Culture

Summer fiction: Have you seen her? by Sandra Kavanagh

For Rose, The Change was presenting not as one cataclysmic event, but as a series of mercurial, nuanced changes

The operators of the little airy salon presided over the intricacies of emerging and ageing womanhood with alacrity, jollity and skill

Sandra Kavanagh
Thu Aug 24 2023 - 05:00

I’d like an eyebrow tint and a chin wax before I go on holiday at the end of June please. Rose, who was merely having her nails done in one of Vogue’s biggest nail trends of 2023, Barely-There French, so she could get her feet out and into white Birkenstocks for the summer term, was half-horrified and half-impressed.

The matter-of-fact way the older lady had voiced her seasonal, menopausal maintenance requests to Toni, the owner-manager of Have You Seen Her?, was liberating. Toni was, as ever, unfazed and the appointment was made. The operators of the little airy salon presided over the intricacies of emerging and ageing womanhood with alacrity, jollity and skill.

It was a safe space, in fairness: if Toni was in flying form she liked to tell the story of the foolish man who had sashayed in looking for a back, sack and crack wax, and how he had been whooshed out the door with a “catch yerself on, mate” from the immaculate, intrepid Toni and her pretty airbrushed sisters, Mandie and Esme. What kind of place does he think this is? All three were highly professional and of their era and area. Rose liked their savvy, kindly, unpretentious ways. See her, see me. Alrighty. Let’s get you sorted missus. That winning mix of brusque and bonhomie that made Belfast both edgy and friendly.

Her friend Eve swore by the BT9 clinics on the other side of the river, where the not-so-real housewives of leafy south and east Belfast had their tweakments. Even had Rose followed the serious money of her first marriage, she was never going to play that game. As one of the business partners’ wives had observed at their last ever coffee, Rose had been the most easily pleased and low-maintenance of the three start-up WAGs.

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It would have taken so little to satisfy her, Gillian had observed, not necessarily approvingly, before repositioning her Mulberry cross body bag. Rumour had it she spent her days driving around Ballyclare in showroom-fresh Aston Martins and Ferraris, trying to persuade her husband to move to Cultra, or at least to Holywood.

Her once auburn hair was now all salt and pepper caramel blonde highlights (half head of foils twice a year, ditto the cut)

Rose sat at the nail bar watching one of the episodes of Friends that played endlessly on the big screen. (How young they all were, we were then, watching, that first time.) The sun on her back, the pearlescent nails gleaming, the soft white towel on which her hands were spread-eagled, making her skin look summery and sultry already. Her wedding and engagement rings on her left hand, her mother’s on her right.

An old-school file and polish, hands and toes, had been part of her summer routine since girlhood. Her once auburn hair was now all salt and pepper caramel blonde highlights (half head of foils twice a year, ditto the cut). Her mother had modelled and counselled this classic transition for women of a certain age from brunette to blonde. A helmet of dark hair is unwise against the ageing face. It was all about nuance and balayage or you might fast-track into a look that screamed Miss Havisham; a look that said old, or worse, if you were ABC1, common. A little like Max Richter’s reimagining of Vivaldi’s Summer: derivative, subtle but reviving of a June bank holiday on RTÉ Lyric FM.

Rose shared her mother’s penchant for a celebrity salon: Baudelaire hadn’t written a poem called La Chevelure at random. Hair was the first thing a man noticed about you, it was your crowning glory. So, twice a year Rose treated herself to haute coiffure and occasional blow-drys. Those midlife social staples: weddings of the not-so-younger set, and aged relatives’ funerals, and, most poignantly, peer funerals, all called for a blow-dry that didn’t fall out once you had shimmied into your blazer.

There had been the usual Queen Bee contest about who was going grey and how grey, and whether you were a glamorous-platinum-grey, or just a dour-grey-skies-of-Ulster-DUP-grey, among the mature girlfriends. Some had even admitted to losing their hair, as after childbirth or chemo. Fewer still, in a moment of menopausal madness by the bakery section in M & S, or after a vat of Sauvignon Blanc, had fessed up to hair extensions.

One friend, at the interval of a particularly awful show in the fabulously refurbished Opera House, and sporting a rather convincing wig of peroxide bob (that had garnered better reviews from fellow theatre goers than the musical that night), quipped that she had hair everywhere but where she wanted it.

Anecdotally, most menopausal women are only ever an appointment away from a moustache or a beard that a teenage boy would wear with pride

Rose recalled the salad days of a quick shave of the legs and armpits. The dark-haired among us had the inevitable Bridget Jones brush with Jolen or electrolysis. Rose still smarted at the cruelty of her French mother-in-law, who, having ignored la jolie Irlandaise for the whole of the Meet the Fockers week back in 1996 (apart from Jean de Florette scowls that came with every exquisite salade) spoke only to refute the consensus douze points love-in by hissing: Jolie? Celle-là? Avec sa moustache! But this was next-level unwanted hair: coarse; capricious; cruel. Anecdotally, and if you were wearing your varifocals, most menopausal women are only ever an appointment away from a moustache or a beard that a teenage boy would wear with pride.

Glorious were the days when your biggest headache was the six-monthly dental appointment. Surviving had become a part-time job. The three-monthly periodontal treatments to make sure your worn-out gums could hold on to your tired teeth. The referrals to the specialist, restorative dentist clinic: euphemisms for extractions and implants (dental). No woman admits to adult tooth loss; not to her husband, not to her lover, not to her friend, not to herself. If she’s lucky, she outsources it to someone at the top of their game, spends her running-away-money on it, and moves on with a modicum of dignity and a stabilised mouth.

One of Rose’s friends was silly enough to have talked about a sunny drive to Newry for an X-ray and was immediately outed as an implant patient by her canny interlocutor. A girl couldn’t be too careful. The auld cone scan was it, the old busybody had queried, with all the meanness of the Enniscorthy shopkeeper in Brooklyn, you must have had an extraction so. She had leaned in excitedly, can I have a wee look?

Another client was in for a spray tan. Toni apologised for leaving the plate-glass doors open so the rooms could be aired before the woman was spritzed and sent away shimmering with an afterglow that her holiday in Malaga might have been expected to deliver. Every year Rose would think about losing her fake-tan-virginity and every year she would settle for a paraben-free SPF 50 invisible spray from La Roche-Posay or Avène instead.

The very thought of stripping down to disposable knickers (the latter would always be synonymous with childbirth and its messy aftermath of blood and haemorrhoids) was enough to kybosh the notion. There’s no point unless you’re going away was Toni’s take on it. And when she mentioned the idea to her old pal, Eve had given her the Larry David line – sure who’s looking at you anyway?

Then they would laugh about the card Rose’s mum had sent with the two middle-aged women hunched over glasses of wine, one grumpy gal saying miserably to the other, you promised me he would have left me for a younger model by now.

Rose sort of got the younger-model thing now, but knew better than to share that bad feminist thought. Women Rose’s age were too busy casting about for sleep and sanity to bother looking for their libidos

Rose planned on emulating her mother’s and Diane Keaton’s midlife sartorial response to summer: flowing linens, Joan Didion shades, a wide-brimmed hat, and her favourite new accessory, summer gloves.

Why be invisible, sunburnt or Fanta-orange when you can be Woman with a Parasol; an elegant, older iteration of the girl whose fleeting beauty might still haunt those who saw her once?

Eighties summer hits on Spotify and she was still the girl in the Don Henley song, those Wayfarers on, he’s driving by her house, though he knows she’s not home ... These days she’s picking up a script for oestrogen gel or cooling down with her midlife mermaids, in a Boden tummy-control shaping swimsuit – her fluorescent pink tow float strap giving her a waist of sorts.

Rose sort of got the younger-model thing now, but knew better than to share that bad feminist thought. Women Rose’s age were too busy casting about for sleep and sanity to bother looking for their libidos. She hadn’t even felt remotely angry when her cousin Douglas talked about his brother’s two great consecutive wives and lives at their aunt’s funeral lunch in Sutton. Living his best lives. Gosh. Good for him, Rose smiled, mostly at the dessert.

But, the killer line from Dorothy Parker, a member of the first wives’ club herself, inevitably popped into her head: It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard. We go in for repairs and they’re revving up. De Niro and Al Pacino were still at it, into the grave, a phrase she once overheard her auntie Jean say, a Russian cigarette in a holder held up like a prop. Rose at nine years old did not have the context then to guess what men were so doggedly after. Golf? Pints? Cafe Crême Cigars? PG Wodehouse novels? Ninety-nines?

As she waited to hear back from the NHS Menopause Clinic, even the private place was booked out until 2024. They had the longest waiting lists in the UK. No wonder her Dublin relatives referred to Northern Ireland as East Berlin

The Change was yet another reason to stay on the island during the summer months, Rose thought. A hot flush could ratchet up an Irish summer’s day into something quite tropical. No point spending your holiday watching terrible French TV and choosing la clime over la mer. The Med like a tepid bath, full of honeymooners and golden youth making you look and feel like yesterday’s darlings. Too hot and too heavy to dare to eat a crème brûlée.

Midlife meant that the halter neck and spaghetti strap dresses were history, along with the wasp-waist skirts and the 32A bra. A 36D, okay, a 38DD or a 40D, did not augur well in the heatwaves and fires of southern Europe. Rose’s mother and aunts had warned their daughters that they would widen or wizen, like generations of women before them and after them. How they had laughed, skiting off on their skates or their bikes into what seemed like an eternity of effortlessly lithe, size-eight summers.

When you are too hot to walk 10 minutes to hear Melody Gardot in the Nice Jazz Festival, or you find yourself looking at ads for The Big Bloomers Company in Good Housekeeping: Happy legs for summer, save 25% when you buy a pack of 3 Lexi anti chafing shorts. Be ready for dress season and holiday packing! ... it’s maybe time to embrace the staycation and buy yourself a cooling Brunch from the local Spar. You’re worth it.

Are you doing anything nice for the bank holiday? Mandie smiled. Rose decided not to mention the liposuction for gums procedure that was her next appointment, or that she was experiencing a hormone surge that would see her working through a lucky dip of HRT treatments that her GP had recommended while she waited to hear back from the NHS Menopause Clinic. Even the private place was booked out until 2024. They had the longest waiting lists in the UK. No wonder her Dublin relatives referred to Northern Ireland as East Berlin.

It was beauty salon etiquette that you held back on your messy divorce, your anorexic daughter, your stoner son, your dying mother, your ageing pet, your empty or not-empty-enough nest, the qualified joy of attending your stepdaughter’s wedding, vaginal atrophy, and any other areas of life that couldn’t be tweezered, trimmed and transformed in a timely and lighthearted manner.

This arrangement suited clients and practitioners. What good would come of spilling your guts in Have You Seen Her? Fake it till you make it. You came here to paper over the cracks, not to explore them. The drilling-down into the Victorian sewers to improve infrastructure could be heard on the hot streets; traffic worsened because South Parade was closed for filming. Toni closed the door with relief, Christ tonight, it would do yer head in. And they’ve bollards everywhere. No parking. Oh my days.

No magazines since Covid, but Rose didn’t miss the tittle-tattle of the glossy celebrity titles: a busty display here, an illicit affair there (wasn’t that the point?)

Rose knew her audience well enough and vice versa, so she and Mandie swapped some trivia about their respective families. They moved to one of the I’m a Barbie Girl in a Barbie World rooms for Rose’s toes to be done. The heated bed was adjusted and Rose closed her eyes and listened to the Healing Sounds Spa Music until Mandie returned with her box of tricks. It was worth coming in just for these few moments of contrived but comforting quietude.

She remembered her old colleague, always groomed and lip-glossed, especially when she was falling apart, who used to say: a woman who looks after herself gets looked after. It was validating to keep these rituals with yourself, the seasons and the professionals.

You couldn’t change your birth cert or reverse the chemical castration of menopause, but you could lie back and laugh with Mandie about your nouveau riche neighbour’s gardener. The slogan Trim Yer Bush! was gamely emblazoned across the side of his van. More laughter over the Faux Red Robin Leaf Expandable Trellis (Homebase label still attached) he had affixed to the fence only yesterday. Better nouveau riche than no riche at all, and, sure won’t it give you all a bit more privacy. I’d take that plastic trellis over my neighbour’s flippin’ trampoline!

The French polish is great on the toes, they agreed. Clean, fresh, summery, goes with everything. I’ll leave you to relax for a bit and then we’ll do the top coat. No magazines since Covid, but Rose didn’t miss the tittle-tattle of the glossy celebrity titles: a busty display here, an illicit affair there (wasn’t that the point?). Online content creators had helped too in the slow fade of waiting room magazines. They might resurface like vinyl, eventually.

She had been grateful recently to the lady of a certain age at the till in M & in Letterkenny for flagging up the cost of a shiny, happy Menopause Journal. It’s €9, she said, taking it off the conveyor belt and smiling conspiratorially at her.

Rose knew how to leave a party. She had always been better at endings than beginnings. It felt so freeing

Rose watched her toes dry and enjoyed the soothing music. Her phone on silent and in her bag, a threat to the perfectly polished nails, it would stay there, and with it the group chats she had muted, the group chats she wanted to leave, the group chats she could never leave. She was out of reach for a while. And that was enough.

She had cut her HRT patch in two, diagonally, as her GP advised. It had served her well, through those peri-menopausal white nights, but recently her breasts felt so engorged she thought she might lactate. Or have mastitis. Or worse. There had been a referral to the Breast Surgery Clinic. She had the bloated mock-pregnant belly that seemed to arrive like a passion-killer every evening. Her sleep was fine again though.

Like so many women of her vintage, The Change was presenting not as one cataclysmic event, but as a series of mercurial, nuanced changes. Here too was another part-time job, or at the very least a side hustle that you couldn’t walk away from.

After a recent gathering of girlfriends, some misguided soul had fired up one of those terrifying offshoots of a group chat: Menopause Support Group. It fell to Rose to knock it on the head. Jesus, can you imagine? The most annoying contributor would be the inevitable I’ve still got my periods menopause denier. There’s always one, shaming the rest of us for being spent hens already.

There would be endless posts about UTIs, post-menopausal bleeding, hysterectomy, womb ablations, vaginal dryness and the usual pecking-order stuff about who lost the most or least blood. Rose would say something snarky, sooner rather than later, and a subgroup of supremely supportive but affronted ladies would sprout.

When their Motherland group chat had run its course (les enfants terrible had all graduated with firsts, or so it said on the chat), Rose had put it out of its misery by taking aim at the most morose mum: one little comment about positive vibes did the trick. Our Lady of Sorrow’s default position was to Brexit, and she duly obliged.

And just like that, a woman as spiteful as a Rosamond Vincy or a May Welland; a woman who had been smiling daggers at her friends for school-gate-years, drinking all their gin and eating all their cake, slabbering about them all to anyone who would listen, was gone, and with her, a group chat that had served its time.

The other simpering dames would prolong the death throes for a while – texting in ways to woo back the unhappy bolter. The most sanctimonious mum said she had left a plant and card on the bolter’s doorstep. A flurry of auction-style bids for best girlfriend flooded in. Rose saw her chance. In one great bound, she was free. She typed her last words into the defunct chat: If I leave the chat, will I get a plant and a card too?

Rose knew how to leave a party. She had always been better at endings than beginnings. It felt so freeing; like boxing up the last blocks of Lego or Hot Wheels Cars, or giving away your beautiful, tiny, Don Racine wedding dress, vintage Irish lace train, and tiara, to someone you didn’t even like.

She slipped on her flip-flops, thanked the three sisters for starting her summer officially with the first file and polish of the silly season, and floated out on to the Ormeau.

She might just see Pierce Brosnan or Hugh Grant having a coffee outside General Merchants or Indie Fude.

They might just see her.

Sandra Kavanagh is a teacher and freelance writer based in Belfast

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