A Vision of Loveliness

Chapter 5


Don’t, whatever you do, forget that the

girl behind the counter is a human being

too. She has feelings just as you have.



The Arcade still had the gates up but they were pulled open a foot or so at the Bond Street end to let the sales staff sidle in. Jane had hoped to be first into the shop so that she could sneak out of her coat and jacket without anyone noticing but Bennett was in early. Bennett’s real name was Brenda but she’d been ten years in Young Separates at Derry and Toms where the manageress had been a Brenda. Something had to give and it was Bennett.

Bennett had a choice of two trains from Catford and she liked to play safe with the early one and then do her face in the mirror of the basement showroom in the belief that the unflattering light was helpful. Have a powerful, shadeless light over your glass. Fool your audience, but never fool yourself. In fact, it just meant that she put on far too much make-up and the distorting colours of the fluorescent striplight meant that she never noticed the tide mark where the Honey Velvet of the foundation met the Dove Grey of her neck.

‘Let’s have a look. You’re a bit done up, aren’t you, for a Saturday morning? You after that job at Hillson’s?’

There was an ‘Experienced Saleslady Required’ notice in the window of a rival knitwear shop in Bond Street. Not such a bad idea, actually.

‘I’m going out for lunch.’

‘Ooh! Get her! Out for lunch in her –’ she peered at the jacket’s label on the hanger. ‘What make is it? I can’t see without my glasses.’

Bennett was always saying this but the plain truth was that she couldn’t read at all. No one else seemed to have tumbled but Jane was wise to all her tricks because she had an aunt – George’s sister – who was the same: always forgetting her glasses or complaining that the print was too small.

‘It’s a Hardy Amies.’

‘Hardy Amies? Where did you get that kind of money? Hardy Amies! You can’t be on more than a fiver a week – if that.’

‘Sample sale.’

‘All right for some.’ Bennett was a size eighteen. She had eaten a cheese roll and a doughnut for elevenses every day for twenty years and the evidence was all held in place under a huge whalebone and ‘power elastic’ foundation garment that was supposed to take five years off you in five seconds flat. Twenty-three separate measurements tailored to fit every inch of her lumpy, fat torso. You didn’t catch Bennett bending. If something got dropped on the floor it was gone for ever as far as she was concerned.

‘Let me see the skirt. Mmm. It fits you all right but then they’re always a very funny shape, those Hardy Amies showroom numbers. The house model – Yvonne? Yvette? Eva? Evadne? Sonia? – name like that. Lovely girl but she’s got a very peculiar figure: hollow back. What is it? Cashmere and wool? The seat will bag out if you’re not careful. You ought to have a higher heel than that. It just looks frumpy with those.’

Jane left her to it. No sense giving her the satisfaction. Poisonous old crab.

Once Jane had escaped from Bennett’s clutches she began straightening the fixtures. She was supposed to replace any colours that had been sold with new garments from the stockroom. This took all of ten minutes. The last week in January was completely dead. The sales were over (not that the Arcade’s shops ever had anything as common as a sale), there were no tourists and the rush of post-Christmas exchanges had dried up (‘So sweet of him but it just isn’t my colour’). Saturdays were even quieter if anything, because any English people with money would be in the country for the weekend. What you did get were time-wasters. Overdressed ladies from places like Stanmore and Rickmansworth who liked to spend the morning swanning in and out of smart shops before they had to decide whether to go for the set lunch at Debenham and Freebody or blow six bob on an ‘Elegant Rarebit’ in Fortnum’s – twice the price of the inelegant kind. The Welsh weren’t elegant enough for Fortnum’s apparently.

The proper salesladies took it in turns to patrol the ground floor. You weren’t allowed to read or smoke or look as if you were deep in conversation. No. You must either be folding or generally fiddling with the stock or just mooch about ornamentally, waiting for a customer to come in and give your life a meaning.

There were days in January when the door didn’t open at all and, rather than stand about sniping at each other, the senior sales used to take it in turns to man the shop while the others retreated downstairs to read magazines or play gin rummy. This didn’t affect the all-important pecking order. If a customer should cross the threshold, Bennett might do the ‘Good morning, Madam, can I help you’ lark but she would then hand over to Brigitta straight away. Bennett had the knack of sounding like a snotty manageress as she explained that Madam would like to see something in lovat blue with a short sleeve but it was still Brigitta who got the commission. By rights, Jane was Fourth Sales which meant that she seldom saw a single customer at this time of the year. If ever. Brigitta had been known to serve as many as three customers at once. Made a party of it, as if they were all out shopping together.

Jane had taken all the cashmere shirts out and arranged their polythene bags into tidy rainbows with each shade blending into the next like the colours on a cinema organ: primrose, moss green, lovat green, bottle green, brown, camel, natural, white, pink, camellia, tartan red, claret, black, navy, Dior blue, Sandringham blue, lovat blue, powder blue. She then somehow shoehorned the slithering pile back into its fixture. She’d polished all the mirrors – why did people touch mirrors? – and stood with her back to the stock gazing out at the arcade through the window display where the coloured cashmeres were suspended on their glass shelves like fully fashioned tropical fish.

Bennett kept up a merciless running commentary on the passers-by as they bustled along.

‘Have you seen these two?’

A pair of identically dressed girls dashed by: very ‘with-it’, very Chelsea, with red woolly tights and matching red berets on top of their shiny bobbed hair which was cut in hard lines round their faces like the hair on a cartoon character. They wore A-line flannel coats well above their knees with big shiny red buttons – like a really, really embarrassing school uniform.

Brigitta looked out of the window as she tripped past on her way back down to the basement after her tea break. She was Dutch but she could bore you to death in six languages. Her saving grace was that she swore all the time. She would never have sworn in Dutch, but she picked up dirty little scraps of English like a tramp rooting through a dustbin. It was a miracle she didn’t swear at the customers really.

‘Whoever cut those f*cking jackets should cut another jacket and then be shot.’

She’d got that one from a little Jewish alterations tailor and she used it a lot.

You didn’t call her Brigitta to her face. You called her Mrs Taylor. Brigitta had been married very, very briefly to an Englishman she met nearly ten years ago while they were both working in the same department store. Bennett always reckoned it was just one of those friendly arrangements to get a work permit and that the split was all very amicable but Jane knew what really happened. Brigitta had had three Dubonnets and four glasses of punch at the Christmas party (table for twenty at the Cumberland Hotel) and had cornered Jane and explained that Mr Taylor had expected to be able to put his dirty great thing into Mrs Taylor whenever he felt like it.

‘I told him to stick it up his arse,’ said Brigitta and Jane said that would be a good trick if he could do it and Brigitta shot Dubonnet straight out of her nose.

Brigitta was, technically, still married to Mr Taylor but a week after the honeymoon she’d moved back into the salesladies’ hostel behind Marshall and Snelgrove, a miserable great barracks of a place where a girl could find refuge. Anyone with a gentleman caller had to wheel her bed out into the corridor. No gentlemen ever called. Mr Taylor was now living with his common-law wife in Carshalton Beeches and Brigitta eventually got herself a two-room flat near Clapham Common.

A very large woman in a mink coat had parked in front of the window.

Bennett pulled a face.

‘Oh no, Madam. Not in that size, Madam. Please!’

But Madam came in anyway. Very, very loud voice. Pointed to a baby-pink batwing-sleeved number in the window.

‘I’d like to see that in nigger brown in a size 48.’ No ‘good morning’.

‘I’m not sure if we still have that shade, Madam. It’s been a very popular line. But if you’d like to step downstairs one of our ladies can show you what we have. Mrs Taylor? Perhaps you could show Madam something attractive in nigger brown?’

Jane could hear the suppressed giggles and the whispered ‘Sidney Poitier’ but fortunately the customer didn’t. Brigitta hadn’t much to go on but she soon set to work persuading Madam that what she wanted was not a nigger brown, batwing-sleeved boat neck but a duck-egg blue, edge-to-edge cardigan. Unfortunately even the largest size didn’t allow edge to meet edge over Madam’s enormous tits. The most ‘generous proportions’ can be made to appear attractive when allied with perfect posture – look at the Queen Mother.

‘This style does run very small, Madam,’ said Mrs Taylor’s voice, apologetically. ‘I’ll just run upstairs to the stockroom and get you the next size.’

Brigitta stopped when she got to Jane and Bennett and immediately snipped the size labels off the 48 in her hand before pulling the cardigan as wide as it could possibly go. Cashmere can be any size you want. After the cardigan had had its nice little ‘schlap’, she folded it, put it in a bag and slipped back downstairs.

‘Oh yes, that’s better. Mind you the sleeve seems a bit short.’

You could hear the faintest sneer in Brigitta’s voice. ‘Short? Oh NO, Madam. Bracelet length.’

Whether or not they made bracelets big enough for those dimpled pink wrists Madam didn’t say, but she looked nice enough in her new cardigan and she knew when she was beaten. She even allowed Brigitta to sell her a bottle of Woolite and a D-Fuzz-It. After that, the shop went quiet for nearly an hour. Jane flicked furtively through a copy of Vogue on the counter. Why go to Yucatan?

There were no prices in the window. Prices were vulgar and, besides, once they’d plucked up the courage to come in and ask, there was always the chance the customer would be too embarrassed to scuttle straight back out again and admit that a twenty-guinea three-piece was more than their husband earned in a week and you could just shame them into buying something.

The door pinged open. Mousey woman in windowpane checks.

‘How much is that cardie in the window?’

Bennett had started humming a tune. Jane raised her voice slightly.

‘The anthracite bolero, Madam? That model is six guineas, Madam. It’s pure cashmere.’

‘Oh.’ Her little fat face fell. ‘Do you have the same thing in Orlon?’

Uh-oh. Bad sign. Mr Philip couldn’t abide man-made fibres. Cheap and machine-washable, they were a threat to his whole way of life. His contempt was infectious. Did they have the same thing in f*cking Orlon? No, Madam. Or Ban-Lon. Or Acrilon. Or Courtilon. Or Nylon. Or Brilon. Or Draylon. Or Vilene. Or Terylene. Or bloody polythene. Orlon cardies. Peasants.

‘Or what, madam?’

As she scuttled out by the far door the other one dinged open and suddenly there were two men in the shop. They didn’t seem to know it but they looked nothing like customers. One wore a leather car coat, the other had a big sheepskin draped over his shoulders. Both were wearing silk socks – wide boys always did. The beadles had already spotted them and were now stationed at either end of the arcade, on the lookout for a passing copper.

Bennett was on the attack at once.

‘Good morning, gentlemen. Can I help you?’ She turned to Jane. ‘I shall be busy looking after these gentlemen, Miss James. Perhaps you could tell Mrs Taylor and Miss Williams and Miss Stent and Mr Keating they’re wanted in the showroom?’ She made the last two up.

Jane kept her eyes on the two men and felt for the electric bell on the side of the stairs and pressed it three times. The card-players nipped swiftly up the stairs and took up their positions near the other two doors.

‘You got any intarsias, love?’ They didn’t bother with ‘good mornings’ either.

‘Yes, sir. We have some beautiful designs at the moment. What size was sir looking for?’

He looked nonplussed and opened his jacket. Bennett kept a completely straight face.

‘About a forty I should say, sir.’ She slid back the glass, pulled a single pullover from the top fixture and spread it on the counter further down while Jane smoothly came in behind her and slid the glass door back in place. Bennett shook the sweater from its folds. It was gorgeous: sooty black cashmere with exotic sprays of fuchsia, camellia and violet flowers scattered across it.

‘Would Sir like to try it on? We have a nice private fitting room downstairs, very discreet,’ said Bennett in a horribly understanding way. The man was a nice shade of camellia himself. His friend was trying not to laugh but keeping an eye on the door.

‘No. I meant that diamond pattern. You know.’

‘Ah! Sir means Argyll, I think. Not this one then?’

She and Jane went into their little dance, Bennett folding and bagging the garments while Jane worked the glass doors. Bennett moved down to the Argylls and her fingers hesitated a moment in front of the pigeonhole.

‘Same sort of colours?’

There wasn’t much left in that range. Jane had had to fill up the whole fixture with the brown and camel colourway.

‘Er. Brown?’

Bennett peered at the toffee-coloured pile in the fixture.

‘Oh dear. That’s the one colour we’re out of, sir. But we are expecting a delivery much later this year. Or early next.’

Jane opened the door and joined Bennett in a sort of pincer movement as they ushed the pair of them out of the shop under the watchful eye of the beadle.

A saleslady’s radar could recognise shoplifters immediately. She also had a sixth sense about messers. You got the same ones coming in again and again. Something about their clothes, about the angle of their feet (were they heading for the door?) told you that it wouldn’t be worth your while getting half the stock out.

Jane had spotted one of them outside looking at the window display. A painfully thin, miserable-looking woman with dyed black hair and a slightly sticky-looking beaver coat. A regular. She spent time but never money and nobody wanted to be prevented from serving a proper customer by getting bogged down with a time-waster. Jane tried to take evasive action but she was too slow off the mark. The other salesladies had begun tidying fixtures the moment she stepped through the door, leaving her to Jane. She always asked if she could take things home ‘on appro’ and always tutted when she couldn’t. She would then disappear into the fitting room and start amusing herself, putting together rather clever ensembles and walking up and down. She probably looked OK in certain lights but the crude strips and spots in the basement took no prisoners. She was even thinner than she looked – Over-zealous slimming leads to scrawniness, salt cellars, flat chests, bad temper and even (if you read your daily newspaper) suicide. Also, Jane soon realised that her trim figure was all spare parts: shoulders, bosom, even hips, were all little bits of wadding attached to her bra and corset. Tailored clothes hid all these bits and pieces but she looked very lumpy in knitwear.

Today Madam wanted to see something in vicuna, an animal so soft and fluffy and delicate that you practically had to kill it to get the silky brown wool off its back. They were running quite low on vicuna. So was Peru. Madam quite liked it but wasn’t sure about the brown. Did they have the same in a Saxe blue? Or a turquoise? Jane imagined Saxe blue and turquoise vicunas scampering across the Andes. No, Madam. Not in that style. Ignorant old bitch.

The only other customers that morning were a matching pair of Americans in his-and-hers camel overcoats, tartan trousers and cashmere scarves. Mrs Taylor, who had no conversation in real life, oozed professional charm. Not a very nice time of year for their trip, was it? London not at its best. Were they here on business? etc. All the while laying plans to sell them the entire shop, fixtures included. It was warm and slightly airless in the basement showroom and the cashmeres were cosy and soft and the pair could suddenly think of nothing nicer than a whole new wardrobe of knitwear plus the mix and match tweeds to go with them. They had already picked out over £200 worth of things when there was dangerous talk of lunch and coming back on Monday. Brigitta wasn’t going to let her commission get away that easily.

‘Miss James here can pop out and get you a nice smoked-salmon sandwich if you’re peckish. You still need to decide on a skirt length.’

‘Sure, honey. Let’s get it done today,’ said the husband, good-temperedly. ‘Just one skinny old English sandwich and then we can have a good lunch at that roast-beef place.’

Jane hurried into the coat room to put on her jacket and gloves and slip into her smart shoes. She walked the length of the arcade freezing to death but warm with pride at her reflection in the shop windows. She could sense the loafing shirt salesmen moving nearer the doors to watch her pass.

One of the regular buskers had taken the pitch at the end of the arcade. He was an old man with a tiny mandolin. He couldn’t play it but would stand there plink, plink-a-plinking away until one of the shopkeepers gave him half a crown to clear off. Jane preferred the old tapdancer with the wind-up gramophone and the suit made of Union Jacks. She’d once tried dropping a penny into the mandolin man’s case and he’d thrown it right back at her, calling her all the names. He wouldn’t take coppers: it was sixpence or nothing.

It was warm and spicy in the grocer’s. A few fussy old ladies were being served one at a time by young men in starched Holland overalls, scaling the high walls of shelves for tiny jars of orange blossom honey and stem ginger. The sandwich counter was right at the back under the skylight. A funny misshapen little man was making a right meal of a ham salad on white, tenderly buttering every slice from scratch as if the order for each sandwich came as a terrible surprise. He would then layer on the sugar-baked ham – ‘muthtard?’ – and tuck in the hospital corners of lettuce with the flat of his knife once the top slice had gone on. All the time in the world. Jane raised her head and looked about her a trifle impatiently – the way customers did – and a wide-awake young man in a morning coat and striped trousers magically materialised.

‘I’m sorry to keep you waiting, Madam.’ Madam. Not Dear. Not Miss, Madam. ‘Can I help you at all?’

She smiled. Charm every single person you meet. It’s more than a skill: it’s a fine art.

‘Yes you can, actually.’ Actually. ‘I’d like a smoked-salmon sandwich please.’

‘Certainly, Madam. Brown or white?’

She raised her eyebrows in slightly pained surprise. He very nearly apologised.

‘Brown?’

‘Brown.’

He may have graduated to spongebag trousers but he must have served time in overalls because he definitely knew his way round a smoked-salmon sandwich and had knocked one together – lemon and pepper included – before the old bloke next to him had finished mummifying his in greaseproof paper. And then he was out from behind the counter, ushering her down to the cashier and holding the door open. He was rather good-looking. Bit like David Niven.

‘Goodbye, Madam. See you again, I hope.’ Nice posh voice, too.

She rewarded him with another smile – never underestimate the power of your smile – then swung her brown paper carrier bag all the way back to the shop. Brigitta had moved seamlessly on to sportswear by this time. The Americans put out their cigarettes and nibbled gratefully on their sandwich.

‘What a neat suit! Isn’t that neat, honey?’ They really did say ‘honey’, both of them. The wife turned to Brigitta for guidance. ‘Do you have those here?’

Jane felt herself shrivelling with awkwardness. That, as Mr Philip would say, was why it was so important for the staff to wear their uniforms. The salesladies got four different outfits a year (although Junior Jane only got two) to be worn to work whenever humanly possible: ‘You girls must be my Living Advertisements.’

‘Might I have a word, Miss James?’

It was Mr Philip himself.

‘Uh-oh. He’s seen the suit,’ hissed Brigitta, happily. ‘He’ll have your guts for garters.’

Mr Philip was the younger son of the man who founded the business in 1928. Mr Drayke senior now lived in the south of France on his share of the profits. Januaries might be dead but it was still a very good business, especially the mail-order department which was run by a terrifying old stick of a woman in butterfly glasses who used to tint the front of her blue-grey bouffant to tone with that day’s ensemble. She never wore green, sadly.

Mr Philip spent most of his time up in the office, checking off the huge stock book and drinking Scotch which he kept in an old cough-mixture bottle in the safe along with the takings and the luncheon vouchers. He was a difficult person to talk to. Partly because you were trying not to react to the whisky breath and partly because, perched on the top of his head, like a friendly forest creature, was a glistening, nut-brown toupee. He’d obviously got a whiff of a Big Sale and had been lurking on the basement stairs proprietorially and overheard the unwelcome compliment.

‘That is a nice suit, Miss James.’ His clever, rag-trade fingers automatically reached out to price the tweed. ‘Very nice. But it is not a Drayke’s garment, Miss James. You girls are my Living Advertisements. You are not paid to advertise’ – he ran an expert eye over the sculpted waist, the hand-covered buttons – ‘Mr Hardy Amies. You’ve got your uniform, why don’t you wear it?’

‘I’ve not been here long, Mr Philip. I’ve only got two outfits and I can’t wear the same thing every day. I washed my navy twinset last night but it’s still drying. It did say “dry away from direct heat” on the swing ticket.’ Sweaters are called sweaters for a reason. Stay fresh and never fall victim to underarm fustiness.

‘Well, well, we’ll see if we can’t find you something upstairs.’ He had a whole cupboard full of samples and oddments most of which supplied his family’s Christmas presents. ‘Come and see me on Monday and we’ll dig something out.’

‘It’s my Long Weekend.’

‘Tuesday then. I don’t ever want to hear a customer say that to you again. Nice-looking girl like you. You should be a real asset to the firm.’ He looked at her again. ‘I hope you aren’t thinking of leaving us?’

Guess who else had seen the sign in Hillson’s window?

‘I’m very happy here, Mr Philip.’

Which was no answer and he knew it.



Brigitta was now at the till with a vast pile of sweaters, swatches and order books. Jane and her suit disappeared downstairs to tidy away the stock. She didn’t mind. The basement was warm and nicely smelly with traffic wax and the faint scent of burning fluff from inside the Bakelite wall heaters. Mirrors covered every inch of wall space that wasn’t taken up by shelving. The counters were elbow-deep in cashmere. It was Brigitta’s style to pull out all the different shades; that way the voice in the customer’s ear saying ‘Why not have both?’ seemed almost reasonable when they looked at all the colours they could have had. Jane folded and bagged, folded and bagged until she had finally dug back down to naked rosewood. Ten minutes to one. Please don’t let there be a late customer.

Jane finally looked up from her last bit of folding and saw her reflection, flushed from the basement heat. She did her best to smile a warm, winning, crocodile-handbag smile.

‘The wind’ll change and you’ll stay like that.’

Bennett was like a portable Doreen, a whining voice in her ear to drag her back down to earth.

‘A young man called for you with a delivery while you were out getting that sandwich.’ She produced a large Hardy Amies bag from the stock room. ‘He said the fitter thought you might like it. No one bought it in the end. Can’t say I’m surprised. It’s a horrible colour and the zip’s broken. I had a quick look. I knew you wouldn’t mind.’

It was the violet dress and coatee.

‘He seemed very disappointed to miss you, your young man. Rotten suit he was wearing.’

The bell was being rung by the beadle and she could hear the happy sound of the doors being locked and blinds being pulled down. Jane stuffed the last pile of three-button cashmere shirts into their cubby-hole. They fitted easily now – the American couple played a lot of golf.

‘How much did they spend in the end?’

‘Two hundred and sixty quid,’ said Bennett glumly.

They both silently calculated Brigitta’s two per cent. More than a week’s wages for Jane.