a woman sacrifices inner status.
Madge had pitched up at Carpenter’s just in time for the next round: a bottle of light ale; a brandy and soda; gin and French for Sylvia; gin and tonic for Janey; a double Scotch and water for Reggie (as long as someone else was paying) and three double gins with orange for Madge who’d missed nearly an hour’s drinking time and wanted to catch up. Ted the barman lined them up tidily in front of her then neatly clammed a fresh ashtray over the full one.
Madge had spent the best part of the missing hour fighting for mirror space in the ladies’ powder room of the Café Royal, making good with Pan-stick and eye pencil after a day’s work in a fur showroom off Bond Street somewhere where she was part saleslady, part house model. She was tall and very skinny (thanks to a special diet of Camp coffee, Granny Smiths and gin) and well-groomed enough to show off the skins. Although she hadn’t ever been particularly pretty, she looked so much classier, so much happier once she was safely wrapped up in a full-length ranch mink with dolman sleeve and half belt that she turned out to be surprisingly good for business.
Madge had grown up just outside Aldershot and her first pair of high heels – stolen from her big sister when she was sixteen – had carried her up the hill to her first army dance, her first glass of gin and the first in a long line of stupid, randy men who didn’t care if she lived or died provided she came across. At least Reggie paid the electricity bill for the grotty ‘open plan’ bedsit in Clapham that she shared with her Mario Lanza records and a pair of blue Persian cats (Bezique and Canasta). Reggie even paid the vet’s bill once. Suzy said that Madge ought to come to some sort of arrangement with that vet. Cut out the middle man.
The thick peachy paint on Madge’s cheeks cracked slightly as she smiled her thanks for the drinks. Alpaca Pete gallantly slid off his stool and she hoicked herself up on to it, wincing as the top of her high-waist girdle rolled over and wedged itself into her ribs.
Pete was in the middle of a very rude joke.
‘So. The eager young bridegroom says, “Don’t worry, my angel. Hubby doesn’t mind if you make naughty noises in your knickers.” Well, anyway, next morning after a night of mad, passionate love – close your ears, Janey my darling – his lovely young bride tiptoes across the honeymoon suite to the bathroom and she goes and farts again: “That’s right! Stink the fucking place out!” ’
Madge, already knocked for six by the three double gins, practically fell off her stool laughing. You should find his funny stories extremely amusing. Only it wasn’t amusing. Jane wasn’t laughing although she would have photographed that way: head thrown back, Suzy-style, to show those lovely white teeth. What was funny about it? Poor cow, stuck for life with a pig like that. Doreen always said a man wouldn’t respect you if you let him take ‘liberties’. All the books said the same. Doreen never went into details about these stolen liberties but the pickled-onion look on her face suggested terrible ordeals from the inside pages of the News of the World: hands over stocking tops; interfered with; consenting party; intent to ravish; intimacy took place; the flogging you so richly deserve.
Jane’s stocking tops had been strictly off limits (for Johnny anyway). Johnny might be a textbook boyfriend but men were men all the world over. Jane had an idea he had a woman in Streatham he went to (which would explain him killing time in the Locarno that night). He knew South London surprisingly well for someone who lived in Gloucester Road. What was the exchange rate south of the river? Fur? And if so, which sort? Squirrel if you were lucky.
Johnny had been taking Jane out two nights a week but his presents were all strictly by the book: a bottle of scent, the odd silk scarf. No big stuff. No payments – there’d been nothing to pay for. Jane had drawn a prim line at doorstep kisses. When Mr Right does make an appearance he won’t be pleased to learn that one slice of the cake has already been enjoyed.
Jane had actually passed the cake plate round quite a few times since she’d left Norbury but only when there was a very good reason – a decent bit of fur or a really well-paid modelling job. People said you could tell ‘that sort of girl’ just by looking at her, but could you really? Jane sipped her gin and straightened her smile in the mirror behind the bar. The same face. The same smile.
Johnny clearly had no idea of her own double life and – after a few false starts – didn’t seem to mind the ice-maiden treatment. That was probably why he was still chasing her three months after that first fantastic date in Lawrence Green’s red-velvet dress, dancing rumbas till two in the morning. He’d bought her sweet champagne and when the diddicoy kid came round with the single red roses he gave a fiver for the whole basket. Waste of money really: they’d only die off. You could have bought the whole three dozen for fifteen bob in Berwick Street. Or two pairs of stockings. Or six lipsticks.
Jane had hated the sex lark at first. She couldn’t say she’d been disappointed exactly because she hadn’t really expected much. Suzy acted as if she quite liked it but then Suzy acted as if she quite liked caviare and Jane knew for a fact she didn’t – she used to throw up in the Ladies’ afterwards. Even if you did turn out to like it, sex was still a men’s thing. A woman’s ability to reach orgasm enables her to share her husband’s pleasure but a sexual climax is no more essential for starting a family than a mink coat or a lipstick.
There was certainly no climax the first time but there was a mink, thanks to some friend of dear old Henry’s – like Ollie only a bigger tipper – who paid for his Norbury virgin with a nice little trip down Bond Street. Mean bastard in other ways, though. Took her to a hotel for the night another time (rotten old Regent Palace, no private bathroom) and then left for a business meeting after breakfast in bed and a bit more how’s-your-father, never thinking how was she supposed to get home in strapless navy taffeta and a mink jacket. She had to get the chambermaid to zip her back into the dress and there wasn’t enough money for a taxi in her beaded evening bag which meant an excruciating ride down Piccadilly on a number 9 bus, her gown and petticoats sticking out under a cheap raincoat borrowed from the same chambermaid, her mink stuffed into a laundry bag. She’d slipped back into the flats through the side entrance rather than let the porter see her in that state. She felt like a tart. She looked like a tart . . .
The sapphire bracelet brought back happier memories: an Italian business associate of Henry’s who took her to the White Elephant club and told her in a sexy Rossano Brazzi sort of voice over a dozen oysters that she had beautiful eyes, a beautiful neck, beautiful ankles, beautiful shoulders. You name it. It was hard to know what to say in reply, really. She decided to play safe and drop lashes, raise lashes, lean forward (giving him an even better view down the front of her frock) and work the old ‘Are you trying to seduce me?’ line. He lapped it up. He wasn’t trying to seduce her, he was going to seduce her. And then he began to whisper a few of his plans for the rest of the evening. She couldn’t understand a word but just the tone of his voice made a peachy blush spread steadily across her chest. He could hardly wait to get cracking.
Jane was exactly his type. Not a virgin (virgins made him feel bad) but Unawakened. He enjoyed himself. She didn’t have a lot of conversation but she was clean, she was the youngest, prettiest, best-dressed woman in any restaurant, she knew which knife and fork to use and she went like a rabbit (after a little instruction). A hundred and fifty pounds (including purchase tax) had seemed cheap at the price.