‘Is this a slow foxtrot?’
‘Certainly seems that way. Why?’
‘Oh nothing.’ She gave a careful little giggle. ‘It’s just that I can’t do the slow foxtrot.’
‘Could have fooled me.’
He held her still tighter and smoothly reversed them in the direction of the table where Henry and Suzy were back whispering sweet nothings to each other. Nuzzling and stuff like bunny rabbits. Public intimacies between the sexes only render them absurd to other people. Henry was much too old for that lark. He pulled away as they approached the table.
‘There you are, Janey! I’m afraid old Ollie’s a bit of a spent force this evening.’
Henry looked up at John, checking his barber and his tailor while he waited for an introduction.
‘Henry, this is John Hullavington. John Hullavington: Henry Swan.’
‘I’m afraid I should go back and join my party. I’ll see you again, I hope? May I telephone you?’
Suzy gave him the number, the smart Langham exchange giving no inkling of the cracked old phone hanging on the wall in that cold, dirty corridor. John took a gold fountain pen from his inside pocket and wrote it down in a neat leather diary.
‘Johnny, where have you been?’
The blonde had finally tracked him down. Citron yellow was definitely not her colour. She was furious and she was making a right mess of it. Does he seem enraptured by another woman’s company? Say nothing. Don’t interrupt their tête-à-tête. She should have stayed at the table and flirted like mad with one of the other men. Instead she was chasing him all over the club like she was his mother or something. There was only one more mistake to make and she went right ahead and made it.
‘And who’s your little friend? I didn’t know they still did dancing partners here.’
Jane took yet another leaf from Suzy’s book and decided to look hurt rather than put out. John smoothly introduced everybody.
‘And I don’t think you know Oliver Weaver? Ollie was at school with Charlie. How’s Angela, Ollie?’
Ollie looked miserable and bewildered to be woken up by someone who knew the wife. The blonde dragged John away. Ollie began demanding the bill – asking nicely seemed beyond him. Jane and Suzy made a last visit to the powder room.
‘That was fast work.’ Suzy looked surprised, like Jane couldn’t pull a fella without her help.
‘I’ve met him before.’
‘Rather a dish. I wonder if he’ll ring? Not if the girlfriend has anything to do with it.’
At which point the blonde swung through the powder-room door with a friend. They could see her reflection in the mirror but she hadn’t yet spotted them.
‘Swine! Leaving me stranded with some feathered pervert while he was off dancing with that skinny little tart.’
‘Oh don’t be silly, Amanda. It was only a dance. You’d already said you didn’t want to. And you are as good as engaged, aren’t you?’
Maybe not. Not from the look on Amanda’s face, anyway.
The skinny little tart and her friend got up and twirled critically in the mirror, checking for laddered stockings, stray curls. It was past midnight and the blonde – who was the wrong side of twenty-five – was looking a bit lived-in. It would have been fine if the evening had been going well but misery can do terrible things to the face: pouches of disappointment round the mouth, tramlines between the eyes. You might wake up one morning married to a face like that but not if you’d seen it coming.
Gushing goodbyes from Jerome at the door and then back into the car. Ollie got in the back with Jane this time. They were dropping him off in St James’s first but he was determined to get full value for the five-minute drive down Regent Street. He had an arm round Jane’s waist and a hand on her knee and his tongue in her ear, telling her what a very, very, very pretty girl she was. His hair had a stuffy, old-man smell, bay rum or something. His hand was fumbling its way up her nylons just as Henry stopped smoothly in front of Ollie’s flat. Tell him you had a lovely evening (don’t thank him; he thanks you). A dirty, wet goodbye kiss and it was over but she could still taste his spit on her lips.
When they got back to the flat Henry turned the corner into the mews beside the block and parked under the lamp post. Suzy took the bunch of keys from her evening bag while Henry nipped round to let Jane out.
‘You run on up, Janey darling. Henry and I need to have a little chat.’
Jane turned to wave goodnight to them from the steps and Henry’s hand was already under Suzy’s navy-blue grosgrain like a rat up a drainpipe, inching above the stocking to where her knickers ought to have been.
The flat was freezing but it was far too cold to get into bed. She found a red rubber hot-water bottle hanging up on the back of the kitchen door and put the kettle on for it. She got as far as taking her frock off but had to huddle back into Glenda’s fake fur while she crouched over the gas fire in the sitting room. She was just warming up again when the phone went. It was gone One.
‘Hello?’
‘Jane?’ A deep, husky, slightly sleepy voice. ‘Were you asleep?’
‘No. I only just got back. I half got ready for bed but it’s so cold I had to put my fur coat back on.’
Silence. She could just hear the noise of the club in the background. He must be calling from the booth in the lobby.
‘Are you still there?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he sounded a trifle huskier, ‘I just had a vision of you half undressed in your furs.’ Another silence.
She looked across the corridor at the big gilded mirror: the strapless bra; the girdle and suspenders; the high satin shoes all framed by the silvery fur of the coat and lit by the street light outside. She thought of the fat girl and her wily little spiv.
She lowered her voice to a gravelly whisper.
‘Did you?’
‘Mmm.’
She caught her breath at the tone of his voice. Now she too would never be entirely alone in the mirror. She wedged the receiver into her neck and unhooked her bra, nipples brushing the chilly satin inside the coat. She could hear him breathing.
‘I’ll telephone tomorrow. Sweet dreams.’
‘Yes.’
Chapter 11
Every girl, whatever her face, figure
or finances, must put in the hours if she
wants to keep and improve her looks.
Suzy was already up and busy when Jane finally woke. Every heater in the place was switched on while she got to work on her weekly beauty routine: face masked in clay; legs and armpits plastered with smelly white cream; toes clamped apart with a little sponge thingy while the cherry-red nail varnish dried.
‘Good morning, my darling. I can offer you black coffee, black tea or lobster bisque. Shall I run you a bath? The hair removing stuff’s on the shelf in the kitchen.’ (Bristly calves are a cardinal sin.)
Suzy was reading the Sunday Times.
‘Blimey. Do you have a paper delivered?’
‘Lord no. Annie fetches it for me along with the week’s smalls. A girl’s got to keep abreast otherwise you just sit there saying what a good band it is. Here. You can have half if you like.’
No scoutmasters here. It was all politics and foreign affairs. Algeria. Nigeria?
‘It’s what makes the difference between a squirrel jacket and a nice flat in Maida Vale’ – or Curzon Street for that matter – ‘the old “Your work must be fascinating” line can only get you so far. The wife talks about the children. The floosies tell him where they like to go dancing. You’re the one who knows all about the book he’s reading or what he should do on his business trip to Madrid. They love it. Two hours a week and they think you’re Marghanita Lasky. Henry takes the Observer so I get the other one.’