More Than You Know (5 page)

“I’m not being silly,” he said now. “I feel bad about it. And I hate to see you so worried.”

“Well, I’m afraid I can’t help that.”

“Sometimes,” he said suddenly, “I think your father was right. You should never have married me. How much better you’d have been with Johnny Robertson; how many millions is he worth now?”

“I have no idea.”

“I think you do,” he said, and his eyes were very sad. “Oh, Sarah, I’m not surprised you’re disappointed.”

“I’m not disappointed,” she said quickly.

He ignored this. “But there Charles was. So you didn’t have much choice, did you?”

“I didn’t want a choice.” And she hadn’t, in spite of her mother’s grief, her father’s rage at her announcement she was pregnant. She had wanted to marry Adrian. Had insisted on marrying Adrian.

She reached up and kissed him.

“I’ve been very happy,” she said, “as you know; we both have. It’s all been lovely.”

“I hope so. Certainly it has for me.” He picked up the paper again, clearly feeling the matter settled. “Anyway, darling, I’ll get Mr. Chapman in early next week. Don’t worry anymore.”

She would, of course, but silently. These discussions just made matters worse.

As she went into the house, the phone rang.

“Mummy?”

“Hallo, darling. How are you?”

“Very, very well. I’ve got the most wonderful news.”

Engaged? thought Sarah, her heart leaping. To that nice Barrett boy, perhaps. That would solve an awful lot of problems; he was so rich, so … so suitable in every way. “What’s that, then?”

“I’ve got the most amazing and brilliant job. It’s everything I hoped for—in fashion, not just secretarial—oh, Mummy, I’m so happy …”

Sarah’s heart lifted in spite of herself as she listened. It did sound wonderful. And Eliza was only eighteen, was still a little too young to think about getting married …

“Look! Isn’t it lovely?”

They all looked obediently at the square-cut sapphire surrounded by small diamonds, glittering in its appointed place, the fourth finger of the left hand, specially manicured for the occasion.

“Oh, it’s gorgeous.”

“It’s beautiful.”

“How terribly exciting. Congratulations!”

“Marvellous!”

“Thank you. I’m so happy! I don’t know how I’m going to get through the day. Thank goodness it’s Friday; we’re going down to the country tonight, to talk plans with Mummy and Daddy.”

“Well …” Eliza hated to break the charmed circle of beaming rosy faces all peering down at Susannah Godley’s ring, in the kitchen of the shared flat, but … “I’m already late. Sorry. Susannah, congratulations again. Let me give you a kiss.”

“Thank you, Eliza. Thank you so much. Work hard! As if she wouldn’t,” she added to the other girls, as the door closed on Eliza’s back. “That job is just too important to her. Well, when she does get married, she’ll have to give it up; I mean, no man’s going to agree to his wife working the sort of hours she does.”

Eliza ran out into the street, feeling the now-familiar mixture of irritation and mild depression that followed any announcement of an engagement among her friends. Irritation because she couldn’t understand how they could all get so excited about it, seeing it as the be-all and end-all of their lives—it would be the end as far as she was concerned—and depression because however much she told herself that, and that she was right and they were wrong, she was beginning to feel just a bit of an outsider. Everyone, absolutely everyone was getting married, even Princess Margaret—to a photographer called Antony Armstrong-Jones. Everyone except her, that was. Not that she wanted it, or certainly not at the moment; she was far more interested in her career.

But it was beginning to feel a bit lonely out there, more so with every friend’s engagement.

Anyway, at least she wasn’t a virgin anymore; she’d seen to that, rather unsatisfactorily but with great relief, a few months earlier, at a country house party. He had been the brother of an old friend, they had both been rather drunk, and she had … well, seen a golden opportunity, really.

Her relief was tempered with disappointment that it hadn’t been more pleasurable; how could that, which had been uncomfortable rather than anything else, possibly have anything in common, she wondered, with the surge of rapture that Lady Chatterley had clearly experienced with Mellors? The book had just become available on the open market and was being passed from nice girl to nice girl all over England. She told herself that everything required practice, presumed it must get better and that when she found the right person, it would.

She did, of course, feel considerable guilt that she couldn’t yet give her mother the pleasure—and the satisfaction and relief—of seeing her safely engaged to someone rich and appropriate. She was well aware of the investment in her season and how the whole point of the ritual—and it was a ritual—was to pave her way to the altar, as it was for all the girls.

But she had something far more important, in her opinion, the sort of job she had dreamed of: in the publicity department of Woolfe’s, a medium-size, high-fashion Knightsbridge store. Eliza had gone to Woolfe’s as a secretary, but she had recently, and to her great pride, been
promoted to publicity assistant. She absolutely loved her work, which consisted mostly of driving round London in taxis, delivering clothes that fashion journalists had requested for photographic sessions; she was also sometimes allowed to show the more junior journalists clothes herself, and even suggest that such-and-such a hat or bag would go beautifully with the dress their magazine was featuring. Of course, she wasn’t allowed near the real queens of their professions, Audrey Withers of
Vogue
, Ernestine Carter of the
Sunday Times
, Beatrix Miller of
Queen
, but she sometimes would get the chance to sit quietly in a corner and listen to her boss, Lindy Freeman, as she talked to them. She had brilliant ideas, did Lindy, the use of live mannequins in Woolfe’s windows to launch the previous autumn’s collection being her greatest yet. She was a tough boss and often had Eliza working until nine or even ten at night, and her wrath over mistakes was terrifying, but she was immensely generous, both with her praise and in giving credit where it was due. Eliza had never got over the sheer heady thrill of hearing Lindy tell Clare Rendlesham—the petrifying Lady Rendlesham of
Vogue
’s “Young Idea”—that the idea of sending a cloud of multicolored silk scarves together with a simple black shift dress had come from “my assistant Eliza.”

“Darling,” said Lindy when she got to the office, “I want these coats taken over to Audrey Slaughter. I don’t know if they’re young enough for her, but it’s worth a try. And on the way back, you might pop into Ruban’s and buy a few yards of ribbon: white, pale blue, and lemon. I’ve got an idea for an advertising shot: kind of weaving them into a model’s hair. Nice for our wedding promotion.”

“It sounds lovely,” said Eliza. She loved going into Ruban de Paris, just off Hanover Square, with its rows and racks of ribbons and buttons.

Audrey Slaughter, an inspired young editor, had just launched
Honey
, the first-ever magazine for that new social curiosity, the teenager, and moreover was persuading the big stores to open up Honey boutiques within their fashion departments, stocking the kind of trendy, young clothes that teenagers would want to buy, rather than near-replicas of what their mothers wore. She liked the coats but said she really couldn’t use them, that they were a bit too grown-up and certainly too expensive.

“Pity, though, they have a really nice line. I haven’t seen anything quite so sharp anywhere.”

Eliza reported this to Lindy, who sighed.

“It’s a problem for us. Of course
Vogue
and
Queen
sometimes do young fashion, but for the most part our young clothes are ruled out of court as being too expensive. It’s such a shame.”

“The customers buy them, though,” said Eliza. “Surely that’s what matters?”

“We-ell, not as often as I’d like. The perception of Woolfe’s is still that it’s very much for the mothers rather than the daughters. And I can’t get as much publicity as I need to change that view.”

“Couldn’t you get some younger clothes made up that were just a bit cheaper?” said Eliza. And then: “Sorry, sacrilege, I know; Woolfe’s isn’t about cheap, of course.”

“Well—maybe not complete sacrilege,” said Lindy. “Not even sacrilege at all, actually. In fact, you might’ve given me an idea, Eliza. I need to think it through a bit, but meanwhile let’s have those ribbons. And I can try this idea out on your hair.”

“Please do,” said Eliza, and sat feeling almost unbearably excited as Lindy wove yellow ribbons into her hair. She had given Lindy an idea! If only the rest of her life could be as good as work.

“Oh, God. Here we go. Turbulence ahead. Now they’ll all be sick. Oh, the glamorous life of the air stewardess. Scarlett, it’s your turn to collect.”

Scarlett didn’t mind. She loved her job so much that even collecting and emptying sick bags was bearable. She still adored it, even now that she’d been doing it for two years.

Scarlett loved the fun, the glamour, the status of it all. She loved the dizzy excitement of the walk through the terminal wearing her uniform, the blue-and-white dogtooth suit, the white shirt, the jaunty cap, smiling confidently, being pointed out and stared at admiringly—anyone would think they flew the bloody planes—greeting passengers at the top of the steps, directing them to their places, settling them, flirting very mildly with the men, charming the women, walking up and down slowly, smiling reassuringly, checking they were all safely strapped in.
“It’s a bit like being a mannequin,” they’d been told when they were training. “Everyone will look at you; you’re the face of the airline; you have to be calm, confident, perfectly groomed every minute of every trip.”

And they had such fun. The pilots were fantastic, glamorous, dashing figures, made so much more handsome by their uniforms. The most dashing were the ex–fighter pilots, older, practised charmers. The girls weren’t supposed to fraternise with the air crew; they were always booked into separate hotels, “as if that would make any difference, for God’s sake,” Scarlett said scornfully.