Free Getting It Right by Elizabeth Jane Howard

appointments. When Gavin had remarked on this to Iris, to whom Mrs Bletchley-Smythe also went, Iris
had made a minute little drinking gesture with one hand and unexpectedly winked. ‘How do you know?’ Gavin had asked. Iris had looked at him in a kindly, almost pitying way. ‘There
are signs,’ she said. Anyway, Mrs Bletchley-Smythe didn’t turn up, but Mrs Courcel did, with three hair pieces: two of them to be cleaned and reset, and one which she wanted used to
dress her hair after a wash and set, and he knew from experience that dressing Mrs Courcel’s hair in a new way was a time-taking affair. He managed to get her hair into rollers before he set
Mrs Blake, whose newly permed hair emerged from the wash basin in tiny corkscrews – he hoped not
too
tight, but it had taken very fast . . .
    ‘I look like a rather expensive doll! My hair, I mean – not the rest of me.’ Well, at least she was noticing – it had taken her out of herself a bit.
    ‘I’ll set it on rather large rollers to give it a soft effect,’ he said. ‘Mind you, a perm’s always a little bit tight to begin with. Or, if it isn’t, it
doesn’t last five minutes. Would you like to order a sandwich now to have under the dryer? Egg and prawn’s very nice, with brown bread. Mrs Silkin makes them with a little cress –
’ but he realized that he was entering Mrs Blake’s Danger Zone; she didn’t seem able to stand anyone offering her things. This time she nodded, and started to frown, so he sent
Jenny off to Mrs Silkin with the order, and bent over his trolley pretending to sort out the rollers to give her time to recover. But she didn’t recover; tears were making two tracks down her
face, she was holding her breath again, and, what both moved and frightened him, she began a small uneven rocking motion. This time, he took one of her hands in both of his, held it very firmly and
remained quite still, not looking at her face. It was meant to be a kind of repressive comfort; not the kind he wanted to give, but the only kind that circumstances would allow. Eventually, she let
go of her breath in a long muttering sigh and then said, almost briskly: ‘I shall have to blow my nose.’
    He released her hand and stooped for her bag which was on the floor.
    ‘Of course,’ she said, ‘if you stayed on one of the islands near Turkey – the Dodecanese I think they are called – you can get across to Turkey. You can get a boat
from Cos, for instance, they tell me.’
    ‘I don’t think I’m going to be there long enough, you see. I mean, I’ve never been to Greece, and two weeks isn’t very long to get the feeling of a new
country.’
    ‘Perhaps Turkey next year then.’
    ‘Can you manage without me, Mr Gavin, because Mr Hugo wants me to wash his client?’
    ‘All right, Jenny. But I shall want you at about two-fifteen, so mind you get your lunch in before that.’
    Jenny rolled her eyes and, slightly overdoing it, said, ‘Yes, Mr Gavin,’ but he knew that, with her, it was the tail end of her apology for letting him down earlier. Mrs Blake,
meeting his eye for the first time in the mirror, and clearly finding it difficult, said hastily: ‘I like that girl; she looks about fourteen, though, doesn’t she?’
    ‘She does look young. She’s twenty, actually.’ He decided that Jenny was a good safe subject. ‘But she came to hairdressing later than they usually do. Her father was a
vet, and when she left school she worked with him for a couple of years, but then two of her brothers were passing the exams and said they were going to take over the business and they wanted her
just to be a sort of receptionist and general assistant so she decided to have a different career.’
    ‘Goodness! What a lot you know about her!’
    ‘She’s been here nearly three years.’ While he finished the rollers and put on the net and ear pads he reflected that in a way it was funny that he didn’t know more.
    ‘Half an hour under the dryer