hairdressing visit

Today Cecil has mainly been musing on mortality - mainly his own.
Very pale, wan and depressed and it shows in my hair - his depression that is.
At least he used the comb on my hair exclusively, this time, rather than using it on his own hair halfway through the comb-out.

Small, lantern jawed, old women shuffle into the shop; some of them Cecil has picked up on his way in.
He hands out cups of coffee, they collect up damp towels and roller pins. He barks phrases into deaf ears and the women move from shampooing basin to setting chair, to hair dryer, at his nudge, doing small jobs as they go.

Cecil's chatter is endless. The trouble is he ceases work while he recalls an anecdote and I watch the clock move on nearer to the time I should be at home. Edna and Norah nod in the right places, dutifully hand up the pins as required and watch the traffic go by. Other callers pass through to visit the chiropodist and provide yet another distraction and delay.

Cecil is desperate for a ciggy. His feminine "tut" and pout exaggerated by twitchy fingers pulling up his trouser waistband to just below his paunch. Immediately it slides back and his hands stray to his back pocket. He tries to pretend they weren't reaching for the packet.
His mournful voice recites a catalogue of doctor's visits and medical tests, the strain on his marriage because he doesn't feel Sheila is giving him all the sympathy and support he feels entitled to. After all, look how he cared for her through her "dark time" and it's only right he should have his turn.
Then he reveals that none of the test results are through yet - all these ifs and maybes.
He has his grave booked and an appointment with the undertaker on supposition alone!
I have to say something, I really do or I'll still be here at teatime.
"Still working at the home are you Dear?" He's studying his reflection, turning to look at the profile of his gut, not thinking, really, about what he's saying.
"Yes! And I have to be on duty by two."
"Oh you should have said!" He continues back combing Norah's hair with a brush, then choking her with hairspray. There are no refinements like face shields. Norah's medical history is exposed without reference to her. She nods vacantly as he recites the details of her long standing leg ulcer and the vagaries of her digestive system.
Edna, under the dryer, is oblivious as her talks about her without interruption. She sees a stray, wet towel that has missed the linen bin and makes to get up and retrieve it. "Leave it - don't move!" She complies and Norah tuts.

At last! My head is pushed back into the shampoo sink and soft finger tips briefly massage shampoo, in small circles, before tepid water trickles down my neck and into my ears. Cecil continues to speak but now his voice is indistinct and muted because my hearing aids are tucked under the coverall, clasped in sweaty hands. The battery compartment closes, inadvertently, and the aid screams. Cecil prods me. "Yer whistling". Obediently, I fumble under the folds trying to adjust it.
Once he has shaken my head in the towel I can put one aid back in and rejoin the monologue.
"What's the future for me now? High blood pressure, diabetes - it's so depressing." Once again he pauses and the comb waves in the air instead of through my hair. He plugs in implements - clippers, curling tongs and then searches for the blow dry brush, which is a wizened, almost naked, set of spikes that he drags through the hair accompanied by blasts of searing hot air. I am choked by the crystal spray he uses to anchor the style but try not to cough and splutter. He is busy spraying a bigger hole in the ozone layer.

Why do I come here? I constantly ask myself as I look at a decor well past its sell by date. The mobile paraffin heater keeps his feet tepid, the customers need the hair driers to stave off the chill. The corners of the setting area have eons of hair clippings which vapid sweeps of the brush have failed to stir.
Yet customers come from quite a distance, week after week, settling for the same styles for years.

Another regular entered, a tall woman with a short body and disproportionately long legs, a dowager's hump and a beehive worthy or a sixties teenager.
Without a word Cecil left me, washed her hair,put me under the dryer and left me to spectate.
Her hair was spun sugar, an ebony black that accentuated her pallor and heavy, tight, jaw. I felt I had been transported back to an eighteenth century boudoir as he sectioned her hair, rolled each one over a pad and anchored them with squadrons of hairpins that she handed up robotically. As each roll was completed is was sprayed heavily. The final creation was immovable, wisps at the nape of the neck deftly tweaked and tucked under the confection. Her heavily ringed fingers replaced huge button earrings.
Cecil carefully draped a chiffon scarf over the creature - because it did seem to have an independent existence. She, decomposing, sank while her coiffure stayed unchanged like a parody of Dorian Grey.
All her colours were poster blocks, bright, unsubtle, but the frame seemed too fragile to carry the exhibition.
She is the sort of person who beguiles me, holds me fascinated to the point of ogling.