Bron drove home slowly, not really wanting to arrive. She had so enjoyed getting everyone ready for the wedding, especially Elsa. She really had felt like a fairy godmother cutting her hair and putting her make-up on, and even helping with that lovely dress. The end result was fantastic. The fringe had made Elsa look wonderfully waif-like. That, and the make-up, had made a woman who was pleasant and attractive into one who was almost stunning. And she was leaving all that girly fun behind.
There would be a row or possibly a sulk. Roger was a better sulker than he was a fast bowler, or whatever his specialty was, and a row would be almost preferable, except it would end in tears, her tears, as it had when she had left that morning.
The trouble was, he hated her working at weekends, and weekends were when she could do freelance work, in particular for weddings. He hated her doing freelance work too. He liked her to work regular hours, at the local salon, so she could be at home when he needed her to be. It was fair enough, she realised. Most women would grumble if their husbands worked all week and then freelanced at the weekends, but as Roger played so much cricket, Bron felt she might as well be working. Except that he wanted her to watch him play, and it bored her stupid.
And she hated her day job. She didn't get on with the owner of the salon, which meant she did more hairwashing and less cutting and styling than by rights she should have done. And although she'd told Roger this, explained why she wanted to leave and try her luck as a mobile hairdresser, he just said she should learn to stand up for herself. People often told other people to stand up for themselves, Bron reflected, although they'd be horrified if they stood up to the person telling them to do just that.
Now she pulled her shoulders back as she locked the car and checked her watch. It was four o'clock. She should have a couple of hours before he was home and perhaps, if he'd done really well, he might have forgiven her for not being there to watch him play. She would have to wash his whites, but that was nothing new.
There was a note on the kitchen table that was still covered with the remains of his cooked breakfast: You were on the tea rota. You owe Edna a haircut.
Bron sighed. It wasn't that she particularly minded doing Edna's hair for nothing, it just seemed rather heavy payment for standing in for her tea duty. Unlike Bron, Edna lived for cricket. Even without the need to make sandwiches and bake cakes she would have been there, watching the chaps, clapping at the right time, knowing what the score was.
As Bron collected the dishes and put them in the dishwasher she wondered how she could have not realised that getting involved with Roger meant giving up her weekends to cricket. He'd asked her to go and watch him on their second date, and he'd looked so utterly wonderful in his whites that she had fallen in love with him – or maybe, in hindsight, it was just in lust. Either way they had both faded into habit and convenience now.
As she had got into her white Rolls-Royce to go to the church, Ashlyn had added her pleas to her mother's and begged Elsa to stay on for the wedding. Sarah had to be there anyway, Elsa too, now she'd been promoted from dressmaker to bridesmaid; it seemed a shame, Ashlyn had said, for her to be left out. 'Besides, my lip-gloss may need reapplying after a few glasses of fizz.’
Bron had told Ashlyn she was perfectly capable of reapplying her own lip-gloss and sadly waved the bridal car away.
Bron would have much preferred to stay at the wedding. She had worked very hard to help everyone look beautiful and she got on well with Sarah and Elsa, although she hadn't known them long. Bron had done the hair for a couple of weddings organised by Sarah, and because Bron was reliable, Sarah said she would always encourage brides who didn't have a favourite hairdresser to use her.
But could she be reliable when her freelance work caused such trouble at home? She sighed, and thought back to a little incident that had happened just as she was leaving. She had put her last box into her car and was about to close the boot and go home when a large, yellow Labrador bounded up to her.
‘Major!' a male voice had said. 'Here!’
The voice appeared from behind the side of the house. It belonged to a tall man wearing a suit that didn't really fit him. There was a thinner, longer dog of indefinable breed close to the man's heel. The yellow dog bounced away from Bron like a ball ricocheting off a wall and landed by the man.
‘He didn't frighten you, did he?' he asked as he came within earshot.
‘Oh no,' said Bron, glad of the diversion. She didn't want to go home; any little delay was welcome. 'He's lovely. Hello, Major.' As the dog was by her side again and she was rubbing his chest, it seemed only polite to use his name.
'Ashlyn wanted him to come to the wedding and wear a blue bow round his neck,' the man explained. 'But everyone agreed it would be hopeless unless he was well and truly worn out first. I've been walking him since dawn, more or less. I'm the gardener,' he explained. 'I'm now going to find the blue bow and be ready to greet the wedding party when they come out of church so he can be in the photos.'
‘Lovely!' said Bron.
‘Aren't you going to the wedding?' the man went on. `No, I'm just the hairdresser.'
‘I can't believe Vanessa – Mrs Lennox-Featherstone – didn't invite you.'
‘Yes she did, but, sadly, I can't come. I must get home.' The man had smiled. 'Shame.’
Bron had thought it was a shame too.
Roger came home at about ten, when his favourite shepherd's pie looked less golden-brown and more dried-up. Bron had made it as a peace offering although her tired bones would have much preferred to slump in front of the television with a glass of wine and a bowl of pasta. She'd had to get up incredibly early to be with Ashlyn on time. 'Hi, darling! How did it go?' she asked, trying to show some enthusiasm.
‘Great! We won. You should have been there.' He looked at her under his eyebrows, the double meaning clear. 'Don't bother to dirty a plate, I'll eat it out of the dish. I'm starving. Mm. This is great!’
No kiss for her then, but he'd stopped greeting her affectionately a long time ago.
Pleased, though, that she'd got this right at least, Bron pulled out a chair and sat down to watch him eat. He didn't seem to want to talk and, as she was tired too, neither did she. When he'd finally finished, he threw his fork down and said, 'We're going to Mum and Dad's for lunch tomorrow, did I tell you? I think Mum wants her hair doing.’
As Sunday lunch with his parents was an almost weekly ritual she hadn't unpacked her car. She didn't mind doing Roger's mother's hair, but she did wonder if Roger, an accountant, would have spent every weekend doing someone's books for free.
She had a bath and went to bed. Why was it that Roger was so free with her services as a hairdresser, but when she wanted to work for herself, to actually get paid, he didn't like it? Somehow along the way the balance of their relationship had gone wrong. They were no longer equal partners.
Lying as near to the edge of the bed as she could get without actually falling off, she realised that they never had been, really. She and Roger had moved in together too early in their relationship; mostly, she realised, because her parents had been moving to Spain and she had nowhere else to live. She'd never lived on her own or with girlfriends – getting together with Roger seemed a natural progression.
Now she was a bit stuck. It was Roger's house and although she had some savings, she would find it hard financially to live on her own. Hairdressers' wages were not good unless you worked at a top city salon. She couldn't even apply for jobs in somewhere like London or Birmingham without a lot of lying, and then supposing they didn't want her?
No, it was probably better to hope this was just a phase they were going through and to try to work on the relationship – at least until she had a chunk of money behind her. Running-away money, people called it.
To her huge relief, Roger didn't reach for her when he finally came to bed. She wouldn't have refused him, she didn't hate him, but his lovemaking didn't do for her what it had in the beginning. He still pressed the same buttons, went through the same routine, but for her it had stopped working. Once he had turned her insides to melted chocolate just by looking at her, now his kneecaps tended to bang into her shins in a way that not even the most dedicated masochist would appreciate. She sighed and eventually went to sleep herself.
The following morning, when she had put stain remover on all the patches of grass on Roger's whites before putting them to soak, and was checking that she had Roger's mother's favourite semi-permanent hair dye in her kit, her mobile rang. It was Elsa.
After the 'Hi! How are yours Elsa said, 'They were thrilled with how it all went, and I totally love my hair! I can't stop running my fingers through it. Ashlyn's mother told me what a sweet girl you were and what a shame you couldn't come to the wedding. It was good you managed to fit in a quick comb-out for her, when she wasn't on the list.'
‘I'm so glad it was all a success.'
‘But I must give you back your clips that you used to keep the headdress on with.'
‘Oh, you don't need to worry about that!’
`No, I want to.'
‘Well, if you'd like to pop over this evening, I'd love to hear all the details.' Bron didn't often invite her friends over – she could never quite forget it was Roger's house -but she felt it was OK to do so sometimes. Roger surely wouldn't object to Elsa – she was young and pretty and didn't laugh too loudly or anything likely to make him wince. And she did want to hear about the wedding. She gave Elsa the details and then told Roger.
‘A friend of mine is coming over for a drink this evening.'
‘Oh? One of your hairdresser friends? You want to discuss the latest edition of Frizz, or whatever? Well, that's OK as long as I can watch that film.’
`We'll go in the conservatory, or the kitchen,' said Bron, hoping Roger wouldn't be rude to Elsa. He could be quite sarcastic.
She waited on the doorstep for him, so she could lock up. 'Are you wearing that?' Roger asked when he came out to the car.
‘Apparently not,' said Bron and went back into the house to change out of her clean jeans and into a skirt that had a mark on it, but would be more in keeping with Roger's idea of Sunday clothes.
At least doing Roger's mother's hair took them both away from the tedium of what passed for entertainment in that house. Roger and his father liked to watch sport on Sunday afternoons. This was punctuated by Roger's father commenting on items in the paper. Bron almost always disagreed with his opinions, which weren't so much right wing as fascist, but had learnt to say nothing after the time she had suggested politely that England would really suffer if every immigrant who had arrived since the War was repatriated. The discussion turned into an argument and only just stopped short of a row.
Early on, Pat, Roger's mother, had retired to the kitchen to do the washing up. At the time, all fired up with the injustices of the world, Bron had longed to demand that the men of the family cleared up. A couple of months later she discovered that Roger's father's contribution to Sunday lunch was opening and pouring a bottle of wine.
She liked Pat and felt a loyalty to her. Pat did whatever her husband Vince wanted without argument, probably because argument was futile. In spite of this doormat imitation, when she was on her own Pat was fun in a gentle way and the two women got on well.
Really, Bron should have realised Roger wasn't a long term prospect the moment she met his dad, but she had still been blinded by love and thought the similarity between father and son was only superficial. Now, she and his mother had got into a routine. After the men had gone off to the sitting room, they cleared the table, stacked the dishwasher and put the tins into soak. Then they went up to the bedroom for the hair appointment.
‘Tell me about the wedding,' said Pat when Bron had finished pouring jugs of water over her head at the en-suite sink and was gently towel-drying her hair. 'I love hearing about all the clothes and things.'
‘It was lovely. A bit of a panic at the last minute though, because the chief bridesmaid backed out.' Bron squeezed a dollop of serum into the palm of her hand and then pulled it through Pat's wet curls.
‘Really? How rude!'
‘I know! And the bride and her mother insisted that Elsa, the girl who made the dresses, stand in for her. I had to do her hair. I cut it and gave her a fringe. It looked wonderful! I did the bride's mother's too, only that was just a quick comb-through and make-up, really.' She looked at her client and friend in the mirror, wondering if it was time for a restyle. She took out her scissors. Their familiarity in her hand was comforting and restorative.
Pat wasn't so interested in her hair as in the wedding. 'So tell me what everyone wore. And was the bridegroom handsome?'
‘I didn't see the bridegroom, but the dresses were heaven!’
There was a short pause and then Pat said, 'Don't worry, dear, I'm sure Roger will get round to asking you to marry him eventually. Took his dad five years.’
Bron exhaled quietly and snipped a little bit off the back of Pat's hair. Was that what she wanted, really? If she and Roger were married, would she feel more secure, confident, and less put upon? It was hard to say. She might do, but she wasn't in love with him any more, she knew that. But did it matter? Wasn't being 'in love' only a matter of hormones anyway? Wasn't it some chemical that wore off after a while? Maybe it would be OK to be married to someone familiar but not exciting. Excitement was probably very over-rated.