Elegance and Innocence (23 page)

‘You’re thirty-five, Colin.’

‘Yes, but in gay boy years that’s sixty-five and shopping with a trolley.’

‘You’re missing the point entirely! I don’t want to blend
in; I want to stand out! I’ve been waiting months for him to ask me out. I want him to notice me!’

‘No.’ He shakes his head and waggles a finger at me as if I were an erring dog. ‘Not at the Ritz. Believe me, darling, you really
do
want to blend in, you just don’t know it. And he has noticed you or else you wouldn’t be going there in the first place.’

‘But if he saw how sexy I was …’ I begin. But Colin continues to shake his head ‘no’.

‘I’ll think about it,’ I sulk.

‘Do. Now,’ he stands up eagerly. ‘Shall we colour code these clothes?’

‘No, not now. I want to be alone.’ I push him towards the door.

‘Now, Ouise, you’re not angry are you? Babe?’

I shove him out and slam the door shut.

‘Ouise?’ He presses his eye to the keyhole but I put my hand over it. ‘Don’t be mad, it’s for your own good. Even Audrey was nothing until she met Givenchy.’

‘With all due respect,’ I respond haughtily, ‘I am thirty-two years old, Colin, and I think I can dress myself. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like a little privacy.’

Ask Ria for clothes! Honestly!

As I pick up my faux Pucci mini and rummage around for my sheer layered vest top, my eye falls on the copy of
Elegance
where it sits on top of a stack of books balanced against the windowsill. Perhaps Colin’s right. Maybe it
wouldn’t do any harm to consult the oracle one more time.

I pick it up and hold it a moment, staring at the well-worn grey cover and feeling the familiar weight of it in my hands. I think of all the hours I’ve pored over its pages, searching for answers and advice. I was desperate then. But I’m not desperate now. After all, he’s asked me out, hasn’t he? I must be doing something right.

Still, I hesitate. Flipping the book open, I riffle through until I come to ‘R’.

‘Dress in whatever you own that’s conservative, luxurious and perhaps even a little banal.’

I look again at the tweed suit on my bed. OK. Why not give it a try? Moments later, I’m examining my reflection in the wardrobe mirror. Adorned top to bottom in brown tweed, I look not just conservative but positively
embalmed
. Attack of the Sexless Librarian. I take off the suit and throw it back on my bed in frustration. There’s nothing for it; rummaging around in the back of my wardrobe, I locate the damaged Karen Millen dress. I’m just going to have to repair it myself. And while I’m here, I toss my copy of
Elegance
behind a stack of old tee-shirts and close the door.

I’ve waited far too long to let this opportunity go to waste.

And I don’t need help from anyone.

It’s Friday night. I emerge from Green Park tube station waxed, shaved, depilated, exfoliated, refined, defined, moisturized, and volumized. I am, in supermarket terms, washed and ready to eat.

Getting dressed was nothing short of a nightmare. I figured I had one shot at this and one shot only; therefore, I’d better not leave anything to chance. If I was going to successfully seduce Oliver Wendt, I’d better bring out the big guns. So, I’ve highlighted a few of my assets.

Although I’m not the world’s greatest seamstress (or even in the top five thousand), I have managed to stitch together the torn seam of the black Karen Millen dress. Exhilarated after completing my task with such a relative amount of ease, I then decide to go that one step further. After all, if the dress looks sexy just above the knee, imagine how much more effective it will be if I take it up a few more inches. So much more Versace. And tonight I’m determined to give even Liz Hurley a run for her money in the glamour stakes. To finish the look off, I’ve got on strappy high heels to make me look taller, fishnets to make my legs look thinner, and a new, inflatable push-up bra aptly named, ‘Vavoom’. Then I backcombed my hair to make it look fuller, sprinkled my eyes with gold glitter dust to bring out their colour, and dusted my cleavage with a little blush. I’m not dressed so much as armed. He cannot fail to appreciate my natural charms.

However, impressive though I am in an MTV kind of
way, I’m attracting a little more attention than I’d like travelling on the tube from Brixton. I’m practically chased down the platform by a Rasta who wants to sell me his travel card, calling out after me, ‘Oooo, I think you look
fancy
, girl!’ This isn’t quite the reaction I’m after.

I stand outside Green Park tube station with my black overcoat buttoned to the chin feeling more than a little peculiar. Compared with the hysteria of blow drying, plucking, ironing, etc., showing up seems something of an anticlimax.

It’s seven o’clock. I turn and make my way towards the Ritz.

I walk in from the cold, damp, darkness of the park, past an army of uniformed doormen in coats ornamented with gleaming brass buttons and stiff epaulettes, bellhops in pillbox hats, and foyer attendants in morning suits.

The first thing I notice is how golden everything is. The light is, in fact, blinding, bedazzling. It sparkles across mirrors, bounces off crystal chandeliers, glitters over gilt surfaces. I stop for a moment, clinging to a corner of the front desk like a drunk while I catch my breath and allow my eyes to gradually adjust.

The second thing I take in is the sheer grandiosity of the place – the bold, unassailable authority of so many rococo flourishes gathered unblushingly into a single location. Pudgy, rosy-cheeked cherubs romp across pale blue skies on cream-coloured clouds not unlike junior members of the
Conservative party set loose at a party conference. Chandeliers blaze above velvet-covered Louis Quatorze furniture. The atmosphere vibrates with self-assurance. There’s the sound of a piano playing unobtrusively in the next room. ‘Isn’t It Romantic?’ it enquires softly. And it is.

And then I become aware of something else; it’s as if gravity pulls harder at the Ritz. Everyone seems to be moving just a little bit slower than normal people do. I notice a blond woman sitting at a small table in the corner. She’s dressed in an off the shoulder black cocktail dress, ornamented by a single strand of pearls. She could be twenty-five, thirty-five, an immaculate forty. She’s engaged in conversation with an elegant man in his fifties, who could equally be her father, her husband or her lover. He’s handing her a small turquoise Tiffany bag which seems to float between his hand and hers. She smiles. He smiles. She opens the box and laughs a little before closing it again, and they exchange a knowing look. There is nothing hurried or impulsive about the transaction – they move in a kind of emotional slow motion, brought about by a drug more potent than Prozac or Valium. It’s affluence itself that evens out their lives into a single, pale sheet of fine water-marked paper.

Gradually I become aware that all around me life defining moments are being played out against the plush emerald velvet seats: proposals, anniversaries, infidelities. It’s no wonder that everyone is moving so slowly.

And here I am, about to join this exclusive club and engage in a life defining moment of my own.

I see him before he sees me. He’s sitting, forlornly, at one of the small round tables in the lounge, drinking beer from a glass and pulling awkwardly at his tie. It’s an old school tie – I can tell by the bizarre combination of colours. And at that moment I realize, with a dreadful, sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, that I’ve made a terrible mistake.

S
Sex

Unconsciously or not, men and women indulge in all sorts of artifices in order to attract each other, and the sad truth is that women almost always employ far less discretion than men. In fact, it is often in attempting to exploit their natural advantages that they destroy all hopes of elegance. So called ‘sexy’ styles are never truly elegant, but only suitable for the vamps of gangster films or comic strips
.

A kind of mythology seems to have been built up concerning men’s preferences in fashion, with the result that many a young woman who deliberately dresses to attract masculine admiration often inspires only astonishment. To separate once and for all the fact from the fiction, this is:

What Is Really Attractive To Men:

– full skirts, tiny waists, and a long-legged look

– clothes that are in fashion, but not avant-garde;
men follow the fashion trends more than you may realize

– furs, and a general air of luxury

– almost any shade of blue; white; very pale and very dark grey; certain men hate to see their wives in black; others adore it

– perfume – but modern men appreciate lighter perfumes than their fathers did, subtle sophisticated blends rather than simpler scents

What Men Think They Like:

(but only in the cinema)

– revealingly tight skirts and aggressively pointed bosoms

– false eyelashes

– ‘femme fatale’ lingerie

– musky, oriental scents

– spike heels

– yards of black fringe and miles of red chiffon flounces

In short, men enjoy being envied, but they hate feeling conspicuous. And they particularly dislike vulgarity in the woman they love
.

I ring Ria from the telephone in the Ladies loo.

‘Louise? What is it? Where are you?’

‘Ria, Ria, I’ve made a mistake, a terrible mistake!’ I’m choked with tears.

‘Calm down, baby. Where are you?’

‘I’m at the Ritz.’

‘The bastard hasn’t stood you up, has he?’

‘No, no, he’s here but …’ I can almost taste the shame, ‘it’s me. I … I’m
all wrong!
’

‘Wrong? What do you mean?’

‘I look like something out of Studio 54! I’m wearing my black Karen Millen dress.’

‘Yes? What’s wrong with that?’

‘I’ve … I’ve shortened it, Ria’

‘By how much? An inch? Two inches?’

‘Try five,’ I whisper.

There’s a long silence.

‘Oh Louise!’ I can actually hear her shaking her head.

‘Ria, you’ve got to help me!’ I plead. ‘He’s my destiny. I know it. But I can’t go to dinner at the Ritz like this!’

She sighs. ‘All right,’ she says at last. ‘Stay where you are. I mean, no, go out, speak to him; it’s rude to keep him waiting. But whatever you do, don’t take your coat off! I’m on my way.’ And then she hangs up.

When I walk back to the lounge, he’s still there. He stands up to greet me, holding his tie to his chest as if he fears it might fall off into the cocktail peanuts. I smile a
frozen head of death smile, pull my coat more tightly around me, and laugh like a hyena on helium.

‘I’m so sorry I’m late … I just had to … to …’

‘Quite right,’ he smiles, pulling out a green velvet chair for me. ‘Please.’ He motions to the chair again and then moves behind me. ‘Shall I take your coat?’

I recoil as from a hot flame. ‘No! No!’ I hiss, coming over all Glenn Close. Then, seeing the look of shock on his face, force my mouth back into the death grin and say with as much softness as I can muster, ‘It’s just that I’m so awfully cold.’ I thud into the chair like a sack of potatoes.

He motions to the waiter. Act like a normal person, act like a normal person, I berate myself in my head. Pull yourself together.

Right, I think. I’ll fake it. He doesn’t know what I’m wearing underneath this coat – I could be draped in Dior and dripping in diamonds. From this moment on, I am the blond woman with the Tiffany’s box.

‘And what would Mademoiselle like?’ purrs the waiter.

I straighten my shoulders, sit up, and cross my legs. ‘I’d very much like a glass of Chablis please.’

Oliver smiles. ‘A glass of Chablis for the lady and another Heineken for me,’ he orders.

‘Very good, sir.’ He dissolves into the golden ether.

Oliver looks at me admiringly and straightens the top of his tie. ‘I think we’re going to have a good time tonight. I mean, I had my doubts about coming to a place like this.
I’m not really a suit and tie kinda guy. To be honest with you, I like the atmosphere, the way people look. I guess I’m really a secret snob,’ he laughs.

I laugh gaily, fighting the desperate desire to sob outright. ‘Who isn’t?’ I parry lightly. I am the Tiffany woman, I am the Tiffany woman. ‘I love the Ritz. It’s so quiet and discreet.’

He looks at me carefully. ‘I thought you’d never been here before.’

I am still the Tiffany woman, still the Tiffany woman. ‘Ah, yes, well now that I’m here, I find I love it. And it is discreet,’ I flounder. ‘Discretion is so undervalued, don’t you think?’ I sound like the straight man in an Oscar Wilde play.

‘True enough.’ He passes me the peanuts.

I decline with a gentle wave of the hand. Women with Tiffany boxes do not require peanuts; they’ve undoubtedly had smoked salmon sandwiches at lunch.

The threat of a silence stretches out in front of us. When in doubt, ask a question. ‘Tell me about your day,’ I invite him, eager to abandon any more metaphysical discussion of the merits of discretion.

‘Well,’ he begins, ‘everyone at work teased me today because I was wearing a suit.’ He smiles. ‘They wanted to know who I was trying to seduce.’

My heart skips a beat. ‘And what did you tell them?’

‘I told them I was meeting someone at the Ritz and that
since they couldn’t understand the concept of a suit and tie, they’d better just leave it. Of course, it didn’t keep them from following me around all day trying to prise your name out of me.’

Sudden panic. ‘And did you tell them?’ I try to sound light and easy.

He sips his Heineken. ‘Well, I don’t know about you, but I think discretion is so undervalued nowadays. Besides which, I decided that a girl with such refined tastes wasn’t to be revealed lightly.’