A Vision of Loveliness

by Louise Levene

  ‘Auntie says you’re not to be let in.’

  ‘I don’t want to come in.’ She said it loud enough to be heard in the kitchen. She jerked her head at the heap of her possessions. ‘What’s all this in aid of?’

  ‘You weren’t at Joy’s house last night at all. Joy phoned here this morning wanting you to go round. Auntie says you’re a Dirty Little Stop-out and I’m to have your room.’

  ‘I wouldn’t hold your breath. She’s not your mother, remember. She’ll give the big room to Ken or Georgette, you wait and see.’ The upstairs curtains had all been taken down and you could hear the scrape of beds and wardrobes and the sound of Doreen shouting instructions as she carried out one of her big furniture shuffles. She didn’t do any of the lifting herself (not with her Trouble) but poor Uncle George and Kenneth would be made to ‘see what it looks like over by the window’, toddling wardrobes backwards and forwards while Doreen stood with her head on one side before deciding that she preferred it the way it was and tutting about dust as if one of them had put it there.

  ‘Oh well. Want to give me a hand with this lot?’

  ‘Don’t you care? Aren’t you ashamed?’ June had been a patrol leader in the Guides which had done her no good at all.

  ‘I stayed the night with this really nice girl I met. She’s got a flat up in the West End and she’s asked me to share with her. I’ve only come back for a few bits and pieces. She’s got loads and loads of clothes and we’re exactly the same size.’

  Jane thought happily of that wonderful rail of frocks, and Glenda’s shoes. Twenty-two pairs. She’d counted.

  ‘Sounds like white slavery to me,’ said June, cluelessly.

  ‘Don’t be schew-pid. Come on. Give me a hand.’

  June slipped out into the garden while Jane fished through the heap for her cashmere sweaters and her nice tweed skirts and the summer frock with the blue poppies – although they did say next summer was going to be more gingham and polka dots. They all fitted neatly into the holdall. When she opened the overnight bag it gave off a lovely bedroomy smell of freesia-scented talcum powder (her Christmas present from June). She stuffed the big brown envelope into it then clicked it shut. She left everything else lying on the concrete. She hesitated for a moment over her precious books but she almost knew them by heart and anyway she didn’t want Suzy bloody sneering at them.

  ‘You can have the rest.’

  June’s eyes lit up: summer frocks, cheap shoes, a navy suit from Etam. Jane hadn’t the heart to point out that none of it would fit until she lost a stone. Maybe she would now she’d got Gayelord Hauser’s Guide to Intelligent Reducing. Doreen would love all the leftovers. She gave June the phone number of the flat. They’d be gone from there by Wednesday but maybe Lorna would pass on a message. She was at the gate when Doreen appeared on the doorstep. Jane did the best Paris turn she could manage and posed on the path, feet just so, gloved hand flared out from the body, chin prettily tilted. Very Bronwen Pugh.

  ‘Hello, Auntie. I’m just off,’ for all the world as if her entire wardrobe wasn’t littered round the hydrangea bush.

  ‘Don’t you “Hello Auntie” me, you slag. Coming back here, done up like a dog’s dinner.’ She jerked her head disgustedly at Jane’s beautiful red coat. ‘ ’E buy you that lot, did ’e?’

  Jane switched back to her ultra-ritzy voice to wind Doreen up nice and tight.

  ‘No, Auntie. My new friend Suzy lent them to me. I’m going to be sharing a flat with her from now on.’

  ‘A likely story. Coming home Friday gone eight o’clock smelling like a four-ale bar. “Late customer” my eye. You must think I’m daft. Well, I won’t stand for it.’

  Net curtains were being twitched ecstatically on both sides of the street. You could hear the deaf old bitch opposite opening her casement window to hear better. Doreen didn’t usually like people knowing her business but it was still quite nice to have an audience once in a while. She raised her voice.

  ‘I’ve tried to bring you up right but I’ve got my own children to think of.’

  Bang on cue Georgette began screaming. It wasn’t real crying, just the wah-wah noise she made when no one was taking any notice of her.

  ‘I can’t have that poor mite growing up with a slut like you for a sister – half sister. Gawd knows what your poor mother would say.’

  Doreen even had the cheek to look up at this point. As if her dead sister were peering out of the front bedroom window enjoying the show like one of the neighbours.

  ‘My poor mother will know that I was staying with Suzy. Bye-bye, June. Ring me if you need me. Give my love to Ken and Uncle George.’ Sod Georgette.

  The two bags were very heavy but Jane managed to give the neighbours a nice little show as she walked off down the avenue, head high, while Doreen was screeching after her that she wouldn’t be coming back. Bloody right she wouldn’t.

  She stopped for a rest once she was safely round the corner. Carrying a heavy bag in high-heeled fashion boots was no joke.

  ‘Want a hand with that?’

  Uncle George had abandoned the furniture-shifting and come to say goodbye properly, dashing out in his shirtsleeves with no collar on.

  ‘I really was staying at this girl’s flat, you know. I only said I was staying with Joy because if I said “Suzy” she’d want to know all the ins and outs. And she’s a model. Auntie hates models.’

  ‘Jumped-up clothes horses,’ quoted Uncle George, smiling.

  ‘And No Better Than They Should Be. But Suzy’s really nice and she’s asked if I want to share her flat.’

  ‘Where is it?’

  ‘Up round Oxford Street but she’s moving to a new one tomorrow. Mayfair.’

  Uncle George had always lived and worked south of the river. He hardly ever went into London but he knew (or thought he knew) how much rent you’d pay where. If Jane had said Pentonville Road or Northumberland Avenue he’d have been fine but this sudden advance to Mayfair worried him.

  ‘Must earn a fair bit, then. For a model.’

  Uncle George put his arm around her shoulder.

  ‘You sure you know what you’re doing? I know you want your independence but wouldn’t you be better off sharing with a few of the girls from the arcade? You only met this Suzy yesterday. Why does she want you to share with her all of a sudden? You got a rent book?’

  ‘Not exactly.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound right.’

  Oh why couldn’t he shut up? He was spoiling it. Doreen carping wouldn’t matter. With Doreen it would just be envy. Jane was already young and pretty with smart clothes and an overnight case. But a nice friend? And a nice flat? Aunt Doreen didn’t have any friends – nice or otherwise.

  When Doreen was young she used to go about with her younger sister. Her social life dried up very suddenly when Jane’s mother got married but it picked up again when the war started. Doreen quite enjoyed the war. She met Uncle George when she was working in the Naafi out at Ascot and for some reason he had asked her to marry him. Everyone was at it. One hundred and twenty thousand of them got divorced right after the war but not Doreen. Till death us do part, as she was bitterly fond of saying.

  Doreen and her sister had grown up in Stepney (or Essex, as Doreen now preferred to call it). When Jane’s mother first got married she and her shy-looking, black and white husband had moved in with his mother in Norbury. She wasn’t an easy woman to live with but they didn’t have to stand it for very long. She died one night during the Blitz (her heart, not the Germans). They found £500 in white fivers and a photograph of her late husband’s brother sewn into her corsets.

  Doreen had just got herself transferred to another job pouring tea at Croydon Airport and took the large back bedroom in the house in Norbury to give poor Gloria a hand with little Jane. Jane’s father wasn’t too thrilled but he was only on leave once in a blue moon and it was company for Gloria. When Doreen got married the following year George moved in too. The two couples jogged along together fo
r two tetchy years before the Jameses died and Doreen moved her things into the front bedroom. By rights the house in Pamfield Avenue belonged to Jane and June but Doreen never told them that. That was the real reason why Mr and Mrs Deeks never got round to adopting their orphaned nieces. There might be questions, nosey parkers, forms to fill in. It was also why Doreen kept her distance with the neighbours who’d all have remembered old Mrs James. She didn’t want to be humped up with them anyway. Snobby lot. Washing milk bottles and polishing doorsteps. It was all just Swank.

  Sixteen years since moving there she now knew all the neighbours’ names and all their business but they weren’t friends with her. Friends would have meant invited in for tea, shopping expeditions to Croydon, picnics with the children on the rec, trips to the pictures even. Doreen always said she didn’t want to be bothered with all that – not that anyone ever asked her.

  Doreen was much happier talking to complete strangers. She spoke to anyone and everyone, usually in queues for things: in the post office; in the self-service; at the bus stop. But the doctor’s was her favourite. You had more time to get a monologue going. Dr McCartney’s National Health patients weren’t entitled to a proper appointment like the private ones. Instead they had to sit round the edge of the uncarpeted waiting room on Tuesdays and Thursdays, bumping their germs on to the next chair every time another person got their turn in the consulting room. Doreen would usually start with the weather (too hot; too cold; too bleeding wet) and then shift her complaint to London Transport, the Co-op; or Dr McCartney. Her victim would then chime in with the responses: ‘Oh dear’ or ‘That’s nice’ (usually ‘Oh dear’). If it was a woman – which it almost always was – she might move on to the birth of her children or even her hysterectomy but never, strangely, the two dead baby girls. Jane once got stuck next to some old dear in the doctor’s (gall bladder and funny turns) – who’d obviously had the full Doreen treatment.

  ‘Your aunt’s had a very hard life.’

  She knew all about Kenneth’s adenoids, Uncle George’s false teeth, June’s athlete’s foot but when Jane wondered aloud about what it must be like to have a baby and yet not keep it the woman looked mystified. It obviously wasn’t in the authorised version. Nor was Jane’s scholarship. Or her poetry-reading certificates. Jealous, that’s why.

  Uncle George wasn’t jealous. Uncle George knew about having friends. So why was he spoiling it about Suzy and the flat? What difference if it was Park Lane or Park Royal?

  ‘It’s all completely above board, honestly it is.’ Was it? ‘You’d really like Suzy. She’s smashing. I’ll give you a tinkle once we’re straight and you can see for yourself.’

  Mercifully there was a bus coming. The conductor, dazzled that such a taxi-looking woman should be waiting for a bus in Norbury, took the holdall from Uncle George and stowed it under the stairs. Like a porter. Jane waved goodbye – ‘Goodbye, George’ rather than ‘Uncle George’. Not in that shirt.

  She sat on the long seat by the entrance and put her overnight bag at her side. It exactly matched the red coat as if the whole outfit had come pinned to a card – like dolls’ clothes.

  She played up the part of a Persian lamb lady who wasn’t quite sure how buses worked.

  ‘Do you go anywhere near Oxford Circus?’

  ‘Stop right there.’

  ‘Super. How much is that?’

  She counted the change out of her purse and her kidskin fingers held on to the ticket as if it were all a big novelty. She looked around the lower deck of the bus as it whizzed through Brixton and peered out at Big Ben, smiling excitedly at the three other passengers as if she were on a great big merry-go-round.

  It was already getting dark and she was dreading the long, wobbly walk from the bus stop at the other end but what Doreen would have called a Well-Spoken Young Man stopped in Portland Place on his way to work at the BBC and offered to carry her bag and was she busy that evening? She wasn’t sure. As far as she could tell there was only lobster bisque and stale Ryvitas in the cupboard.

  She couldn’t very well let him carry the bags up the stairs – though he did ask. She imagined his face at the sight of the flat. This nice clean Oxbridge boy with his brainy tweeds and college scarf.

  Jane explained about the elderly aunt she was lodging with using a wealth of Suzy-style detail: arthritic; war widow; very old-fashioned. But she did let him have the telephone number. He might not be Mirador material but he’d be all right to practise on.

  Chapter 13

  The all-male gathering can be a hearty

  occasion. The female equivalent – a poached

  egg on toast listening to the wireless with

  a friend – is simply an evening wasted.

  Suzy, now smoothed, plucked, varnished and moisturised, was tricked out in a rather natty weekend get-up: dogtooth-checked slacks and a black cashmere polo neck. She looked very pretty but much younger without her face on. She was lying on the three-legged sofa after a long day of self-improvement, reading a copy of Queen and smoking her way through a packet of Woodbines – she saved the good fags for going out.

  ‘That was quick. Did she cut up rough?’

  ‘No. Not at all. She helped me get all my things together.’

  Suzy arched her body into a long, pin-up stretch.

  ‘God, I’m starving! I’ve had nothing but black coffee and cheese footballs all day.’

  ‘I know how you feel. I decided against staying for lunch. Auntie was just having something on a tray.’ She pictured Doreen with a bit of smoked haddock and a glass of hock. ‘I wish I’d said yes to the dinner date now.’

  ‘Not on your life, darling. Kiss of death.’

  Suzy had run out of coins for the meter and the flat was freezing again. Jane clunked her last two shillings into the slot and gingerly lit the gas before slipping reluctantly out of the red coat and hanging it up on the rail that Suzy had wheeled into the passage. The shoes had all been pegged into pairs and bundled into one of the three tea chests. The other two were full of cashmeres, underwear, handbags and hats. The whole arsenal of Suzy’s charm. They had made the place look a tip but without all those glamorous things lying about, the flat was as dirty and sordid as Doreen’s back kitchen.

  ‘Well it’s much too cold to stay indoors.’ Suzy went through to the bedroom and started work on her face, blotting it out with a grubby little bottle of make-up base, then drawing the whole lot back on again. She scrabbled in an old tobacco tin for a matching pair of false eyelashes, pulled off the snotty strings of old gum, squeezed a skinny worm of glue on to each one from a tiny tube, and patted the lashes into place, beefed up with two coats of automatic mascara.

  ‘Your turn.’

  Jane slid into her place on the piano stool and Suzy repeated the whole process.

  ‘Where are we off to then?’

  ‘Well we can’t stay here eating Twiglets. I was thinking we could treat ourselves to a sherry and nuts at Claridge’s and see what develops.’

  She helped Jane put the finishing touches to her face and gingerly ran the comb over last night’s hair-do – when Big Terry pleated your hair, it stayed pleated.

  Jane had her eye on a gorgeous fuchsia-pink corded velvet cocktail dress but Suzy knew better.

  ‘Not on your own in Claridge’s, darling. They’ll take you for a tart and chuck you out. We’ll have to pretend to be meeting someone to be let in the bar at all.’

  Apparently unaccompanied Sunday night drinking in a West End hotel – always supposing they let you in, unchaperoned – called for smart tweeds. Not too mumsy but nothing to frighten the horses.

  Jane was about to slip into her Hardy Amies when the phone rang.

  ‘Oo? Oh you mean Mrs White’s niece. Oo wants her?’

  The posh voice stammered feebly.

  ‘Er. It’s Michael. Michael Woodrose.’

  Jane covered the receiver with her hand.

  ‘It’s the man I met at the bus stop. He was rather sweet. Works at
the BBC. He’s about to finish his shift. Wants to know if I fancy some supper.’ Supper sounded cheaper than dinner.

  ‘Get him to take us both out for a Chinese,’ stage-whispered Suzy. Claridge’s was certainly smarter but might yield nothing on a Sunday night in January.

  ‘Well. I’m meant to be going out for supper with my friend Suzy. Would you mind if I brought her along?’

  Snookered. He couldn’t very well say no but it was nice to hear the disappointment in his voice. They arranged to meet at Ley-On in Wardour Street at eight.

  ‘Can you work chopsticks?’ Jane shook her head. ‘Well there’s time for the crash course before we head off. I think there are a few cornflakes left.’

  Jane dashed into the icy kitchen, tipped some cornflakes into a curved saucepan lid – the single remaining clean thing in the cupboard – and found a pair of chopsticks in the dresser drawer (one said Ley-On, the other Lotus Garden). The next half hour was spent tweezing the stale yellow flakes out of their bowl and into the ashtray.

  ‘It’ll be easier tonight. The sauce glues the stuff together. You can always attack it with a fork if you get desperate – loads of people do – but it’s much more impressive this way. They like it when you know all the tricks.’

  They. The men who bought dinner.

  ‘Do you ever go Dutch?’

  ‘Go Dutch! Wash your mouth out! Look, darling. They’ve got a pretty girl on their arm and a kiss and a cuddle on the way home. Dinner’s the least you should expect. Dutch! You are funny. So. What’s he like, this conquest of yours?’

  ‘Young. Private school.’

  ‘Public school,’ corrected Suzy. Snobby cow.

  ‘Quite nice-looking. Tweedy.’

  ‘Sounds all right. Sounds virginal. But it might be fun. Where does he live?’

  ‘Not far. Round the back of the BBC somewhere, I think.’

  The planned Claridge’s get-up was switched for tight, low-cut black sweaters (Glenda had three of these) and full felt skirts. They didn’t leave the flat till gone eight. The streets were deserted and apart from the odd thirty-watt twinkle from St Anthony’s Chambers, there was no light from any of the surrounding buildings. Down in Oxford Street the fancy window dressing sulked unseen in the lightless displays. The taxi was surprised to find a fare at all – particularly one that only wanted to go four hundred yards but Suzy didn’t really believe in walking. What was the point? You just arrived with sore feet and a red nose. The cab let them know you weren’t a cheap date and with any luck Janey’s tweedy little friend would pay for it anyway.