Roundabout
sun. Friends, offspring and officials stamped gloomily on the platform and blew plumes of reassurance into the frozen air : `You'll be all right, Mum, don't worry.'
'I put the tickets in the inside pocket of the black bag.'
'I'll see the little fellow hag everything he wants, Madam.'
There was even the Wodehousian uniformed chauffeur actually holding the poodle in his arms.
There were, in fact, two cruises—the five-week and the seven-week. The five-weeker attracted men whose businesses gave them no peace in the summer—the contractor who could escape only when the ground was frozen, the man who owned a swimming pool, the turf accountant with his two glowering sons. Their wives were wrapped in ocelot, in marmot, in mink. However else they had raised the £300, none of them had been reduced to popping the furs.
For the seven-weeker the Upper Classes paraded en bloc. Their accents were 'U,' their pieces of luggage were apt to match, their cloth coats must have cost twice as much as the five- weekers' furs. One was travelling with a maid. There was a gorgeous old gentleman in a flannel shirt and a stiff collar who could not have helped looking what he was in blue jeans and som- brero. There was even a single plum-duff deb, her mohair skirt inflated by petticoats, her pearls and fur jacket echoing Mummy's.
•
One woman was nobly seeing off her husband and staying behind herself. 'Well, you see, he's older than I am; and, well, even if a cruise doesn't make you live longer, it makes you happier, don't you think?' Only one thing seemed to be missing—the traditional Distinguished Author Incognito. What about that flamboyant figure in the billowing camelhair, his beard no bigger than a rabbit's foot nestling in his chin? 'No, I'm not an author: I'm a director of a football club and 1 collect pictures. PORTAH ! • The doors began to slam. The man who was leaving his wife behind meanly handed her the cardboard and Cellophane remains of his snack. Four men in bowler hats ran down the platform, the cautious jocularity of their farewells making it clear that it was their managing director, they were seeing off. The chauffeur held up the poodle, and a slim black glove came out of the window and scratched it goodbye. The younger genera- tion stood thankfully back, and the trains, with their load of years, of money and pearls, gym shoes, furs, dark glasses, Kwells and dinner jackets, steamed slowly out of the station.
Permanent IT WAS IN THE West End. It was a hairdressing salon. It produced the bouffant and the wig, the poodle and the tulip in the West End manner. But it did not look normal. It was too big and too noisy : the paint had been kicked too often; and above the mirrors and the dryers one was conscious of the looming roof of the old con- verted ballroom. There were too many grins on the faces of the cutters and setters; too much variety in the clientele. For this was a hairdress- ing school. The prices were not the usual fifteen shillings and upwards, but a mere three bob. The rest, presumably, was written off as a rebate for danger money.
Under one dryer sat a shovel-faced woman with all the militant gloom of an office cleaner. Under another a delicate piece who had just hipped in from Soho. Two office girls chatted in front of a mirror. A sophisticated woman of unmention- able age (dress shop? marriage bureau? small hotel?) prodded suspiciously at a neat set of raven-blue curls. Instead of snake-waisted Mon- sieur Alphonse wafting his clients to the dryer in a haze of mauve perfume, brisk Mr. Terry yelled across the room, 'You're cooked ! Out you come!' And he was meekly obeyed.
'We get all sorts in here,' he said. 'And because it's a school, they're supposed to let us do what we want. But we try and please them—that one over there, she wanted a perm so tight she wouldn't have to comb it for a year. We pretty well had to give it to her.'
'Sometimes we get our own way, though,' said Mr. Leonard. 'The other night I couldn't sleep for thinking of a particular hairstyle; and in the morning I just waited and waited till someone came in with the right sort of hair. Then I just grabbed her and said, "You've got to have it my way." Lovely, she looked.'
Did they plunge straight in here at the begin- ning of the course? 'Lord, no; we get two months' lectures and demonstrations first—and they start us on wigs. A wig can't scream if you clip its ear, for one thing.'
'What did I do before I came here? I was a pattern-cutter,' said Mr. Terry. That seemed reasonable—from shaping clothes to shaping heads. And Mr. Leonard, too?
'Me?' he roared with laughter. 'Not me. I was a taxi-driver.' And he curled the hair delicately round his fingers.
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