Nick (well pissed) had taken Johnny on one side already to say how very, very, very pleased he and Daphne were. It was time he got married. They were running out of single women to make up the numbers. They’d neither of them liked Amanda who couldn’t follow their conversation (mind you, they did tend to talk about Civil Rights and disarmament on purpose) and who sneered at them for not living in Kensington.
Amanda’s name was Methune, which was God’s gift of a name for a snob like her because nobody was entirely sure how to pronounce it. You began the game with a ten-point start. Only poor dozy Amanda never saw that the handicap might not always work in her favour, that her name might simply never be called.
Johnny was dead chuffed at how well Janey had gone down with the old pals but then again he wasn’t absolutely sure how he felt about having a wife that other men would really want to fuck. Nobody else would ever fancy Amanda – but then neither did he. Poor Amanda, who thought that ‘letting him’ would make her more desirable rather than less. As if anyone would want to screw that for the rest of their lives.
Jane was a very different kettle of fish. You could tell by the way she danced, by the way she kissed him goodnight. And yet he hadn’t managed much more than a kiss so far. She had a fabulous figure. He imagined her at the head of the table in the dining room in Putney – Mummy had always promised she’d move into the flat in Gloucester Road if and when he got married. He imagined standing behind her chair and pulling down the zip on that saucy red dress of hers.
Johnny proposed to Jane that evening after an unusually steamy goodnight kiss. Her breasts were actually much larger than he’d thought. Mmm. He drove away from Massingham House loosening his bow tie slightly with his right hand as he headed down toward Knightsbridge. Amanda had pretty much kept her knickers on once she’d realised they weren’t worth a sapphire and diamond cluster. In the end he decided to pop down and see the lovely Barbara for a little light relief. Good old Barbara. He turned left into Sloane Street and surged on towards Chelsea Bridge and the South Circular.
He had been quite surprised when Jane hadn’t accepted him. She wasn’t supposed to say No. Was there someone else? She said not. Would she think it over? If he insisted but couldn’t they go on as they were? All very frustrating but she was sure to come round eventually now that she’d met his mother and his friends. Playing clothes horses with that foxy little trollop was no life for a nice girl like her. And that whole Mayfair flat business was very suspect. Johnny didn’t believe a word of Suzy’s Hong Kong story. The flat was obviously being bankrolled by the sugar daddy and they just had poor Jane in there to make it look respectable.
He’d danced with Suzy once. They’d bumped into her and Henry at the Stork Room one evening and although neither couple wanted to share a table, they’d swapped partners for a swift rumba, just out of politeness.
‘God help poor Janey,’ laughed Suzy, as she sashayed into his arms. ‘Henry came very late to the rumba.’
The dance floor was fairly crowded so it was hard to be completely sure but it seemed that whenever they passed behind a pillar Suzy pressed herself closer. It seemed churlish not to respond. He held her a little tighter and, once he was quite sure he wasn’t mistaken, began rubbing himself against her hip bone. She did a little work with the eyelashes at that one but she didn’t pull away. And then the music stopped and she trotted back to Henry and Johnny could see them at their table for two, nuzzling soppily. How old was Henry? Fifty, maybe? Could he get it up that easily?
Janey had beaten him back to their table.
‘How was your rumba?’ He was afraid she’d read his thoughts.
‘Very nice. Tiny bit rheumatic,’ and her face smiled sheepishly at him while she mentally ran through the wardrobe for the following night in search of something Sergio hadn’t seen. The new jade-green chiffon and paper taffeta creation that Lawrence Green had given her might be nice. It had cost slightly more than the usual quick feel (the workroom were up to their eyes in velvet speciality models for Debenham and Freebody and Goldie had had to nip down to John Lewis for some bias binding) but it had definitely been worth it.
Jane smiled absently at Johnny and sipped at her Grand Marnier while imagining herself stretched out on the bed in Sergio’s suite at the Connaught (you really could walk home from there) screaming ‘bracelet length!’ at the moment of climax: it still made him laugh and, besides, she quite wanted another bracelet. Blue didn’t go with everything.
Johnny gazed at the suddenly very sexy look in her half-closed eyes and immediately proposed again.
He’d proposed pretty much every date since. She never actually said no outright – a girl had to eat – but she was getting sick of being asked, of his assuming that she would say yes eventually. He’d probably be at it again tomorrow after the double date if he got the chance – he went down on one knee sometimes (usually when he was tight). Did she want to be married to him? She certainly didn’t want to get married. She thought again of Doreen in the yellow jerseylaine coatee.
Suzy asked her if he’d proposed and seemed quite surprised – fucking cheek – when Jane said yes as a matter of fact he had. Cow. She was even more surprised that Jane had turned him down.
‘You must be out of your tiny mind.’
‘I reckoned he was probably joking.’
‘Men never joke about a thing like that. You should have bitten his hand off.’
‘I don’t need to be married. I’m making nearly fifteen guineas a week what with the Debenham and Freebody job and all the showroom work. And the Double Dates should get us more bookings.’
‘Might do. Might not. A gimmick like that might work too well. A woman actually stopped me in Fortnum’s this morning. If we become the face of Frockways, nobody else will touch us. Besides, none of this is for ever, darling. Do you really want to be doing Paris turns and being nice to Sergios in ten years’ time? More to the point, will anyone even want you to? This is a young woman’s game. Even Iris used to be a model, you know, darling – house model at Wondercoat, in all the magazines, ten guineas a week then – now look at her: three quid a week alimony from Mr Iris and the odd handout from Dougie if she comes across. Or you end up like Madge, selling your body to the Reggies of this world just to keep the vet from the door.’
And there was Johnny offering to rescue her from ending up like Iris and Madge. Some rescue. He only made about three grand a year at his job in the City. You couldn’t live happily ever after on that kind of money. You could live on macaroni cheese and hand-knitted woollies and last season’s sweat-stained satin evening gowns ever after but what was happy about that?
He didn’t really love her. How could he? He loved the hourglass figure, the model gowns, the perfect make-up all right, but one whiff of the marrow moussaka and he’d be back sniffing round Amanda – or his Streatham fancy-piece.
And he had the cheek to ask what she was doing in a place like this. A place like what? And she looked around her at the chandelier and the china ornaments and the gilded mirrors and the beautiful white sofas and wondered what kind of place he had in mind. Four bedrooms in Barnes or Kingston or Wimbledon or Esher or somewhere? With nice neighbours. And mingy little ‘young marrieds’ drinks parties – Allow two to three drinks per person or three bottles for ten people. And poxy ‘mmm-did-you-make-these-yourself?’ coffee mornings and snobby rotten dinner parties of lousy French food wearing a cheap black frock (home-made, even. People did) being groped over the drying-up by other people’s husbands whose wives, you bet your sweet life, did not understand them at all. Where the nearest any of the women got to a job was manning the bloody cake stall at the school fête.