A Vision of Loveliness - By Louise Levene Page 0,37
junior in a madam shop’ was probably not the right answer.
‘Well, I’ve been living with an aunt down in Surrey since my parents died but I’m hoping I might be able to get some modelling work.’
The ‘aunt down in Surrey’ was a masterstroke. Doreen was suddenly installed in a detached house on the outskirts of Dorking: fruit trees; odd-job man; pastel twinsets with mix-and-match tweeds. She’d have hated it. The trick was always going to be putting just the hint of tragedy queen in the ‘since my parents died’ part so that it sounded too recent and too painful to talk about. What you didn’t want was the bit that went:
‘Oh dear, I am sorry. When was that?’
‘1944.’
Jane managed to sound like a plucky young creature with her living to earn.
‘I shouldn’t think you’d have any trouble modelling,’ said Ollie, who had managed to get outside an entire bottle of Chablis on his own and was now trying to hold her hand. ‘You’re a very, very, very pretty girl.’
It was like having dinner with some great big, balding talking doll. He must have other conversation. He couldn’t very well sit about in the City all day saying that to people.
Suzy and Henry’s chat had reached the whispers and giggles stage and he was stroking her tiny white wrist as he spoke. She was leaning across the table with her pretty face propped on her other hand, smiling into his eyes and occasionally lowering those big, fat false eyelashes as if everything he said was utterly fascinating. Which it wasn’t, quite honestly, not what Jane could catch. Mind you, she did hear the words ‘Curzon Street’ and wondered if this was the promised flat. That would be fascinating.
She returned to her duties with Ollie. Talk about fashions, home life and people the man has not met are utterly boring to most men.
‘Do you live in London, Ollie?’
‘I’ve got a bolt hole in St James’s but the family live out in Wiltshire.’
Out of the corner of her eye Jane could see Henry Swan wincing then laughing at Ollie’s idea of a chat-up line. Poor Ollie wasn’t really cut out to be a ladykiller. Family in Wiltshire. It was pitiful, really.
‘Oh Wiltshire! How lovely!’ Which one was Wiltshire? She tried to dredge up a long-forgotten piece of geography homework. Wiltshire was mauve. Or was it yellow?
‘Do you have a big garden?’
‘About ten acres, I suppose.’
Jane tried to picture an acre. She thought hard about those little tables on the backs of red exercise books: rods, perches, furlongs, fathoms. Biggish garden obviously. Big gardens just made work, Doreen said.
‘What flowers do you grow?’
Doreen actually disliked flowers. Cut flowers especially. It was just a vase to wash as far as she was concerned. The front room was full of virgin vases with cobwebs inside. But she hated garden flowers too: ‘They only die off. Make the place look untidy.’ The back garden in Norbury was little more than a long straight lawn, a few evergreen bushes and a lot of completely bare earth – she had George out there with the hoe most weekends. There were wooden trellises here and there but nothing grew on them. She had a horror of climbing plants. God alone knew why.
They had all had crêpes Suzette for pudding which involved setting fire to pancakes on a trolley in a rather flashy way but they tasted quite nice. So did the liqueurs Henry had ordered. The only other time Jane had ever had liqueurs was one Christmas when she was about nine. She had bitten into a chocolate only to find some kind of nasty medicine inside. But this was nice. Orangey. Took away the taste of the coffee anyway.
Meanwhile Ollie was still trying to remember what he grew in his garden in Wiltshire.
‘Don’t know much about flowers. Angela looks after all that side of things. Wonderful woman in many ways.’
He had hold of Jane’s hand again and was sandwiching it between his. It wasn’t a romantic gesture at all. Just something to fiddle with while he talked.
‘Angela used to be a very, very pretty girl,’ and suddenly the idea that veh, veh pretty girls should end up like Angela seemed too unbearably sad. If a man wants to make a hit with the opposite sex and is not as happy as he might be, he should endeavour to keep this to himself.