Women glow

I WAS 14. It was a dank day in October, 1977, the kind when you walk under trees and it sounds like it’s raining and you wait for the drip which lands on your head and feels so cold it seems to spread across your scalp underneath your hair.

I’d caught the 14 bus into town with my friend Lynne who had always been fatter than me in primary but was now much thinner, with long auburn hair - definitely NOT ginger -  and amazing cheek bones. A little bit of me still thought of her as my fat ginger friend in the blue duffle coat but she was in the past with my Donald and Mickey comics and John Noakes. 

In town we met Sally and Tae – short for Tracey – and headed to Debenhams as it was the nearest shop to the bus station.

“Let’s go and try the hats on,” Tae suggested. Dutifully, we trudged up the stairs to the first floor. No-one thought to argue. Tae was the 'fun one' who had ideas. 

“That really suits you,” said Sally, as Tae grabbed a red beret from under the reaching hand of a woman who looked like she could afford the hats in Debenhams. I was feeling self-conscious. We’d been doing this sort of thing a lot, things which felt a little bit bad around the edges. I was sure we'd be asked to leave. I was mortified already...

I knew we weren’t really being bad, but I could imagine what my mum would think if she saw us, and since when did 14-year-olds have the kind of money needed for department store millinery?

Tae was in a feathered number now, lilac and gauzy. We were her audience. “Yes vicar, she does look lovely doesn’t she? Her father and I are very proud…and what do you think of my hat?”

The woman who’d been reaching for the red beret gave us a hard stare, Paddington-like. Oh to be back to the days when things had been so simple, listening to a teacher reading a Paddington book, when Lynne had still been fat and we could go out and play football and French skipping without having to worry about Rimmel eye shadow and wearing the right shoes.

“Come on, let’s go and look at the make-up,” I said. 

Tae plonked the hat back on its plastic head and we headed for the stairs.

Down by the beauty counter I realised how hot I was. Tweed jackets and boots were fine for dark, damp outdoors, but Debenhams wasn’t stinting on the heating bills.

“God, I’m boiling,” I announced, to no-one in particular. “It’s so hot in here, I’m sweating.”

“My dear,” came an imperious voice, from somewhere behind and below the make-up counter. A blue rinse appeared atop an orange face, all cloying scent and arched eyebrows. 

I blushed as she fixed her mascara'd eyes on sweaty me. From between coral-pink lips dripped her words of wisdom.

“Horses sweat, men perspire, but women glow.” 

She then bent back down to whatever drawer she’d been rummaging through a second or two earlier.

I'm 55 now, and whenever I glow (often) I hear that woman’s voice as clearly as I did back then.  And I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said, in an imperious voice: “My dear, horses sweat, men perspire, but women glow.”