A Vision of Loveliness (10 page)

She twisted the third key in the lock and the door swung open, releasing a terrible smell of dry rot, wet nylons and Chanel No 5. ‘Sorry about the pong. Glenda smashed a bottle of scent on the kitchen lino.’

The pay telephone on the wall of the passage had been ringing the whole time she was unlocking the door.

‘Can you smell gas, darling?’ sniffed Suzy, striking a match and lighting a fresh cigarette. ‘God, it’s cold in here. Do put the fire on. There should be some shillings on the chimneypiece.’
Chimneypiece
. Swank.

Suzy slipped out of her Persian lamb coat just as smoothly and foxily as if she were trying to sell you what was underneath. She hung it up carefully on a wooden coat hanger marked Trust House Forte which was dangling from the picture rail. The phone rang on while Suzy kicked off her shoes and switched on a few lights. Finally, finally she picked up the receiver.

‘I don’t think so.’ She said this in a strong South African accent. ‘She maht be upstairs. I’ll jist chick.’

She left the phone hanging off the wall and disappeared into the kitchen to fetch a glass of water.

‘Ah’m sorry. Miss Saint John is still not beck yit.’

She smiled at Jane as she hung up the receiver.

‘No one’s ever actually seen inside the flat so you can say what you like: “I think I saw her go out into the garden” or “She may be downstairs in the billiard room” – anything. No one’s
ever
in, by the way: always check who it is first or run your eye down the list.’ There were men’s names written in lipstick and eye pencil on the wallpaper by the phone. ‘Oh, and if the Dreaded Arnold rings I’ve just got a job in Hong Kong and you don’t expect to see me back. Ever. Ghastly little man. Canadian. Do get the fire on, sweetie. Big Terry will be here in a minute and I need to ring the boyfriend. Have you got any pennies? It’s all very grand saying “keep the change” all the time, but you never have money for the telephone.’

Jane scrabbled in her purse for fourpence and Suzy hooked the receiver lazily over her shoulder and dialled the number, watching herself in the full-length mirror on the opposite wall –
Hang a looking glass by your ’phone so that you can keep an eye on your expression
.

‘Hello, my darling. Yes of course I am. But listen, I have a lovely, but
love-ly
little friend staying and I hate to leave her at home alone with nothing but the Black and White Minstrels for company.’ A pause while he spoke as Suzy batted her eyelashes at her own reflection. The naked lightbulb in the passage cast big, smutty shadows across her powdery cheeks. ‘You’ve got a very dirty mind, Henry Swan. Now then, the question is do you have an equally
love-ly
friend who might like to join us?’ More chat his end. ‘No,’ she eyed Jane thoughtfully, ‘no I don’t think so. Not yet anyway.’ Another pause. ‘
Extremely
. Good. Well bring him along and we’ll expect you at around nine. Me too.’ She purred the last two words. A voice that Jane didn’t yet have.

Suzy hung up the receiver then skipped off to the kitchen while Jane found another fourpence to ring Doreen. They’d only got connected a couple of years ago. Doreen had almost been tempted by a white wrought-iron telephone seat she’d seen in the Green Shield Stamp catalogue but she decided that would just run up bills. Instead the phone was perched precariously on the arm of the hall stand so you had to answer it stood up in the draughty front passage. Doreen was very suspicious of the telephone, often not saying hello at all until the person on the other end had spoken. God help anyone who had dialled a wrong number. This time she was more forthcoming as Jane had caught her in the middle of the wrestling and if she stayed away from the set too long Uncle George would switch over to
Robin Hood
.

‘Wot?’

‘It’s me, Jane. I’m over at Joy’s and she’s asked me if I want to stay overnight so I said I would if that was all right with you.’

Doreen just grunted and hung up, the quicker to get back to the telly. Suzy had stepped back into the corridor so Jane carried on talking, pretending to be having a normal conversation with a normal bloody human being.

‘Oh I expect I can borrow a nightie. All right, Auntie. See you tomorrow. Bye.’ She even blew a kiss. And then hung up the dead phone, ready for the grand tour of the flat.

The sitting room had bare floorboards covered by a peculiar offcut of carpet that had been woven with a fancy monogram of Ps and Hs (when they redecorated the Portland Hotel the landlord had done a deal with one of the carpet fitters he’d met in a local pub after finishing the job). The only furniture was a three-legged chaise-longue propped up on a pile of old
Vogues
, an armchair and a row of six red plush tip-up cinema seats. The dingy striped wallpaper had half a dozen clean, gaily coloured patches where pictures had once been. A naked light socket hung from the chipped rose in the middle but there was no bulb in it. Instead Suzy zipped round the room switching on three lamps with pink nylon shades on stands made from old dimple whisky bottles. There was only one electricity point in the room and the long flexes had all been crudely spliced together with fluffy black knots of insulating tape. The three plugs all met in one corner in a terrifying tangle of wires and two-way adaptors.

The only ornaments on Suzy’s huge old plaster
chimneypiece
were a row of blue china elephants linked together by trunks and tails and a Moët and Chandon ice bucket full to the brim with ritzy little matchboxes. Jane selected a Claridge’s bookmatch and crouched down to light the gas, waving the flame along the bottom row of charred white mantles until the whole thing stopped hissing and
woomfed
scarily to life.

‘Would you like a glass of water?’ called Suzy. Jane wandered out to the kitchen. It was a largish room about twelve feet square with a utility dresser, an old stone sink, a grimy gas stove and a huge, gleaming white roll-topped bath tub.

‘Mad, isn’t it? Not all the flats have got one. Most of them head off to some cosy bath-house place down in Soho. You know, special occasions: Jewish holidays, Queen’s birthday, Grand National, that sort of thing. The lavatories are all down on the half landing. There is one for each flat but it’s still a frightful pain. We usually wee in the bath, quite honestly. Quite hard finding anyone to share. Most of them just curl up and die when they see the kitchen. Glenda just used the place as a wardrobe really and we only got Lorna by dropping her rent to a quid provided she did all the cleaning and washing up. Which worked brilliantly for about a fortnight but as you can see . . .’

The bath was the only clean thing in the room. The kitchen floor was covered in black and blue fake marble lino tiles but the blue ones were almost black with grime, except for a cleanish path polished back to their original colour by passing feet. Doreen kept a pretty hairy kitchen floor but she did at least run the mop over it occasionally.

‘I could clean the floor if you like.’ Jane wasn’t sure she could face stepping barefoot on to that filthy old oilcloth. Beetles, said Doreen,
Germs
.

‘Don’t be daft, sweetie. Life’s too short. You can put some newspaper down, if you like. There’s even a bathmat somewhere.’ Which there was. It said Grand Hotel and there was dried blood on one corner.

The sink was overflowing with coffee cups and glasses, the gas stove was brown and sticky with long-forgotten fry-ups and the walls, which had once been painted a sort of school-corridor blue, were encrusted with strange little yellow worms, each about two feet long. Jane picked at one of them very, very cautiously.

‘Spaghetti. You can tell it’s cooked when it sticks to the wall – so Lorna says. Bit of a dark horse, Lorna. Works in the British Museum, sensible shoes and all that but she spends most of the week shacked up with one of the Egyptologists in his rat’s nest in Gordon Square. He goes home to the family on Friday nights but the wife and kids have gone to her mother’s in Reigate so Lorna’s off to Brighton for a nice dirty weekend. Let’s hope she brings back a new bathmat.’

Suzy began running herself a bath, pouring a large slug of swanky bath essence into the trickle of water from the boiler, filling the foul kitchen with the treacly smell of carnations.

The cupboard was nearly as bare as Doreen’s – but in a much tastier way: a jar of powdered coffee; a box of cornflakes; a long blue paper tube of spaghetti; a large box of Fortnum’s chocolates (unopened); a packet of Ryvita; a box of Biskoids; three tins of Carpenter’s lobster bisque; a jar of stuffed olives and yet another huge catering tin of Twiglets; Cheeselets and cheese footballs (someone, somewhere was obviously very generous with these). There was no fridge but two bottles of Veuve Clicquot and a waxed carton of milk-machine milk were sat outside on the window sill.

A heavy knock on the door meant Big Terry had arrived. He wore tonic trousers, a red Carnaby Street shirt, a navy-blue Crombie and suede shoes. He was about five feet four.

‘Terry, thank God.’ Suzy, now down to bra and panty girdle (
No girl is ever too thin for a girdle
), planted kisses on both cheeks. ‘This is Janey, by the way. Please say you don’t mind doing both of us. We have to do something about her.’ Like it was nothing to do with Jane.

‘We’re not doing fuck all about fuck all until I’ve had a bloody drink. God. God! What a day! One ugly bitch after another, all wanting miracles.’

He threw his overcoat on the chair and flopped down on the sofa so hard that the leg made of magazines slithered dangerously sideways.

‘Have you got any Scotch?’

Suzy pulled a face.

‘Glenda drank it. Is it cold out?’

‘Of course it’s bloody cold out. It’s bloody cold in
here
.’

‘Then we’ve got some nice cold champagne. It’s that or instant coffee, darling.’

‘God, girl, you are just so piss-elegant. All right, champagne it is. Now what are you two tarts after? At least it’ll make a change from those trolls.’ He put on a sort of Iris-type drawl: ‘“I need a new
image
. I was thinking a sort of Julie Andrews.” Julie Andrews! Eamonn Andrews more like.’

Suzy eased the top off the champagne bottle and filled three mismatched pub wine glasses. She opened the tin of cocktail snacks. All of the Twiglets had gone.

‘Bottoms up, dear,’ said Big Terry and he and Jane followed Suzy down the steam-choked passage to her bedroom.

It was more like a dressing room really. The bed, a small single, was pushed into the far corner next to the chest of drawers. The only other furniture was a huge old enamel-topped kitchen table with a big three-part mirror lit by a pair of desk lamps and a long piano stool to sit on. A dirty great chrome dress rail with one wheel missing completely filled with coats and frocks ran the length of the left-hand wall.

‘We found it in the street one evening. Perfect, isn’t it? Now sit down and let Terry look at you.’

She pushed Jane down on to the piano stool in front of the table and tweaked all the pins out of the makeshift chignon so that her hair dropped down below her waist.

‘My God, girl! Are you growing it for a bet?’

Terry was enjoying this more than Jane, who looked glumly at herself in the brightly lit mirrors. The borrowed lipstick had worn off and she looked very plain suddenly. Very Norbury.

‘Cheer up. Soon sort you out. You know what, my love,’ said Terry, fingering the last few feet of her hair, ‘it’s not bad stuff. Not bad at all. And the colour’s strong all the way down. Could have a very nice piece made with it if you like. Then you could pin it in when you wanted a bit of glam.’ He drained his glass and got his scissors out of his back pocket. ‘OK. Let’s get weaving. I haven’t got all fucking night.’ He whipped a pink cotton cape out of his kit bag, brushed her hair hard and began shearing it off, carefully laying the cut pieces side by side on the table.

By the time Suzy came back from her bath, Jane was seeing how it felt to flick her hair from side to side – something she hadn’t done since she was about six. The towel on Suzy’s head said ‘Dorchester’ and the one round her body said ‘His’.

‘That’s better! I’ve left the bathwater. You’ll be finished by the time my hair’s dry.’

Terry was extracting a hand-held hairdryer from his bag. It looked like a huge, ointment-pink revolver. He looked warily at the wonky Bakelite socket in the corner.

‘Now where can I plug this in? I don’t want to fuse all the fucking lights like last time.’

It was a funny sort of bath. Open your eyes and you could be in Doreen’s back kitchen but close them and it was like the time Jane had begged for all the buttonholes at the cousin’s wedding and sat there tickling her nose with asparagus fern and going giddy on the scent of the fat white flowers. She wrapped herself in yet another big white towel and carefully cleaned the bath with Liquid Gumption as the water ran out.

Suzy’s hair was all dry when Jane tiptoed back into the bedroom –
Walk about on tiptoe whenever you can. It will lengthen your line, improve your balance and work on ankle puffiness and falling arches
. She sat beside Suzy on the piano stool while Terry decided what he was going to do. It was only when she saw the two of them in the mirror without make-up that Jane realised why the old drunk in the pub had given her the crocodile bag. Terry looked interested suddenly. Chances were he really did have a friend who was a photographer.