A Vision of Loveliness (22 page)

So much for Michael Woodrose and his busty young models. Jane was just replacing the receiver as Suzy trolled back through the front door, freshly dabbed with Joy.

‘Poor Lorna. She’ll have to man the switchboard for a few weeks when we move.’ This seemed the least of poor Lorna’s worries.

A normal person might have fretted about old employers and old boyfriends not having their new number but Suzy seemed quite pleased to be shot of them. She had the numbers of the ones she liked: the employers who paid reasonably well and were generous with their remaindered stock; the dates who bought nice little presents and didn’t make a nuisance of themselves. And as for the mistakes – the big spenders who suddenly wanted to be paid back; the lovesick widowers and randy deadbeats from the BBC pronunciation department – move house and you could wipe your wires clean and start over.

The taxi driver had been starting to wonder. They had fire escapes, them old buildings. Cheeky tarts. But it was going to be all right after all. The two cheeky tarts had just slammed the street door behind them. Smashing-looking birds, both of them. Lovely pins. And not short of a few quid. Fortnum’s for lunch. All right for some.

Chapter 17

Always live as centrally as you possibly can.

Suzy had been getting happier and prettier and lovelier from the moment they climbed back into the taxi. She told Jane a funny joke – good and loud so that the driver would laugh too. Then she gushed delightedly about Janey’s nice red-velvet present and what a great model she’d make. Then she tipped the driver two bob and waved gaily at Henry who was already installed at a window table.

Her good mood hit Fortnum’s like a stink bomb. Even the crabby old stick of a waitress cracked her face into a smile at sir and his two pretty daughters. The house model, pacing the restaurant every lunchtime like the Flying Dutchman in daywear, made a point of stopping at their table. They ordered lobster burgers (more bloody Chablis) but were careful not to have more than a bite of the bun. Jane tried to imagine what Doreen would have ordered. At those prices? Not likely.

The Fountain Restaurant was full of ladies dabbing with napkins, tongues checking dentures for bits of trapped Elegant Rarebit or traces of lipstick while anaemic unpainted eyes scanned the room awarding black marks: Milk-In-First; knife held like a spoon; taking a knife to a bread roll; sips of tea taken while food remained in the mouth. No food crimes were being committed at Jane and Suzy’s table but they watched them anyway. Huntsman suit, handmade shoes, cashmere socks. Was he Daddy or Sugar Daddy? Very hard to tell. Suzy’s manner always suggested a bit of both.

‘Can we go and see the flat after lunch?’ Can we, Daddy? Can we?

Suzy hardly ever asked Henry about his life away from her. ‘Did you have a nice weekend?’ would have been stupid. He probably didn’t – why else keep Suzy? – and if by any chance he did have a nice bloody weekend, if, by some incredible chance, his dearly beloved wife opened her skinny grey legs for the first time in twenty years, it would have been the last thing Suzy wanted to hear. Besides, she wasn’t that interested in what he got up to when she wasn’t there.

As a tiny child Suzy had believed that other people only existed while she was in the room – which explained why they were always so bucked up when she arrived. She’d never quite shaken this feeling and anyway it was true. Rubbish evenings came to life when Suzy told a joke or suggested champagne or, later, more softly, said that no one had ever cared about her this way since Daddy died. No wonder people were pleased to see her.

Henry handed them nicely into a taxi which whizzed along Piccadilly then up into Mayfair. They stopped outside a big once-white stone block of flats round the back of the Dorchester Hotel somewhere. Henry introduced the girls to the porter as his nieces who had just moved up to London from the country and said he hoped Jim – it was Jim, wasn’t it? – would look after them. Yes sir he would sir thank you very much sir. Nieces his arse but enough five-quid tips and sir could have all the nieces he liked. Five quid down the drain, of course, if Suzy didn’t like the nice little flat.

She liked it.

The front door of number fifty-two opened into quite a big square hall with a crystal chandelier in the middle and shelves all round it with books and fancy china – not the kind with ‘Foreign’ stamped on the bottom. There was a door in the near corner leading to a guest cloakroom which had a toilet (lavatory,
lavatory
) and washbasin and a big linen cupboard full of fluffy matching towels and starchy sheets and room enough at the bottom for a huge Mayfair Laundry box.

The double doors on the left led into a twenty-foot sitting room, two more doors to the bedrooms and a swing door to the kitchen. The kitchen (which didn’t have a bath in it) had walls of white cupboards and a door leading on to the fire escape (which might come in handy in a bedroom farce-y sort of way) but who cared about the kitchen? People who lived in Massingham House only went there on the maid’s day off.

There was no washing machine. Even Doreen thought washing machines were common. Mrs Grant next door had one. Dirty great mangle on top of it and a garden full of drying sheets and shirts. The woman on the other side wheeled hers down to the laundrette in her wicker trolley then pegged it out when she got back. But Doreen had a magic cardboard suitcase from the electric laundry company that turned dirty clothes into clean. It wasn’t cheap but Doreen had Better Things to do with her time than wash bloody sheets. What Things?

Suzy’s bedroom was pink and white and gold. The whole of one wall was fitted wardrobes with enormous great mirror doors showing a second king-size bed, a second fancy white and gold dressing table, another chandelier, another mile of fat, furry white carpet, another Suzy.

Suzy watched herself do a basic turn into Henry’s waiting arms – no joke in high heels on shag pile – while Jane went off to explore her own room which was the same only blue: hyacinth blue. Jane’s king-size bed covered in silky satin; Jane’s dressing table; Jane’s hand-blocked blue and gold wallpaper. You opened the curtains by pulling a brass pineapple on a string. The view wasn’t up to much – just the windows and fire escapes of the other half of the block – but the raw-silk floor-length drapes shimmered so beautifully in the light that you didn’t want to see out anyway.

Through the white door and into Jane’s very own private bathroom which was blue to match the bedroom, even the bath was blue and it had gold-coloured taps – hot and cold, but no sign of a water heater – and a boiling hot chromium-plated rail covered in half a dozen soft, fat bath towels in exactly the right shade. The whole of the right-hand wall above the bath was one big mirror and the mirror over the washbasin had tiny lightbulbs all round it. Jane checked her reflection for damage, only there wasn’t any. Only a pretty young face rising from the neatly tailored shoulders of a cashmere suit. Very pretty. Pretty enough for a flat of its own.

Jane sat down at the dressing table and began opening each of the little drawers. They smelled of Quelques Fleurs and hair removing cream. The imaginary Mrs Collins had left quite a lot of stuff behind in the top drawer: a powder compact: a lot of hairpins and some nice twist-up lipsticks: Pango Peach; Cuban Rose. The drawer underneath was full to the brim with about two hundred bookmatches, shiny blue ones with Mayfair 3515 embossed on them in gold lettering. Jane had read about these in the
News of the World
. Call girls had them. They’d have been handy for lighting the gas – only there wasn’t any gas.

Suzy was still thanking Henry so Jane had a nose round the sitting room: no plastic fruit; no atomic magazine rack; no cheap prints (
Reproductions of ‘Sunflowers’ or the Annigoni royal portraits or Rédoute roses have no place in the Good Taste Home
); no sideboard and not a pouffe in sight.

Henry and Suzy had slipped out of the bedroom. He’d had as much gratitude as he was getting for a weekday afternoon.

‘Now then, you two. Have you got everything packed? If you give me the keys I can send my man round right away if you like. No need for you to go back to that place ever again.’

He squeezed Suzy’s sticky little hand. Suzy had been having another think about schlapping back to St Anthony’s Chambers and smuggling the gear down to street level so that Henry’s driver wouldn’t see the state of the flat and she had decided it was more trouble than it was worth. Who cared what some driver thought? She’d already told Henry it was a slum but that it was all she could afford (after Daddy died) and how she felt sorry for her poor pregnant flatmate and Henry had been very, very understanding. The bigger the contrast, the more generous and magnificent the Mayfair flat seemed, the bigger and better Henry would feel.

‘Bill will bring all your bits and pieces over in an hour or two. I’ll pick you up at seven thirty. I thought you and I could have a bite to eat somewhere and then go on to the River Club. What are you up to this evening, Janey?’ He had a very polite voice, he was a very polite man but it wasn’t an invitation.

‘Janey’s got a date.’ Definitely not an invitation.

‘I’m sure she has.’ Henry ran his eyes over Jane in her expensive suit. Any floozie could wear a smart evening dress but dollies in daywear were in another league. ‘So, Janey. Do you like the flat?’

‘I don’t like the flat at all, Mr Swan. I
love
it.’ Service with a lick. Did he believe her? He didn’t look as if he believed her somehow. His smile seemed to dry on his face, shrinking slightly at the edges, but he kissed her hand anyway.

Once Henry was in the lift, Suzy kicked off her shoes and threw herself on the big white sofa. This was definitely the life. She reached across to the side table for the phone – white with gold trim – and dialled Big Terry. Then she rang Lorna at work to give her the new number and see how the professor was shaping up.

Lorna obviously couldn’t talk – in a roomful of graceless eggheads from Romano-British antiquities the typist could go whole days without speaking to a living soul – but she obviously had something to say. There was also the danger that the switchboard was earwigging.

‘About the newspaper cutting we discussed?’

‘Oh yes. Are you going to put the ad in?’

‘I think that would be best.’ Lorna’s voice was tight, resentful even.

‘Would you like me to do it?’

‘If that would be convenient?’

‘I’ll do it right now. Now can you do me a little favour, darling. We’re living at Fifty-two Massingham House and our new phone number is Mayfair 3515. I don’t want you to pass it on to any of the pests, obviously, but could you be an angel and pop in and see Annie on your way upstairs and get her to give me a ring? Oh yes and can you give the address to Janey’s Johnny when he rings?’

As soon as she’d hung up she found a bit of paper in the desk drawer, tore the letterhead off the top and wrote out half a dozen words in neat block capitals. She then buzzed down to the porter to send up the messenger boy – like she’d been doing it all her life. Would he be a darling – given half a chance he would. He was only sixteen and his eyes were on stalks at the sight of two pretty popsies and all that shag pile – and take this to the classified ad department of the
Evening News
in Fleet Street? Thirty bob should cover it. He could keep the change. And the following evening, in a pub round the back of Gower Street, young Dr Tom would check the personal columns, make the call and save another young life – that was how he liked to look at it, anyway.

Jane wandered back into her beautiful blue bedroom. The smart fitted wardrobes were filled with empty coat hangers covered in padded satin. Some of them had scented net sachets still dangling from them. She hung her suit on one of the hangers and laid her black cashmere crew neck on one of the empty shelves.

She decided to have a bath while they waited for Henry’s Bill to arrive with their things. The bathroom cupboards were full of goodies. The one under the washbasin was mostly medicinal: Andrews liver salts; aspirin; a funny rubber tube with a squashy bag on the end and three packs of French letters. There was another stash of things behind the bathroom mirror: soap, body lotion and bath essence and two pots of Helena Rubinstein Beauty Overnight cream. Jane decided on Stephanotis – Lily of the Valley was a bit mumsy. She was so used to the slow, pissy stream of Doreen’s dodgy Ascot heater that she nearly let the bath run over.

Suzy had found a pair of see-thru pink nylon baby dolls in one of her wardrobes and was skipping around the flat opening cupboards and drawers to see what else the imaginary Mrs Collins had left behind. She found a cupboard full of art silk kimonos, several pairs of poplin pyjamas, a dozen pairs of Irish linen sheets and a parcel containing two navy-blue maid’s uniforms.

‘Size ten. Oh wait till I show Annie.’

Her tour of the flat had finally reached the blue bathroom where Jane was up to her neck in scented bubbles. ‘Are you washing your hair? You might as well. I’ve got Big Terry coming round at six.’
Some girls find that a bi-monthly shampoo is ample. Others find that their hair becomes oily and unmanageable within ten days or even a week.
Suzy looked herself over in Jane’s bathroom mirror – as if she were registering her face with every glass in the place – then checked the baby dolls in the big reflection behind the bath.

‘This big mirror’s a bit kinky. I haven’t got one of these in mine.’