A Vision of Loveliness (21 page)

Today’s wedding dress was ‘purest white satin’. White-ish anyway. It was nearing the end of its showing life and the underarms were so stiff with stale sweat that they left scratches on Jane’s skin. Still looked gorgeous, though, even in the fluorescent half-light of the changing room. The shiny silk cast a soft white glow on her face and neck. Jane shifted her weight from one foot to the other, setting the big hooped petticoat in motion. She practised a demure smile, imagined stepping out of a mossy old church, bells ringing, a Savile Row morning suit by her side, then the girlish fantasy creaked to a halt at the cold, wet thought of Doreen. Doreen in her lemon two-piece carping about the expense of the Do or how they had to have one tier in plain Victoria sponge because the currants Got Under ’is Plate. No. Forget the white satin. It would have to be a dove-grey shantung at Caxton Hall after all. Or not bother.

Jane and Suzy sailed out from opposite ends of the screen.

‘Suzy wears “Creamy Secret”, a vision in hand-clipped witchcraft lace. The soufflé-soft full skirt is gently lifted at the waist in front’ – we all knew why
that
style was so popular – ‘sweeping back to trail softly.’ Lawrence Green threw an expert handful of multi-coloured paper confetti while Goldie pointed out that the pure silk dyed beautifully to make a lovely evening dress for the budget-conscious bride.

The buyer clapped awkwardly while the two models retreated to the changing room for a cup of instant coffee and a fag. Goldie darted in to check the running order on the sagging dress rail. It was time to be Dolly Teens which meant skipping round the showroom in cheap nylon party frocks and matching hair bows which they were somehow supposed to look cute in. Jane glared glumly at her reflection in ‘Bubblegum Baby’, a pink and black nylon organza arrangement. The cheap fabric stank of someone else’s sweat. The heavy gathers across the bosom were designed to flatter the teenage figure but they made Jane look like Gina Lollobrigida on heat. By now Suzy had finished her coffee and wriggled into a disgusting yellow-spotted outrage, ‘Polkadot Parade’. Goldie stuck her ginger head round the door.

‘Ready when you are, ladies.’

The Junior Miss buyer turned out to be a rather embarrassed-looking young man whose hopes of inheriting the family firm (which he had every intention of selling to Hugh Fraser first chance he got) depended on his learning the business from the bottom up. He’d done stints in the post room and stockroom, he’d spent every Saturday morning on the shop floor and made a thorough nuisance of himself in dress fabrics. He had shadowed the model gown buyer all last season and now he was being let loose on the newly-launched Young and Gay department (answering the phones was no joke).

This was his twenty-third autumn fashion show and he never wanted to see another frilly nylon party dress as long as he lived. Lawrence Green watched young Firbridge’s face light up as his Bond Street models tripped out in their high-street clothes. The dress-show ‘lead with the thighs’ lark didn’t go with Vilene can-can petticoats. Jane and Suzy forgot all about Bronwen Pugh for a minute, walking out arm in arm, giggling slightly as they took turns to do a jiver’s twirl. The cheap single underskirts flew up as they span round and Jane could feel eyes burning into her knickers.

‘Young Mr Firbridge’ had bought hardly anything at the twenty-two other shows and had come to the conclusion that one budget gown was very, very much like another and that the sensible thing was to go for a bulk discount with Lawrence Green and make a bid for a couple of phone numbers while he was at it. He didn’t know much but he did keep a very keen eye on the kind of thing that ended up gathering dust on the sale rails. None of Lawrence Green’s oily patter about what Paris had to say about butterscotch and marigold and lime green cut any ice whatsoever. While poor Lawrence thought anxiously of those big bolts of chartreuse Banlon languishing in his basement stockroom, young Mr Firbridge briskly did a nice little deal on a full range of blue, black, black and white, red, pink and violet party frocks. He finally agreed to take three of a size in butterscotch and lime but only on a strictly sale-or-return basis. It was only when the stock started to come in, weeks later, that he realised how skimpy and cheap the frocks looked when they didn’t have Jane and Suzy inside them.

Mr Green had half an hour before his final appointment – the speciality model gown buyer from Debenham and Freebody – and while Goldie was upstairs checking on the girls in the workroom he joined his models for a swift panatella. The air in the changing room was already thick with smoke and face powder.

‘It’s going very well, very well. You’re a natural, Miss James. You and Suzy together makes a lot of sense. Very nice effect. Keeps the show moving along nicely. Piques the client’s interest, if you know what I mean, having twins.’

‘We’re not twins, Larry.’ Suzy sounded cross as she teased carefully across her hair with a dirty steel styling comb.

‘I know you’re not but you should play it up just the same. Nice little gimmick.’ He allowed himself to forget about business for a moment and looked them both over. ‘Very, very hard to choose between you. I’d like to have both.’

He didn’t mean showroom modelling but Jane was sure it was just the cigar talking. Nice Jewish businessmen with their handsome wives and beautiful children – they were bound to be beautiful children – didn’t mess around. Jane flirted happily, sure that she was quite safe. Suzy slipped off to the loo – not the one the clients used but a smelly little cave behind the basement stockroom. Jane wriggled out of the tangerine nylon tulle she was wearing, took off her bra and slid into model gown number one, carefully settling herself into the chilly silk whaleboned bodice while Lawrence Green’s dirty brown eyes watched her reflection in the cracked cheval glass.

She wasn’t quite as safe as she’d thought. He had calculated the time it would take his wife to get up to the fourth floor, have a ruck about something, then trip back down in her slingbacks, and he reckoned that left just enough leeway for a bit of expert fitting. He rested his cigar on the stub-stuffed ashtray and with a smooth glide (he was a lovely mover) was behind Jane, his freshly shaved lips sank on to her neck and his manicured brown hands slipped inside the back of her dress. She nearly screamed with shock. He must do this all the bloody time.

‘So, Janey, have you picked out what dress you’re taking?’ As he spoke his lips stitched their way across her shoulder and up the side of her neck while his fingertips fiddled about inside her bodice.

‘Please –’ she began.

‘It’s my pleasure. So which is it to be?’

Jane squirmed awkwardly which he seemed to take for excitement. It was her own fault, walking round the room half-dressed, getting him at it. She arched her head away from his kisses and ran her eye along the rail of grubby model gowns.

‘Can’t I have a clean one?’

His hands were less gentle now and he raised his head to check the mirror: the dark handsome man seducing the luscious young brunette in blue velvet trimmed with white(ish) mink (‘Starlit Surrender’). He stored the image away so that he could look at it later in his mind’s eye in his super-king-size bergère-style bed in Maida Vale when he was gratifying Mrs G with an unusually vigorous seeing-to.
Lots of women, especially wives, are extremely aroused by a rough sexual approach
.

He stepped back and retrieved his cigar.

‘A clean one?’ He turned back the neck on an eau de nil duchesse satin and pulled a face. ‘I don’t see why not. I’ll see what I can dig out.’

Jane was still panting slightly when Suzy got back from the lav.

‘Did you get your frock?’ The look on her face. No wonder she’d been gone so long.

‘I think so.’

‘Larry’s a bit of a gent, all things considered.’

Gent? That was gents, was it?

Larry slipped back into the room with an old dress box with drawings of Harrods all over it. Strips of the patterned cardboard were missing where countless chunks of Sellotape had been ripped away. He winked at Jane.

‘You’ll knock him dead.’ It was hard to breathe in the tight blue velvet as he looked her up and down.

Goldie was suddenly back in the room. Anxious. And picky. The speciality model gowns had a very nice mark-up but then they were a big investment to start with. Since Green’s – like everyone else in the London rag trade – had been caught napping by the New Look back in ’47, Lawrence and Goldie took no chances. They either bought Paris designs or stole them (having paid their ‘caution’ to see the collections). The results – the ‘Monsieur Lawrence’ Collection – were put together in the workroom by the senior cutters and machinists and usually found their way to the very smartest madam shops and department stores but it never said Green’s on the label. It was a miracle Debenham and Freebody had got wind at all. Good suppliers were a closely guarded secret. That was where Lawrence’s canny little window display came in. The queen bee of Wigmore Street had spotted it on her way to buy from a rival supplier and finally twigged where all these elegant little numbers were coming from.

The model gown buyer at Debenham and Freebody, after two decades of buying – daywear, junior fashions, after six, evening, model gowns and finally speciality model gowns (own secretary; office with a window; Paris four times a year) – was finding it harder and harder to work up any enthusiasm for this season’s colours, or whether Paris said duchesse satin or beading or hand-cut lace or panne velvet or organza.

But she liked the twins gimmick. So much so that she gave both girls her card. One of the house models in Wigmore Street was leaving to get married – silly little fool. She hadn’t really wanted to give up her job – ten pounds a week and a nice staff discount – but the fiancé insisted that they could both manage on an under-manager’s salary. Not in Ferragamo slingbacks they couldn’t.

She liked a few of the gowns and placed quite a big order after a long chat with Lawrence insisting on some exclusive colours and fabrics. One of her regular suppliers had gone broke and she needed them delivered by mid March (which was asking a lot) and she wanted them ‘exclusive to London W1’ but Larry wouldn’t play. What would Dickins and Jones say?

Jane had been enjoying herself when the morning began. She’d got the turns down to a fine art (parquet was much smoother than lino) and she’d worked out a nice repertoire of looks: Surprised, Shy, Playful and Seductive (the imaginary Johnny Hullavington played a big part in Seductive). But after the umpteenth twirl she was getting hot, sweaty and tired. She had rough red friction patches on her ribs from rubbing up against sweaty whalebones, her back ached and there was a blister starting on each heel from walking in the cheap dyed-to-match satin stilettos, all of which were at least two sizes too big. Suzy gave her some Elastoplast from her kit bag but it had rubbed away and kept sticking to her nylons and twisting the seams.

Suzy and Jane hung up the last of their dirty hot frocks, smoothed their hair and eased back into their suits. The Debenham and Freebody lady was still finalising petticoat fabrics with Goldie when the girls left. Thirty bob had sounded reasonable three hours ago but now she’d actually done the job she didn’t quite see why Suzy should get double. Still, there was the frock in the box. She had been afraid Larry would palm her off with some misfit in chartreuse Charmaine but he turned out to be a bit of a gent after all: cherry-red velvet copied from an original Givenchy toile. The bows were a bit last season but they were only tacked on.

Larry saw them to the door, feeling the quality of Jane’s cashmere and wool skirting as they went.

‘That was a nice morning’s work, Miss James. I hope we’ll see you again for the new collection in September, if not before. You take my advice, Suzy my love, and work up the heavenly twins angle. You’ll make a fortune.’

One last pinch and they were back out in Great Portland Street. Suzy hailed yet another taxi, raising her arm in a cheery, imperious wave – like Wenda Rogerson doing spring fashions as if somewhere round the corner lurked Norman Parkinson with his fancy Japanese camera, ready to snap her mid-swank.

Suzy told the taxi to leave the meter running while they staggered up the stairs of the flat with the bag and the Harrods box. Annie stuck her head out as they passed, then dived back inside to produce a brown paper carrier bag filled with fluffy white nylon underwear. Suzy rummaged in the crocodile bag for the promised half-crown.

‘Annie.’

‘Wossat, Suzy my darlin’?’

‘How would you fancy a nice little cleaning job? I can’t promise anything but Janey and I are probably going to be moving to a new place and I think we might need a tiny bit of dusting doing.’

Annie, who survived on National Assistance (having never paid a penny in Stamps), was yes darlin’ ooh not half darlin’ very very keen on a nice little cleaning job. Small-time prostitution didn’t offer much in the way of a pension. Annie could usually cadge a glass of stout from one of the old faces in the Fitzroy – at least it was warm in there – but you couldn’t live on stout.

Suzy promised to ring Lorna with the details.

Back in the flat they dumped the bags in one of the tea chests and did a few running repairs to their faces – a quick stroke with the pan-stick and a bit of powder and Bewitching Coral. Suzy dived downstairs to the loo just as the phone rang in the hall. Doreen answered.

‘Janey oo? No Janeys living ’ere. You must have the wrong number. What do you mean “brown hair, nice figure”; this isn’t a knocking shop, you know. It’s a private house. Niece? I’ll niece you.’