A Vision of Loveliness (24 page)

Johnny had been taking Jane out two nights a week but his presents were all strictly by the book: a bottle of scent, the odd silk scarf. No big stuff. No
payments
– there’d been nothing to pay
for
. Jane had drawn a prim line at doorstep kisses.
When Mr Right does make an appearance he won’t be pleased to learn that one slice of the cake has already been enjoyed.

Jane had actually passed the cake plate round quite a few times since she’d left Norbury but only when there was a very good reason – a decent bit of fur or a really well-paid modelling job. People said you could tell ‘that sort of girl’ just by looking at her, but could you really? Jane sipped her gin and straightened her smile in the mirror behind the bar. The same face. The same smile.

Johnny clearly had no idea of her own double life and – after a few false starts – didn’t seem to mind the ice-maiden treatment. That was probably why he was still chasing her three months after that first fantastic date in Lawrence Green’s red-velvet dress, dancing rumbas till two in the morning. He’d bought her sweet champagne and when the diddicoy kid came round with the single red roses he gave a fiver for the whole basket. Waste of money really: they’d only die off. You could have bought the whole three dozen for fifteen bob in Berwick Street. Or two pairs of stockings. Or six lipsticks.

Jane had hated the sex lark at first. She couldn’t say she’d been disappointed exactly because she hadn’t really expected much. Suzy acted as if she quite liked it but then Suzy acted as if she quite liked caviare and Jane knew for a fact she didn’t – she used to throw up in the Ladies’ afterwards. Even if you did turn out to like it, sex was still a men’s thing.
A woman’s ability to reach orgasm enables her to share her husband’s pleasure but a sexual climax is no more essential for starting a family than a mink coat or a lipstick
.

There was certainly no climax the first time but there was a mink, thanks to some friend of dear old Henry’s – like Ollie only a bigger tipper – who paid for his Norbury virgin with a nice little trip down Bond Street. Mean bastard in other ways, though. Took her to a hotel for the night another time (rotten old Regent Palace, no private bathroom) and then left for a business meeting after breakfast in bed and a bit more how’s-your-father, never thinking how was she supposed to get home in strapless navy taffeta and a mink jacket. She had to get the chambermaid to zip her back into the dress and there wasn’t enough money for a taxi in her beaded evening bag which meant an excruciating ride down Piccadilly on a number 9 bus, her gown and petticoats sticking out under a cheap raincoat borrowed from the same chambermaid, her mink stuffed into a laundry bag. She’d slipped back into the flats through the side entrance rather than let the porter see her in that state. She felt like a tart. She looked like a tart . . .

The sapphire bracelet brought back happier memories: an Italian business associate of Henry’s who took her to the White Elephant club and told her in a sexy Rossano Brazzi sort of voice over a dozen oysters that she had beautiful eyes, a beautiful neck, beautiful ankles, beautiful shoulders. You name it. It was hard to know what to say in reply, really. She decided to play safe and drop lashes, raise lashes, lean forward (giving him an even better view down the front of her frock) and work the old ‘Are you trying to seduce me?’ line. He lapped it up. He wasn’t trying to seduce her, he was
going
to seduce her. And then he began to whisper a few of his plans for the rest of the evening. She couldn’t understand a word but just the tone of his voice made a peachy blush spread steadily across her chest. He could hardly wait to get cracking.

Jane was exactly his type. Not a virgin (virgins made him feel bad) but Unawakened. He enjoyed himself. She didn’t have a lot of conversation but she was clean, she was the youngest, prettiest, best-dressed woman in any restaurant, she knew which knife and fork to use and she went like a rabbit (after a little instruction). A hundred and fifty pounds (including purchase tax) had seemed cheap at the price.

Apart from doing a stock-check on her charms, he didn’t really say much himself. She tried asking him about business –
Many men like to talk about their business affairs and you
must
be sure to find it all very interesting
– but he just smiled and pointed out another place of interest: her hands; her knees; her ears. His English vocabulary was fairly extensive (on parts of the body, anyway). Jane had learned how to stretch a yawn into a smile (she’d watched Suzy doing it). Sergio even taught her a bit of Italian, mostly just things he wanted her to say to him – ‘
Piu forte! E cosi grosso!
’ – things like that. He didn’t tell her what any of it meant but she had a bloody good idea. She did manage to get a few useful phrases out of it: colours; fabrics; what is your wife’s size (a large sixteen by the sound of it). Bracelet length was ‘
I manici lunghi fino al braccialetto
’. She actually got mixed up one night after a long evening of oysters and champagne and began moaning ‘
fino al braccialetto
’ at the height of passion. She thought he’d never stop laughing. That was how she got the sapphires.

None of Henry’s other friends had Sergio’s technique, but at least Jane knew what was expected of her now and could make all the right noises. Enough to earn a nice little suede jacket, a quadruple string of Japanese cultured pearls, a smart dress watch and her very own Hermes alligator bag (they definitely did take the price ticket out). There hadn’t been any nasty accidents – so far. A doctor friend of Henry’s (Henry had a lot of friends) had a sideline in rubber goods and had been happy to supply ‘Mrs James’ with a disgusting little brown thing that seemed to do the trick. Failing that, there would always be the
Evening News
.

Poor Lorna was still living on her own in St Anthony’s Chambers. Suzy’s Henry, like Glenda’s spiv, had paid three months’ rent up front so Lorna hadn’t yet bothered finding a flatmate. Jane had bumped into her in Great Portland Street on her way to a modelling job (Finefit slacks). Lorna said she’d strong-armed the landlord into repapering the hall, sitting room and kitchen (by promising not to breathe a word about the two scrubbers in the basement). He’d even offered to do the bedrooms but the only bedroom paper he had gave Lorna a headache just to look at it. She’d borrowed a Hoover from the old poof downstairs who’d said he might be able to dig her out a few odd rolls from the stockroom at work if she didn’t mind slight seconds so all in all things were looking up, she reckoned. She didn’t say anything about the baby but she had a new skirt – natty plaid number with a waspie waist – so presumably all that had sorted itself out. She’d given the professor the scrub and got herself transferred to Books and Manuscripts where one of the librarians had been very understanding. Boring. Balding. But very understanding.

Lorna said that the bloke from the BBC still rang now and then, looking for Suzy or Jane (he didn’t seem to mind which). Lorna had tried telling him to fuck off – having had such lasting success with the Dreaded Arnold – but Michael Woodrose seemed to quite like being sworn at by women with posh voices (his mother back in Sevenoaks had a lot to answer for). He had been ringing about once a fortnight for a fresh slice of tongue pie.

Suzy had got a new job demonstrating some stupid brooch-clip thingy that let you wear a silk scarf in all sorts of peculiar ways, ringing the bloody changes on a tired old coat and skirt. She had a stand in DH Evans draped with silk squares (only they weren’t silk, obviously) and as soon as anyone came within charming distance she’d begin the spiel. Men bought them for their wives but they bought Suzy presents too. Chocolates mostly.

She hadn’t been working lately, though. There had been another small ad in the
Evening News
a fortnight ago and Suzy had been resting in bed ever since, kept going by regular deliveries of hot-house grapes from Fortnum’s and cups of Bovril from Annie who had moved into the attics of Massingham House where the maids and valets lived.

‘Them gentlemen’s gentlemen is all gentlemen’s gentlemen, if you know what I mean, dear.’

Annie’s gummy old face folded up with happy disgust. She was quite taken with the maid’s quarters otherwise. There was barely room to get out of the bed divan but it was all centrally heated and she spent most of her time down in the flat anyway, either washing their lovely little bits or polishing the mirrors or playing with the Hoover – ‘it’s got attachments. Does curtains and everything’ – otherwise once her two dolly birds were off out she could just put her feet up in the easy chair in her cosy kitchen, eating handmade chocolates and listening to
Mrs Dale’s Diary
on the wireless. Mrs Dale wasn’t Annie’s cup of tea at all.

‘Stuck-up bitch. Doctors’ wives are the worst. Like her shit don’t stink. She’s probably having it with that Caradoc bloke. They don’t let you hear what really goes on in them places.’

The only man Annie had ever really had any time for was killed in France somewhere the war before last. Died instantly they said. Never knew what hit him – unless he did know . . .

Henry had been visiting Suzy every day with silk dresses, lizard shoes, straw hats, suede gloves, a gold wristwatch (
It wasn’t feminine to know the time – until she had a Rolex
) and finally, jammy jammy tart, he’d promised her the deeds to the Nice Little Flat. Henry had never had it so good. He had just persuaded the London County Council to let him pull down what the Germans had left of New Oxford Street and he could afford to say sorry any way he liked.

Suzy had spent most of Thursday at a beauty parlour in Bond Street being massaged with placenta oil (which was a bit peculiar in the circumstances) before taking a cab the three hundred yards up the road to visit Big Terry at the shiny new black and white salon and turn his fully-booked afternoon into a nightmare of be-with-you-in-a-moment-madams. Then she got another taxi over to Carpenter’s and swanned into the bar looking like a million dollars (so Pete always insisted on saying).

‘Mmm. Monopoly money, darling,’ oozed Suzy.

Suzy kissed a few cheeks and popped herself up on a stool, crossing her legs with a soft whizz as nine bob’s worth of five-strand 15-denier s-t-r-e-t-c-h nylon rubbed itself together. Her crocodile bag was tucked over the sleeve of her suit jacket and under her arm was the very latest
Vogue
.

‘Big Terry let me have his. He’s got a hairdo in it.’ She flicked through the pages quite casually before holding out the open magazine to Alpaca Pete.

‘See anyone you recognise?’

And there they were, Jane and Suzy in a full-colour, half-page ad for Frockways’ Double Dates.

Three months ago Lawrence Green had recommended them to a man called Feldman who ran a huge budget-fashions business in Eastcastle Street. He had a whole new line and the sample run had been such a hit that he’d decided to advertise. There was a big craze for anything reversible and Solly Feldman’s Double Dates were a stroke of genius.

‘What is it?’ Poor Reggie was going cross-eyed looking at the same girl in two frocks.

‘Basically, darling, it’s a frock with great big lacy holes in the skirt, double-sided petticoat underneath. One side matches skirt: invisible. Other side red or gold lamé or sky-blue pink: bingo. Ready to party the instant you clock off work.’

Reggie glanced obligingly at the picture. ‘Cunning. Very cunning.’

Double Dates. The perfect day-to-evening ensemble for the budget-conscious career girl who’s really going places! Just switch the petticoats and reverse the matching coatee and your Frockways Double Date is all ready for a night on the town. Twice the appeal from only £9 15s the set. Extra contrasting petties available from 59s 11d. Coatees from £4 10s. Sizes 8–16
.

There was a picture of Jane stuck in the background behind the typewriter looking demure in a navy dress and jacket while Suzy wore the same thing only with the red bits showing and a flower in her hair looking deliriously gay in the arms of some deb’s delight in a dinner jacket. The deb’s delight (who lived with an antique-dealing friend in Lower Sloane Street) got paid half as much again (being a man, of sorts) but no one remembered him. It was the two girls – ‘the virgin and the gypsy’ Pete called them – bastard – that caught the eye. Mr Feldman had already bought some junior page ads in the
Daily Sketch
but
Vogue
was much more exciting.

Frockways couldn’t run them up fast enough and Solly Feldman was already looking at swatches so that he could rush out a Summer Secrets range. They were doing the shoot on Monday.

The photographer’s studios were in a dirty back alley off the King’s Road somewhere. The desk and typewriter had been borrowed from the secretarial bureau downstairs and the bare boards of the freezing cold room were covered with coloured paper stapled to the floor by his assistant. For the next shoot Jane was going to be sat at the bloody typewriter again in Capri-blue shantung back to back with Suzy, a vision in blue and white on a garden chair having her glass refilled by the deb’s delight in blazer and yachting cap.

Suzy had got tired of showing off and had begun to tell them her latest funny story.

‘So she says to her fiancé: “Uncouth? Your mother thinks I’m uncouth? Did you tell her about Daddy’s place in Gloucestershire? About the flat in Park Lane? Does she know I went to Roedean?” and the boyfriend nods every time. “So what’s this ‘uncouth’ crap about?” ’