Marjorie was right about this as well. Barbara couldn’t remember the last time she’d served a man.
‘But they buy perfume as presents. They get all flirty when they’re buying it, too. They want you to spray it on your wrists and then take your hand so they can sniff.’
Barbara had seen this back home in R. H. O. Hills, but not often, and it was never done with any real intent. People were more careful in a small town. If somebody’s husband tried something on, his wife would find out soon enough.
‘Listen,’ said Marjorie. ‘A gentleman friend isn’t interested in wrestling. I just thought I should warn you.’
Barbara was surprised. ‘What is he interested in, then? If he’s not interested in, you know, that.’
‘Oh, he’s interested in that. Just not the wrestling part.’
‘I’m not sure I get you.’
‘He won’t want to wrestle. Wrestling’s for kids.’
‘But if he’s a gentleman …’
‘I think the word “gentleman” in “gentleman friend” is like the word “public” in “public schools”. It actually means the opposite, when you put it with something else. You’re not a virgin, are you?’
‘Of course not,’ said Barbara.
The truth was that she wasn’t sure. There had been some sort of business with Aidan, right before the beauty pageant. She had decided that she wanted to be unencumbered before coming to London. He’d been hopeless, though, and she was consequently unsure of her official status.
‘Well, be warned, that’s all. They’re not messing about.’
‘Thank you.’
Marjorie looked at her, apparently exasperated.
‘You do know what you look like, don’t you?’
‘No. I thought I did, before I came down to London. But it’s different here. There’s a different scale. All those girls in Cosmetics and Ladies’ Fashion, and then when you go out on to Kensington High Street …’
‘All those little stick insects?’ said Marjorie. ‘You don’t need to worry about them. All right, you’re not very with it. But men don’t care about that. You’re ridiculous.’
‘Oh,’ said Barbara. ‘Thank you.’
‘You’re like Sabrina.’
Barbara tried not to roll her eyes. She hated Sabrina, the girl who just stood in front of the camera on the Arthur Askey Show, smiling and showing off her silly bust. She was and did the opposite of what Barbara wanted to be and to do.
‘You’ve got the bosom, the waist, the hair, the legs, the eyes … If I thought that murdering you with a meat cleaver, this minute, would get me half what you’ve got, I’d slice you up without a second’s thought and watch you bleed to death like a stuck pig.’
‘Thank you,’ said Barbara.
She thought she’d focus on the compliment, rather than the terrifying glimpse she’d been given into her flatmate’s soul. She found herself particularly worried by Marjorie’s willingness to do all that, the slicing and the bleeding and the murdering, for only a percentage of the advantages she envied. There was something in this compromise that made it seem more real than Barbara wanted it to be.
‘You shouldn’t be in of an evening, watching me dry my underwear. You should be entering beauty competitions.’
‘Don’t be daft,’ said Barbara. ‘What would I want to do anything like that for?’
The next day, Barbara asked a girl she knew on the perfume counter to swap with her for an afternoon, just to see how easy it was to find a gentleman friend. The results of the experiment were startling: you just had to turn on the light indicating that you were looking for one. Barbara was glad she hadn’t known where the switch was during her teenage years, because she’d have got herself into all sorts of trouble in Blackpool – trouble caused by married men who owned seven carpet shops, or who sang in the shows at the Winter Gardens.
Valentine Laws wasn’t much of a catch. She should probably have thrown him back in, but she wanted to get on with it. He was at least fifteen years older than her, and he smelled of pipe tobacco and Coal Tar soap. The first time he came to the perfume counter, he was wearing a wedding ring, but when he came back a couple of minutes later, apparently for a longer look at her, it was gone. He didn’t speak to her until his third lap.
‘So,’ he said, as if the conversational well had momentarily run dry. ‘Do you get out much yourself?’
‘Oh, you know,’ she said. ‘Not as much as I’d like.’
‘ “Mooch”,’ he said. ‘Lovely. Where are you from? Let me guess. I’m good at this. I know it’s somewhere oop north, but where, that is the question. Yorkshire?’
‘Lancashire. Blackpool.’
He stared, unembarrassed, at her chest.
‘Sabrina comes from Blackpool, doesn’t she?’
‘I don’t know who Sabrina is,’ said Barbara.
‘Really? I’d have thought you’d all be very proud of her.’
‘Well, we’re not,’ said Barbara. ‘Because we’ve never heard of her.’
‘Anyway, she looks like you,’ said Valentine Laws.