Free Nora Webster by Colm Tóibín

young? No, rather he is blessed in being so young thus to be made swiftly an immortal. He has escaped the tremulous hands of age.”
    The words, she thought, seemed to be too certain. Wherever Maurice was at this moment, he would long for the comfort of this house and for her, as much as she longed for the past year of her life to be wiped away and for him to return to them.

    On Wednesday morning she went downtown and had her hair done, talking to Bernie in the hairdresser’s about a new system of dyeing hair she had read about, wondering if it was time that she did something about the grey.
    “I wouldn’t like it blue,” she said.
    “I know what you mean,” Bernie replied.
    “And if it was too black then it would look dyed. And I was never blond, everyone in the town knows I was never blond. Is there a good brown, so that it might not look dyed?”
    “I could try this one.” Bernie showed her a package with a photograph of a woman with curly brown hair that looked natural.
    “Maybe just start off with a small bit?” she said.
    “The instructions say to use the whole thing. I’ve used it before. It’s very popular. You would be surprised who has it.”
    “Well, try it so,” Nora said.
    Once the dye had been applied, Bernie put a nylon net on her head and left her to flick through some magazines. When she saw that she would not be home in time to cook a proper dinner for the boys, she regretted having come here at all and knew that she would have to go soon. She signalled to Bernie, who was now busy with two women who had come in together and appeared to need to consult each other about each clip of the scissors.
    “I’ll be right with you,” Bernie said.
    When she came over to remove the net, Bernie told her notto worry, or look too closely, as the real change would come only once the drier and a brush and comb were used. Nora was aware that the two women Bernie had been looking after were studying her closely. Nora wondered if she should not have consulted other women before getting her hair dyed for the first time, but she couldn’t think of anyone she could have asked. Both of her sisters, she presumed, dyed their hair, but she had never heard them talking about it. Slowly, as she watched Bernie working with the hair drier, she realised that she was being given the hairstyle of a much younger woman, and that the women watching it all happen knew that and were taking it in with considerable satisfaction.
    The more Bernie worked, the more her hair seemed to look like a wig. She knew that the dye would take time to wash out, but, in the mirror, she could see how pleased Bernie was with her own work. There would be no point in complaining.
    “Is it not a bit young for me?” she asked.
    “I think you look great,” Bernie replied. “This cut is very fashionable at the moment.”
    “I’ve never had a fashionable cut before,” she said.
    When it was finished, she knew that anyone who saw her on the way home would think that she had lost her mind, or that she was trying to look like a young woman rather than someone who was recently widowed.
    “It’ll take a few days to get used to,” Bernie said. “But no one has grey hair anymore.”
    “Does the dye not look very unnatural?”
    “In a few days it will lose that look and people will think that you’ve had it all your life. You look very worried but I promise you that by the weekend you’ll be delighted with it.”
    “You can’t wash it out, can you?”
    “No, but it will fade, and I guarantee that you’ll be back here in a month for the same again. I’ve never known anyone to go back to the grey. But maybe the next time we’ll think of putting some highlights in. They’re all the rage now as well.”
    “Highlights? Oh, I don’t think so.”
    Outside, she lifted her head high and hoped that all the women in Court Street and John Street would be busy cooking and that none of them would be standing at the door. She prayed that she would