Kim Thurrock proved more helpful. So immersed had she become in the lifestyle of Brotherton Hall that she seemed to know everything that went on there. Kim, whom Mrs Pargeter found on her back in the gym pushing up impossible-looking weights with her feet, said she thought she’d seen Lindy going through to the Dead Sea Mud Bath area.
So Mrs Pargeter went down to the Brotherton Hall basement, but was denied entrance by an officious teenager with the obligatory perfect body. ‘Only guests who’ve actually booked baths are allowed through,’ she announced in less than perfect vowels.
There was nothing else for it. Mrs Pargeter returned to Reception and booked herself a Dead Sea Mud Bath for ten o’clock.
Beneath Brotherton Hall was a considerable network of cellars. Part of this had been developed into a well- appointed basement area, which had been through many incarnations since the building’s consecration to the religion of health.
Following the passing fads of fitness regimes, it had housed Steam Baths, Ice Baths, Traditional Turkish Baths, Hose Baths, Needle-Sharp Showers, and Electro-Tingle Pools. (These last were introduced for a treatment whereby very mild electric currents were passed through a guest’s bathwater. The facility never proved popular and after a couple of rather nasty electrocutions had been replaced by Stagnant Water Tubs, another failure.)
The basement’s current incarnation was certainly its messiest and, Mrs Pargeter surmised, wrinkling her nose as she entered the bath area, probably its most malodorous. Maybe the Dead Sea did smell like that, but she couldn’t remove from her mind the image of Stan the Stapler and his shovel. A fetid flavour of pondwater hung in the air.
The Dead Sea Mud Bath treatment was, like many such regimes, based on a book. In common with all such fitness books, the argument of New Life From Dead Sea Mud could be expressed in one sentence — in this case: ‘Dead Sea Mud is good for you.’
But, also in common with all such fitness books, this simple thought was backed up by all kinds of pseudoscientific research and lots of charts and graphs. Dead Sea Mud, it was asserted, contained unrivalled concentrations of natural chemicals. Filtered and purified through the varied strata of clay, marl, soft chalk, sand and gypsum, were abundant deposits of sulphide; potassium, magnesium, bromine, chlorine, and sodium chloride. The fact that the Dead Sea was, at four hundred metres below sea level, the lowest terrestrial area of water, meant that it was closer to the health-giving radiances and healing magnetism of the Earth’s core. The mud’s anti-corruptive powers had been proved historically because the Dead Sea was reputed to have engulfed the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah. Its mystical significance could be judged from the fact that it was fed by the sacred River Jordan, as well as streams running through the wadis of al-Uzaymi, Zarqa’Ma’in, al-Mawjib and al-Hasa.
And, needless to say, the book contained some stuff about ley lines.
All of this material had been assembled by a publisher secure in the knowledge that New Life From Dead Sea Mud was not the kind of book that anyone would actually read.
Its tiny thesis, supported by some really arty photographs and a couple of meaningless graphs of mineral analysis or weight/body-fat ratios, would be just the right size to fill a colour supplement serialization, which would recoup most of the production costs.
Then the book itself (published in the run-up to Christmas) would be bought by faddists, friends of faddists, husbands trying gently to hint that their wives were letting their appearance go a bit, and women determined to change their lives completely after the breakdown of relationships.
There were sufficient such purchasers about to ensure reasonable sales figures, or even, with a bit of serendipitous publicity — like, say, a chat-show host showing what a good sport he was by getting into a Dead Sea Mud Bath — an entry into the bestsellers’ lists.
The fact that none of the purchasers or recipients of the book would read more than a couple of pages did not give the publishers a moment’s unease. They felt absolutely confident that they had produced a product with enough confusing words in it to make people think they were learning something. And, more importantly, a product that would sell.
At the end of the process the public consciousness would have assimilated the dubious thesis of the book’s title, that ‘Dead Sea Mud is good for you’.
And it would stay in the public consciousness until the next fitness fad came along.
The one detail never mentioned anywhere in the book was that any fish foolish enough to stray into the waters of the Dead Sea dies instantly.
Chapter Twelve
The difficulty with mud — whether from the Dead Sea or from the pond of an English stately home — is keeping it muddy. In a centrally heated interior it has a distressing habit of setting, and the mud in the basement of Brotherton Hall needed constant dilution to maintain it at a properly glutinous level.
The Dead Sea Mud Bath unit had, in common with every other facility at the health spa, been installed to a very high specification. Given the costs of that, and the costs of keeping the area spotless, it was no surprise that the Dead Sea Mud Baths were promoted so heavily to the guests. Ankle-Deep Arkwright had to see his installation money back before the arrival of the next fitness fad would require the unit’s complete refurbishment.
There were four baths in all, each in a cubicle separated from the others by eight-foot-high walls. The baths themselves were sunken, filled from incongruously gleaming lion’s head sluices, and drained by some unseen but presumably very powerful pumping system. Brotherton Hall assured guests that their baths would be individually filled, so that no one had to step into someone else’s dirty mud, and presumably that was one of the reasons for the exorbitant costs of the treatment. (Mrs Pargeter’s natural cynicism — and knowledge of Ankle-Deep Arkwright’s customary business practices — made her pretty sure that some kind of mud-recycling would be going on, but she had no proof of this.)
The lion’s heads were fed from a large central tank, in which a stew of mud was kept in constant motion and, it was to be hoped, fluency, by a rotating blade like that used in the mixing of cement or the manufacture of toffee. Because of the viscous nature of its contents, the outlets to this tank frequently became clogged and indeed, when Mrs Pargeter arrived that morning, Stan the Stapler was up on a ladder poking away with a long instrument at some blockage.
By happy coincidence, the other users of the unit were demonstrating the sequence of the treatment.
Through the half-open door of Cubicle One Mrs Pargeter could see a body lying at full length in its tub. So complete was the covering of pale brown sludge (participants were encouraged to smear their faces and work the mud into their hair) that she could not even have told the sex, let alone the identity of the bather. This immersion part of the process was recommended to last for an hour, during which ‘the natural salts and minerals can get really deeply into the pores’ (Mrs Pargeter shuddered at the very idea).
On a bench outside Cubicle Two, in the glare of a kind of sunlamp, another participant was enjoying the second part of the treatment. This involved letting the mud dry ‘naturally’ on the skin till it formed a pale beige crust. During this stage guests were encouraged to keep as still as possible, to avoid cracking and flaking. The recommended drying time was also one hour, and again Mrs Pargeter could form no opinion about the identity of the participant — or even whether she had on any underwear.
Cubicle Three was empty, but from it came an abdominal rumbling and gurgling, which presumably denoted that the bath was being drained. On the other side of the unit, the cubicle’s most recent occupant was undergoing the most gruelling part of the Dead Sea Mud treatment — getting the bloody stuff off.
Under a ferocious shower a streaked body scrubbed away at itself, directing high-speed jets of water from a hose into its most intimate crevices. Mrs Pargeter had heard from Kim Thurrock that this cleansing process took hours; ‘and still at the end of the day when I undressed I found flaky bits in my knickers…’ The depth of Kim’s love affair with everything related to Brotherton Hall can be judged from the fact that she then added fervently, ‘… which shows it must’ve been doing some good.’
Lindy Galton, perfectly proportioned and still immaculately uniformed in spite of the mud that surrounded her, stepped forward to meet her latest client.
