The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters (18 page)

‘I always looked,’ admitted Ida. ‘I want to go back to Harristown.’

Darcy replied, ‘That sounds like an excuse for slapping some cheek to me.’

At which point, Mr Rainfleury entered the fray with one of his amiable sentences. ‘And, Darcy, I have been meaning to speak to you about this matter of slapping. And pinching, and boxing of ears. In Society, ladies do not vent their grievances with acts of violence. They leash their tempers, Darcy. Like ladies, Darcy. Some incidents have come to my attention via third parties. We cannot have the public thinking that there’s any brutal behaviour in this nest of goddesses.’

‘Perhaps Society ladies do not have as much to put up with as I do,’ retorted Darcy.

‘I merely put the matter to you,’ said Mr Rainfleury, ‘and the thought that you would not want the “Miss Darcy” doll to be known as the virago of the Godivas.’

Leaving Darcy for a rarity speechless, he bowed to the rest of us, and assured us that he had many good things to address on our behalf and must be off to do so.

As well as our accounts, Mr Rainfleury had taken it on himself to enrich the content of our show, constantly suggesting refinements and additions, though he was no one’s Shakespeare and always concluded, ‘So, Manticory, you’ll write up the new piece that way, dear?’

Mr Rainfleury rewon Darcy’s friendship by introducing a coffin into the act. The coffin came equipped with a gormless and infinitely flexible stuffed black cat which Darcy held up triumphantly before consigning it to the underworld along with all her other worldly treasures. The cat was laid in the coffin with its paws in the air. I wrote a special song about the grave-goods that Darcy’s corpse would take with her. As she sang, Darcy dropped her ribbons and crucifixes, one by one, into the silk-lined lacquered box – avoiding the cat – along with plentiful tears squirted from a perfume bottle concealed behind her left ear, with a tube running to a pump under her armpit.

Darcy also made play with a death’s head puppet, a bleached monkey’s skull sewn on a glove of white. She had Enda, in a black dress printed with a skeleton, perform a dance of death with Berenice, in red silk, accompanied by Ida playing the fiddle with the unearthly grace and the hollow eyes of one who had sold her soul to the Devil.

‘Good evening to my seven queens.’ Mr Rainfleury arrived for dinner in the indulgent mood that meant he had something new to sell us. Sure enough, out it came. ‘And speaking of that, my queens must have their attendants. Settle down, my dears, for I have lovely news.’

Having reddened the fire with the bellows, he consigned his bulk to his favourite armchair, his soft rolls settling in increments like goose feathers in a pillow. He announced, ‘I have engaged a professional hairdresser to put a little cultivation in your admirable animal growths.’

‘A little less of the animal from you, sir,’ growled Darcy in her most scalding tone. ‘And for the hairdressing we have Pertilly – who does not require to be paid extra.’

‘Our programme is intensifying,’ said Mr Rainfleury with the mild but unequivocal tranquillity of a folded blanket. ‘Remember, I have new activities planned for you – in department-store windows and lecture halls. We shall presently need your hair dressed twice a day, with suitable styles for morning and evening engagements.’

‘What’s wrong with our hair?’ Darcy’s brows knitted. ‘No one has ever complained about the hair.’

‘Except the Eileen O’Reilly,’ piped up Ida.

‘Even a flowered bower must be attended to,’ burbled Mr Rainfleury persuasively. ‘Art and craft are both employed in the garden, and upon the flowers themselves. And so art and craft must also attend the lady’s toilette table.’

Ida stared at him. ‘We are getting a gardener, is it? For our hairs so?’

‘Imbecile!’ barked Darcy, so I knew she didn’t understand either.

Mr Rainfleury laughed delicately. ‘Let me use language you will comprehend, my poppets. Hair in its natural state is like a raw potato or a plain boiled one. But hair may have aspirations. Hair may leave Nature and become Culture, may express Civilisation. Whenever we want the humble potato to be its best possible self, to be fit for a duchess’s table, we employ a chef to deal with it. And that chef will dignify and beautify the potato, creating such masterpieces as
pommes de terre sautées
, and
pommes de terre dauphinoise
and
pommes de terre gratinées
. Now Pertilly has a natural aptitude, to be sure, and her labours have served you well—’

Pertilly’s face pinkened with happiness to find her work recognised for once.

‘But you need someone working
in the back room
, my dears, so that you can flourish better in the front room and on the stage.
My
candidate has studied at the leading hair academy in Holborn, London, where the students practise for months on wefts of hair glued to board until they are perfectly accomplished in every fashionable style. Tastefully arranged hair adds elegance and finish to the features of the human face. I’ll mention no specific names but there are faces in this room that might be glad and grateful for those things.’

Pertilly frowned, understanding herself insulted. She looked to Berenice for defence, but Mr Rainfleury was still talking a torrent.

‘Moreover, my Miss Craughn – who has reached the elegance of middle age in her profession – has acquired the art of incorporating false hair invisibly into the natural growth. No!’ He held up his hand. ‘Sit down, Manticory. You ladies shall not object to resting your own hard-working hair in gentle nets and using hairpieces from a reputable source – and no, of course not every day, or often – only for some theatrical exigencies, of course. Yes, you too shall have your scalpettes and frisettes and single curls cunningly gummed to your foreheads; your torsades, your two-ended braids, all gardened and landscaped into your own hair so subtly that no one shall know what is home-grown and what is not.’

‘You mean,’ I asked slowly, ‘you want us to wear false hair, just when we are selling
your
dolls on the back of our supposedly natural hair?’

Again, I received that look of unqualified dislike. ‘Of course you shall own it, Manticory, for you shall pay for the hair out of
your
dolls’ earnings. And the more hair you show, the more dolls
you
shall sell, and the more money you’ll get, and the more hair you can buy,’ he chortled. ‘Show some imagination, dear!’

The
Hairdressers’ Chronicle and Trade Journal
, Pertilly’s favourite reading matter, lay open on a pertinent page. I seized it and waved it under Mr Rainfleury’s nose.

‘Hair you can buy! See this!’ I told Mr Rainfleury. ‘Black straight hair is these days imported via Marseilles from India, China and Japan. It says here that they boil it up in nitric acid to take out the black, which ruins the health of the poor hair-workers. And then they recolour it to fashionable reds and blonds with poisonous dyes! And frizzle it with tongs into curls, so it stinks—’

‘And even
African hair
comes into Marseilles.’ Darcy had read the article too. She spluttered, ‘And its wool can be disguised. You ask us to put that on our heads?’

‘Oh no!’ flourished Mr Rainfleury. ‘Far from it! How many times must I say it? It is not
human
hair I ask you to nestle among your own. It is my own invention, hygienic and safe. For my sweet poppets, nothing but silk and rare-plant extracts. It’s that naughty Manticory feeding your heads with nonsense again – the
Hairdressers’ Chronicle
is
bound
to tell lies about hair; they make money out of sensation.’ He dropped his voice to a wheedling tone. ‘Miss Craughn brings with her a treasure chest of tortoiseshell combs, amber pins and diamanté combs. Why, she even has a portable nitting machine to deal with your own little . . .’

Seeing our blanched faces, he stopped tactfully.

Was it my own Enda, I wondered, or was it Berenice who had confided to him that the lice still sometimes made themselves at home on us, even in Dublin?

Mr Rainfleury had not puffed the hairdresser beyond her abilities. Miss Craughn was a true professional, who gave performances in her own right. She made a theatre out of the sewing room where she conducted her business with the tongs and frisettes, her crimping irons. We all assembled to watch her whenever we could, relishing the chance to be part of a hair audience for once. Small, mouse-haired and with a tight little mouth, she sat on a stool to work on us. Miss Craughn loved our hair – she acted as if it were hers and not ours. She insisted upon it being just so. But the desiccated little lady wished no intimacies with us Swineys, quietly giving it to be understood that she had worked with better blood and breeding than ours. I overheard her exclaiming to Mrs Hartigan, ‘To think a grand house like this would hear native accents like the ones on those girls in its very dining room! And that Darcy creature makes it the home of all the profanity in Ireland.’

While she worked on our heads, Miss Craughn spoke only to herself, muttering about necessary pins and technicalities of combs and lotions with terrifying names. I liked the prissy woman’s skills well enough, but I never accustomed myself to the smells of the liquids she painted on my scalp. And I hated the false hair, for I never stopped picturing the girls obliged to be shorn so that I, already luxuriating in hair, might greedily have yet more. In fact, the more Mr Rainfleury spoke of his silk curls, the less I believed in him.

Miss Craughn very promptly found her way into Darcy’s black books. In front of the hairdresser, Darcy assumed her most lordly airs. She gave peremptory orders for her own styling. Miss Craughn ignored both the order and the tone. Darcy did not scruple to administer a slap or a curse to a recalcitrant sister in Miss Craughn’s presence, until she found that the hairdresser faithfully informed Mr Rainfleury of every act of violence.

A month after the hairdresser arrived, Ida was alone in the sewing room with Miss Craughn after the latter had exchanged some bitter words with Darcy. Poor Ida took the brunt of it. The hairdresser brushed her frustrations into her scalp, knotted her anger into curling rags and roasted her impotence with hot tongs. Finally, Miss Craughn’s comb made a too-swift and merciless progress though Ida’s curls. Ida lost the run of herself and threw a fit. She turned her head and bit Miss Craughn’s hand.

In a moment both Ida and the hairdresser were screaming heroically.

The noise had us all running into the room. At the sight of Darcy, Ida bolted out.

‘That Miss Ida is a mad girl!’ cried Miss Craughn, showing us a bleeding finger. ‘I’ll not stay among bastard madwomen!’

‘How do you dare?’ demanded Darcy, advancing on her.

Oona placed herself between them. ‘Do not be so harsh on Ida, oh please. You know it’s an affliction just to be the youngest. There’s a want in her, Miss Craughn honey,’ she cajoled. Oona had rather taken to the hairdresser, who had found a way to make her hair glitter with a subtle gold powder under the stage lights. ‘There’s a want there but no real harm. Don’t take any notice so.’

But Miss Craughn was already packing up her frisettes and scalpettes and her hackle for carding our combings, and her nitting machine. All the while she crammed her valise and offered bitter remarks such as ‘The obscenity of it! Just a hedgerow harem for that curdy goat Rainfleury.’

Darcy towered over her. ‘I’ll take no tongue from you, you old bitch! It’s better you’re gone. You’re nothing but a slippery-fingered spy.’

Miss Craughn retorted, ‘May your own black tongue wither to its dark root, Darcy Swiney. You do not use it for anything but nasty, is what you don’t do. I’m sorry for your sisters, frankly. The things I’ve seen and heard here! And you, with your hand in the accounts . . . and all those brown envelopes for the groom, coming back empty besides!’ She stared meaningfully at Darcy.

‘That is a look I take from no woman!’ Darcy shook her fist. ‘Be gone from this establishment.’

‘As quickly as I can,’ Miss Craughn assured her.

Ida reappeared, holding one of Darcy’s black books.

‘Miss Craughn! See here!’ she said. ‘Darcy has language on you! You must do better than this! These are not good words. “Trollop”. “Bacon-fed whore”. And she says that while you were visiting the haberdasher on Tuesday she dipped your hat feathers in her chamber pot.’

Miss Craughn pointed a quivering finger, still dripping with blood.

She told Darcy, ‘You are cursed. It may take time, but my curse will catch up with you. And if I can do anything to hasten it on its way, you can be sure I shall.’

‘Why are you still here, you besom?’ asked Darcy. ‘I don’t give a whooping cough for your old curses.’

‘Would it kill you to bid the woman a courteous farewell?’ asked Oona reproachfully.

‘It would,’ said Darcy.

From the doorstep, Miss Craughn turned and cried up to the windows, ‘This will get out, mark my words.’

I silently agreed with the hairdresser’s opinions on both Darcy’s tongue and our patron’s proclivities. The more Mr Rainfleury insinuated himself into the tight knot between Enda and Berenice, the less easy I felt. The twins were engaged in an increasingly painful competition for his approval. Both had now achieved exactly six feet of hair, but they spent hours stretching it around the banisters to try to extract an extra quarter-inch. Mr Rainfleury goaded them on, measuring their hair with a soft tape every week, taking his time over it too.