A Vision of Loveliness

Chapter 19


A man should date a girl purely for the

privilege of her company, not to buy her

intimacy. Her pleasure in his hospitality

and her warm thanks for a lovely

evening should be reward enough.





It was just seven when they got upstairs. Suzy, having spent the whole day being beautified, just peeled off her suit and her girdle and lay down on the pink satin eiderdown for a little beauty sleep. Jane undressed and slipped into the bath Annie had run.

She had a date with the under-manager of the posh grocer’s in Piccadilly – two more smoked-salmon sandwiches and he was eating out of her hand. She wasn’t convinced the first time he asked her. He could only be on about a tenner a week but it turned out he was learning the family business and it was going to be dinner at Prunier’s and then dancing. She wouldn’t get much more than a box of chocolates out of it although the sick flatmate might pull in a hamper. He’d already sent an orchid – plain white, thank goodness. Those big, bruise-coloured ones never went with anything. She decided to stick it in her hair. Very mumsy, corsages.

What to wear? He didn’t look like the red velvet type. Too showy. She called through to Suzy who had had her nap and was now wriggling into a rhapsody in pink organza. She was seeing Henry at least two nights a week now and she liked to build in plenty of variety. She was going through a fluffy, jeune fille phase lately.

‘Is the forget-me-not faille clean?’

‘Give or take. Annie’s been over it with the Dabitoff, haven’t you, darling?’

Jane, all dried and lotioned, was dribbling the glass stopper of the Jolie Madame bottle behind her ears and down her front. Make the most of your chosen scent. Let the world know that someone lovely has drifted by. She had been using Miss Dior but a girl who worked on the scent counter in Selfridges told her that Ruth Ellis always used to wear it which made her feel a bit funny so she gave the bottle to Annie and then took Sergio shopping.

The blue faille was very, very tight. What Yanks called a Willpower Dress because it helped you say ‘no’ to food – say ‘yes’ and you either threw up or blew off. It looked fabulous, though, once Annie had trussed her into it. The bodice looked quite demure from the front but from above her tits looked like two fat dollops of ice cream. That should keep the waiters on their toes.

Quick check of her three reflections in the dressing-table mirror. Hair fat and glossy; skin powdered and peachy; lips young and pink as berries and eyes . . . eyes like little brown bits of wood. Even Jane could see that. Dead eyes. All the eye make-up in the box will not make your glance appealing if your eye is merely on the main chance.

The phone on her dressing table rang. Henry had arrived early and Annie was busy shoe-horning Suzy into the organza (she’d lost a few pounds over the last fortnight but a size eight was a size eight) so Jane went into Maid Mode with a nasty Norbury voice.

‘Yais? Mayfair 3515.’

Completely threw June. Umming and ah-ing at this unexpected hurdle.

‘Is Miss Deeks there please? Miss James, I mean.’

‘Hi shall enquire.’

Jane put the finishing touches to her lips.

‘Hello?’

‘Jane? It’s me. June. I thought I’d better ring. It’s Auntie. Something’s happened.’

Jane studied her reaction in the three angles of the white and gold dressing-table mirror and let the drama flood across her skin. She pictured Doreen under a bus, Doreen in an oxygen tent, Doreen broken and bleeding at the bottom of the gorilla’s cage.

‘Aunt Doreen? Oh my God! What’s happened? What’s the matter?’

The Fantasy Coral lips trembling, the stiff dolly’s eyelashes clicking shut and then opening again on shiny new eyes. Not blue ones – why were dolls’ eyes always blue? – but hot and wet like melted chocolate. That was better.

‘She’s had a really Nasty Turn.’

What the bleeding hell was that supposed to mean? Definitely one of Doreen’s that was. Nasty Turn. What? Heart attack? Epileptic fit? Stroke? Brain haemorrhage? Stomach on the chest?

‘Is she in hospital?’ Jane got a little catch into her voice. She leaned forward so that she could see her breasts (all six of them) inflating into view with each breath, brushing the fluffy blue bow affair at the front of the frock.

Doreen was at home (so the turn was only so nasty in other words). They’d put her in Jane’s old room.

‘She’s asking for you.’

This was hard to believe.

‘Is it serious?’

‘Doctor doesn’t know.’ A breath in June’s voice and suddenly, clear as bloody day, Jane could picture her sister stood in the draughty passage by the hall stand, checking her own reflection in the big old speckled mirror. Drama queen, honestly.

‘Uncle George didn’t want me to worry you.’

‘I’ll come over tomorrow about twelve. That be all right?’

She pictured herself at the side of her old bed, on the dressing-table stool looking smart, cooing sweetly. Cooling flannel? Spooning soup? No thank you. More June’s style.

She could, in theory, have taken a bus from Park Lane (number 137, change at Streatham Hill) but sod that.

Suzy was curled up on Henry’s lap in the sitting room being comforted (again). Bit late to start crying about it now.

‘Was that the lovely Sergio on the telephone?’

Suzy had stretched her leg out over the arm of the chair, letting her new pink suede Ferragamo shoe – one of the week’s nice little presents – dangle daintily from her stockinged toe.

‘No,’ compress lips grimly. ‘No. It was my aunt’s housekeeper. She’s very ill apparently.’

Hospital? No. Home? Yes. Asking for her. Got to get down to Norbury. ‘Down to Norbury.’ Made it sound a major expedition especially to those two. Henry just sat in the backs of cars reading the share prices until Bill switched off the engine and the southern borders of Suzy’s known universe only stretched as far as Sloane Square.

‘You poor darling! Is there a train or something?’

Henry wanted the conversation to stop so he could get his hands back down the front of Suzy’s pink organza dress. He looked like a man being attacked by a giant stick of candyfloss.

‘Don’t be silly. Bill can take her in the car. I’ll give him a call and tell him to be here for – eleven all right for you? We don’t need the car till tomorrow evening, do we?’ ‘We’. Not ‘I’. ‘We’.

This was very, very kind of Henry. Jane didn’t know how she could thank him enough (trembling slightly as she said it in case the randy old bugger thought of a bloody way). But he wasn’t even looking at Jane and her grateful tears would have been completely wasted if the doorbell hadn’t rung. She opened the door with bright, gooey eyes and her handsome, posh grocer was ready and waiting to whisk her down to Daddy’s Daimler which was vrooming respectfully on the forecourt below.

‘I shan’t be two seconds.’ It was imagining her suede stiletto snaking out of the passenger door that gave Jane the brainwave.

She dived back into her room. How long would she actually be spending with Doreen? Half an hour? An hour at most. At that rate Henry’s Bill could practically leave the engine running on the Bentley. Oh goody. The Bentley. She picked up the receiver and, using the end of her eye pencil to protect her manicure, dialled Joy in South Norwood.

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.