. A face such as he had seen as he marched across the snow, away from Czechoslovakia. The face of his brothers, and of his first son.

Valerie was bringing in the first of the evening's customers. From the kitchen he heard the deferential tone of her voice, and Leonard's almost servile greeting. This was not something Vlado asked of him, he had learnt it
elsewhere
. Nevertheless, he knew that it was Leonard's way of doing his best for him. Through the eye-level slit in the dividing wall between the kitchen and the restaurant, he glanced out and saw that it was the Billingtons.

Leonard came scuttling out to the back.

‘You see who it is?' he hissed.

Vlado nodded.

‘Is this the first time they've been here? Do they usually go to the others?' Vlado nodded again for each question.

The ‘others' were the opposition. Leonard nearly danced with pleasure for Vlado's sake.

‘The Billingtons!' Then his face assumed a pained expression. ‘If only it was full. If only we had the dance band tonight —!'

‘If only tonight we can give them the food and the service equal to that which anywhere they can receive,' said Vlado, only an inversion of language betraying his nervousness. Nowadays it's rare, and his peculiarities of speech are a quaintness turned on for occasions, though he is nonetheless genuine for his stylishness. ‘Now go you out Leonard, and see that all is well with them,' he said.

But if the Billingtons wished for excellence as their rule, it was not evident tonight. Although they had chosen this restaurant over the more popular and better known one in town, the reason was their desire for privacy.

Janet Billington's slim figure collapsed into a chair. She was considered beautiful. Her face was delicate, really too thin, so that her cheek-bones and forehead stood out in extravagant detail, her eyes surrounded by hollows rather than wrinkles, mouth extraordinarily lavish in its tightly constructed surroundings. Her clothes all came from a boutique in Wellington which catered for women of taste who had remained as small as she had in middle years.

Her husband was a heavily built man, but considered handsome too, going grey with credit and ease. As they sat looking at the menu Valerie had
produced
for them, they avoided each other's eyes. Valerie stood waiting.

Leonard swept out. ‘It's so nice to see you Mr and Mrs Billington,' he enthused. They inclined their heads to his homage.

‘Get out of it,' Leonard mouthed at Valerie behind them.

‘Well,' he said, rubbing his hands together. ‘I'll leave you to it then. I'm here if you want anything. Not far away.' He backed off, following Valerie who had flounced out to the kitchen.

When he arrived she was banging pot lids and dishes. Leonard seized a plate from her, and turned accusingly to Vlado.

But Vlado was not listening. Beside him was a tiny transistor radio and he was bending down beside it. A news broadcast was halfway through. He reached out fumbling for the switch to turn it off. Slowly he straightened up, his eyes
fixed at a point somewhere through and beyond the wall in front of him.

‘What am I supposed to have done now?' snarled Valerie.

‘You don't hang over them. You give them a few minutes to make up their mind. How many times have I told you you're not in the caf now serving oysters and chips?'

‘Oh yeah? Only difference here is the oysters are raw. Takes talent to cook 'em.'

Valerie bared her teeth. Leonard sighed. Valerie was quite passable until she opened her mouth. It was neither beautiful to behold, nor to listen to, and it took him all his time to coax a reasonable reaction to the diners' orders out of her. If he'd been Vlado he would never have taken her on. Eileen, no doubt. All heart that one, a real worker, but she'd learned good taste the hard way. Valerie with her good looks and hard luck story, would certainly have been one of her mistakes. Whereas he, Leonard, was a different proposition. My word, but they were lucky to have him. Everyone had their bad patches in the cities, no crime in that, because there were plenty of offers trickling back now that the heat was off. A passing problem indeed.

He decided that he wouldn't sleep with Valerie. The idea was quite preposterous.

‘I've been considering,' she was saying to him, ‘and I've thought about your — um — proposition. Yes, I have and it doesn't appeal.'

She flicked her hips with disdain at him as she passed on her way out to the Billingtons. Sharp, you had to give her credit for that. You'd think the monkey could read one's mind.

As the order was being given, there were more arrivals. Leonard hurried out, as Valerie was occupied. As he was not familiar with the town and had only a small stock of local notables in his repertoire, the latest couple meant nothing to him, though it was obvious that he was expected to recognise them, in a way that the Billingtons had seemed indifferent to. The woman was very blonde and made up so perfectly that the very idea of indifference to anything, least of all her mirror, or the mirror of public opinion, was
ridiculous
. Her husband was blond too, immaculately tanned, and hair somewhat slicker than was considered fashionable. Reg Billington's thick greying hair at the other table obviously hadn't seen oil in years.

‘Isn't there a band tonight?' asked the woman in a peevish tone.

‘I'm so sorry madam,' said Leonard, treating them to even greater servility than the Billingtons, for at least he recognised the occasion to mock when it was necessary. ‘But we don't have a band every night. This is one of our quiet nights. We have some excellent records.'

The woman frowned. ‘What d'you think Errol darling? Sounds deadly dull and hardly a soul here. I did tell you we should have gone to the other place.'

Errol darling's eyes flicked over the place.

‘The Billingtons are here,' he murmured.

A slight flush spread over his wife's face. ‘Thank you so much,' she said to Leonard sweetly. ‘Could we have that table there?' She indicated one a discreet distance from the Billingtons yet angled to face them.

With a slight bow he led them to the table of their choice and seated them. The Billingtons were ready to give him a wine order. Reg Billington scanned the list and ordered an unpretentious but very good wine, barely raising his eyes as he spoke. It was just what Leonard would have expected him to order, and he was all the more admiring that the man had fulfilled that expectation.

He passed through the kitchen on his way to the wine cellar. Valerie plucked at his arm.

‘I'm busy can't you see?'

‘Please Leonard!' There was a note of urgency in her voice. ‘It's him. Look at him.'

And Vlado was something to be seen. His face was grey, and his eyes had a glaze over them.

‘The Billingtons ordered beef stroganoff, and he hasn't moved since I gave him the order.'

Leonard touched his arm. ‘Never mind, Vlado,' he said. ‘It might only be beef stroganoff, but you make it like a dream. There's nothing to touch your beef stroganoff. They'll make you famous just for your stroganoff.'

Still Vlado did not move. Leonard persisted. ‘Another night they will ask for one of your specials, tonight they will find that your everyday is brilliant.'

And for once he was being true to himself, and to Vlado too, for though the chef had not trained as some of the country's other top restaurateurs had done, he had a touch of genius, and Leonard knew it for what it was worth. He had envied true worth in others for too long, not to give it its due in matters such as this. Vlado might still have things to learn, but he was a born master, and therefore Leonard cared for his welfare, for that reason and no other. Next month, maybe even next week, he would be gone, serving
someone
else — who knew? — but while he was here he had an allegiance to
talent. He was loyal to that. Vlado could trust him more than he knew.

Vlado looked at him with dull eyes. ‘The trouble in my country, it is worse. Bad things, happening they are.'

Leonard dropped his arm. ‘Beef stroganoff for the Billingtons,' he said. In silence Vlado reached for the food, mechanically assembling the tender meat, the mushrooms, the sour cream which must go in at the last critical moment. The wine waiter heaved a sigh of relief and continued to the cellar. By the time Valerie had placed the next order and the wine was served to the Billingtons, everything appeared to be under control.