Skin Deep by Susanna Clayson

“Good morning. My name is Lauren and I’m your beauty therapist for today. You are booked for the aromatherapy rejuvenating marine pedicure? Is that right?”

She looks barely old enough to be at secondary school and speaks in that irritating, sing-song, saccharine style of the air hostess or waitress who has repeated sentences so often they no longer have meaning. How absurd that this young girl has the capacity to intimidate me. Perhaps it’s more about how she makes me feel, - old.

“Has modam tried any products for the more mature skin?” It’s effortless, the way the likes of Lauren can make me feel like a stooped, wrinkled crone

The problem is the way I feel inside is at odds with harsh reality – as cringingly illustrated by a recent shopping trip. On this particular morning, I was feeling tired after hours searching for a dress for a party on Saturday and all I had to show for it were a pair of sore feet and an aching back. I was meeting a friend for a coffee and snack but arrived in need of something more restorative. So I asked the young man who showed me to a table if they served alcohol. He turned towards me and asked

“‘Are you eighteen madam?” Absurdly, given the way my aches and pains had made me hobble in like a pensioner awaiting a hip replacement, I giggled in a simpering coquettish way and said

“Sadly, yes but thank you for asking”. He looked puzzled then flustered and scurried away. It was only when he had gone and I was sitting enjoying a fleeting moment of elation at how well preserved I must look, when it dawned on me that I had misheard and he had actually asked ‘ Are you eating madam?’ That brought me down to earth with a thud. Studying my reflection in the window, I was mortified to realise just how impossible it could be to think I was under eighteen and consequently what a sad old cow I must have looked to the young man who had greeted me.

I can be eighteen again. It’s why I subject myself to regular humiliation at the hands of Lauren because painted toenails always make me smile inside. They trigger memories of getting ready to go out. Those teenage parties when the excitement and fun was in the anticipation; hours spent planning what to wear, achieving just the right look with hair and make-up. The event itself was almost always a disappointment.

Just the whiff of acetone and I am sitting in a steamy bathroom, wet hair wrapped in a towel turban, another towel wound tightly round my body and kept in place by tucking a corner down my cleavage – or where I hoped I might have a cleavage some day. The coarse texture of the fabric etches into my flesh where it is pulled taut. Towels were not created for comfort in our house, they were utility, rather than luxury items. Old and threadbare with very little absorbency, they scratched you dry. We never threw anything away in those days. On the rare occasions Mum decided there was no life left in a towel, she would say ‘It’s too ripe now’ and tear it into smaller pieces to go into the rags box, reborn as a duster or floor cloth.

I can still see the Spartan, uncompromising décor of the bathroom. No soft flickering light from scented candles, no warm, soft, fluffy towels or fragrant toiletries. Instead there’s crazed enamel, tarnished pipe-work and the assorted clutter of squeezed toothpaste tubes, hair grips, aerosol cans, make-up and razor blades. Rusty turquoise stains and crusty calcium deposits scar the bath and basin, the legacy of decades of dripping taps. No curtain at the window, which has frosted glass, cracked across one corner and a speckling of black mould on the painted frame below each pane. The smell is a mixture of coal tar soap, Harpic and an underlying mustiness that hints at damp and rot hidden behind peeling paintwork or the bath panels. The harsh, light from the bare neon tube humming above me gives everything a hard, cold, bleached clarity.

I am perched on the loo seat, feet on the rim of the bath painting my toes a deep mauve shade called ‘Perfect Plum’ from Biba. I have the matching lipstick which makes me look like I’ve got angina or have joined the ranks of the un-dead. The lid of the bottle has been left off for too long and the polish has become rather thick and sticky. This, combined with the clumsy, rushed way it is applied, produces a fairly hideous result but it doesn’t really matter since my feet will be encased all evening in my new purple suede boots that lace up the front and are perfect with my tweed midi skirt and cheesecloth smock. I look like Ann of Green Gables in her ‘Goth’ phase.

At eighteen nail varnish made me feel like the woman I wanted to be, rather than the gawky teenager I saw in the mirror – sexy – experienced – confident - adult. Funny really how as an adolescent, the painted toenails were part of the costume I needed to wear to become the person I thought I wanted to be. Yet now, after three or four decades of adult life, painted toenails say something about the person under the costume. Those layers we acquire that conceal our true nature and help us to fit into the life our choices have created for us. Underneath the coating of convention, responsibility and respectability that go with marriage, children and work, there is a woman who takes care of herself right to the tips of her toes and wants to be noticed and admired and discovered. It says don’t judge a book by its cover. It is an affirmation of identity. It says ‘see me as a woman, not an occupation.’