Louise Levene - A Vision of Loveliness

‘I’m sorry. I thought you were right behind me. Meet someone you knew?’

‘Some woman wanted me to buy her a drink. Never seen her in my life. She was drunk. Do you often go in there?’

‘It has a lot of Atmosphere,’ said Tony, apologetically, as he helped her on with her coat. ‘Augustus John used to drink in there.’

Did they really. What difference did that make? It was still a horrible pub.

‘You sure you won’t change your mind and have a bite to eat?’

Not on your life. If that was his idea of a nice pub she dreaded to think what the meal would be like. Foreign probably.

‘I’m sorry, I can’t. Aunt Doreen has tea on the table at seven. I’ll be lucky if I make it. It’s nearly half six.’

‘Another night?’

Oh God. How to make him stop? Crew-cut, fifty-shilling suit, nylon shirt, body odour. Did she have to spell it out? She’d only agreed to ‘one quick drink’ as a thank you. Without Tony she wouldn’t have the precious contents of her carrier bag: a Hardy Amies cashmere and wool dogtooth-check costume. Buy the best suit you can afford . Tony worked in the accounts department at the Savile Row boutique and told her that they were selling off that season’s samples and misfits at an invitation-only sale on Friday lunchtime. Jane had got there on the dot with £10 from her post office savings. Hardy Amies suits retailed for nearly thirty guineas – six weeks’ wages – and she wasn’t sure what kind of discount she’d get. In the end the pricing was up to Tony who let her have it for a fiver.

She had spotted her suit straight away: short, exquisitely draped jacket, real horn buttons, pencil-slim skirt with a nice deep wrap at the back. She tried it on in the back room filled with half-naked size-ten salesgirls and under-buyers looking for a bargain. There was a really nice violet dress and coatee as well but she couldn’t afford both and the black and tan dogtooth was more of a classic. The house fitter wouldn’t leave off about Jane’s stock-size figure. Not a single alteration. Jane could hardly wait to get home and try it on again.

‘How about Monday?’

‘Monday’s my day off. Look, I’m sorry but I’ve got to get the bus. Thanks awfully for the drink.’ Awfully . She blushed as she said it. What was all that about?

Tony insisted on walking her through Soho to the bus stop in Regent Street. The butchers, cakeshops and smelly delis were all shut up, blinds pulled down inside the windows. The coffee bars were quieter now that the pubs had opened. The usual warm, fatty whiff of roasting meat was already farting out of the back of the Regent Palace but it was too early for proper restaurants and it was far too early for the tarts – thank God – although Jane did glimpse one old trollop in a dressing gown pinning a card to the side door that led to her room above a chop-suey joint in Wardour Street: ‘busty young model upstairs’, apparently. Flat as a board she was. Imagine paying fifty bob for that. It was supposed to be more if they took their clothes off but it was hard to see why, looking at her.

It was a very cold, very aggravating walk, packed with opportunities for Tony to try and pin Jane down to a definite night. She tried talking about the miserable January weather but he kept a painful grip on the conversation, dragging it back to this date they were supposed to be having. He insisted on waiting in the queue with her, even though he lived in the opposite direction, but after only a minute the golden glow of Jane’s bus swung round the bend and she ran up the stairs to escape the sound of his farewells, to escape the possibility that people might think he was hers.

It was lovely and warm on the top of the bus and she slid thankfully into a seat, enfolded in smoke. A man in an old, smog-stained Burberry sat down next to her although there were several empty seats further along. His thigh was pressed the length of hers and, although it couldn’t really be helped on those skimpy double seats, some spark of unwelcome electricity, some unsmelled smell, told her that he knew what he was doing. Jane pulled her coat huffily round her and inched closer to the window, making herself as small as possible and opening up the tiniest crack of daylight between her thigh and his. He gave a faint grunt and immediately exhaled into the extra space. Jane flashed a cross glance at him: pale, sickly complexion, home-cut hair and an evil smell of Scotch and stale sweat.

The conductress had stomped heavily on to the upper deck, guarding the passengers’ heads from her ticket machine with her fingerless-gloved hands.

‘Any more fares please! You together?’

Cheek. Jane paid her fare and dug her book out of her coat pocket: Lady Be Good . As they reached Lambeth Bridge a huge drop of dark brown water landed splat on the page explaining how to tackle various hors d’oeuvres: Want him to think you mysterious and sophisticated? Don’t, whatever you do, order corn on the cob . She looked up to see the whole tobacco-stained ceiling trembling with tarry, fat droplets of condensation.

The night was colder still by the time they reached Norbury and Jane huddled inside her coat as she tripped along the lightless windows of the shopping parade. Vanda Modes – Vanda , honestly, the woman’s name was Edie. The huge walk-in windows were full of chipped, jazz-age mannequins dressed in snappy outfits, all identified with special labels (mis)printed on Vanda’s little machine as if Vanda were afraid that Norbury wouldn’t know the names for such clothes. Stylish gaberdine two-piece. Sporty ensomble. Casual jacket. Day-to-evening. Young seperates.

Jane had had a Saturday job with ‘Vanda’ as a schoolgirl. The windows might be full of winter fashions but at least a quarter of the turnover was corsets: slim pink boxes full of the things stacked in the light oak glass-fronted fixtures by size and length. White, pink, even black – service with a sneer here: either you were a slag or you didn’t wash your underwear, both, maybe, but never neither. The decent pink and white ones were worn by straight-backed old ladies who had been taught to dress when they came of age and who saw no reason to give up Mr Marcel’s waves, the tailor-mades, the smart little blouses and the figured rayon foundation garments they had worn as girls. The smart little blouses were also Vanda’s bread and butter: lawn; rayon; Viyella. They were lined up in the window on fantastical wickerwork torsos, their rude pointy bosoms tilted up shamelessly at passing eyes.

Aunt Doreen used to buy corsets from Vanda (when she bought them at all, which wasn’t often) but one year she was persuaded to try a new line in roll-on panty girdles instead. The scientific system promised ‘twice the flattening, twice the flattering’ and she couldn’t really sit down in it. It rolled on all right but after a day of toast and biscuits and boiled sweets it was completely impossible to roll off. There had been a knock at Jane’s door after everyone had gone to bed and there was Auntie Doreen in just her dressing gown, a porridge-coloured long-line bra and a gleaming white girdle. All Jane’s fault of course – ‘I only shop in the rotten place because you work there.’ Jane had had to cut her out of it with the nail clippers, each careful snip increasing the V-shaped pillow of flesh until Doreen was finally scissored free. It was one of Jane’s happiest memories. Doreen said she was going to take it back and complain but she didn’t. Of course she didn’t. She sewed it up and made it into a peg bag.

When Jane had started her Saturday job she didn’t know dolman from raglan. She still had nightmares about her very first customer. The corset fitter had been off sick and Vanda and the proper saleslady were both in the fitting room seeing to a large order. ‘Lovely woman. Difficult Figure,’ mouthed Vanda as she dived back behind the curtain, tape measure slung round the neck of her tan jersey two-piece. So far Jane had done nothing but fold and box corsets. She approached the customer with exaggerated meekness. She didn’t exactly curtsey, but her face did.