A Vision of Loveliness (19 page)

He hoped they’d just leave but Suzy stood there in her coat, expectantly. Surely they didn’t think he was going to drive them home? Of course they bloody did. It was only down the road, for God’s sake, and there were two of them. Selfish bitches. He’d have lost the urge by the time he got back. Glumly, he put on his coat.

‘It’s
so
kind of you to give us a lift.’

Michael Woodrose was hoping for a quick grope across the long front seat but Suzy put the tin hat on that by sliding into the back with Jane.

‘Home, James. And put the heater on, can’t you? It’s freezing in here.’

Only there wasn’t a heater. Uncle Jack had struggled to find the six hundred and sixty quid to buy the car in the first place, let alone unnecessary luxuries like radios and leather seats and heaters.

Suzy had decided against goodbye kisses. What kind of cheapskate ran a car with no heater in it?

‘Cheerio, darling. Dinner was scrummy.’ And she and Jane slipped from the car without even waiting for him to whizz round and open the door for them – not that he showed much sign of wanting to do this – and they were on the doorstep and in before he had a chance to ask for another date.

Chapter 15

Every woman who isn’t downright
deformed can approximate the
harmony that will pass for beauty.

The lights were on when they got upstairs. Lorna, still in her coat, was slumped in front of the gas fire smoking Senior Service through a silly jewelled holder Suzy had left by the phone and sipping unhappily at a toothglass of neat gin. There was a new half bottle of Gilbey’s and a fresh pile of shillings on the mantelpiece. Brighton had not been a success.

Lorna was really quite pretty (for a redhead) but she obviously wasn’t the glamour type: patch-pocketed tweed skirt; Viyella blouse; hairslide. Suzy had once persuaded her to let her do her make-up. Big Terry had put all that ginger hair into a wormy fat mound on top of her head and Glenda had lent her a frock – green strapless taffeta. She didn’t look half bad but Lorna thought she looked like a tart and said so and the Egyptologist was so unnerved by this sudden nasty rash of glamour that he couldn’t get it up until she’d washed her face and stripped down to her knickers (navy-blue school leftovers).

That was months ago and the professor had obviously not been having too much trouble in that direction because Lorna was now three weeks late and had spent the weekend in the hotel room either crying her eyes out or being enthusiastically comforted by lover boy, who had decided to take full advantage of the fact that there would be no need to withdraw.

Lorna had always known he would never divorce Aileen – charming woman, apparently, head of modern languages at a girls’ grammar school in St Albans – but she didn’t ever want to have it proved conclusively. He hadn’t even mentioned the possibility of divorce, just fretted uselessly about how One went about arranging, ahem, Such Things and wondering if any of his colleagues had any idea what One did in these situations – and whether he could trust them to keep the whole Sordid Business to themselves.

‘It might affect his chances of promotion, apparently. Selfish pig. It didn’t occur to him that I might actually want to keep the rotten thing.’

The careful curve of Suzy’s eyebrows jumped nearly to her hairline.

‘Of course it didn’t, you dozy cow. What would you want with a baby, for Christ’s sake? They’d only make you have it adopted anyway. Imagine your mother with a bastard grandchild.’

This hit home. Suzy had only met Lorna’s mother once. She’d worn flat shoes specially. They hadn’t dared show her Suzy’s flat: they’d shown her round the one downstairs that belonged to a sweet old queen who worked in a wallpaper showroom in the next street. It was very nicely decorated – him being in the trade – but Mrs Lorna was still appalled by the idea of a lavatory on the half landing. Couldn’t understand why the darling daughter couldn’t travel in from Haywards Heath every day. Plenty of people did. Gaynor Charlesworth took the train to the P & O office every morning. What would people think?

People would probably think that poor Lorna was better off out of it: finally free of Mummy and her doilies and her musical doorbells and her koi carp and her vols au vents and her hostess aprons and the ludicrous bright brown nylon wig she wore to the shops on Wednesdays and Thursdays while she was holding on for Friday’s shampoo and set.

There was a Mr Lorna, back in Haywards Heath, but he hadn’t featured in the whole no-daughter-of-mine nonsense when Lorna had first moved into the flat and Suzy had never met him. Mr Lorna worked late whenever he possibly could and spent summer evenings and weekends in the greenhouse, faffing about cross-pollinating fuchsias and potting up dahlias or mixing composts in the nice warm shed he had built (at the very far end of the garden behind some trellis, as far away from Mrs Lorna as possible). There was a primus stove, an old armchair and, slid down between its sagging seat cushions, a small collection of rather dirty, dirty magazines. Not
Playboy
or anything like that. They were too clean. Too wholesome. Like a prettier, nuder version of the girl he’d married. No. Something grottier, and slightly hairier was more his cup of tea. Ginger if at all possible. It was finding one such grubby little photo in her father’s stash of reading matter that had made up Lorna’s mind to leave home.

She had stopped crying now but she hadn’t cheered up. Suzy poured her glass of gin down the sink, rinsed out a cup and made her some black tea. Lorna thanked her, ruefully wiping a half kiss of old lipstick off the rim of the teacup with her thumb.

‘Have you still not washed up?’

‘Not on your nellie. That’s your department. You can hardly get into the kitchen for mouldy plates. What must poor Janey think?’

Lorna smiled wanly at Jane.

‘Sorry about this. Are you moving in?’

Suzy looked slightly uncomfortable.

‘Well, yes. Moving
out
is nearer the mark, Lorna-my-darling, as you can probably tell from all the tea chests. The ever-obliging Mr Swan has a friend with a flat lying empty in Curzon Street who’s looking for two house-trained females to mind it for him and so Janey and I are moving in. Probably tomorrow. Janey’s boyfriend was at school with Henry’s kid brother, you see. Don’t worry about the rent. I’m paid through to Easter and you’re bound to find someone by then.’

The lies rattled past Lorna who sat, nursing her cold, bitter tea, glummer still at the thought of being left alone in the flat.

Suzy read her mind and immediately tried to sell her the idea of flat-sharing with some of the girls from the department. Surely they’d be queuing up? Only round the corner. Dirt cheap. Whether they would or not, Lorna was more worried about the next few weeks.

‘Will he leave the wife?’ Suzy only really asked out of politeness.

‘No. Didn’t even come up.’ Lorna’s tears streamed soundlessly down her face and into her cup.

Suzy might have made tea but there was no sympathy. Married men didn’t leave their wives and even if they did leave their wives (which they didn’t) they didn’t leave them for pregnant girlfriends with stubbly armpits. No chance of granny minding baby back in Haywards bloody Heath. No sense going through all that ugliness and agony just to save some other bitch the trouble. Which left Dr Tom.

Dr Tom couldn’t be telephoned. You had to put an ad in the evening paper and then he rang you. Suzy chatted on matter-of-factly about how long it all took and how Lorna could probably come and stay at the new flat for a couple of days – there was a tiny maid’s room up in the roof of the block, Henry said. And while Suzy was speaking Lorna’s face dried and hardened and she drained her cup and went to her bedroom without saying goodnight.

‘Mmm,’ wondered Suzy, ‘I get the feeling Lorna’s going to make her own arrangements. Silly cow. Do you
like
babies, Janey?’

Jane summoned up a picture of wailing, wet Georgette, bib crusty with crumbled rusks, face sticky with rosehip syrup, angry pink bum stuck in an envelope of smelly grey towelling.

When Georgette wasn’t in her high chair she was in her pram, a creaking pre-war wickerwork number, and left in the garden ‘to exercise her lungs’ or left outside the Spar for a bit more such exercise. Doreen preferred the Co-op really but the Spar gave Green Shield Stamps and Doreen was saving up for one of the clocks in the catalogue.

Doreen had raised Kenneth on strict Truby King lines: four-hourly feeds; no sweets; regular habits and now look: a spotty berk who collected bus numbers. Doreen had thrown her Truby King book away, thinking she’d done with all that, and so Georgette had no regular habits at all – unless you counted crying and shitting.

The Croydon area health visitor was very keen on routine. So much so that she always made her calls on the second Thursday of the month at eleven in the morning, enabling Doreen to regularly meet her at the front door in her hat and coat on her way out for some ‘pure fresh air’ for baby’s little walk (actually Doreen’s little walk to post Doreen’s little pools coupon). The woman – interfering stuck-up bitch – would then have to struggle to do the weighing in the front passage and mutter something about ‘baby’s routine’ and she’d be back on her bike.

Did Jane like babies? No she bloody didn’t. Yet Carol and Eileen could hardly wait. Carol had actually tried knitting a bonnet and matching bootees. Ideal if it turned out to have a club foot . . .

‘My mother was only nineteen when she had me.’

‘Same here, darling, but that doesn’t make it right.’ Suzy’s mother was dead, so she said. There was a picture of her (was it her?) on the grotty makeshift dressing table wearing Molyneux and gazing poshly into space. ‘Poor old Lorna.’

Suzy seemed to have washed Lorna from her mind: she’d offered to help the only way she knew how but if Lorna wanted to ruin her career, her figure and her life with a screaming brat, that was her funeral.

‘Up early tomorrow, darling. I’m showing evening and bridal at Green’s Gowns. Nine sharp. Henry said he’d meet us at Fortnum’s at half one and take us to look at my nice little flat. I’ll need the blue holdall for work but there should be room for your stuff in one of the tea chests.’

She frowned critically at the smoke-stained wallpaper, at the cobwebby cornice and the threadbare orange and brown chenille curtains as if noticing them for the first time.

‘This time tomorrow, Janey darling! Aren’t you excited?’

She looked at Jane’s face but it had been switched off. Jane quickly pulled herself together.

‘This is so kind of you.’ Would that do? Probably. Suzy was picturing her new life.

‘This time tomorrow, darling. Central heating; wall-to-wall carpet; fitted wardrobes and big, fat king-sized bed. Each.’

She’d only been between the starchy new king-size sheets a couple of minutes when the telephone rang.

‘Were you in bed?’

‘Mmm.’

‘Asleep?’

‘I can’t seem to get to sleep.’

‘Me neither.’

She tried to imagine him, stretched out on one of those big dimply leather settee things, a balloon of brandy in his other hand. She pictured his lips whispering into the receiver.

‘I’ve got the car again tomorrow.’ Not his car then. ‘There’s a nice place on the river.’

‘Dancing?’

‘Dancing.’

‘Sounds super.’ Super.

‘Sweet dreams.’

Chapter 16

Most men are on the lookout for a
bargain and like to see a sizeable return
in gratitude for a very small outlay.

It was a dogtooth check sort of day. The weather had turned milder and the pair of them hit the sunny street at a quarter to nine: eyelashed; powdered and tricked out in sixty guineas’ worth of novelty tweed suiting. The hair was still holding up reasonably well after a quick tickle with the comb and a burst of lacquer. Suzy had the crocodile bag neatly tucked into the crook of her arm.

The pair of them catwalked round the corner to Green Gowns, a thriving wedding and after-six business in Great Portland Street. Unusually for a rag-trade showroom, there was a large window display: a huge fashion drawing of a skinny, supercilious brunette in a sheath of nasturtium silk and the actual dress itself, thrown elegantly across a gilded show chair with a sign saying ‘one of last season’s creations’ (you didn’t want rivals nicking any of your new ideas). Mr Green always reckoned that buyers were just like anybody else: they might have an appointment elsewhere but you never knew who might be walking past or what might catch their eye.

The showroom was on the ground floor. The office was on the first and the upper storeys were packed with machinists French-seaming their way through mile after mile of organza, dupion, paper taffeta, duchesse satin, silk damask. Not to mention the Tricel, Vilene, Rayon and Banlon required by the budget lines and Junior Dream collection. The basement stockroom was forested with great bolts of material and huge dress boxes ready to receive the finished gowns that travelled down in a creaking old goods lift.

Suzy gave Jane a final once-over as they rang the bell and smiled smugly at the pretty picture she had made.