The Vintage Guide to Love and Romance

by Kirsty Greenwood

  I frown. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘It’s a “Sounds of the Saxophone” playlist on Spotify,’ he smiles. ‘Just setting the mood.’

  ‘What do you think this is, Red Shoe Diaries?’

  He shrugs and tugs at the collar of his T-shirt. ‘I like it.’

  ‘Fine, fine. Just turn it down a little.’ My eyes dart towards the door. ‘My grandma really can’t know you’re here. We’re working on this kind of secret project together and I’m supposed to be in here getting my “beauty sleep”. If she hears us, the proverbial shit will hit the fan.’

  ‘A secret project?’ He lifts a dark eyebrow. ‘Intriguing.’

  Hmm. Should I tell him about it? Can I trust him? What if he tells someone?

  Oh, what am I worried about? He’s just a nerdy doctor geek boy who is obsessed with hearts and wears brogues. Who is he going to tell, really?

  ‘All right, I’ll tell you.’

  And so I tell him about the project, about Valentina Smith and the guides, and about Leo Frost and how Grandma reckons her romance tips will make him fall in love with me.

  When I’m done, Jamie pulls a face.

  ‘It’s a daft idea, isn’t it?’ I chuckle. ‘Ridiculous, really.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s kind of insane. Seems a bit callous on the guy. Frost.’ His tone is disapproving.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about him.’ I wave away any notion of concern for Leo Frost. ‘He’s a massive twat. He deserves everything that’s coming to him, trust me.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Jamie ponders, taking the wine from me and drinking some. ‘But what if he actually, you know, falls in love with you? Surely it would destroy him to discover that you weren’t who you said you were. That it was all some cynical experiment for a dating book. It seems a little heartless.’

  ‘Jeez, he won’t fall in love with me!’ I laugh. ‘It’s not actually going to work, Doc. I only agreed to do it because I get two and a half thousand quid either way and I’m in no position to turn that down. He’s some kind of womanizing, eternal bachelor anyway. He’s the heartless one. Honestly, don’t worry about Leo Frost!’

  Jamie shrugs stiffly. ‘If you say so.’

  I feel a prickle of irritation. Pah. Why am I even explaining myself to a veritable stranger?

  There’s a bit of an awkward silence. I don’t tend to mind awkward silences, but we haven’t really got a great deal of time here.

  I take my top off as an icebreaker. It works. Jamie dives on me.

  Life might be strange and rubbish in general right now, but I’m engaging in some truly good sex and I thank the heavens for that. Doctor Jamie has tied my hands to the huge bedpost with the belt from his corduroys and has propped one of my legs over his shoulder. It’s very effective indeed. So pleasant, in fact, that I can’t help the squeak of delight that pops out of my mouth.

  ‘Christ, Jess,’ Jamie utters gruffly, biting my inner thigh and moving with deep concentration. ‘Christ Almighty.’

  He drops my leg, slides his hands underneath my bum, lifts me up slightly at the torso and goes deeper.

  Oh my God!

  I don’t intend to say that out loud. But I do. Very loudly. And to my complete horror the door to the bedroom opens and Grandma appears. She’s holding a tub of moisturizer in one hand, a glass of milk in the other, her mouth falling open in dismay. The worst, the most cringe-worthy thing of all, is that Jamie doesn’t notice she’s standing there. I wriggle about and try to clamber off the bed but my hands are literally tied. Jamie’s still going, he’s still going with the vigour of a bucking bronco! Grandma hurries backwards out of the room, slamming the door on us.

  ‘Jamie, get off!’

  He stops thrusting and scrambles off me to the edge of the bed. ‘What is it? Are you OK? Am I . . . am I too . . . big?’

  I give him my withering glance. ‘My grandma just walked in on us. Untie me!’

  He removes the belt restraint with fumbling hands. I jump off the bed and cover myself up with the duvet.

  ‘What? Old Lady Beam saw my arse?’

  ‘She saw everything! Balls, bums, boobs. All of the B words. Everything.’

  ‘Right. Oh, bugger.’

  ‘Shit.’ I bury my head in my hands. I didn’t think true, deep embarrassment was an emotion I had any capacity for – I’ve never really experienced it before. But then again I’ve never had a seventy-seven-year-old long-lost relative watch me engage in a little light bondage. It feels highly uncomfortable.

  I hear a weird noise and remove my hands from my face.

  The weird noise is coming from Jamie. He’s still naked, standing in front of the gigantic wardrobe, his face tomato-red, his shoulders shaking up and down. He’s bloody laughing.

  ‘Stop laughing!’ I hiss. ‘You’re a doctor. You’re supposed to be sensible. I can’t believe she walked in. She was bringing me milk, as well. Oh God!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Jamie splutters apologetically between blasts of laughter, picking up his grey cotton boxers from the floor and pulling them on as he guffaws noisily. ‘I – ha-ha-ha – I’m really sorry, but you can’t deny that this would all – ha-ha! – make an excellent “how we got together” anecdote one day. Ha-haa!’

  Got together anecdote?

  Er, what does Doctor Jamie think is occurring here? I thought I’d been putting out a strictly casual vibe . . . Have I not?

  I glance up at him sharply.

  ‘Um, not to ruin the mood, but you do know that this thing with us is just a no-strings deal, right?’

  He gasps, pressing a hand to his mouth jokily. ‘You mean to tell me that . . . that y-you’re using me for my body?’

  ‘Well, pretty much, yes. Sexual convenience, stress release, etcetera. Nothing more. Not anything against you, of course, you seem perfectly lovely and I can’t deny that you have . . . skills. I’m just not interested in anything more . . . any emotional stuff, you know? I’m not that kind of girl. So you need to know that, if we’re going to, like, see each other again or whatever.’

  ‘I was joking, Jess,’ Jamie retorts, a small frown playing around his mouth. ‘I was just messing about. No strings, I get it.’

  ‘Good.’ I give a firm nod. ‘That’s all right then.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  The chap of your dreams will appreciate a neat whisper of a waist that can be clinched beneath his hand span. The largest part of the bust should be equal to the largest part of the hips and the waist should be at least ten inches smaller than either!

  Matilda Beam’s Guide to Love and Romance, 1955

  The next day, Grandma doesn’t mention anything about last night and the fact that she may have seen my vagina, though she studiously avoids meeting my eye, which is absolutely fine by me. Tonight is the night of the retro funfair in Regent’s Park where I’ll be meeting Leo Frost in a 1950s disguise and attempting to charm him into asking me out on an actual date. I haven’t looked less forward to something since I had to defrost the freezer last February.

  Grandma has marked the entire day out for the purpose of making me over. Now ordinarily I love a good makeover – especially if it’s in an 80s teen movie and involves some sort of perm, but I am filled with trepidation about this one. I don’t want to change my appearance; it’s already kind of all right, I reckon. But needs must, and I have agreed to take it like a woman.

  We’re starting my transformation with, as Grandma has kindly termed it, ‘the ghastly situation atop my head’, i.e. my hair. She and Peach have set me up in Grandma’s huge bathroom in front of her big Hollywood mirror, which is framed by light bulbs and casts a sultry boudoir glow over us. I gaze at my long platinum hair extensions and feel a sinking in my heart. I love my fierce so-white-blonde-it’s-almost-blue hair: people can easily spot me in a large crowd, and the sun reflects off my head, giving me a certain glow. I will miss that. I will not have a tantrum, however. No one ever won America’s Next Top Model by having a tantrum on makeover day. Tyra never forgets, you see.
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  Peach fishes inside one of the shopping bags from her supplies trip and pulls out a home-dye kit. After much debate yesterday, we decided to turn me into a fiery strawberry blonde. Grandma was advocating for brunette because that was her hair colour as a young woman, and she felt it presented a classier look (whatever that is), but I refused. I have not been a brunette since I was seventeen, and there is no way I’m going back to that life. No way. So strawberry blonde was the compromise and still enough of a change from platinum to disguise me from Leo Frost.

  All three of us start to take out my hair extensions, loosening the glue bonds with an acetone solution that Peach picked up from town. I feel sad as I watch my former hair being chucked into the bathroom bin. I spent a month’s wages on that stranger’s lovely hair. Peach and Grandma pull disgusted faces as they take it all out, the glued ends on occasion getting stuck to their fingers. It is pretty gross, admittedly, but no one was ever supposed to see this part of the process. Hair extensions are a very private thing.

  The pair of them fuss about, pulling on heavy-duty marigolds and mixing up the dye. They carefully squirt it all over my head and rub it in. I watch the three of us in the mirror and wonder quite how I got myself into this odd situation with these odd people rubbing my head so enthusiastically. How many wrong turns must I have taken to get here?

  ‘I trust you revised the chapter on making a new male acquaintance?’ Grandma asks lightly, avoiding my eye in the mirror.

  If revising means having a vague flick-through last night to show Jamie before casting it aside so he could go down on me, then yes. Yes, I did.

  I nod my head.

  ‘Good. That’s good, at least.’ Grandma smiles a little and a sharp spike of guilt darts my chest. Must remember to look over the chapter properly before tonight. Ordinarily I’d write it on my hand as a reminder, but I don’t have a pen. I take my iPhone out of my bathrobe pocket, open up the Notes app and create a new document entitled ‘FROST’.

  I tap out: REMINDER FOR JESS: Read chapter on making male acquaintance.

  When the dye is rinsed off, the atmosphere in the bathroom becomes heavy with anticipation. Peach blasts my hair dry with an old sage-green hairdryer and then I face the mirror. I’m totally ginger. It’s a pale, orangey-gold ginger. It makes my hazel-coloured eyes ‘pop’ and really sets off my Fake Bake. I like it.

  Grandma turns to Peach. ‘The tan will most certainly have to go.’

  What?

  ‘Noooo!’ I yell in a Scottish accent. ‘You can take my freedom, you can take my hair, but you will never take my tan!’

  Peach muffles a small laugh while Grandma shakes her head at me in astonishment, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. ‘Deary me,’ she croaks. ‘Peculiar girl.’

  They cannot take my tan away! My tan is what makes me me. If you asked someone to describe me in a word, they would say, ‘One word isn’t enough! I have to have three words and those words are Golden Fucking Brown.’

  I pull a sad face as Peach dashes out of the room, returning with a bag of lemons and brandishing them in the air like a weapon. I know all about lemons. Lemons are the murderers of tans.

  ‘Disrobe, please, Jessica,’ Grandma commands, indicating the dressing gown. I grumpily shrug off the robe, blatantly ignoring the sharp gasp of dismay that emanates from Grandma as she takes in my silver Wonderbra and nonmatching turquoise knickers with the word ‘Juicy’ stitched over the backside in purple sequins.

  I smile at her benignly. She looks away quickly and hurries out of the room, muttering to herself about appropriate undergarments.

  Peach squeezes the lemon juice onto a sponge and starts scrubbing it all over my legs and arms. Ow. Bit by bit my beautiful tan fades away. Goodbye perfect tan. I am bereft.

  ‘I thought we were gonna be mates,’ I hiss at Peach as she makes me more and more translucent with her stoopid lemons.

  ‘You will look wonderful, just wait and see,’ she squeaks as she scrubs my ankles. ‘And, Jess . . . speaking of friends . . . ’ She pauses her rubbing and looks up at me shyly. ‘In many of the movies I’ve seen, girlfriends often hang out and watch DVDs together as a way of bonding. They have popcorn and wine and do face masks and that sorta thing. I was thinking that when you get back tonight we would maybe watch a DVD together . . . ’

  ‘Sure.’ I shrug. ‘Sounds cool. I love watching movies.’

  Peach smiles and flushes pink, handing me a towel to wipe off the bits of lemon gunge all over my body. Grandma returns with three pieces of fabric and a dress bag.

  I peer closer and notice that the fabric is some sort of underwear.

  ‘Underwear? Why on earth?’ I clutch my bum and my super-cool ‘Juicy’ knickers. ‘Isn’t the point of this that I’m supposed to be demure? Leo Frost is never going to see my knickers!’

  ‘Jessica,’ Grandma says with a calmness that seems to take a great deal of effort. ‘Undergarments are the fashion beneath the fashion. They will streamline your silhouette.’

  ‘My silhouette? What’s up with my silhouette?’

  Grandma looks me up and down and purses her lips. ‘You are a little wiry. All that running, I suspect. I would like you to appear softer, more curvaceous. This – ’ she holds up a piece of elasticy cream-coloured material that looks like some kind of Spanx skirt – ‘is a Spirella 206 girdle. It will smooth out your shape, in particular lifting the derrière. And this – ’ she hands me what looks like a very wide belt – ‘is a boned waspie. It will create an illusion of curves, giving you a twenty-three-and-a-half-inch waist.’ Grandma says this casually as if she’s not just suggested something anatomically impossible. ‘I had a twenty-three-and-a-half-inch waist on my wedding day,’ she adds proudly.

  ‘Yeah, well, Kylie Minogue has a twenty-three-inch waist,’ I retort. So there.

  ‘Twenty-four, actually,’ Grandma replies promptly.

  How does she know that?

  I step into the girdle and watch forlornly as Peach and Grandma struggle to roll it up over my hips. When it’s finally in place, Grandma takes the waspie and wraps it round my waist.

  It’s a bit tight, actually. Really quite tight.

  ‘Fuck!’ I yell as they tug at the corset and I realize that my breath is being taken from me against my will. ‘I thought you said I need the illusion of more curves?’ I groan through the pain. ‘This is stealing all my curves!’

  ‘A Good Woman does not use such coarse language, Jessica,’ Grandma says impatiently, pulling at the waspie. ‘You will get used to it. It will be worth it. Beauty is often painful.’

  Normally I’d agree – I’ve got eyelash glue in my eye on more than one occasion – but I feel like this is a wrong thing.

  ‘Now we are going to hook it at the top,’ Grandma says, panting with the effort of yanking and pulling the corset. ‘Peach, I’m going to need your help. It needs to be just a little tighter.’

  ‘Hook it? Tighter? It’s not fastened yet? Oh, Jesus.’

  ‘If we had more time we would have had a few practice runs to get your ribs used to the pressure.’

  ‘Ugh. This kind of restrictive shit says a lot about why I’m glad I’m a woman today. I shouldn’t be wearing anything that my ribs have to get used to.’

  I feel myself go pale as Peach and Grandma tighten the waspie and hook the final eye, squidging my body into a shape it was not designed to be in.

  ‘A bra too?’ I huff as Grandma hands me the final piece of fabric – an odd, pointy sort of bra. ‘Surely nothing on earth is as good as my Wonderbra?’ I indicate my brilliantly pushed-up cleavage, so pushed up that it looks like I have Harry Hill and Harry Hill’s twin brother comfortably tucked inside.

  ‘This is not just a bra,’ Grandma says, sounding vaguely like the woman who voices the M&S adverts. ‘This is an original Delightex firming, lifting bullet bra.’

  ‘Sounds dangerous,’ I grump, still twisting with rib pain.

  ‘It served me well for many a year,’ Grandma says, a look of happy n
ostalgia flitting across her wrinkled face.

  This is Grandma’s bra? Ew. No. I cannot.

  ‘You don’t even know if it will fit!’ I protest, eyeing the weird cone-shaped bra with horror.

  ‘36C,’ Grandma declares with conviction. ‘All Beam women are.’

  She’s right. I am a 36C. God, please no. This is so wrong.

  I reluctantly unclip my beloved silver Wonderbra and they turn away to give me my modesty, which I never have and don’t currently require. I pull on the weird pointy bra and clip it at the back. As I turn back round, I seem to lose all spatial awareness regarding my breasts and knock Peach into the wall with my left boob.

  ‘Oh mah goodness.’

  ‘Shit, sorry, Peach. I’m all uneven! Let me look – I need to see this.’

  Surely I must look like a member of the circus by now. Boobs like road cones and a waist circumference smaller than my thigh circumference.

  ‘Just a little longer, Jessica, dear. Your look has to be perfect. A Good Woman is a patient woman.’

  Grandma takes a suspender belt from the big drawer and clips it round my waist. Man, there are so many things wrapped around me and I’m not even dressed yet. Grandma unzips the dress bag and pulls out a white cotton summer dress with a pale blue polka-dot pattern on it. The skirt is huge – all pleated and sticky-outy.

  ‘This piece is my favourite Victor Josselyn dress. I wore it to my first ever midsummer picnic with Jack. It’s perfect for the funfair. It will show your figure while also being light, seasonal and demure.’

  I take a closer look at the dress. It smells faintly of Chanel No. 5, the perfume my mum used to wear. I go slightly dizzy at the scent. Don’t think about that, Jess.

  I take a deep breath and recover myself, putting my hands in the air while Peach and Grandma pull the dress over my head.

  Once they’ve buttoned the gazillion buttons up the back, Grandma glides around me in a circle like a shark, huge eyes narrowed in assessment.

  ‘Can I look now?’ I tut, folding my arms in front of me.

  Grandma nods once and gestures towards the mirror. ‘Go ahead.’