Jane crossed the floor then risked a full basic turn. There was nothing basic about it. Pivot on the balls of both feet. Go back on your right foot, which must be at right-angles to the left. Pause. Then step off again with the left foot. Just as she completed the manoeuvre she saw that Suzy had entered the room having somehow managed to zip herself into the identical dress in white satin. She was wearing the white pumps from her kit bag. They were slightly grubby but then so was the frock after umpteen showings. They passed each other then both did a full turn and faced the Greens. Mrs G walked up to Jane and checked the fit of the bodice.
‘Not bad. Not bad at all. Quite a nice effect, the two of them. What do you say, Larry? Nice effect?’
She drew on her cigarette, deepening the hollows beneath her high, bony cheeks. She lowered her powder-blue lids slightly, glancing sidelong at Larry, waiting for his agreement.
‘Very nice effect, Goldie, should be very good for sales. They’ll find it hard to choose between them: take both colours.’
He nipped back into the changing room and re-jigged the running order, ringing the stockroom to send down a few more duplicates: lupin and rose; black and white; silver and gold; marigold and violet (African violet was going to be very big next season).
Mr Green turned to Jane. ‘Very nice. Very promising.’ (Promising was cheaper than nice.) ‘Thirty bob for the morning all right for you?’ This was way below the going rate but she needed the experience.
‘Aren’t you going to throw in a frock, Larry?’ Mrs Green was back in the workroom so Suzy could work the lashes. ‘You must have lots of stuff hanging about from last season. What about that sale or return deal you did with Barkers? They can’t have shifted all of it. Not the small sizes. Be a darling. Janey’s got a really hot date tomorrow.’
She posed demurely on a little gilt chair, hands crossed at the wrist to deepen the round, creamy cleavage visible over the white satin rim of the bodice. Like a very naughty bridesmaid. Lawrence Green straightened his Windsor knot and gave them another flash of that smart gold tooth.
‘We’ll see how it goes this morning. I’ve got one buyer coming down from Manchester; Firbridges Young and Gay department and the head of model gowns for Debenham and Freebody – first time we’ve had her here. One of her suppliers has let her down and she needs some spring models in a hurry. Wedding gowns are big business at the moment. Nobody wants a Windsor grey costume in a register office when they can screw daddy for white faille and six bridesmaids.’ Jane thought of Eileen and her four fat cousins in home-made peach pongee.
The first buyer arrived on the stroke of half nine. A huge, heavily corseted Manchester woman who had picked out a showy fat personality to match her size. She was on the lookout for ‘soomthing a bit different’ which was why she always came up to London to service her ‘special’ customers: toffee-nosed, butterscotch-blonde matrons from Wilmslow.
In fact, as Lawrence Green well knew, ‘soomthing a bit different’ actually meant something very plain indeed. The gown manufacturers of the North West were still hopelessly addicted to bugle-beading.
Mrs Stockley loved coming to Green’s. All the gown buyers did. Goldie Green would stay out of the way while her husband worked them over: hand-kissing; flirting; smiling that handsome smile; oscillating around them like an attentive boyfriend. Almost all the buyers were single – most big stores (and most husbands) frowned on female staff keeping their jobs after marriage – and almost all of them were susceptible to a little professional flattery. Place a big enough order and you might even get lunch at one of Mr Green’s regular haunts: the Langham Hotel or maybe even L’Etoile. Like Henry Swan, he knew the value of a familiar face (and a big fat tip). Half the fun of coming to London was to be wined and dined by a witty, handsome, hand-stitched creature like Lawrence Green. And he listened. All her problem customers, their fads, their tantrums. Her staff. And the orders were always turned around nice and fast.
When he could, Lawrence liked to schedule a good fifteen-minute firebreak between appointments so that his buyers didn’t see each other coming and going. He’d have had separate entrances if he could. Everything was always Exclusive but that could mean a lot and he didn’t want two rival stores seeing each other buying. The important thing was to sprinkle the collection across as wide an area as possible so that none of the model gowns brushed against each other at the same dinner dance – the punters would be mortified and the shops would get it in the neck. The budget customers had to take their chances.
In the tiny changing room Suzy was zipping Jane into a green creation in ottoman satin – ‘In a Jade Garden’ – while Jane hastily stuffed some paper handkerchiefs into the dyed-to-match shoes.
‘Try to keep your left side to the wall. There’s a coffee stain down the skirt.’
The dress was fat and heavy with fabric, giving the ballerina-length skirts a slow, graceful sway. She swung out from behind the screen and Mrs Green began her running commentary to an audience of one (‘Janey’s gown has standaway fluting in the Balenciaga manner’). Jane had watched such shows dozens of times, played models in the mirror till her feet burned. She paused by the screen as if scanning the room for her date, raised her chin and smiled as if she had spotted him on the far side of the room, then loped purposefully towards him, swinging her hips very slightly to exaggerate the lilt of the skirt. A hasty full turn (to keep the coffee stain on the move) and then a classic pose while Goldie drew the buyer’s attention to the built-in boning – ‘for a smoother line’; the pistachio net petticoats – ‘ideal for dancing’; the clever new Seenozip and the fact that the same style was available in tangerine, raspberry ice and Capri blue. Other colours by arrangement. Jane’s next basic turn twirled her behind the screen.
The buyer was settling back for the usual grouch about whether ‘those nipped-in numbers were right for her Larger Ladies’. Lawrence Green flashed his teeth politely but said nothing. Half his output was outsize but nobody wanted Larger Ladies doing Paris turns in the showroom. He had once tried using a Young Matron type (three inches bigger all round) to show the models for his winter collection but the dresses didn’t look half so well and he abandoned the experiment after the first morning when a head buyer from Dickins and Jones – a flat-chested, stony-faced, pear-shaped pudding of a woman with the legs of a hockey international and a fluffy little moustache – had complained that this year’s collection seemed a bit on the frumpy side. The poor model – Shirley, her name was, lovely-looking girl. Wore the merchandise like a queen. Natural blonde. Baby-blue eyes and very modern ideas – ran about the dressing room practically starkers. Goldie Green wasn’t sorry to see the back of her, to tell you the truth. Anyway, poor Shirley was sent packing after six gowns leaving Goldie scouring the building for size tens and Lawrence on the phone to the agency trying to find somebody – anybody – to work the rest of the day. The agency got very hoity-toity and said they had no one available. For one terrible moment Lawrence Green thought that he was going to have to show two dozen model gowns ‘in the hand’ until he suddenly remembered Suzy.
He’d met her at a rag-trade party the previous week. A fellow gown merchant had had a big fortieth birthday affair at his house in St John’s Wood. Champagne, caviare, chopped liver and a wild party game in which Lawrence and five other dress designers were given ten yards of ‘art’ silk, a box of pins and a half-naked model to dress. After a certain amount of groping and tucking there was a fashion parade which the wives judged and Lawrence and Suzy had won first prize (a box of Havana cigars) by a landslide.
Suzy had made it round to the showroom in half an hour and had twirled through his winter collection so fast that no one saw the pins and bulldog clips holding the size fourteen frocks in place. Lawrence sold every stitch.
Today’s buyer was just settling into her usual whinge when Suzy appeared in a turquoise velvet sheath with matching satin train. The woman was quite startled to see what looked like the same brunette appear from behind the scree
n. They hardly gave her pause for breath: burnt-orange bayadère stripe, citron lace, cerise ribbed silk. Jane is wearing ‘Midnight Moment’, in Prussian-blue figured satin with black evening coat lined with the matching blue fabric. The ensemble is completed with a matching organza stole. Jane let the stole droop to her waist as she twisted and gazed over her shoulder at the imaginary man just behind Lawrence Green’s buyer. It was Johnny Hullavington, she decided, wearing that nice blue suit. She imagined his slow smile listening to the prattle of ‘my larger ladies’ and the ‘select foonctions’ they attended. Ballerina length might be all very well Down South but they wouldn’t let you through the door without a long frock in Wilmslow, apparently.
The final part of the show was bridal wear. They did this as a pair. ‘Suzy and Jane wear “Rosy Whisper” and “Lemon Dream”, bridesmaids’ dresses of paper taffeta with tulip skirts.’ Suzy and Jane tore back into the changing room – by now strewn with warm silk – and hurriedly wriggled into their gowns for the double wedding finale. The showroom, which had been chilly at nine o’clock, was ringed by fat old radiators and the room’s only window was painted shut. By half eleven it was like an oven. There are, don’t forget, approximately three million sweat glands in the human body.
Jane had never tried on a wedding dress before. Carol had already got hers ready for the Big Bloody Day and a gang of them had gone round to drool over it. Norma was allowed to slip it on, but not Jane – afraid she’d look better in it probably. Eileen’s was going to be a cheap flocked Tricel number but it would still set her dad back fifteen quid: Man likes woman to look exciting, luxurious, adorable . . . So man made Tricel. Carol’s was much more swanky but it was an absolute swine. After trying on every wedding dress in Croydon, she’d finally plumped for a peculiar-looking crinoline affair in French brocade patterned with silver frosted roses cut into a huge shawl collar, the wide revers forming a sort of double-breasted effect on the front of the bodice. Carol, who was only five feet two when she took off the shoes (covered in matching French brocade), had read something about adding height with a coronet so she’d picked out a silver satin pill box with a full short veil of pure white softlon silk gossamer – she’d have done better with an old net curtain, quite honestly. Dress, veil and shoes cost fifty-five guineas – more than Jane earned in three months – let alone the going-away outfit – no final decision as yet, but there was talk of shell-pink Tricosa.
Today’s wedding dress was ‘purest white satin’. White-ish anyway. It was nearing the end of its showing life and the underarms were so stiff with stale sweat that they left scratches on Jane’s skin. Still looked gorgeous, though, even in the fluorescent half-light of the changing room. The shiny silk cast a soft white glow on her face and neck. Jane shifted her weight from one foot to the other, setting the big hooped petticoat in motion. She practised a demure smile, imagined stepping out of a mossy old church, bells ringing, a Savile Row morning suit by her side, then the girlish fantasy creaked to a halt at the cold, wet thought of Doreen. Doreen in her lemon two-piece carping about the expense of the Do or how they had to have one tier in plain Victoria sponge because the currants Got Under ’is Plate. No. Forget the white satin. It would have to be a dove-grey shantung at Caxton Hall after all. Or not bother.
Jane and Suzy sailed out from opposite ends of the screen.
‘Suzy wears “Creamy Secret”, a vision in hand-clipped witchcraft lace. The soufflé-soft full skirt is gently lifted at the waist in front’ – we all knew why that style was so popular – ‘sweeping back to trail softly.’ Lawrence Green threw an expert handful of multi-coloured paper confetti while Goldie pointed out that the pure silk dyed beautifully to make a lovely evening dress for the budget-conscious bride.
The buyer clapped awkwardly while the two models retreated to the changing room for a cup of instant coffee and a fag. Goldie darted in to check the running order on the sagging dress rail. It was time to be Dolly Teens which meant skipping round the showroom in cheap nylon party frocks and matching hair bows which they were somehow supposed to look cute in. Jane glared glumly at her reflection in ‘Bubblegum Baby’, a pink and black nylon organza arrangement. The cheap fabric stank of someone else’s sweat. The heavy gathers across the bosom were designed to flatter the teenage figure but they made Jane look like Gina Lollobrigida on heat. By now Suzy had finished her coffee and wriggled into a disgusting yellow-spotted outrage, ‘Polkadot Parade’. Goldie stuck her ginger head round the door.
‘Ready when you are, ladies.’
The Junior Miss buyer turned out to be a rather embarrassed-looking young man whose hopes of inheriting the family firm (which he had every intention of selling to Hugh Fraser first chance he got) depended on his learning the business from the bottom up. He’d done stints in the post room and stockroom, he’d spent every Saturday morning on the shop floor and made a thorough nuisance of himself in dress fabrics. He had shadowed the model gown buyer all last season and now he was being let loose on the newly-launched Young and Gay department (answering the phones was no joke).
This was his twenty-third autumn fashion show and he never wanted to see another frilly nylon party dress as long as he lived. Lawrence Green watched young Firbridge’s face light up as his Bond Street models tripped out in their high-street clothes. The dress-show ‘lead with the thighs’ lark didn’t go with Vilene can-can petticoats. Jane and Suzy forgot all about Bronwen Pugh for a minute, walking out arm in arm, giggling slightly as they took turns to do a jiver’s twirl. The cheap single underskirts flew up as they span round and Jane could feel eyes burning into her knickers.
‘Young Mr Firbridge’ had bought hardly anything at the twenty-two other shows and had come to the conclusion that one budget gown was very, very much like another and that the sensible thing was to go for a bulk discount with Lawrence Green and make a bid for a couple of phone numbers while he was at it. He didn’t know much but he did keep a very keen eye on the kind of thing that ended up gathering dust on the sale rails. None of Lawrence Green’s oily patter about what Paris had to say about butterscotch and marigold and lime green cut any ice whatsoever. While poor Lawrence thought anxiously of those big bolts of chartreuse Banlon languishing in his basement stockroom, young Mr Firbridge briskly did a nice little deal on a full range of blue, black, black and white, red, pink and violet party frocks. He finally agreed to take three of a size in butterscotch and lime but only on a strictly sale-or-return basis. It was only when the stock started to come in, weeks later, that he realised how skimpy and cheap the frocks looked when they didn’t have Jane and Suzy inside them.
Mr Green had half an hour before his final appointment – the speciality model gown buyer from Debenham and Freebody – and while Goldie was upstairs checking on the girls in the workroom he joined his models for a swift panatella. The air in the changing room was already thick with smoke and face powder.
‘It’s going very well, very well. You’re a natural, Miss James. You and Suzy together makes a lot of sense. Very nice effect. Keeps the show moving along nicely. Piques the client’s interest, if you know what I mean, having twins.’
‘We’re not twins, Larry.’ Suzy sounded cross as she teased carefully across her hair with a dirty steel styling comb.
‘I know you’re not but you should play it up just the same. Nice little gimmick.’ He allowed himself to forget about business for a moment and looked them both over. ‘Very, very hard to choose between you. I’d like to have both.’
He didn’t mean showroom modelling but Jane was sure it was just the cigar talking. Nice Jewish businessmen with their handsome wives and beautiful children – they were bound to be beautiful children – didn’t mess around. Jane flirted happily, sure that she was quite safe. Suzy slipped off to the loo – not the one the clients used but a smelly little cave behind the basement stockroom. Jane wriggled out of the tangerine nylon tulle she was wearing, took off her bra and slid into model gown number one, carefully settling herself into the chilly silk
whaleboned bodice while Lawrence Green’s dirty brown eyes watched her reflection in the cracked cheval glass.
She wasn’t quite as safe as she’d thought. He had calculated the time it would take his wife to get up to the fourth floor, have a ruck about something, then trip back down in her slingbacks, and he reckoned that left just enough leeway for a bit of expert fitting. He rested his cigar on the stub-stuffed ashtray and with a smooth glide (he was a lovely mover) was behind Jane, his freshly shaved lips sank on to her neck and his manicured brown hands slipped inside the back of her dress. She nearly screamed with shock. He must do this all the bloody time.
‘So, Janey, have you picked out what dress you’re taking?’ As he spoke his lips stitched their way across her shoulder and up the side of her neck while his fingertips fiddled about inside her bodice.
‘Please –’ she began.
‘It’s my pleasure. So which is it to be?’
Jane squirmed awkwardly which he seemed to take for excitement. It was her own fault, walking round the room half-dressed, getting him at it. She arched her head away from his kisses and ran her eye along the rail of grubby model gowns.
‘Can’t I have a clean one?’
His hands were less gentle now and he raised his head to check the mirror: the dark handsome man seducing the luscious young brunette in blue velvet trimmed with white(ish) mink (‘Starlit Surrender’). He stored the image away so that he could look at it later in his mind’s eye in his super-king-size bergère-style bed in Maida Vale when he was gratifying Mrs G with an unusually vigorous seeing-to. Lots of women, especially wives, are extremely aroused by a rough sexual approach.
He stepped back and retrieved his cigar.
‘A clean one?’ He turned back the neck on an eau de nil duchesse satin and pulled a face. ‘I don’t see why not. I’ll see what I can dig out.’
A Vision of Loveliness Page 15
