Suzy was still thanking Henry so Jane had a nose round the sitting room: no plastic fruit; no atomic magazine rack; no cheap prints (Reproductions of ‘Sunflowers’ or the Annigoni royal portraits or Rédoute roses have no place in the Good Taste Home); no sideboard and not a pouffe in sight.
Henry and Suzy had slipped out of the bedroom. He’d had as much gratitude as he was getting for a weekday afternoon.
‘Now then, you two. Have you got everything packed? If you give me the keys I can send my man round right away if you like. No need for you to go back to that place ever again.’
He squeezed Suzy’s sticky little hand. Suzy had been having another think about schlapping back to St Anthony’s Chambers and smuggling the gear down to street level so that Henry’s driver wouldn’t see the state of the flat and she had decided it was more trouble than it was worth. Who cared what some driver thought? She’d already told Henry it was a slum but that it was all she could afford (after Daddy died) and how she felt sorry for her poor pregnant flatmate and Henry had been very, very understanding. The bigger the contrast, the more generous and magnificent the Mayfair flat seemed, the bigger and better Henry would feel.
‘Bill will bring all your bits and pieces over in an hour or two. I’ll pick you up at seven thirty. I thought you and I could have a bite to eat somewhere and then go on to the River Club. What are you up to this evening, Janey?’ He had a very polite voice, he was a very polite man but it wasn’t an invitation.
‘Janey’s got a date.’ Definitely not an invitation.
‘I’m sure she has.’ Henry ran his eyes over Jane in her expensive suit. Any floozie could wear a smart evening dress but dollies in daywear were in another league. ‘So, Janey. Do you like the flat?’
‘I don’t like the flat at all, Mr Swan. I love it.’ Service with a lick. Did he believe her? He didn’t look as if he believed her somehow. His smile seemed to dry on his face, shrinking slightly at the edges, but he kissed her hand anyway.
Once Henry was in the lift, Suzy kicked off her shoes and threw herself on the big white sofa. This was definitely the life. She reached across to the side table for the phone – white with gold trim – and dialled Big Terry. Then she rang Lorna at work to give her the new number and see how the professor was shaping up.
Lorna obviously couldn’t talk – in a roomful of graceless eggheads from Romano-British antiquities the typist could go whole days without speaking to a living soul – but she obviously had something to say. There was also the danger that the switchboard was earwigging.
‘About the newspaper cutting we discussed?’
‘Oh yes. Are you going to put the ad in?’
‘I think that would be best.’ Lorna’s voice was tight, resentful even.
‘Would you like me to do it?’
‘If that would be convenient?’
‘I’ll do it right now. Now can you do me a little favour, darling. We’re living at Fifty-two Massingham House and our new phone number is Mayfair 3515. I don’t want you to pass it on to any of the pests, obviously, but could you be an angel and pop in and see Annie on your way upstairs and get her to give me a ring? Oh yes and can you give the address to Janey’s Johnny when he rings?’
As soon as she’d hung up she found a bit of paper in the desk drawer, tore the letterhead off the top and wrote out half a dozen words in neat block capitals. She then buzzed down to the porter to send up the messenger boy – like she’d been doing it all her life. Would he be a darling – given half a chance he would. He was only sixteen and his eyes were on stalks at the sight of two pretty popsies and all that shag pile – and take this to the classified ad department of the Evening News in Fleet Street? Thirty bob should cover it. He could keep the change. And the following evening, in a pub round the back of Gower Street, young Dr Tom would check the personal columns, make the call and save another young life – that was how he liked to look at it, anyway.
Jane wandered back into her beautiful blue bedroom. The smart fitted wardrobes were filled with empty coat hangers covered in padded satin. Some of them had scented net sachets still dangling from them. She hung her suit on one of the hangers and laid her black cashmere crew neck on one of the empty shelves.
She decided to have a bath while they waited for Henry’s Bill to arrive with their things. The bathroom cupboards were full of goodies. The one under the washbasin was mostly medicinaclass="underline" Andrews liver salts; aspirin; a funny rubber tube with a squashy bag on the end and three packs of French letters. There was another stash of things behind the bathroom mirror: soap, body lotion and bath essence and two pots of Helena Rubinstein Beauty Overnight cream. Jane decided on Stephanotis – Lily of the Valley was a bit mumsy. She was so used to the slow, pissy stream of Doreen’s dodgy Ascot heater that she nearly let the bath run over.
Suzy had found a pair of see-thru pink nylon baby dolls in one of her wardrobes and was skipping around the flat opening cupboards and drawers to see what else the imaginary Mrs Collins had left behind. She found a cupboard full of art silk kimonos, several pairs of poplin pyjamas, a dozen pairs of Irish linen sheets and a parcel containing two navy-blue maid’s uniforms.
‘Size ten. Oh wait till I show Annie.’
Her tour of the flat had finally reached the blue bathroom where Jane was up to her neck in scented bubbles. ‘Are you washing your hair? You might as well. I’ve got Big Terry coming round at six.’ Some girls find that a bi-monthly shampoo is ample. Others find that their hair becomes oily and unmanageable within ten days or even a week. Suzy looked herself over in Jane’s bathroom mirror – as if she were registering her face with every glass in the place – then checked the baby dolls in the big reflection behind the bath.
‘This big mirror’s a bit kinky. I haven’t got one of these in mine.’
At about half four the porter, still running very smoothly on his nice crisp fiver, called up to say that Mr Swan’s driver had arrived and the girls hurriedly slipped on kimonos and unpacked the tea chests as fast as they were brought up, filling the empty cupboard shelves. The dress rail wouldn’t fit in the goods lift so Henry’s Bill and his boy, a well-built lad of nineteen, had to bring the frocks up in silky, scented armfuls and hang them straight into Suzy’s wardrobe. Jane’s cupboard had far less in it but Larry Green’s cherry-velvet down payment and her two Hardy Amies numbers looked well and Glenda’s shoes filled the racks that ran along the floor. There was even a red satin pair to match the frock.
Henry’s driver didn’t know what to make of it alclass="underline" the clothes, the slum, the smart flat: didn’t make sense. But Suzy was one step ahead of him, unravelling a whole string of chatty little lies just so that some van driver wouldn’t think badly of her.
‘Thank you so much. They seem to have taken care of everything. I was a bit worried. Where did you have to pick it all up from in the end?’
So that was it. Not her flat at all. Of course it wasn’t.
‘Some dirty little place north of Oxford Street, miss. Filthy it was. Stank of damp.’
Suzy pretended to inspect the hem of a lavender lace evening gown.
‘Oh well, no harm done. I expect they were only there over the weekend. My old lease in Bryanston Square ended at New Year so we’ve been staying down in the country while my maid found somewhere to store all our things.’
She romanced on for a bit then gave Bill a pound and Bill’s boy ten bob. Bill’s boy could hardly wait to get home and unpack the memory of Jane and her loosely wrapped kimono leaning over a tea chest.
The phone rang.
‘Mayfair 3515.’ You could hear the excitement in her voice. Like a little girl showing off. ‘Oh hello, Annie darling. That was quick. Lorna must have clocked off early. Yes we’re both very well. Now then. How do you fancy that little cleaning job we talked about? Good. Well why don’t you hop on a bus and get down to Massingham House. It’s right behind the Dorchester. I know, darling. Posh or what? Anyway hurry on over and then you can see how you feel about it. There’s a service entrance round the side. Number Fifty-two.’ Service entrance. Swank.