A Vision of Loveliness (5 page)

The walk to the bus stop was good practice with the high heels. They made her two inches taller and made the model walk much easier. She’d only worn them once before, to go dancing at the Locarno with a bunch of girls she’d been at school with. She wore them with a floral stripe California cotton frock: big blue poppies with sooty black centres. She had two net petticoats under it – one black, one white – and her black twinset cardigan over it.

She’d got the dress for half price in a funny little shop halfway in to Croydon. She’d only gone in there for dress shields. Vanda didn’t sell these. Dress shields weren’t Lingerie, they were Haberdashery, and Haberdashery was where Vanda drew the line. The shop’s window had been full of creepy little woollen vests, tenderly laid out on brass T-shapes and draped with yellow cellophane to keep the sun off – as if it mattered what bloody colour the things were – but once inside, she was surprised to see a rail of gaudy fat sun dresses. The woman who ran the shop looked quite surprised herself. A salesman had been round and she couldn’t resist the lovely flowers – like seed packets – but when she’d tried putting one in the window it looked all wrong somehow so they were left on the rail inside. Her regular customers just tutted at them or said they’d make nice loose covers.

Jane told her she worked at Vanda Modes and offered to re-do the window for her. Only took ten minutes. She put all the vests and elastic stockings in the side window and left just two frocks in the main one, one on each side, with a hand-written ticket: ‘Perfect for dancing. Only sizes eight and ten remaining.’ They were actually the only sizes the woman had got.

‘He had bigger,’ she confessed, giggling, ‘but I can’t see big girls wearing all those flowers, can you?’

She could if she went to the Locarno. The dance floor last summer had been heaving with size fourteens in yards and yards of waxed cotton begonias and peonies and sunflowers. Like a great big, sweaty municipal flowerbed.

Jane had taken the bus into Streatham and met her old schoolfriends outside as arranged. Two of them were engaged already – tiny little diamonds to prove it. The other two were working on it, slyly eyeing up the Brylcreem boys and spotty Herberts who stood round the edges of the room ready to make a move when the music slowed down. Couples were showing off their practised steps, plain girls were dancing with each other. It was yet another filthy hot night and the room stank of body odour and Evening in Paris.

Jane had pushed her way to the bar for an orange squash, and a man – quite old, thirty at least – had started chatting her up. He used the usual rubbish lines but differently somehow. As if he were taking the mick out of the whole thing.

‘Now what, to coin a phrase, is a nice’ – he put a lot of work into the ‘nice’ – ‘a
very
nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’

He had a nice deep voice. Not Streatham at all. More Rex Harrison.

Jane selected one of her own smarter voices.

‘I’m here with some old schoolfriends.’

‘To dance? Or are you just on a man hunt?’

He had spotted the four of them, giggling and stealing glances at Jane’s new friend in the blue suit. Hand-stitched lapels. Four proper working cuff buttons.

Jane crossed her legs – high on the thigh to keep the calves parallel – and his eyes slid politely down them to her black suede toes.
Nothing grabs the average male’s attention faster than a pair of pretty legs
.

‘Smart little shoes. But can you dance in them?’

Norma and the other three seemed about to muscle in for introductions.

‘You bet.’

The band were playing ‘C’mon Everybody’ and the room had decided to jive to it. He looked a bit old for all that. A bit big, too, but he turned out to be a lovely mover. Twirling her and her blue poppies round him with just a flick of his strong wrists. People made room. They even had the spotlight on them for a bit. He watched her the whole time. She had twirled in the wardrobe mirror enough times to know how she looked: the smiling face; the flash of stocking tops under the lace and the tidy little black suede feet.

When it was over he led her back to the bar and bought her another orange squash (no funny business, just plain squash). Norma was hovering again. He spotted her approaching and everything happened very fast after that. He leaned down, placed a hand behind Jane’s back and kissed her right on the lips. Not sloppy, but not a peck either.

‘That was very, very nice indeed.’ That word again. She could practically feel his voice between her legs. ‘But, sadly . . .’ he looked at his watch (nice watch) and took his car keys from his pocket (nice car) ‘. . . I have to see a man’ – he had timed it brilliantly – ‘about a dog.’

He left just as Norma arrived, leaving this vague insult hanging in the air. Doreen always said that Norma must take Ugly Pills. She looked extra terrible that evening. She had looked better in her old school gymslip, quite honestly. Her mother helped her with her beehives, big yellow busbies of lacquer and backcombing with a bow on the back to match whatever outfit she had on. Norma never went to the West End. If she wanted something really special she went to Croydon.
The plainest woman alive can find a man somewhere who will marry her and happily have intercourse with her
. Not in Norma’s experience.

Jane went to the Locarno the next week and the next but she never saw the handsome stranger in the blue suit. Why would she? What would a nice man like him be doing in a place like that? He hadn’t exactly spoiled her for the local talent but she couldn’t even be bothered to dance with them any more. Norma said she was stuck up. She didn’t dare say this to Jane’s face but Jane could imagine her saying it just the same.

Jane was in the West End six days a week so she didn’t really have a lot of time for Norma and that lot. Norma and Joy had gone to secretarial college and had got jobs in the council typing pool. Carol and Eileen were just killing time working in Woolworths until the Big Days in May. They talked about their Big Days all the time. Carol’s mum, who’d had to make do with a hideous old borrowed frock and a pitiful little wedding cake made with powdered egg, wanted Carol to have four tiers and eight bridesmaids – her dad could afford them – but Eileen cried so hard they’d agreed to both have three and six. Carol’s wedding was still going to be the biggest. Reception for two hundred at the Nelson Hotel; honeymoon at the Palace in Torquay.

Turned out that Carol had managed to pick Princess Margaret’s Big Day so they were going to have to rent a television for the reception so no one would miss it. The happy couple would then be living happily ever after in an ugly brick doll’s house on a brand-new estate just outside Crawley. Joy had never been to Crawley – none of them had except Carol and she’d only been for twenty minutes to look at where the house was going to be (semi-detached, own garage, picture windows, separate toilet) – but Joy was very snide about it: ‘Very suburban’. Joy reckoned you hadn’t reached the suburbs as long as the buses still said London Transport on the side – which let South Norwood off the hook.

Kenneth had already started scribbling down bus numbers when Jane got to the stop. A couple of his buddies were there with him and they were all laughing at some joke Kenneth had just told them. She didn’t know he knew any jokes. He looked different suddenly: smiling, relaxed, almost handsome – apart from the spots. Like a younger, skinnier version of Uncle George. He seemed to shrink when he saw Jane, when he saw his mates looking at her legs in their Bear Brand 15-denier. He didn’t say hello and nor did any of the long line of familiar faces in the tidy little queue. She tried it once but they all looked at you like you were trying to sell them something. The buses weren’t too full at that time on a Saturday and she managed to get a seat downstairs. She decided she’d better change into her old black pumps on the bus. You weren’t allowed to wear stilettos in the shop anyway – it knackered the parquet. Customers did enough damage. The whole floor was pockmarked with the traces of their spiky heels. ‘A woman in stiletto heels,’ as Mr Philip kept on saying, ‘exerts the same pressure as an elephant standing on one leg.’ He’d read it in the
Daily Express
.

It was a bit tricky getting the shoes on and off but the man next to her was very nice about it. Skinny dark-haired bloke. She’d seen him somewhere before. He worked in a shoe shop in Bond Street. Jane had a funny feeling he was a poof but she didn’t mind that particularly as long as they kept themselves to themselves. Doreen minded very much although Norbury didn’t give her much chance to show it except on Sundays when the
News of the World
sometimes served up a nice scoutmaster.

The shoe-shop man was speaking.

‘Lovely courts. Nice low vamp.’ Definitely queer.

‘Aren’t they? They’re yours, aren’t they? I didn’t buy them myself, to be honest. A customer left them in the shop and never came back for them. I was the only one with feet small enough: three and a half double A.’

‘Sample size. Tell you what, we’re having a sample sale next Monday after the shop shuts. You’re welcome to come if you like. Only ten bob a pair. There won’t be many of you. A few really, really special customers and friends with small feet.’

‘Ooh. Yes please. That would be super.’
Super
. Doreen should hear her.

New shoes. And no annoying little thank-you drinks to pay him back.

‘My name’s Jane, by the way. I work at Drayke’s. Jane James.’ She had been Jane Deeks at school to make life easier for everybody but Uncle George had never got round to adopting her so it still said Jane James on her cards. It sounded better anyway.

Chapter 5

Don’t, whatever you do, forget that the
girl behind the counter is a human being
too. She has feelings just as you have.

The Arcade still had the gates up but they were pulled open a foot or so at the Bond Street end to let the sales staff sidle in. Jane had hoped to be first into the shop so that she could sneak out of her coat and jacket without anyone noticing but Bennett was in early. Bennett’s real name was Brenda but she’d been ten years in Young Separates at Derry and Toms where the manageress had been a Brenda. Something had to give and it was Bennett.

Bennett had a choice of two trains from Catford and she liked to play safe with the early one and then do her face in the mirror of the basement showroom in the belief that the unflattering light was helpful.
Have a powerful, shadeless light over your glass. Fool your audience, but never fool yourself
. In fact, it just meant that she put on far too much make-up and the distorting colours of the fluorescent striplight meant that she never noticed the tide mark where the Honey Velvet of the foundation met the Dove Grey of her neck.

‘Let’s have a look. You’re a bit done up, aren’t you, for a Saturday morning? You after that job at Hillson’s?’

There was an ‘Experienced Saleslady Required’ notice in the window of a rival knitwear shop in Bond Street. Not such a bad idea, actually.

‘I’m going out for lunch.’

‘Ooh! Get her! Out for lunch in her –’ she peered at the jacket’s label on the hanger. ‘What make is it? I can’t see without my glasses.’

Bennett was always saying this but the plain truth was that she couldn’t read at all. No one else seemed to have tumbled but Jane was wise to all her tricks because she had an aunt – George’s sister – who was the same: always forgetting her glasses or complaining that the print was too small.

‘It’s a Hardy Amies.’

‘Hardy Amies? Where did you get that kind of money? Hardy Amies! You can’t be on more than a fiver a week – if that.’

‘Sample sale.’

‘All right for some.’ Bennett was a size eighteen. She had eaten a cheese roll and a doughnut for elevenses every day for twenty years and the evidence was all held in place under a huge whalebone and ‘power elastic’ foundation garment that was supposed to take five years off you in five seconds flat. Twenty-three separate measurements tailored to fit every inch of her lumpy, fat torso. You didn’t catch Bennett bending. If something got dropped on the floor it was gone for ever as far as she was concerned.

‘Let me see the skirt. Mmm. It fits you all right but then they’re always a very funny shape, those Hardy Amies showroom numbers. The house model – Yvonne? Yvette? Eva? Evadne? Sonia? – name like that. Lovely girl but she’s got a very peculiar figure: hollow back. What is it? Cashmere and wool? The seat will bag out if you’re not careful. You ought to have a higher heel than that. It just looks frumpy with those.’

Jane left her to it. No sense giving her the satisfaction. Poisonous old crab.

Once Jane had escaped from Bennett’s clutches she began straightening the fixtures. She was supposed to replace any colours that had been sold with new garments from the stockroom. This took all of ten minutes. The last week in January was completely dead. The sales were over (not that the Arcade’s shops ever had anything as common as a sale), there were no tourists and the rush of post-Christmas exchanges had dried up (‘So
sweet
of him but it just isn’t my colour’). Saturdays were even quieter if anything, because any English people with money would be in the country for the weekend. What you did get were time-wasters. Overdressed ladies from places like Stanmore and Rickmansworth who liked to spend the morning swanning in and out of smart shops before they had to decide whether to go for the set lunch at Debenham and Freebody or blow six bob on an ‘Elegant Rarebit’ in Fortnum’s – twice the price of the inelegant kind. The Welsh weren’t elegant enough for Fortnum’s apparently.