Keeping Up Appearances

Keeping Up Appearances
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday September 19, 2015

If I called it a massage parlour you might get the wrong idea. It was a parlour, of sorts, but not the seedy kind. It did offer massage, but only the G-rated variety, practiced in the hurly-burly of a busy shopping centre.

“You wait here please,” said the young man behind the counter. He was a dainty fellow with a squeaky voice wearing a t-shirt featuring a fist and the words ‘No More Mr Nice Guy.’

He ran a slender manicured finger down one column of the bookings diary before consulting a small woman in an apron: “She wants to cash in a gift voucher for a foot massage. Can we fit her in?”

I glanced around the shop. In an attempt to create what interior designers call ambience, the walls and ceiling had been painted a sepulchral black. With its vast doorway, the shop looked more like a cave. A single electric globe, hanging by a naked cord, struggled to emulate daylight. Someone with a sense of humour had sectioned off the rear of the shop with spangled-gold curtains. The sounds of slapping and pummelling threatened to drown out the pan flute soundtrack drifting from hidden speakers.

Along one wall squatted several enormous black recliners, their occupants exposed to the stream of foot traffic in the arcade. In one chair, a bearded man with his trousers rolled up to his knees read a fishing magazine while a young masseuse kneaded his hairy calves. He let out a loud moan as the masseuse rammed her knuckles into his shins. I looked away, half amused, half horrified, an unwilling voyeur.

Slumped in another chair was a grand dame in a pink suit. She was asleep: glasses askew on the bridge of her nose, her slackened mouth hanging open. A pearl the size of a Malteser sat in the hollow at her throat. Her gnarled hands were folded in her lap, several fingers stacked with diamonds. At her feet, a male masseuse was tweaking her toes. Outside, shoppers gawped at this strange window exhibit. A husband pushing a laden trolley elbowed his wife to check out the sleeping matron as they passed. They snickered.

The slender shop-boy waved me towards the one empty recliner. As I parked my own dainty buttocks, the creaks and groan of the faux-leather chair must have roused the lady next door. She looked around self-consciously before acknowledging me. I gave her an introductory smile.

“You’re in for a treat,” she said, her voice croaky with sleep.

“I hope so,” I replied. “But I can’t help feeling it’s a bit undignified!” I motioned towards a pair of shoppers inspecting us.

“Ignore them,” she murmured before closing her eyes once more as the masseuse began rubbing her ankles.

That got me thinking. A generation ago, it would’ve been unthinkable to have a massage performed in the doorway of a shop front. Maintenance, as mum called it, was secret women’s business.

As a child, my mother’s beauty regime was one of life’s great mysteries, usually carried out on a Saturday morning behind a closed bathroom door. Once a month she outsourced her treatments and went to the ‘salon,’ a place that looked more penitentiary than pamper-house. The windows carried iron grilles and were shielded on the inside with venetian blinds. An imposing front door, painted cherry red, was protected by thick metal screen, through which children were not welcome. I rode my bike listlessly up and down the footpath for what seemed liked hours. Finally, Mum would emerge from a side exit, her face florid and shiny.

“What were you doing in there? Why is your face red?” I’d ask. But her answer was always the same:

“Never you mind.”

Now I walk through shopping centres and feel uncomfortable. I try not to stare at the women having their faces painted mid-thoroughfare. I hold my breath against the fumes wafting from nail bars where clients are the window display. Even more confronting is the sight of a beautician, centre aisle, threading a client’s eyebrows with a long white string gripped between her teeth. Call me old-fashioned but is nothing private anymore?

Back in the shop’s recliner, my foot massage was coming to an end. It might have been relaxing if not for the heavy breathing (right) and the groans (left). With eyes wide shut, I prayed no-one I knew was tittering at me through the glass. And then with one final flourish, my masseuse dug his thumbs into my heels and I let out an involuntary squeal. A dozen shoppers turned to stare. Mortified, I clapped my hand to my mouth and flushed scarlet.

“Gotcha!” said my bearded neighbour with a snort.

“Sorry,” I whimpered. “Is that what they call a happy ending?!”