Before I went to the Bodega Beauty Salon of Battersea, men hardly glanced at me.Counsel: And now?Lattice: I don’t know what they did to me at the Bodega, but they seem to have given me a kind of luminous beauty which proves irresistible to men It has changed my life It has ruined it. I want my old looks back again.Counsel: Most people would say that this is a most unusual source of distress You go to a beauty salon You come out looking beautiful. How can you possibly complain about that?Lattice: Oh, but women don’t go to a beauty salon to become beautiful! We go for a bit of pampering, a bit of all-female company, a bit of getting away from it all, a bit of leaning back and letting things be done to us. The last thing we want is to come out and be the object of attention.Counsel: But do not all women want to be the centre of attention?Lattice: To begin with, perhaps. But women quickly learn that it is far better not to stand out. A beautiful woman is an object of admiration, yes, but also envy, hatred and isolation.
Ask any model or film star and you will learn that being beautiful is a two-edged sword.Counsel: I certainly intend to find that out.Judge: May I ask how precisely you intend to find that out, Mr Tarlton?Counsel: I intend to call a series of famous film stars and models to the witness stand to testify to the effect of beauty on their private relations, m’Lud.Judge: Will Miss Julia Roberts be one of them?Counsel: She has indeed promised to appear, filming commitments permitting.Judge: I shall look forward to that Wake me up when she appears. Carry on, Mr Tarlton.Counsel: Now, Mrs Lattice, you have complained that the Bodega Beauty Salon left you looking radiant and beautiful There can be no argument about that. Mrs Vera Lattice.Counsel: The “Mrs” is important to you?Lattice: Very. I have to keep stressing that I am a married woman.Counsel: Why is that?Lattice: Because if you do not stress that you are a married woman, people try to take liberties.Counsel: What kind of people?Lattice: Men.Counsel: Married men? All kinds of men?Lattice: What do you mean, “all kinds of men”? There is only one kind of man!Counsel: I see…
Her complaint, oddly, was not that they made her look terrible, but quite the contrary. She claims – but I think an extract from the case might explain things better than I can We join the trial as Mrs Lattice takes the stand. A strange trial is going on in London at the moment which has received, as far as I can see, no attention in the media. It would then be up to the Likud ministers to do as Mr Sharon has done, and listen to the majority, as represented by those 46 army reservists, and not the minority represented by the settlers of Gaza
More from Donald Macintyre. We join the trial as Mrs Lattice takes the stand.
Counsel: Your name is Vera Lattice?Lattice: That is right. It concerns a Mrs Vera Lattice, who went for treatment to the Bodega Beauty Salon in Battersea, and has taken them to court for what they did to her. No one who has been exposed to the mystical self-belief of the residents of Gush Katif, the biggest Jewish settlement block in Gaza, can regard its dismantling as a small thing, or easy to accomplish.
If implemented, moreover, the plan creates a precedent of unpredictable force.With negotiations still under way yesterday to try to unite the Likud ministers, the exact terms – and therefore robustness – of the disengagement plan to be debated on Sunday is not yet certain. But this is not the only reason that most of the Israeli left are bound to support it – provided that it is not so diluted by the negotiations that continued yesterday as to be doubtful of implementation at all. The left could hardly argue in favour of keeping the settlements until some all-too-distant final peace deal. That illustrates the political shrewdness of the plan, but also an objective reality.If the plan were to be implemented, it would be the first real reversal of the relentless policy of settlement expansion, so energetically promoted by Mr Sharon himself. The plan offers no substantial withdrawal from the West Bank, where most of the 250,000 settlers live; indeed by offering what the Palestinian academic Ali Jarbawi calls not land for peace but “land for time”, Mr Sharon is open to the charge of seeking to delay a final peace deal and the further concessions it would require.Mr Sharon’s plan nevertheless goes with the grain of Israeli public opinion in a way that the posturing of its right-wing opponents doesn’t.
