A Vision of Loveliness - By Louise Levene Page 0,2
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