A Vision of Loveliness (26 page)

It was more like Panic in South Norwood, actually. Where had she been, what her aunt had said about her, all that rubbish – until Jane cut her short and suggested they meet for a drink tomorrow lunchtime in the local hotel. You could hear the big gulp of oxygen Joy needed to take this one in her stride, not sound nonplussed and nineteen. She agreed to get the gang together and meet in the lounge bar of the Nelson (it was just a glorified pub really but Joy had never dared set foot in the place) at one o’clock.

Young Master James was straightening his bow tie in the hall mirror.

‘Jolly nice flat.’

As they whizzed down in the lift she explained about the aunt in Surrey and the friend of a friend in Hong Kong. Not too much detail, though. That was where Suzy fell down. Nobody wanted details.

She’d just finished brushing her teeth in the powder room – you couldn’t eat pâté and toast and wear a Willpower Dress, the bloody thing had a 21-inch waist – when the door swung open to reveal Johnny Hullavington’s shop-soiled blonde ‘fiancée’, Amanda, keen for a spot of gossip and nose-powdering between the
boeuf en croute
and the
bombe surprise
. Jane immediately ducked her head as if fiddling with the heel of her stocking. Amanda was with the long-suffering friend.

‘He seems to be being perfectly pleasant,’ said the friend, trying to swallow the yawn in her voice.

‘Yes, well that’s all very well but he still won’t talk
dates
. Mummy won’t shut up about it.’ Amanda was fed up with the whole thing. She’d even let him take her to bed a couple of times but there didn’t seem much point. He hadn’t been particularly appreciative and the whole thing only lasted for about thirty-five rather nasty seconds. Hardly worth taking your stockings off.

‘Yes, but did he ever actually propose? Not even afterwards?’

Afterwards?
Oh dear, oh dear. Poor Amanda.

‘Oh do shut up, Celia.’

No date had been set for the wedding in other words. Serve her right. Silly cow.

Amanda and Celia both disappeared into cubicles to struggle with their girdles (
Holds its shape – and your figure – with a gentle determination
) while Jane escaped back downstairs. So. Johnny was in the restaurant somewhere.

Jane loped smoothly back to her table, giving the room the bland all-seeing stare of the catwalk model, while the room pretended not to look at the cartoon curves of her figure in its blue silk sheath. She could hardly breathe in the bloody thing but it was definitely worth it. They’d probably still have stared at her three months ago but only to wonder what she was doing there. Jane had a nightmare once where she walked the length of the room at L’Etoile and no one turned to look. It was only when she got to the Ladies’ and looked in the mirror and saw the old Jane – long brown hair, chartreuse velvet – that she realised why. It must happen – or not happen – to older women on a nightly basis but it must have been terrible the first time. She shivered prettily.

‘Are you cold?’ A chance to take her hand in his.

‘Someone walked over my grave.’

She had spotted Johnny at his corner table. She had been sitting with her back to him but he’d seen her now and seen the handsome young man she was with. Thank God it was only the grocer: Sergio or one of Henry’s generous old pals and he might have smelled a rat.

She began to work on her escort, like a photographer after a particular look, making his face register amusement, desire, tenderness. Her smiling eyes were on his face but her mind was five yards back, imagining how the scene was playing behind her at that corner table.

Johnny hadn’t wanted to be there at all. He’d only agreed to come when Amanda said that Celia and Hamish would be making up a foursome but Celia was obviously in on it and kept leaving them alone so that Amanda could have another go at charming him into submission. That was the plan, anyway. Amanda was no fool. Amanda’s mummy was certainly no fool: three husbands and counting. She’d told her she shouldn’t nag, shouldn’t act desperate. Amanda managed to keep smiling, keep the conversation light (Mummy’s advice), but she couldn’t get that hungry, scared look out of her eyes. She just didn’t have the training.

Johnny’s eyes kept straying to the back of Jane’s head: the silky white shoulders and the angle of her slim young neck as she chatted sweetly with her date, some gormless deb’s delight. He was laughing at something Jane had said – one of Suzy’s jokes possibly. All very polite and civilised but his hand shook as he lit her cigarette. Johnny closed his eyes and imagined those prettily painted lips blowing out the first breath of tobacco, as if her mouth were on fire.

Seconds later she was stubbing it out and turning her attention to her entrecôte. Johnny imagined her eating her steak (
saignant
): a little meat; a little moutarde; a little pomme sautée. Tiny bites that let her flirt and chew at the same time and that didn’t wreck the shape of her mouth. A technique she’d perfected years ago by eating Canadian cheddar on toast in front of the dressing-table mirror.

The non-fiancée had a depressingly hearty appetite and took such big mouthfuls that if you made the mistake of talking to her mid munch her jaws had to work overtime in order to clear the decks for a reply. There had been a slimy sliver of meat at the corner of her mouth all the way through the main course. It could have been quite earthy, quite Sophia Loren, but not the way Amanda did it. Her eyes hardly left her plate as she stoked her five-star dinner into her three-star body.

Amanda was still pouring her hard little heart out in the powder room and Johnny decided to stagger across to Jane’s table. She could sense his approach from the look in her date’s eyes: uncertain and a bit put out. He didn’t want some debonair thirty-year-old to come muscling in on his luscious brunette.

Johnny wasn’t on his best form. His table had already got through eight champagne cocktails and three bottles of Nuits St Georges. He’d drunk most of it himself. He bowed in a sniffy way to Jane’s escort then stared rather woozily down the front of her frock.

‘Sweet little Alice-blue gown.’ Definitely sozzled.

Jane selected a face for poor young James’s benefit: bemused; amused; tiny bit irritated.

‘What’s an
ice
girl like you doing in a place like this?’ Christ. It was funny the first time but this was getting beyond a joke.

‘Do you know something?’

She twitched a tiny smile, raised a bored eyebrow.

‘I love to watch you eat, Janey-my-darling.’

What was that supposed to mean? It was hard physical work not to let her face look cheesed off: pert; tolerant; politely intrigued.

‘I love to watch you eat because you do it so, so
perfectly
.’

Mercifully, manky old Amanda had finished her weekly whine and was stalking crossly back through the restaurant in last year’s nasturtium lace. She’d caught her heel round the back of the petticoat and the hem was coming down.
Many a miss has lost a man because her slip had slipped, so beware.

Johnny skulked back to his corner without waiting for introductions and Jane refocused her attention on the game in hand.

‘Who was that?’

‘I think his name’s John something. He’s a friend of my flatmate’s. Frightful lush.’
Frightful
.

But loverboy didn’t want to talk about Johnny; he wanted to talk about him. Every now and then he’d realise that he’d pulled the conversation too far over his side like so much eiderdown and push a little her way. Did she know Paris? No she bloody didn’t know Paris. Swank.

‘I’d love to show you Paris.’

If he hadn’t been so wet behind the ears that might have been an invitation but it was just another way of letting her know that he
did
know Paris.

‘
Parlez-vous français?
’

Where that conversation was supposed to go if you didn’t actually parley-voo was anyone’s guess but he’d struck lucky this time.

‘
Un peu.
’

Turned out he was a lot less shy in French.

‘
Vous êtes la plus belle fille içi. La plus belle fille du Londres. Très chic, très soignée, très sensuelle. Avec les tétons merveilleux
.’ (The waiter perked up at this point.) He rather liked having her smile politely while he talked dirty. Risky, but rather exciting. He’d read a list of useful froggy chat-up lines in a men’s magazine once and this was the first time they’d come into their own. He had some even fruitier ones in reserve but decided to save those for the drive home. She might let him take her up in that lift. He rather liked lifts. The funny murky light – and the mirrors.

The Willpower Dress had called a halt to Jane’s entrecôte (eighteen shillings: only the lobster cost more) so it was back to the Ladies’ to freshen up.

Johnny was there waiting on the stairs when she came out. Pissed but dishy. His tie was slightly loose and he looked like a very naughty fifth-former.

‘So who’s the boy wonder?’

No answer to that, really. She leaned against the wall of the stairwell and just looked right back at him. Let him figure out what she was thinking. She was tired of trying to work it out.

‘You look lovely in that dress.’ Tell her something she didn’t know. ‘Younger somehow.’ Was that good? ‘Like the night we first met. Why wouldn’t you see me tonight?’

‘I had a date. I’m nineteen. I have dates. We’re not engaged, you know.’

‘Why aren’t we?’

Here we bloody go again.

‘Don’t start all that. We’ll talk tomorrow.’

Then a nice half turn and back down the stairs to young James.

She decided against crêpes Suzette. She was getting sick of brushing her teeth – besides, just-a-coffee-for-me was always terribly sophisticated.

She let him kiss her in the Daimler, although not as much as the chauffeur would have liked. She let him kiss her again, harder and closer, in the tiny two-man lift. He even pressed the red ‘stop’ button between floors which was cheeky. Doreen never kissed anybody and she wouldn’t even let George kiss June and Jane for some dirty-minded reason or other. Jane had had a lot of ground to make up. She’d had more kisses in the last three months than she’d had in her whole life and being kissed goodnight was just about her favourite thing. Got you from nought to sixty in five seconds: hot, wet, excited. Only kissing was never really enough for them. It was all downhill after that.

James dug out a bit more smutty French as his hand slid up from her waist and his lips started to follow the actually rather well-worn path down to her cleavage. She pulled back sharply, keeping a weather eye on her reflection: pink; wide-eyed; slightly shocked.

‘Please. Don’t. You mustn’t.’ That old rubbish.
No man can seriously be angry, whatever he may say, if a girl shows that she has decent standards of behaviour
. He was very, very apologetic. A two-dozen long-stemmed apology at the very least. Roses, honestly. You couldn’t eat them, wear them or sell them. Waste of bloody time.

‘Please say you’ll forgive me. It’s just that you’re so . . . so.’ More of the old
je ne sais quoi
. Why couldn’t he say these things in English? ‘May I see you again?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know what to say.’

She couldn’t very well say that an evening playing dream girl, pretending to like black coffee and running backwards and forwards to the loo to be sick wasn’t her idea of a good time. That he was too young and soft to understand about things like proper presents and she wasn’t about to start giving it away. Not at this stage of the game.

Chapter 20

The smart girl should be as deft
at whipping up a soufflé as she is
at pondering existentialism.

It was lovely back inside the flat. Annie had left the lights on and it was all warm and creamy and polished. There was a box of chocolates and a huge bowl of hothouse peaches – three bob each – on the coffee table.

Suzy wouldn’t be back yet so Jane released herself from her armour-plated, Alice-blue gown and slipped into something more comfortable – not exactly difficult. She wrapped herself in a kimono, poured herself a glass of Grand Marnier and arranged herself carefully on the long white sofa, adjusting the silk robe to show off a hint of cleavage for her imaginary audience, then lay there, pecking at the three chocolates she’d decided to allow herself (she had to eat something) and watching telly. Just as the national anthem was starting up she heard the lift gate opening and hurried away to her own room. She didn’t want to get roped into one of Henry’s three-handers. Mind you, she had a funny idea he wouldn’t be going in for all that lark again. Besides, she needed her beauty sleep for Norbury.

She couldn’t get to sleep straight away. Johnny was getting to be a right nuisance. It wasn’t just dates any more. He’d been proposing on and off for the last six weeks.

About a month after their first date he’d borrowed a car and taken her down to Putney to meet Mummy. It was a nice enough house with all the right accessories – French windows, wisteria,
Country Life
and Earl Grey bloody tea – but Marjorie Hullavington wasn’t half as posh as she liked to make out. Mr Hullavington Senior had been killed (instantly) during the Blitz. This made keeping up appearances a great deal easier. No one could sneer at his tailor or cringe at his vowels any more. Marjorie certainly did her best to look the part – thirty-year-old Creed suit; lisle stockings the colour of ointment and a thrifty dab of orange tangee lipstick. But the house didn’t smell right. Posh houses (like Nice Little Flats in Mayfair) smelled of brandy and beeswax, of cut flowers and Diorissimo. Dogs (at a pinch). Marjorie Hullavington’s front hall smelled like the inside of a biscuit tin. Not a posh smell. And that triple string of pearls was definitely fake. They exactly matched her dentures, which seemed a lot of trouble to go to.