A Vision of Loveliness - By Louise Levene Page 0,3
also Vanda’s bread and butter: lawn; rayon; Viyella. They were lined up in the window on fantastical wickerwork torsos, their rude pointy bosoms tilted up shamelessly at passing eyes.
Aunt Doreen used to buy corsets from Vanda (when she bought them at all, which wasn’t often) but one year she was persuaded to try a new line in roll-on panty girdles instead. The scientific system promised ‘twice the flattening, twice the flattering’ and she couldn’t really sit down in it. It rolled on all right but after a day of toast and biscuits and boiled sweets it was completely impossible to roll off. There had been a knock at Jane’s door after everyone had gone to bed and there was Auntie Doreen in just her dressing gown, a porridge-coloured long-line bra and a gleaming white girdle. All Jane’s fault of course – ‘I only shop in the rotten place because you work there.’ Jane had had to cut her out of it with the nail clippers, each careful snip increasing the V-shaped pillow of flesh until Doreen was finally scissored free. It was one of Jane’s happiest memories. Doreen said she was going to take it back and complain but she didn’t. Of course she didn’t. She sewed it up and made it into a peg bag.
When Jane had started her Saturday job she didn’t know dolman from raglan. She still had nightmares about her very first customer. The corset fitter had been off sick and Vanda and the proper saleslady were both in the fitting room seeing to a large order. ‘Lovely woman. Difficult Figure,’ mouthed Vanda as she dived back behind the curtain, tape measure slung round the neck of her tan jersey two-piece. So far Jane had done nothing but fold and box corsets. She approached the customer with exaggerated meekness. She didn’t exactly curtsey, but her face did.
‘Good morning, madam. Can I help you?’
‘Last year . . .’ No ‘good morning’. Jane did not qualify. ‘Last year I bought a very nice shirtwaister here. Peter Pan collar. Eau de nil self-stripe voile. Do you still stock it? I’d quite fancy another colour. Greige? Ecru? Or taupe?’
It was like Chinese.
‘Sorry?’
No sale that time but Vanda had kindly sent her home when they closed that lunchtime with a carrier bag full of catalogues, a manufacturer’s colour chart, Weldon’s dressmaking encyclopaedia and a few old Vogues and told her to get weaving. The following Saturday a customer (right prat, Dulwich Village probably) demanded a peau de soie peignoir in cantaloupe and Vanda looked on proudly as Jane manfully tried to interest her in a peach rayon dressing gown. Jane revelled in the new vocabulary. Nothing would ever be green again. Emerald. Peppermint. Apple. Bottle. Chartreuse. Jade. Lime. Loden. Viridian. Moss.
Her last year at school, she spent the Easter holidays haunting fabric departments: fingering silks and worsteds, memorising the difference between chiffon and georgette, organza and tulle. Crush a scrap of it hard in your hand. If the creases don’t bounce out at once, keep looking. She’d told her aunt she was just going into Croydon but spent whole afternoons in the West End stores at the daily fashion shows, sitting at the back while the real customers – groomed to death in natty tweed tailor-mades and three-string cultured pearls – killed time and wasted money: ‘Paula is wearing Sherbet Sunrise, a sporty two-piece in lemon shantung with candystripe revers and simple self-covered buttons.’ Paula looked like a right little madam.
Jane used to wander in and out of the arcades round Piccadilly gazing at antique china and twinfold poplin shirtings until one day she saw the little handwritten sign in the window of Drayke’s Cashmere: ‘Junior Saleslady Required’. She had been interviewed by Mr Drayke himself. Where had she worked? Who were her references? Could she speak French? Jane didn’t expect you needed to speak French to fold up sweaters and make tea and take deliveries – which was pretty much all the junior was going to be doing. He was only asking her so that he’d have a reason to turn her down if the reference was no good. When she said she was doing O level French he immediately asked if she spoke Italian. Lot of Italian customers lately. What did she know about purchase tax? Foreign customers could claim back the tax – not something that ever troubled Vanda. But she knew he wanted her really because he gave her a Pringle catalogue to take home. Saddle shoulder.