Page 8 of Lessons in Love at the Seaside Salon

CHAPTER SEVEN

Sunday afternoon. The one time she can simply sit and … be. Or smoke. Maybe have a little brandy and dry.

The other day Trudy mentioned to a new client, Janice, that she loves her Sunday afternoons because by then she’s done all the housework and the weekly accounts for the salon, and she can relax.

‘You could meditate!’ Janice said brightly. She’s a pixie-looking gal with spiky, layered and tinted hair. The sort that takes a fair bit of maintenance and which can signify that the human beneath the hair can be … tricky.

‘Meditate?’ Trudy made a sound that was on its way to being a snort.

‘That’s for vegetarians, isn’t it?’ She’d heard that people who meditate like to eat lentils.

Or something like that. The Beatles went to India to meditate and came back vegetarian.

Didn’t they? Or was that just Linda McCartney?

She read in a magazine that Linda doesn’t eat meat.

‘It’s for everyone!’ Janice swivelled around to look at Trudy for real, not in the mirror.

‘I went to an ashram and did it! It’s so calming.

’ She gave Trudy a pointed look, which Trudy thought was presumptuous, first because they’d known each other all of five minutes, so Janice couldn’t know whether or not Trudy needed calming, and second because Janice’s hairstyle signified that she was not, herself, a person given to calm.

‘How interesting,’ Trudy replied.

Janice turned back to face the mirror. ‘Your aura could use some calming!’

Trudy dug her fingernails into her palm to stop her snapping. Sometimes the clients really pushed her buttons. ‘Could it?’

‘Oh yes.’ Janice waved a hand up and down as if she was wafting incense. ‘I have ESP. I can tell.’

Trudy smiled with her mouth closed and flicked out the cape. ‘So – crew cut, you said?’

Janice’s eyes widened. ‘What! No. Why would you –’

‘Sorry,’ Trudy said. ‘Got you confused with the bloke who has the next appointment.’

There was no such bloke, but at least Trudy could move the conversation along from meditation, which seemed to her a preposterous activity.

Except, as she sits here on her couch, ciggie in one hand, book in the other, Diogenes prowling around the house, the afternoon sun coming through the window as she looks out on her modest back garden beyond, it seems a little like meditating.

She’s still. She’s calm. Her aura is calm.

She laughs at that idea. She’s pretty sure she doesn’t have an aura and nor does anyone she knows.

So maybe there’s something to the idea of meditation but she’ll take it in her own fashion, with her Agatha Christies and her Dick Francises and their way of taking her mind off things.

Like how Sunday afternoons never used to be spent on her couch – usually she and Laurie would go for a drive, or he’d play golf and she’d sit in the clubhouse with his friends’ wives while the men played nine holes then came in complaining about how their handicaps were slipping.

Friends she doesn’t see too often any more.

Then the phone rings and the reminiscing is over.

Resting her cigarette in the ashtray next to her elbow, she picks up the handset. ‘Trudy speaking.’

‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Darling!’ He probably cringes when she calls him that but her Dylan will always be her darling.

‘How are you?’

‘Fine, darl, I’m fine.’ It’s a lie, but it’s the sort of lie everyone tells when the truth is either going to take so long it will derail the conversation or you think the person you’re lying to isn’t that interested in the reply to begin with.

‘That’s good.’ There’s silence for a few seconds. ‘So how’s business?’

Trudy hesitates before she answers, considering whether another lie should be deployed.

She hasn’t spoken to Dylan for a while – she’s called and left messages with his wife, Annemarie, but he hasn’t called back until now – so he doesn’t know about Jane setting up her own salon.

It’s a big thing for her. But maybe it won’t seem that big to him, and she doesn’t know if she wants to find that out.

Still, it’s something to talk about. Her son is a good, decent man but conversation is not his forte, so she usually has to come up with subjects if she wants their phone calls to last longer than two minutes.

‘It’s tricky,’ she admits.

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Jane left.’

‘Yeah, you said.’

‘And opened her own salon.’

Silence.

‘In the next street,’ Trudy adds.

More silence.

It’s in moments like these – the silent moments, that is – when Trudy sometimes longs for a daughter who could keep up her conversational end.

She sees the mothers and daughters in the salon and they’re always chatting.

Even that Anna who comes in with Ingrid – she sits and reads magazines most of the time but they’ll chat on for a few minutes here or there.

Anna seems slightly scared of Ingrid, when she’s not annoyed by her.

This amuses Trudy because she thinks Ingrid is a dignified lady who is hell bent on preserving as much of that dignity as she can as she ages, which, yes, can make a person seem difficult because they need certain things – like regular visits to hairdressers – but she generally thinks it’s a measure of how much they regard others as well as themselves.

If you take care of yourself – if you value yourself highly enough to preserve your dignity – it means you’re not asking someone else to do that work for you.

It’s why she lies to Dylan – and anyone else who asks – about how she is. She says she’s fine because that helps her preserve her dignity. Some might prefer to blurt out each and every feeling as they experience it but Trudy doesn’t think that’s dignified.

Dignity mattered a lot to Laurie as he was dying.

He didn’t want her seeing him at his worst; wanted to be in hospital for that so she didn’t have to help him to the toilet, or shower him when he couldn’t shower himself.

Even though she told him that she loved him and that wouldn’t change, he insisted she not help him with such things.

Oh, she misses him. Started missing him even when he was still alive. Her strong, steadfast, brave husband and the awful end he didn’t deserve. Yet who does?

‘That doesn’t sound too good,’ Dylan says after a few seconds.

She snaps back to the phone call. ‘It’s not. She’s taking clients away.’ Trudy clears her throat. ‘Or, I guess, they’re going to her.’

‘Annemarie’s sister had that.’

The sister owns a fish and chip shop in south-west Sydney and a rival venue opened three doors down.

It was a drama at the time, but then the sister started doing hot dogs as well, which brought in the teenage boys, and she’s been fine since.

Trudy, however, has no plans to serve hot dogs at the salon.

‘I remember,’ she says. Then she has an idea. ‘It’d be good to see Annemarie and the kids. And you, of course.’

‘Sure, but –’

‘Would you like to come up for lunch one Sunday? Maybe next week? The week after?’

Annemarie likes to see her own family on Sundays but perhaps she could make an exception. When Laurie was alive they used to come up and visit, so Trudy knows it’s possible.

‘Yeah, maybe. I dunno.’

She can hear a muffled sound. Dylan has put his hand over the phone and is talking to someone.

‘Annemarie says she’s busy the next few weekends.’

‘Oh.’ Trudy thinks. She doesn’t want to drive to Sydney but she could get herself to the train in Gosford. ‘How about I come down one Sunday instead?’ she ventures. ‘That way I could at least see you. Maybe the kids too?’

Over the past two years she’s felt she’s completely lost touch with Dylan’s daughters, Irene and Bree.

‘I’ll check with Annemarie. Sorry, Mum, I’ve gotta go. Our neighbour’s just come over.’

‘Oh.’

‘Love ya.’

‘You too.’

He hangs up and Trudy is left listening to the dial tone. Her cigarette has extinguished itself but she doesn’t feel like lighting another. Nor does she want to read more Agatha Christie.

Sitting back on the couch, she sighs. It’s too early to make dinner. Which means it’s too early to go to bed. Days are long when there’s no one here to share them with, she thinks.

She closes her eyes and contemplates meditating, just to see what it’s like, but instead she falls asleep.