A Vision of Loveliness (13 page)

‘Do you live in London, Ollie?’

‘I’ve got a bolt hole in St James’s but the family live out in Wiltshire.’

Out of the corner of her eye Jane could see Henry Swan wincing then laughing at Ollie’s idea of a chat-up line. Poor Ollie wasn’t really cut out to be a ladykiller. Family in Wiltshire. It was pitiful, really.

‘Oh Wiltshire! How lovely!’ Which one was Wiltshire? She tried to dredge up a long-forgotten piece of geography homework. Wiltshire was mauve. Or was it yellow?

‘Do you have a big garden?’

‘About ten acres, I suppose.’

Jane tried to picture an acre. She thought hard about those little tables on the backs of red exercise books: rods, perches, furlongs, fathoms. Biggish garden obviously. Big gardens just made work, Doreen said.

‘What flowers do you grow?’

Doreen actually disliked flowers. Cut flowers especially. It was just a vase to wash as far as she was concerned. The front room was full of virgin vases with cobwebs inside. But she hated garden flowers too: ‘They only die off. Make the place look untidy.’ The back garden in Norbury was little more than a long straight lawn, a few evergreen bushes and a lot of completely bare earth – she had George out there with the hoe most weekends. There were wooden trellises here and there but nothing grew on them. She had a horror of climbing plants. God alone knew why.

They had all had crêpes Suzette for pudding which involved setting fire to pancakes on a trolley in a rather flashy way but they tasted quite nice. So did the liqueurs Henry had ordered. The only other time Jane had ever had liqueurs was one Christmas when she was about nine. She had bitten into a chocolate only to find some kind of nasty medicine inside. But this was nice. Orangey. Took away the taste of the coffee anyway.

Meanwhile Ollie was still trying to remember what he grew in his garden in Wiltshire.

‘Don’t know much about flowers. Angela looks after all that side of things. Wonderful woman in many ways.’

He had hold of Jane’s hand again and was sandwiching it between his. It wasn’t a romantic gesture at all. Just something to fiddle with while he talked.

‘Angela used to be a very, very pretty girl,’ and suddenly the idea that veh, veh pretty girls should end up like Angela seemed too unbearably sad.
If a man wants to make a hit with the opposite sex and is not as happy as he might be, he should endeavour to keep this to himself.

Henry pulled him back from the brink.

‘You up for a spot of dancing, Ollie?’

But Ollie was like a dog with a bone.

‘Used to go to a lot of dances with Angela. Met her at a dance in fact.’

Henry tried again.

‘I’ll bet you’re a fabulous dancer, Janey.’

That rather depended. She’d spent some of her Saturday wages from Vanda on a course of dancing lessons at a funny old place in Thornton Heath a couple of years ago. Doreen thought dancing lessons were swank so she had to say she was listening to records over at Joy’s house. Uncle George had been a very good dancer but Jane only found this out when a rumba came on the Light Programme one Saturday breakfast time and the pair of them were suddenly gliding round the kitchen. Doreen went to her room with Her Headache for the rest of the day.

Jane could rumba, she could waltz, she could cha-cha and she could jive (she learned that at the Locarno) but she had to quit the course before they got to the slow foxtrot – let alone the valeta and the Boston two-step. She had tried to get the basics from a book she’d got out of the library but the black and white footsteps made no sense at all, let alone ‘hovering’ and ‘feathering’. She had enough trouble with the Paris turn. But it didn’t matter. Only old people did those dances anyway – apart from on telly. The only dances Doreen had ever managed were the conga and the Okey-Cokey but now that her whole self weighed over thirteen stone she was reduced to sitting on the sidelines making unpleasant remarks about other people who were having a better time than she was.

‘I rrr-rumba,’ said Jane. She managed to say it in a slightly teasing voice.

‘I’ll bet you do,’ said Ollie, loosening his tie.

Chapter 10

Master the art of smiling even
when you’re not smiling.

‘So. Where to, girls?’

Henry suggested Edmundo Ros in Regent Street and Ollie also seemed keen.

‘Good spot for a rrrr-rumba,’ growled Henry, encouragingly.

Suzy wasn’t convinced. They were probably only suggesting it because there was no chance of either of them bumping into anyone they knew. Suzy wanted the River Club – Henry was a member – but Ollie had obviously been there with Angela. They finally settled on some members-only cabaret joint in Beak Street.

Henry drove and was annoyed when he couldn’t park right outside. There wasn’t a table, either. Nor was there likely to be now that Ollie had decided to take charge. Henry was obviously good at handling waiters: friendly, clubbable, gracious, grateful. Ollie wasn’t. Ollie tended to stick to restaurants where he was known: his own club in St James’s or some little place in Jermyn Street (he could crawl home from there). Sober, he was too self-conscious to catch a strange waiter’s eye. Drunk, he was tense and toffee-nosed and generally made waiters want to spit in his soup (which they quite often did).

He had started giving the maître d’ the full my-good-man treatment which was being met with a completely dead bat (
No one will think you a man of consequence if you incessantly bully the waiters
). Ollie then added insult to injury by tucking a ten-shilling note in the top pocket of the man’s dinner jacket saying he was sure he’d be able to find them a nice table near the band. The maître d’ took the note out and looked at it as if it were a currency he didn’t normally accept and put it in the cloakroom lady’s saucer. What he really wanted was for another foursome to come in so that he could show them straight to a table and put this public-school berk in his place. You could see him keeping his eye on the door, hoping. Instead the next best thing happened: he spotted Suzy.

‘Ah! Mademoiselle!’ All smiles suddenly. Hand kissing. She was looking very lovely this evening. No idea that the gentlemen were friends of mademoiselle. Coats were whisked away and they were led through the maze of tables to a semi-circular booth near the band. There was a delicious smell in the room. Like someone sneaking a quick fag while frying a steak in the perfumery department. A ‘Reserved’ sign magically disappeared.

Again the thrill of heads turning. Jane was almost giddy with it. It was fabulous. Like Miss United Kingdom walking past the judges’ table in evening wear. Every eye on her: admiring her face, her figure, her legs. Marking her out of ten. All they needed was clipboards.

Ollie slumped ungratefully into a seat and ordered champagne. The waiter brought sweet instead of dry but Ollie was too depressed to send it back and besides, the girls seemed to prefer it. Suzy took a happy sip from her saucer then decided that it was time for a bit more nose-powdering and the two of them filed out to the Ladies’.

The mirrored room was packed with what looked like hundreds of women straightening seams, fixing straps, re-gluing eyelashes – like the emergency ward in a dolls’ hospital. A girl in embroidered organdie sat with a broken zip, grubby pink deceivers spilling out of the front of her bodice, black tears snaking down her face while Elsie, the attendant, who had already clocked up over ten quid in half crowns, stitched up the back of her dress. All of them had had far too much to drink. One little gang of tarts were out for a good time with a bunch of loud-mouthed old northerners in town ‘on business’ (they were actually down South for the weekend to service the weighing machines at a sweet factory in Lewisham). Jerome wouldn’t have let them in as a rule but a nice crisp fiver bought them a table by the kitchen door.

‘What’s yours like?’

‘Hands all over the place – talk about Bolton bloody Wanderers.’

Two shrunken-looking women of thirty-odd made a beeline for a pair of vacant stools. Both were wearing greasy old gowns in tired duchesse satin. They’d managed to get the zips done up but only just and there were great fat folds of back bulging out over the top. They sat dabbing listlessly at their strawberry blonde perms – hard to know why, as every strand had been lacquered to a standstill. You could see nasty poultrified bits of razored armpit every time they moved.
It always offends the eye to see a thicket of hair under an upraised arm.

One of them slyly eyed Jane and Suzy but then forgot to put her mirror face back on before looking away and got a sudden, terrifying glimpse of her own vinegary expression. Not just older. Older was bad enough. She looked suddenly panic-stricken. Was that what she looked like when she wasn’t looking? Did all that envy and bitterness show through on the outside? You could see the trouble she had getting her face in order: chin up; eyebrows slightly raised to take up some of the slack. The possibility of a smile. Anything to lose the ghost of the sour old bag she had just seen.

‘What a lovely dress!’ She very nearly said ‘dear’ but swallowed it in time. ‘Dear’ would have widened the age gap still further.

‘Thank you.’

Jane found a smile and turned back to the face that Suzy had made: the neat lick of eyeliner; the smart eyebrows; the bewitching sweep of long black eyelashes. Wasted on Ollie, mind you.

‘Was that a man?’ a posh, bored voice was wondering.

‘Was what a man?’ Her friend had peeled off her stocking and was putting a fresh corn plaster on her little toe. You could smell her feet.

‘That tall one with all the feathers.’

‘Don’t be silly, Vanessa. She had a
huge
bosom. Jerry couldn’t take his eyes off her.’

‘So? Jerry never looks at their faces, darling. Looked like a bloody man to me.’

‘God I hate the West End on Saturdays. Talk about Nescafé society.’

‘No choice, unfortunately. Jerry’s Swedish clients always make this sort of trip at the weekend so they don’t lose a minute in the office. Bloody Lutheran work ethic. Are you going to that charity canasta party Monty Manafu’s doing?’

‘Never even met the man, darling.’

‘Yes you have. You must have. At Audrey’s. That wine-tasting evening she had for the spastics. Little fat chap. At Christ Church with Roger.’

‘No, honestly I haven’t.’

Vanessa wasn’t letting go.

‘You
do
know him. Little fat poof. Lot of gold teeth.’

‘Vanessa. I’d
remember
.’

‘You
do
remember. Little fat poof, darling,’ she lowered her voice, ‘little fat black poof.’

‘Oh him! God no!’

Jane sat on her dainty golden chair and checked her teeth for lipstick while Suzy dabbed needlessly at her forehead with a miniature pink puff.

‘The maître d’ seemed very friendly,’ said Jane.

‘Used to know my father years ago but he was only lapping me up like that to annoy poor Ollie. What a twerp, though, honestly. And so rude! We shall have to do a bit better than that.’

Suzy filled the fading centre of her Butterfly Pink lips, tweaked a tissue from the lace box on the shelf and gave it a hard, passionless kiss.

‘Ah well. Back to work.’

Work? Was it?

Ollie was suffering.

‘So, Suzy.
Mam-zelle
. You seem very, very friendly with the head man here. This your usual table then? Are you on commission? They’re all raking it in, Henry. That’s how the system works, old boy. Isn’t it, Suzy darling?’

‘That’s quite enough of that, Ollie old boy.’

‘Well. Is she? Are you on commission, Suzy old girl?’

Suzy smiled as wide and as pretty as if Ollie were paying her a string of compliments. Henry looked on approvingly as she turned to face Ollie and said in her smartest, doggiest voice: ‘Jerome used to work for Daddy.’
Deddy
. ‘I’ve known him since I was a little girl.’
Gel
. She turned her head abruptly as if about to cry. Nice work. Margaret Leighton couldn’t have done it better.

‘Dance with me, Henry.’

Ollie hadn’t realised. And kept on muttering about not having realised. Poor girl. Didn’t realise. While Henry propelled Suzy round the dance floor in a sort of syncopated smooch. He could have Boston two-stepped very happily but the cha-cha was slightly beyond him.

Ollie knew he had to pounce. ‘You’re a very, very pretty girl, you know,’ he cooed (just for a bloody change) and tried to grab Jane’s hand. Jane kept a smile in place and looked around the room as if she were having the time of her life but she wasn’t and there wasn’t even a mirror to cheer her up.

A pint-sized redhead at the next table was being given the treatment by a slightly foreign-looking man in a tonic suit.

‘You have beautiful hands, Monica.’

Which was a black lie. Monica was quite nice-looking in a Locarno sort of way but her hands were horrible little pink sausagey things. Nice curvy little figure, though – if it hadn’t been squished into a tight Vilene puffball the colour of hospital teacups. Monica had obviously read somewhere that matching accessories were very smart so her beehive had a green bow on it plus green button earrings, green satin evening slippers and chipped nail varnish all in the same snotty rotten colour. She had pencilled her eyebrows all crooked which gave her a slightly roguish look. The spiv obviously thought so. He was holding one of those big, pink paws.