Read Online Under the Net by Iris Murdoch - Free Book Online Page B

was at the hairdresser, and she named an expensive Mayfair establishment. I had taken the precaution of mentioning that I was Miss Quentin’s cousin. I thanked her and set off again towards Oxford Street. I have often visited women in hairdressing establishments and the idea held no terrors for me. Indeed I find that women are often especially charitable and receptive if one visits them at the hairdresser, perhaps because they like being able to show off some captive member of the male sex to so many other women when the latter are not so fortunate as to have their male retainers by them. To play this role, however, one must be presentable, and so I went straight away to a barber’s and had a good shave. After that I bought myself a new tie in a shop in Oxford Street and threw away my other tie. As I mounted the heavily perfumed stairway of Sadie’s hairdresser and caught a glimpse of myself in a mirror I thought that I looked a fine figure of a man.
    Women’s hairdressers obey some obscure law of nature which rules that, contrary to what is the case in other spheres, the more expensive the firm the less is the privacy given to the clients. Shop girls in Putney can have their hair done in the seclusion of a curtained cubic‘e, but wealthy women in Mayfair have to sit exposed in rows and watch each other being metamorphosed. I found myself in a big room where elegant heads were in various stages of assembly. A row of well-dressed backs were presented to me, and as I looked up and down searching for Sadie, I felt myself under observation in a dozen rose-tinted mirrors. I couldn’t see her anywhere. I started to glide along one of the rows, looking into each mirror, and seeing here a young face and there an old one looking at me from under crimped and plastered locks. Each pair of eyes met mine with a questioning look until I began to feel like a prince in a fairy tale. I was glad I had thought of investing in the new tie. At the end of the row there were several figures whose heads were covered by purring electric driers. Here at last I met in the mirror a pair of eyes which were unmistakably Sadie’s.
    I stopped and put my hands on the back of her chair. I stood a while and looked gravely into these eyes while their owner returned my glance first with casualness, then with hostility, and at last with dawning recognition.
    Sadie gave a little scream. ‘Jake!’ she cried.
    I could feel we were being looked at. I began to be pleased that I’d come.
    â€˜Hello, Sadie!’ I said, and I didn’t have to fake my delighted smile.
    â€˜My dear creature,’ said Sadie. ‘I haven’t seen you for centuries! How lovely! Were you looking for me?’
    I said that I was, and I fetched a chair and sat just behind her shoulder. We grinned at each other in the mirror. I thought we were a fine-looking pair. Sadie looked very handsome, even with her hair in a net, and if anything younger than ever. Even allowing for the rosy glass, her complexion was exquisite, and her brown eyes were absolutely blazing with vitality. I quite involuntarily put my hand on her arm.
    â€˜You charming fellow!’ said Sadie. ‘What sports do you devise these days? Tell me all!’
    There was an affectation in her voice and manner which struck me as new. Also she spoke in a curiously loud and ringing tone so that what she said echoed audibly all the way down the room. The explanation of this occurred to me in a moment; she was partly deafened by the purr of the drier and didn’t realize how loudly she was speaking.
    I replied, also raising my voice, ‘Oh, I’m still at the old writing game. Books, books, you know. I’ve got about three on hand at the moment. And publishers will keep pestering me.’
    â€˜You always were such a clever chap, Jake,’ Sadie shouted admiringly.
    Silence reigned throughout the rest of the shop except for the whispering voices of a few assistants,