Charm School Read online

  ‘There! Splendid! Now we’ll divide your face into four separate sections, and try a different cleanser on each, to see which comes out best.’ She looked around. ‘Now who would like to be first to show us their gentle cleansing technique?’

  Araminta’s sobs quietened as Pearl stepped forward eagerly. ‘Oh, please! Can I have a go with that green glop?’

  Mrs Opalene threw up her hands. ‘That green glop! That green glop!’ Lifting the tiny plastic tub of cream at which Pearl had been pointing, she rebuked her errant pupil. ‘Pearl, dear, this is Glow Girl’s phytolyastil V.I.A. Complex tissue peptide VHJ with hygragscopic elements and natural ceramides, and a syntropic blend of unique Derma Bio Tropocollagen. You may not simply call it “glop”.’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Pearl, chastened.

  Toby nudged Bonny. ‘Looks like glop to me.’

  ‘And me.’

  ‘Stroke it on gently, dear,’ Mrs Opalene was telling Pearl. ‘Don’t scrape away at Araminta’s precious face. And, as with all our little skin helpers, dears, what must we always remember?’

  She waved her hands like a conductor as all of them chorused dutifully.

  ‘Smeary is dreary, Mrs Opalene.’

  ‘Smeary is dreary!’ Bonny flipped off the sound. ‘Phytolyastil!’ she muttered scornfully. ‘Tissue peptides! It’s just pretend science, so they can charge the earth for every teaspoon. But Pearl’s quite right. All it is really is glop. And if everyone suddenly stopped feeling halfway to ugly, all those glop factories would close overnight.’

  ‘Someone would lose an awful lot of money if that happened.’

  ‘But everyone else would keep a lot more.’

  ‘The factory owners ought to pay Mrs Opalene to run this Charm School,’ Toby said. ‘In come these perfectly normal girls, and only one of them can end up winning the glistering tiara. So all the rest go home feeling like rubbish, and buy more glop.’

  ‘And clothes.’

  ‘And jewellery.’

  ‘And shoes.’

  ‘And perfume.’

  ‘And nail stuff.’

  ‘And hair stuff.’

  ‘And beauty books and magazines.’ She stared at Toby, horrified. ‘That’s what it’s all for, really, isn’t it? To make them buy more stuff. On and on and on. And, if they’re not buying fast enough, you simply tell them that swimsuits look different this year.’

  ‘Or handbags have to be made out of raffia.’

  ‘Or pink is yesterday’s colour.’

  ‘It’s like having an exam every day. And every now and then you get to have a big exam, like this. One of them gets to come top and be the Supreme Queen.’

  ‘And all the rest go home feeling ugly, and think they ought to try harder. So they waste even more of their time shopping, and even more of their money on stuff to try to look nicer.’

  ‘And they can’t even cheer themselves up by having two slices of pizza. They have to go round half-starved in case they put on a quarter of an ounce.’

  ‘And think their legs have turned into pillars in a multi-storey car park.’ She turned to Toby. ‘It’s very clever, really, isn’t it? Too clever …’

  Toby eyed her curiously. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just what I say. It’s too clever. Hard to believe it’s all a sort of accident.’

  ‘You don’t think someone planned it?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Who? Some evil band of fat glop factory owners, sailing off on luxury holidays with all the loot they’ve made?’

  ‘Laughing up their sleeves at all the silly people they’ve fooled into buying yet another set of clothes.’

  ‘Because sleeves are much puffier this year.’

  ‘Or skirts are much straighter.’ She narrowed her eyes suspiciously. ‘You know, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they owned all the glossy magazines as well. Wouldn’t that be the cleverest thing? And wouldn’t it be a cheek? First, you rip everyone off by selling them forty pages of “fashion news”. And then you sit back and watch them trailing round the shops like sheep, ripping themselves off by buying stuff they’d never have thought of, without you.’

  ‘No wonder they’re laughing.’

  Bonny turned to stare through the glass. ‘Do you suppose that Mrs Opalene is in on it?’

  ‘Mrs Opalene? In the pay of the glop men? Do you really think so?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Together they watched Mrs Opalene. As usual, she was all excited about something. This time it appeared to be yet another of the pretty tubes and pots and bottles spread on the table top at her side.

  Bonny flicked up the sound.

  ‘… with lanoline filtrate and a specially selected cationic derivative …’

  Bonny flicked the sound down again.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Toby said dubiously. ‘She’s never sounded like a fake to me. And she has such an honest face. I honestly think she believes it.’

  ‘Sincerely? All of it?’

  Now it was Toby’s turn to flick up the sound.

  ‘… with that super protein conditioning that does so much to adjust the P.H. balance and improve the texture of …’

  He flicked it down.

  ‘She wouldn’t have to be one of the gang,’ he said. ‘In fact, it probably works better for them if she truly believes everything she says.’

  ‘Then she can’t turn on them. Or spill the beans.’

  ‘She’ll just go round her whole life, spreading the word like a preacher.’

  ‘Smeary is dreary. You have to suffer to be beautiful. Yes.’ Bonny swivelled on the chair. ‘It’s about as clever a plan as you can get. You set it off with a few fancy photographs, and then sit back and watch people like Mrs Opalene rush in and keep it going.’

  ‘Like unpaid police officers herding everyone along in the right direction.’

  ‘Walk as if you were dancing!’ Bonny mimicked bitterly. ‘Smile nicely. Twirl neatly. Keep your knees together. And when she’s not around, there’s all those little beauty helpers of hers to keep it going.’ Again, she was mimicking. ‘You’re not going to eat both those slices of pizza, are you? Do you realize it’s fried? You don’t look as if you fell to earth from Planet Fashion.’

  ‘They can be a whole lot worse than that,’ said Toby. ‘At least the police have rest days. This lot never stop going on at one another, keeping themselves up to scratch.’ He flicked on the microphones in the corners of the room, where Mrs Opalene’s girls were scattering to get themselves ready for the Curls and Purls Show.

  Both of them listened.

  ‘I think you should get your hair highlighted again,’ Serena was telling Cindy-Lou. ‘It’s beginning to look just that tiny bit mousy.’

  ‘Perhaps the pink frock suits your colouring better,’ Amethyst was suggesting to Angelica.

  ‘Are those split ends in your hair?’ Sarajane was asking Esmeralda. ‘Maybe it’s time for a trim.’

  ‘Your hem’s just the tiniest bit uneven,’ Lulu was warning Suki. ‘Though it hardly shows at all from the front.’

  Bonny shook her head. ‘I don’t know how they can stand it. It’s like listening to dripping taps.’

  They eavesdropped some more.

  ‘Fat people should never, ever tuck in their blouses,’ Cristalle was pontificating firmly. ‘It makes them look awful. Just awful.’

  ‘You should always smile in a mirror to check your teeth after eating spinach,’ Pearl was telling Araminta.

  ‘You should never wear aubergine eye shadow with a pink top,’ Cindy-Lou was explaining to Cooki. ‘The colours simply shriek at one another.’

  ‘Always rest your weight on your back leg, and point the other towards the camera,’ Pearl was informing Sarajane.

  ‘So many rules,’ Toby said wonderingly. ‘“You must always …”, “You should never …”.’

  ‘The magazines are full of rules,’ Bonny told him. ‘Well, not even rules, really. Orders. Don’t wear this with that! Rub
this in your face before you paint that on! Walk like this! Sit like that!’

  ‘It was like that in my nursery school,’ Toby remembered. ‘Hang up your coat nicely! Put your wellies in the corner! Wash your hands before snack-time!’

  ‘But you were four.’

  ‘If any magazine I bought kept giving me orders,’ Toby said, ‘I’d chuck it in the nearest bin.’

  ‘But they just try a bit harder.’

  They watched Serena struggling into her outfit.

  ‘They don’t even buy clothes that fit them,’ Toby observed ruefully. ‘They force their bodies into fitting the clothes.’ He pointed through the glass. ‘Look at her face. She’s astonished that she’s managed to fasten that waistband.’

  ‘No, she’s not,’ Bonny corrected him. ‘She’s just striking a pose. Esmeralda’s probably just told her “amazed” is her best look and makes her eyes look big and round.’

  Toby turned away in disgust, but Bonny couldn’t help carrying on watching.

  ‘They’re like caged birds,’ she said. ‘The door’s wide open, but instead of flying off, they spend their whole time making pretty Milly the Model poses on their perches, and fluffing up their feathers.’

  ‘Mrs Opalene’s been running this Charm School for years,’ Toby told Bonny. ‘Some of them must have broken out and got a life. Why haven’t this lot followed?’

  ‘Because they don’t see why the others left. When someone decides, “This is a waste of time,” and stomps off home to do something more interesting, all of them think, “Oh, she’s just a bad loser. She’s leaving because she knows she’ll never win.”’

  ‘Perhaps they wouldn’t be quite so happy to stay in their cages if you told them Mrs Opalene was part of a horrible plot to take their money and use up their lives.’

  ‘They’d never believe me,’ said Bonny. ‘They all think she’s wonderful – so kind and encouraging. Look how she didn’t even order me out after the fuss with the pizza, in case there’d be no lights or music for their precious show.’ Bonny pointed at radiant, shawl-swirling Araminta. ‘Besides,’ she added forlornly, ‘she’s already told them all that I’m just jealous.’

  Again it came, that pang of something precious, lost for ever. She turned to Toby for comfort. But, he, too, was staring wistfully out through the glass.

  ‘You’d think that, if you’d already managed to win that stupid glistering tiara of theirs at least once, you’d be able to stop bothering. But you take that lovely, raven-haired Sarajane. She was Miss Sweet Caroline ages ago. But still she seems to do nothing at all except worry about what she looks like.’

  He looked so mournful that Bonny couldn’t help remembering Cristalle’s arch look at lunch, and Sarajane’s blush. To try and cheer him she put her irritation with the girls aside and stuck up for Sarajane. ‘She probably tries to think about other things. But then I expect she goes out and sees a hundred posters of pretty girls with slim long legs. Or she switches on the television and sees advertisements of girls with perfect hair. Or she goes to the cinema and sees dozens of actresses with beautiful faces.’

  He made an impatient gesture. ‘Someone should tell her the photographs are all touched up. And models go round practically chained to their hairdressers. And most of the adverts for tights and swimsuits have the models’ legs stretched on computer, to look longer and slimmer.’

  Bonny shrugged. ‘I expect they’ve been told all that already. But just so long as somewhere in the world there’s one perfect person—’

  ‘One beautiful, hair-flicking Amethyst …’

  ‘—they’ll all just keep on trying.’ Bonny sighed. ‘But you are right. Somebody ought to try and rescue them.’

  ‘Not me,’ Toby said hastily. ‘I have to get back to the tea room before someone comes looking for me. And you should be getting on with sorting things out for their silly Curls and Purls show.’

  ‘I suppose it’s better than just sitting in here watching them. That’s really sad.’

  ‘Don’t feel too sorry for them. That’s what they like most, being looked at.’ He pulled the door open. ‘Feel sorry for their poor friends. Listening to people fussing about clothes and hair and how much weight they’ve put on is even more boring than being dragged around the shops watching someone look for clothes they don’t need.’

  Bonny grinned mischievously. ‘Maybe some girls go to all this trouble to look nice for you …’

  He waggled a finger at her. ‘Don’t kid yourself. I couldn’t give a bean. No, they’re doing it to impress one another, and make a heap more money for the glop men.’

  The glop men … As Toby hurried off, Bonny turned back to the glass. Could it be some great conspiracy? Like Toby, Bonny found it hard to believe that Mrs Opalene’s beaming, enthusiastic face masked some vile plan to steal people’s money by making them feel awful. After all, boys and men wasted time and money too. Look at the hours and hours her father spent slumped on the sofa watching eleven men – or was it twelve? – kicking some stupid ball up and down the pitch, then listening to even bigger idiots drivelling on about how they must be “over the moon”, or “totally gutted”. At least the girls could sing and dance, and knew how to wear their clothes properly. The boy next door spent all his money on new football stuff, and his team changed it time and again. He didn’t get to decide when to stop wearing it. The team manager decided for him. That was fashion too.

  Her head was spinning. She was almost glad when bossy Cristalle poked her great puffy-haired head around the door and said to her officiously, ‘Nearly time to start! Pass me that box, please.’

  Bonny looked behind her. There on the shelf was a box labelled ‘Number discs’. She handed it over. Cristalle disappeared, and Bonny turned up the microphones to hear what was happening.

  In the far corner, Mrs Opalene was putting the final touches to Lulu’s cowboy-sweetheart costume. Lulu was pouting at herself in the mirror.

  ‘Look at me! I look terrible.’

  ‘I think you look very nice, dear.’

  ‘No, I don’t! I’ve got bags under my eyes, and skin so dry it’s almost cracking.’

  Mrs Opalene tilted Lulu’s pretty gingham mob hat a tiny bit to the side. ‘Does that look better?’ She leaned over to inspect the pouting face in the mirror. ‘Have you been going round without a sun hat, dear? I hope you haven’t been forgetting the names of your dreaded Skin Enemies.’

  ‘No, Mrs Opalene.’

  ‘So you can tell me who they are?’

  Lulu’s answer came promptly enough. ‘Sun. And Misery.’

  ‘That’s right, dear. And who are your precious Skin Helpers?’

  ‘Sleep,’ Lulu said dutifully. ‘And Water. Lots of water.’ Her face fell. ‘I’ve forgotten the third one.’

  Mrs Opalene looked pained.

  ‘Oh, no, I haven’t!’ cried Lulu. ‘It’s Fresh Air!’

  ‘Splendid!’ declared Mrs Opalene. ‘With plenty of sleep and water and fresh air, our skin can’t go wrong!’

  Ignoring Lulu’s bad-tempered muttering – ‘Well, mine has!’ – Mrs Opalene sailed off to help Esmeralda with her ruffles. Bonny shook her head, mystified. Sleep. Water. Fresh Air. All not just cheap, but free. How could Mrs Opalene be part of some fiendish plot to take people’s money? Surely if that were true, then she’d be busy trying to persuade poor Lulu that what she needed was a costly pot of Glamour-Puss face cream, or an expensive tube of Skin-So-Soft. And now Bonny thought about it, even when Mrs Opalene had been going on earlier about face packs and elbow bleachers and stuff like that, she’d always saved her real enthusiasm for using up things like squeezed lemon halves, and old breakfast oatmeal.

  No money in those. Anyone trying to help the glop men get rich quick would definitely have had the sense to say that only Rich-Girl-Bio-Face-Soothe-With-Added-Lano-Smarm-And-Derma-Tested-Gloss-Glaze (at twenty pounds a tub) would do the trick on Lulu’s face.

  And Mrs Opalene hadn’t.

  In fact, she’d said
as many sensible as silly things. Keep off the fried foods. Eat fresh fruit and vegetables. Drink plain old water, not those sugary fizzy drinks. It might have been Bonny’s mother talking. Toby was right. She must believe it all. The only problem was that she took it all so seriously. And so did they. It had become the only thing that mattered. It was the most important thing in their lives. Somehow, with all this fussing, they had forgotten how very rich and big and deep living could be. When Bonny thought about it, she realized that, all that morning, she’d never once heard any one of them turn to another and say, ‘I missed you at swim club’ (Wouldn’t that muss up their hair!) or ‘Are you coming camping this weekend?’ (What scruffs they’d end up looking!) or even ‘Meet you in the library on Saturday morning?’ (Oh, no. They’d miss a whole four hours down the shops!)

  No, Bonny thought glumly, watching them twirling and spinning and practising their prettiest faces. They were doomed. They had become like all those prissy milksops in the poems, walking in beauty but not going anywhere.

  It was her job to save them, that was obvious.

  But how? She couldn’t go and talk to them because she was too busy with the sound and the lighting. And even those who weren’t warming up were still frantically putting the last special touches to their make-up or their hair or their fancy costumes. They hadn’t time to listen. And bossy Cristalle was already striding around with the box that she’d taken from Bonny’s room.

  ‘Time to choose places!’

  One by one, each of them shut her eyes (carefully, so as not to smudge her make-up), whispered her own particular lucky chant, and picked out a coloured disc stamped with a number.

  ‘Eight!’ Cooki chortled. ‘It’s my lucky number!’

  Lulu inspected her own disc. ‘Five.’ She groaned. ‘Right in the middle. Who’s going to remember anything you do if you’re right in the middle?’

  ‘One!’ Serena’s eyes shone with delight, though she said in pretend horror, ‘Oh, it’s awful going first. It’s just horrible! Horrible!’

  Cindy-Lou picked her number. ‘Goody! I’m last! Everyone remembers the last one.’