A Vision of Loveliness

by Louise Levene

  Jane hadn’t taken any chances: Hardy Amies, brown shoes, a russet felt toque and a tan bag borrowed from Suzy – she didn’t think her own shiny new pet alligator would play well with the kind of woman who could make a bottle of sherry stretch to twenty tiny glasses and who served macaroni cheese for Sunday lunch. Who thought that one up? It looked like toasted vomit.

  ‘What does your father do, Jenny?’ Did she get the name wrong on purpose or was she going gaga?

  The wonderful, wonderful thing about Jane’s shy, squinting dad was that, like Mr Hullavington, he was very, very dead and so had a wide choice of careers open to him. Jane usually chose the law. Respectable and no one would expect her to know the first thing about it.

  ‘And where were you at school?’

  God, the woman was nosey but Jane could safely stick to the facts on that one. An Anglican convent in Surrey might not be Roedean or Cheltenham but it was quite posh enough for most purposes. There were only a handful of girls’ schools that anybody had ever heard of anyway so provided you said ‘St Ursula’s’ with enough confidence you were certain to get away with it.

  ‘John tells me you’re a mannequin, Gillian.’

  She might just as easily have said ‘John tells me you’ll perform fellatio for a nice mink scarf’ from the tone of her voice.

  ‘I was living with my aunt in Surrey’ (Doreen was on a swing seat with a straw hat on this time, doing a bit of needlepoint) ‘after Daddy died’. If you didn’t mention Mummy at all they tended to assume she died-when-you-were-born and asked no further questions. ‘But when my aunt died my cousins were forced to sell the house and I had to think about making my own living. Modelling was the only thing I was fit for really.’ A little shrug. Poor me. Poor brave little me.

  ‘And where do you live now, er, Janet?’

  She could answer that one in her sleep: friend Suzy; widower in Hong Kong. Like falling off a log.

  The final test was to bowl Jane a googly about current events. Which was a bit like Philip Drayke asking her whether she spoke Italian – the last thing Mrs Hullavington actually wanted was a daughter-in-law who could bore for Britain about the international situation but it gave her a cast-iron excuse for giving her the thumb’s-down: ‘I know you, John. I know you could never really be happy with a wife who couldn’t hold her own at dinner parties.’

  Jane had only skim-read the Sunday Times that morning but luckily John’s mother (who was a Telegraph reader – The man’s newspaper intelligent women read) preferred talking about the Queen’s latest baby to the nuclear threat so it was a piece of cake. Johnny sat watching the pair of them, practically burping with pride, before announcing that it was really time to be making a move.

  Jane slipped away to give her nose a thorough powdering while Johnny got the green light from Mummy. Marjorie thought John had made a Very Wise Choice: young, pretty, sweet-tempered, mouldable. He could certainly do a lot worse. Amanda was a lot worse, Mummy thought Amanda was Fast (if she only knew) and, almost more to the point, she loathed Amanda’s ritzy bloody mother who saw right through the façade and tended to patronise ‘poor Marjorie and her doilies’. The only good in-law was a dead in-law, Marjorie had decided.

  The pilgrimage to Putney was followed by a dinner party in Roehampton or somewhere (it was dark, there was definitely a bridge involved). Getting dressed had been a nightmare.

  ‘It’ll be black tie but Nick and Daphne are very relaxed,’ said Johnny, who thought he was being helpful.

  Jane knew the type. They used to come into Drayke’s. ‘Very relaxed’ just meant that the women’s clothes would be two seasons old and the men would be wearing their fathers’ dinner jackets and never dry clean them. Practically everything in the entire flat was too flash – Annie’s uniform included.

  Suzy told her to stop worrying.

  ‘The women will all be fat and thirty and passée so they’re bound to hate you anyway. Just wear something Johnny likes.’ She settled on a rather pretty old crimson chiffon number of Glenda’s with a folded satin waist and spent twelve and six at a hairdresser’s in Berkeley Square being groomed to a standstill (Terry had gone to Brighton to do the hair for a swimwear catalogue. The poor cows were going to freeze to death).

  It was a big, ugly red-brick house. There was a pram in the hall and a nasty familiar smell of burned toast and baby lotion. Jane was herded into a group of half a dozen women by Daphne. She’d flicked through a handful of Suzy’s magazines the day before but nothing prepared her for the rubbish she was supposed to talk about. Recipes (Keesh? What the fuck was that?); marrow moussaka; natural childbirth; breastfeeding; child psychology. Most of them were doing a course in something. Daphne left her up to her armpits in spermicidal jelly and then tore back to the kitchen to stir something. Whatever it was, she didn’t stir it enough.

  Daphne claimed to have spent most of the day locked up in the kitchen with Elizabeth David but the food was still absolutely disgusting. After two months of West End dinner dates it wasn’t just smoked salmon and sole grillée any more. Jane had pretty much eaten the lot: snails; frog’s legs; brains; calves’ liver. It might not always stay eaten but she’d got to quite like most of it. Daphne was giving them cheese soufflé and ‘her’ coq au vin: ‘hers’ in the sense that nobody else’s was made with half a bottle of sweet cider and burned to a crisp.

  The wine was rotten too (Nick had been at school with someone in the wine trade). This was a pity because the glasses were really lovely. There used to be a shop near the Arcade that sold crystal like that. It made a lovely noise if you dipped your finger in the wine and skimmed it round the rim.

  ‘Lovely, aren’t they? Waterford, I think.’ Some bloke. She couldn’t remember all their names: Gerald? Jeremy? He had unbelievably bad teeth whoever he was and rather dirty yellow fingernails.

  ‘I’m no expert but they look more like Baccarat to me.’

  He thought not. He started pinging annoyingly at the rim with his fingernail before finally deferring to Our Host in a loud, prove-me-right-will-you sort of way. What an idiot, honestly, as if anybody cared. Only they did care and they were all terribly surprised and impressed that she knew and he didn’t and all looked at her differently even though she was the same.

  The funny thing about all but one of the couples was that you didn’t seem to get two good ones in any one pair. If you quite liked the wife, the husband was sure to be a complete git. Jane had been having an almost pleasant chat with a woman called Linda – about the Ideal bloody Home Exhibition but she meant well. As she was speaking to Jane, Linda waved across the room at the last couple to arrive but her face was being monitored by her husband who was standing on the other side of the bay window: ‘Don’t smile in that insincere way, darling.’ Her face looked like someone had pulled the plug on it: all the life, all the confidence draining away.

  Lavinia and Wossname were the exception. They were a perfectly matched pair. Lavinia, seeking vengeance for her husband’s cock-up about the glasses, waited until there was a lull in the conversation before asking Jane, good and loud, what she thought about Penguin publishing Lady Chatterley in the summer. It was like falling off a log. None of them had actually read it anyway but Henry had smuggled a copy back from Paris and made her and Suzy read the rude bits out loud. There was an expectant silence around the table.

  ‘Lawrence isn’t really me, I’m afraid. He’s so sentimental and all that terrible sex just makes me laugh. It’s such English sex.’

  That stumped them. They’d only ever had English sex and while there was always the outside chance that they’d already read that month’s Encounter she couldn’t see it somehow. They’d done all their serious reading at Somerville or somewhere. It was just keesh and Kingsley Amis from now on.

  Some old trout called Felicity in what looked like a short-sleeved stair carpet had another go a bit later on, as if she were dragging the conversation down to Jane’s level.

  ‘So what should we all be wearing next season
, Janey?’ As if that shabby fat cow would be in the market for a flocked organza overskirt or a gingham bikini. Never mind, Jane knew a good answer to this one.

  ‘I haven’t the faintest idea, I’m afraid. I just put on whatever’s on the rail and try not to fall over. I put on a garment bag by mistake once.’

  Mirthless laughter. Approving glances.

  The men were much, much more straightforward.

  Lavinia’s husband cornered her in the hall on the way back down the stairs from the loo. He stank of cheap brandy and his face was flushed and sticky-looking. She was a very pretty little thing, apparently, so pretty that he felt he must take her hand and press it against the lump in his gravy-stained trousers. She slapped his face so hard that he lurched sideways into Johnny who had just come out of the dining room. Whatsisname looked very, very surprised and horribly, horribly excited.

  ‘Take me away from here. Now.’ Why should she sit down and pretend nothing had happened? Why spare poor Lavinia’s feelings? Fuck Lavinia. Luckily for Johnny, it was time to go in any case.

  All in all it had been an impressive performance: pretty, clever and virginal. Amanda wasn’t any of those. Never had been. Poor Amanda. Amanda was thirty next summer. She had lowered her sights a good long way since she first came out. Not that she could swank about being presented at court any more, not since the new Queen put a stop to it. It showed your age. But Johnny would definitely do. The Gloucester Road flat wasn’t too bad and they could sell that ghastly Putney villa as soon as the old bag died and buy somewhere decent. The friends would have to go, obviously. Those suburban bluestockings and their ghastly grammar-school husbands. Johnny had been to the right school, knew the right tailor, drank in the right bars, even if his mother was a bit common. She couldn’t live for ever.

  Nick (well pissed) had taken Johnny on one side already to say how very, very, very pleased he and Daphne were. It was time he got married. They were running out of single women to make up the numbers. They’d neither of them liked Amanda who couldn’t follow their conversation (mind you, they did tend to talk about Civil Rights and disarmament on purpose) and who sneered at them for not living in Kensington.

  Amanda’s name was Methune, which was God’s gift of a name for a snob like her because nobody was entirely sure how to pronounce it. You began the game with a ten-point start. Only poor dozy Amanda never saw that the handicap might not always work in her favour, that her name might simply never be called.

  Johnny was dead chuffed at how well Janey had gone down with the old pals but then again he wasn’t absolutely sure how he felt about having a wife that other men would really want to fuck. Nobody else would ever fancy Amanda – but then neither did he. Poor Amanda, who thought that ‘letting him’ would make her more desirable rather than less. As if anyone would want to screw that for the rest of their lives.

  Jane was a very different kettle of fish. You could tell by the way she danced, by the way she kissed him goodnight. And yet he hadn’t managed much more than a kiss so far. She had a fabulous figure. He imagined her at the head of the table in the dining room in Putney – Mummy had always promised she’d move into the flat in Gloucester Road if and when he got married. He imagined standing behind her chair and pulling down the zip on that saucy red dress of hers.

  Johnny proposed to Jane that evening after an unusually steamy goodnight kiss. Her breasts were actually much larger than he’d thought. Mmm. He drove away from Massingham House loosening his bow tie slightly with his right hand as he headed down toward Knightsbridge. Amanda had pretty much kept her knickers on once she’d realised they weren’t worth a sapphire and diamond cluster. In the end he decided to pop down and see the lovely Barbara for a little light relief. Good old Barbara. He turned left into Sloane Street and surged on towards Chelsea Bridge and the South Circular.

  He had been quite surprised when Jane hadn’t accepted him. She wasn’t supposed to say No. Was there someone else? She said not. Would she think it over? If he insisted but couldn’t they go on as they were? All very frustrating but she was sure to come round eventually now that she’d met his mother and his friends. Playing clothes horses with that foxy little trollop was no life for a nice girl like her. And that whole Mayfair flat business was very suspect. Johnny didn’t believe a word of Suzy’s Hong Kong story. The flat was obviously being bankrolled by the sugar daddy and they just had poor Jane in there to make it look respectable.

  He’d danced with Suzy once. They’d bumped into her and Henry at the Stork Room one evening and although neither couple wanted to share a table, they’d swapped partners for a swift rumba, just out of politeness.

  ‘God help poor Janey,’ laughed Suzy, as she sashayed into his arms. ‘Henry came very late to the rumba.’

  The dance floor was fairly crowded so it was hard to be completely sure but it seemed that whenever they passed behind a pillar Suzy pressed herself closer. It seemed churlish not to respond. He held her a little tighter and, once he was quite sure he wasn’t mistaken, began rubbing himself against her hip bone. She did a little work with the eyelashes at that one but she didn’t pull away. And then the music stopped and she trotted back to Henry and Johnny could see them at their table for two, nuzzling soppily. How old was Henry? Fifty, maybe? Could he get it up that easily?

  Janey had beaten him back to their table.

  ‘How was your rumba?’ He was afraid she’d read his thoughts.

  ‘Very nice. Tiny bit rheumatic,’ and her face smiled sheepishly at him while she mentally ran through the wardrobe for the following night in search of something Sergio hadn’t seen. The new jade-green chiffon and paper taffeta creation that Lawrence Green had given her might be nice. It had cost slightly more than the usual quick feel (the workroom were up to their eyes in velvet speciality models for Debenham and Freebody and Goldie had had to nip down to John Lewis for some bias binding) but it had definitely been worth it.

  Jane smiled absently at Johnny and sipped at her Grand Marnier while imagining herself stretched out on the bed in Sergio’s suite at the Connaught (you really could walk home from there) screaming ‘bracelet length!’ at the moment of climax: it still made him laugh and, besides, she quite wanted another bracelet. Blue didn’t go with everything.

  Johnny gazed at the suddenly very sexy look in her half-closed eyes and immediately proposed again.

  He’d proposed pretty much every date since. She never actually said no outright – a girl had to eat – but she was getting sick of being asked, of his assuming that she would say yes eventually. He’d probably be at it again tomorrow after the double date if he got the chance – he went down on one knee sometimes (usually when he was tight). Did she want to be married to him? She certainly didn’t want to get married. She thought again of Doreen in the yellow jerseylaine coatee.

  Suzy asked her if he’d proposed and seemed quite surprised – fucking cheek – when Jane said yes as a matter of fact he had. Cow. She was even more surprised that Jane had turned him down.

  ‘You must be out of your tiny mind.’

  ‘I reckoned he was probably joking.’

  ‘Men never joke about a thing like that. You should have bitten his hand off.’

  ‘I don’t need to be married. I’m making nearly fifteen guineas a week what with the Debenham and Freebody job and all the showroom work. And the Double Dates should get us more bookings.’

  ‘Might do. Might not. A gimmick like that might work too well. A woman actually stopped me in Fortnum’s this morning. If we become the face of Frockways, nobody else will touch us. Besides, none of this is for ever, darling. Do you really want to be doing Paris turns and being nice to Sergios in ten years’ time? More to the point, will anyone even want you to? This is a young woman’s game. Even Iris used to be a model, you know, darling – house model at Wondercoat, in all the magazines, ten guineas a week then – now look at her: three quid a week alimony from Mr Iris and the odd handout from Dougie if she comes across. Or you end up like Madge
, selling your body to the Reggies of this world just to keep the vet from the door.’

  And there was Johnny offering to rescue her from ending up like Iris and Madge. Some rescue. He only made about three grand a year at his job in the City. You couldn’t live happily ever after on that kind of money. You could live on macaroni cheese and hand-knitted woollies and last season’s sweat-stained satin evening gowns ever after but what was happy about that?

  He didn’t really love her. How could he? He loved the hourglass figure, the model gowns, the perfect make-up all right, but one whiff of the marrow moussaka and he’d be back sniffing round Amanda – or his Streatham fancy-piece.

  And he had the cheek to ask what she was doing in a place like this. A place like what? And she looked around her at the chandelier and the china ornaments and the gilded mirrors and the beautiful white sofas and wondered what kind of place he had in mind. Four bedrooms in Barnes or Kingston or Wimbledon or Esher or somewhere? With nice neighbours. And mingy little ‘young marrieds’ drinks parties – Allow two to three drinks per person or three bottles for ten people. And poxy ‘mmm-did-you-make-these-yourself?’ coffee mornings and snobby rotten dinner parties of lousy French food wearing a cheap black frock (home-made, even. People did) being groped over the drying-up by other people’s husbands whose wives, you bet your sweet life, did not understand them at all. Where the nearest any of the women got to a job was manning the bloody cake stall at the school fête.

  So long as everything was cooked and washed and starched and ironed and polished and waxed and vacuumed and baked and bottled and sewn and roasted and wiped and brushed and swept and perfumed and combed and disinfected she’d never have to earn another penny, pay another bill, open another door, wear another waspie, mow another lawn, open another bottle, empty another dustbin, read another book, pluck another eyebrow, wax another leg, paint another wall, slap another cheek, suck another cock. And she’d rather fucking die.