The Decision (17 page)

‘I’m not,’ said Eliza and heard her own voice as an odd, high squeak. ‘I’m really not. I’d love to apply for the job. Absolutely love it. Please. I mean thank you. Oh, gosh – golly.’ She wasn’t doing very well here at being stylish and cool. ‘I mean, of course, of course I would.’

‘OK. Great. It’s quite – tough there, you know. They really are determined to do something quite different and the editor, Jack Beckham, isn’t one of your fashionistas, he’s a proper, old-fashioned journalist, come up through the ranks, got the job because he worked on the
Sunday Times Magazine
launch with Mark Boxer. He actually sees fashion as a necessary evil, to bring in the advertising, he’d prefer to stick to features about class and politics and sex, so every single idea we do has to be sold really hard. And they have to be proper ideas, not just the new hemline or whatever. But I fancy you could cope with all that. Having been in the real world, not the
Vogue/Queen/Tatler
school of fashion. Anyway, let me have your CV—’

‘It’s pretty unimpressive,’ said Eliza, ‘I’ve only ever been at Woolfe’s—’

‘But you’ve done so well there. We all love you and you can’t say that for many PRs. But I still have to go through the motions of presenting you to the editor, so you do need to apply. And then he’ll give you a really tough interview, I warn you. But—’

‘Oh, God, it’s so exciting,’ said Eliza. ‘Thank you so much, Fiona, I couldn’t be more flattered or excited if you’d – well, I can’t think of anything. Crikey. It’s just amazing.’

She really must stop saying things like crikey; it made her sound as if she was back in the Sixth at Heathfield.

She got an interview two weeks later. She rather liked Jack Beckham, terrifying as he was; he reminded her of Matt Shaw. He was dark and heavily built, with quite a strong London accent that was clearly genuine – unlike Rex Ingham’s – and he looked completely out of place in the rather rarefied air of
Charisma
’s offices. Not that they were too much like those of most of the magazines she knew, full of pretty posh girls in miniskirts chatting up models and effete photographers. The atmosphere here was much more serious, with a couple of very intellectual-looking men – one the assistant editor – and the features department, which was next to Fashion and twice its size, was full of the sort of girls who had probably, Eliza thought, been to Oxford, clever-looking creatures with wild hair and arty clothes, with voices two octaves deeper than their twittering counterparts. Their office, moreover, was full not of clothes rails and beauty products, but great piles of books and records and a couple of tape recorders, and the pictures on the walls were not of Jean Shrimpton and Patti Boyd, but Kenneth Tynan and Norman Mailer.

They stared at her rather coolly as she waited in the corridor outside Beckham’s office; only one, a tall, aristocratically beautiful creature, smiled at her and said ‘Hello’.

Beckham’s office was full of smoke; he had a cigar smouldering in an ashtray on his desk and a cigarette in his mouth. He leaned back and studied her.

‘So you’re Fiona’s great discovery. I hear you were a deb or some such rubbish.’

‘I was,’ said Eliza, ‘but that wasn’t my fault.’

‘Well, I suppose not.’ He smiled at her. He had liked that. ‘What makes you think you can do this job for us?’

‘I don’t – yet. It was Fiona’s idea. But I’d love to try. I think
Charisma
is amazing.’

‘Oh yes? In what way amazing?’

‘Well – fascinating. Different.’

‘And what’s the most amazing thing you’ve read in it?’

This was a test; she’d prepared for it.

‘I think the piece about the down-and-outs. It was – well, it was great. So well written, and the photographs were—’

‘Bollocks,’ said Jack Beckham.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘I said bollocks. I bet you don’t have the slightest interest in down-and-outs.’

‘I—’ This was perfectly true; she smiled at him reluctantly.

‘Tell me the truth, what really grabbed you?’

‘OK, the piece about the cloakroom attendants at all the big hotels.’

‘That’s more likely. Why?’

‘Well because I – I—’

‘Go on.’

‘I must have met lots of them. And never realised what extraordinary lives they led. And the people they deal with on a daily basis.’

That was a pathetic answer; it made her sound like what she was, a spoilt, upper-class girl.

‘Good. I like that. That’s what we try to do in all our features. Turn accepted ideas on their heads. Think you can convert that into fashion?’

‘I – I don’t know. I mean – surely that’s Fiona’s job. She’s the editor. I’d just be her assistant.’

‘Yes, yes, but we don’t want some crap yes-girl in that job. We want someone with balls. Understand what I mean?’

‘Yes, of course I do.’

‘I interviewed Bernard Woolfe once. For the
Sunday Times
. Bit full of his own importance, I thought.’

‘Well, in his world, he is very important,’ said Eliza staunchly. She wasn’t going to be tricked into bad-mouthing her present boss.

‘Tell me why you think so.’

‘He’s done something amazing with that store. Especially the department I work in. It’s the first to have anything like that.’

‘Well, maybe. Like him, do you? It’ll be very different working for me, you know.’

‘I can see that.’

‘You can?’

‘Yes.’

God, she shouldn’t have said that. Now he was going to ask her in what way. But he didn’t. He laughed instead.

‘You have a certain honesty, Miss Clark. I like that. Now you’re not going to get married and have a baby like that wretched Lucy creature, are you?’

‘Absolutely not!’ said Eliza.

‘You sound horrified. I thought that was what girls like you were trained to do.’

‘I’m not like girls like me,’ said Eliza coolly.

‘I shall remember that. Hold you to it, even. Well, we’ll let you know. Lot of people want this job, you know.’

‘I’ll thank God, down on my knees every night, if I get it,’ said Eliza to Fiona over a nerve-calming coffee.

‘Eliza, if you do get the job you won’t have time for praying. We run three different fashion features every issue, you know. And just the two of us. It’s not enough.’

‘Why won’t he let you have any more staff?’

‘Because he doesn’t believe in fashion. Waste of money, paying girls like us. Now I must fly. I’ll let you know the minute I hear.’

Eliza had to wait two weeks; Jack Beckham insisted on seeing every girl who had applied. But he told her he’d actually made his mind up when she first told him she wasn’t like the other girls like her.

‘Now don’t let me down. And no marriage and no babies.’

‘Of course not,’ said Eliza.

‘Eliza? Jeremy here.’

‘Oh – Jeremy, hello.’

‘I wondered if you were free this Saturday?’

‘Jeremy, I’m so sorry, I’m not. I’m going to go down to my parents for the weekend. With Charles and his – with Juliet.’ She couldn’t bear to say the word ‘fiancée’ in association with Juliet; she found the idea of their being married so awful.

‘Never mind. Only a party. Plenty more ahead. Enjoy your weekend.’

‘Thank you. And you.’

She put the phone down, looked at it thoughtfully. He did seem to be quite – keen.

They had been out together a few times now: he had taken her to Sybilla’s, the newest of the new clubs, and to the opening of the wonderful new National Theatre, with Peter O’Toole playing Hamlet – everything he did seemed to be so glamorous. He’d even taken her to the Royal Variety Performance, and she’d seen the Beatles, for heaven’s sake, God that had been amazing, they were so funny: ‘Those in the cheaper seats clap,’ John Lennon had instructed, ‘the rest of you rattle your jewellery.’

He was a member of Annabel’s in Berkeley Square, so new and smart and impossible to get into – Mark Birley, the owner, was a friend of his, he explained (who wasn’t? Eliza wondered) and had given him complimentary membership. They danced for a long time, after everyone else had gone, and when he dropped her outside her flat – he had an incredible silver E-type Jaguar – after kissing her for a long, long time, she felt everything had shifted up a gear.

He was an absolutely perfect boyfriend. She really didn’t know if she was actually falling in love with him or even if she was anywhere near being in love with him. She had no idea what that felt like. She’d always supposed she’d know when she did.

But she did like him a lot. And he was so absurdly, ridiculously nice: she hadn’t discovered a flaw yet. So good-natured, so charming, so brilliant at saying the right thing and making her feel good. And clever; she could never have fancied anyone who wasn’t really clever. And then he was so good-looking as well.

There hadn’t been any suggestion of sex – yet. Just kissing, which he did really well. But then he was just such a gentleman, he’d never dream of pushing it, he probably just thought they didn’t know each other well enough yet. Which maybe they didn’t.

He had a very big job at KDP, he was a Group Account Director, a breed known at the agency as the Lords. ‘And a few of them actually are,’ Jeremy said, grinning at her. ‘Lords, I mean.’

‘Yes, I’d heard you’d got a few there. And that you recruit from – what was it, two universities, three schools and four regiments. Is that true?’

‘More or less. Yes. It’s a kind of neat copyline, isn’t it?’

He took his work very seriously, it was one of the things she most liked about him, it wasn’t just something he did, to pass the time, like a lot of rich blokes. ‘I get a really huge buzz out of it, you know, getting the strategy for the ads right, working with the creative people, selling it to the clients. It’s incredibly satisfying. It’s like a battle. A lot of advertising terms are military, you know, it’s rather intriguing: things like strategy, campaign, operations room, yup, it is a battle. One I want – no, need – to win.’

She liked that too.

He talked a lot about the advertising industry; Eliza became very intrigued by it, and thought she would have liked it herself if she hadn’t been in fashion. He loved the intellectual challenge of it, explaining to her the concept of the USP. ‘That stands for Unique Selling Proposition. It means it says something very desirable that only that product does, so consumers think they’re only going to get whatever it is by buying it.’

‘What, like “Persil Washes Whiter”?’

‘Absolutely. They’ve now done research that shows the word associated with Persil is whiteness. It’s a con of course, most washing powders make white clothes whiter. Then there’s “Senior Service Satisfies”, as if no other cigarette did, and—’

‘And – I suppose “If you want to get ahead, get a hat”?’ said Eliza.

‘Exactly. Clever girl. What a lot that did for the hat industry. Well, you’d know about that. Likewise “Top People Take
The Times
”. Who wouldn’t want to be a top person? You can start, obviously, by buying
The Times
. I tell you, it’s powerful stuff. I love it.’

He earned a great deal of money and he had a seemingly limitless expense account; his office was very grand and indeed like no office Eliza had ever seen. The agency was housed in a row of what had been three rather splendid buildings in Carlos Place, just off Grosvenor Square; the chairman was a legendary American advertising guru called Carl Webster – ‘Well, Americans invented advertising,’ Jeremy said when she expressed surprise.

Lunches, when clients would be entertained in the dining room on the top floor of the agency, with its huge oval table and view across to the square, would often run from midday until six, when a switch would be made to cocktails and plans for the evening.

They were unashamedly snobbish; even the secretaries at KPD were very well-bred. ‘They all disappear and we have to get temps in for Ascot week, you know,’ said Jeremy. ‘And one of the typing tests includes spelling champagne correctly and Bollinger, of course. Then we know they’re suitable.’

Only the creative people, recruited from the art schools, were from the other ranks, as Jeremy called them; boys from secondary moderns, quick, sharp, and irreverent, with totally original ideas on design and openly, if jokily, contemptuous of their social superiors.

The other thing that was absorbing Eliza, even more than her romance with Jeremy, was her new job. She absolutely adored it. As well as running around, as general dogsbody at sessions and in the office, Fiona consulted her endlessly and in the most flattering way about ideas, plans, sessions – and what on earth they could do when they went to the Paris collections. She was extremely neurotic, and indeed difficult, and simply keeping her on an even keel was a job in itself.

‘Jack’s agreed we’ve got to cover the collections, but he says he simply will not have any crap about fabrics, he wants a proper idea. I can’t think of anything. Can you?’

Eliza said she’d try.

‘Matt? Matt, this is Charles. Charles Clark. How are you?’