The Matisse Stories - Antonia S. Byatt [6]
‘It isn’t nice,’ said Susannah. ‘It’s hideous.’
There was a hush in the salon. Deirdre turned a terrified gaze on Lucian.
‘She did it better than I do, dear,’ he said. ‘She gave it a bit of lift. That’s what they all want, these days. I think you look really nice.’
‘It’s horrible,’ said Susannah. ‘I look like a middle-aged woman with a hair-do.’
She could see them all looking at each other, sharing the knowledge that this was exactly what she was.
‘Not natural,’ she said.
‘I’ll get Deirdre to tone it down,’ said Lucian.
Susannah picked up a bottle, full of gel. She brought it down, heavily, on the grey glass shelf, which cracked.
‘I don’t want it toned down, I want,’ she began, and stared mesmerised at the crack, which was smeared with gel.
‘I want my real hair back,’ Susannah cried, and thumped harder, shattering both shelf and bottle.
‘Now, dear, I’m sorry,’ said Lucian in a tone of sweet reason. She could see several of him, advancing on her; he was standing in a corner and was reflected from wall to wall, a cohort of slender, trousered swordsmen, waving the bright scissors like weapons.
‘Keep away,’ she said. ‘Get off. Keep back.’
‘Calm yourself,’ said Lucian.
Susannah seized a small cylindrical pot and threw it at one of his emanations. It burst with a satisfying crash and one whole mirror became a spider-web of cracks, from which fell, tinkling, a little heap of crystal nuggets. In front of Susannah was a whole row of such bombs or grenades. She lobbed them all around her. Some of the cracks made a kind of strained singing noise, some were explosive. She whirled a container of hairpins about her head and scattered it like a nailbomb. She tore dryers from their sockets and sprayed the puce punk with sweet-smelling foam. She broke basins with brushes and tripped the young Chinese male, who was the only one not apparently petrified, with a hissing trolley, swaying dangerously and scattering puffs of cotton-wool and rattling trails of clips and tags. She silenced the blatter of the music with a well-aimed imitation alabaster pot of Juvenescence Emulsion, which dripped into the cassette which whirred more and more slowly in a thickening morass of blush-coloured cream.
When she had finished—and she went on, she kept going, until there was nothing else to hurl, for she was already afraid of what must happen when she had finished—there was complete human silence in the salon. There were strange, harshly musical sounds all round. A bowl rocking on a glass shelf. A pair of scissors, dancing on a hook, their frenzy diminishing. Uneven spasmodic falls of glass, like musical hailstones on shelves and floors. A susurration of hairpins on paper. A slow creaking of damaged panes. Her own hands were bleeding. Lucian advanced crunching over the shining silt, and dabbed at them with a towel. He too was bloodied—specks on his shirt, a fine dash on his brow, nothing substantial. It was a strange empty battlefield, full of glittering fragments and sweet-smelling rivulets and puddles of venous-blue and fuchsia-red unguents, patches of crimson-streaked foam and odd intense spills of orange henna or cobalt and copper.
‘I’d better go,’ she said, turning blindly with her bleeding hands, still in her uncouth maroon drapery.
‘Deirdre’ll make you a cup of coffee,’ said Lucían. ‘You’d better sit down and take a breather.’
He took a neck brush and swept a chair for her. She stared, irresolute.
‘Go on. We all feel like that, sometimes. Most of us don’t dare. Sit down.’
They all gathered round, the young, making soothing, chirruping noises, putting out hands with vague patting, calming gestures.
‘I’ll send you a cheque.’
‘The insurance’ll pay. Don’t worry. It’s insured. You’ve done me a good turn in a way. It wasn’t quite right, the colours. I might do something different. Or collect the insurance and give up. Me and my girlfriend are thinking of setting up a stall in the Antique Hypermarket. Costume jewellery. Thirties and forties kitsch. She has sources. I can collect the insurance and