Jane reckoned it would be all right to wear the Hardy Amies if she wore her half-sleeve black twinset sweater under it. That way she could take off the jacket for work and still pass for Junior Sales. She decided to risk her best pair of stockings (the only unladdered pair she had). She would wear the high heels on her way in but change into her everyday pumps once she got there. She wouldn’t carry the bag (in case someone saw it) but she could put it in the same carrier – a really nice pale green Fortnum’s one that a customer had left behind. Whatever happened, she wanted the thrill of walking along Piccadilly in the full rig-out. Pity about the awful grey bouclé coat but she couldn’t not wear it in this weather. Pity about the hair as well. She wasted a good ten minutes fiddling about with it but she couldn’t find a style that was smart enough for the suit but dowdy enough for work so she just wore it held back with the big brown slide as usual.
Even so, she caused quite a stir at breakfast. Doreen, thank God, had her Lie-in on Saturdays. She also had her Lie-in on Sundays and quite a lot of the school holidays. Uncle George got up extra early on Saturdays and was sat by the radio, soft black book of racing form on the table, drinking his third cup of tea when Jane sashayed into the kitchen.
Uncle George was all right. He thought of kind things to do and he found nice things to say. How he came to get humped up with a nasty, small-minded cat like Doreen Crick was enough to last the huge and very chatty Deeks family an entire wedding breakfast. She hadn’t even been good-looking. Very much the ugly sister – like poor little June really.
‘Don’t you look smashing! Is it new? Turn round.’
Jane smiled and twirled.
‘Nice fit. But then you’ve got a nice figure.’
He was the only person on earth who could say something like that without meaning something else. June might say such a thing but would really be saying ‘a nicer figure than mine’. One of the senior salesladies might say something like it but only in a ‘much good may it do you’ sort of way. And Alan and Bill and Keith (was it Keith or Kevin?) and Tony wouldn’t say anything about her figure without rolling their eyes over it. Compliments were like coupons that they saved up and stuck down until they’d got enough for what they really wanted.
The only person apart from Uncle George who could make a compliment a statement of fact had been the woman at the Trudi Morton modelling academy. Yes, Jane did have a perfect figure. Possibly a shade too short for photographic work but just right otherwise. But it would take work. The walk. The make-up. The wigs – models used a lot of wigs apparently. And that meant money. Twenty-five guineas for a two-week course and diploma. No point asking George and Doreen.
The Trudi Morton woman seemed really, really nice at first. Jane had gone to the academy in her lunch hour just after she’d started working in the arcade. The reception area had been quite crowded with two completely different sorts: girls who were models and girls who wanted to be models. The most obvious difference was that the models all had a dirty great canvas suitcase which Jane knew to be full of stockings, shoes, wigs, petticoats, scarves, gloves – all sorts of stuff you might need on a job. It seemed that the people you worked for only supplied whatever it was you were modelling: frocks, Hoovers, cat food and whatnot and anything else was supposed to be in your bag. Must weigh a ton.
The other big difference was that the girls who wanted to be models looked like they’d done each other’s hair and make-up in the dark for a bet. Jane had her hair in its usual slide (she’d come straight from a morning’s work) and wore no make-up at all. She hadn’t time and besides she’d actually talked to Vanda about this. Vanda was no fool and Vanda reckoned that it was all about Potential and that they’d get a better idea from a bare face. Funnily enough, she was absolutely right. The Trudi Morton woman had said how refreshing it was to see a girl with her own natural complexion and was her bra padded? That was when she spent five minutes carefully taking Jane’s measurements and that was when Jane went off the whole thing.
Jane had a cup of tea and an apple for her breakfast. It was all she usually had but at least on Saturdays there was no fat Doreen sat there telling her she ought to eat more. Today’s smart girl cannot possibly be too thin. Pay no heed to anyone who pretends otherwise. A slim figure is your most priceless asset. She ran her cup under the tap, kissed Uncle George goodbye and put on her coat and gloves. She’d have to get a new coat from somewhere. She still had £15 in the Post Office. All that was left of her Vanda Modes money.
The walk to the bus stop was good practice with the high heels. They made her two inches taller and made the model walk much easier. She’d only worn them once before, to go dancing at the Locarno with a bunch of girls she’d been at school with. She wore them with a floral stripe California cotton frock: big blue poppies with sooty black centres. She had two net petticoats under it – one black, one white – and her black twinset cardigan over it.
She’d got the dress for half price in a funny little shop halfway in to Croydon. She’d only gone in there for dress shields. Vanda didn’t sell these. Dress shields weren’t Lingerie, they were Haberdashery, and Haberdashery was where Vanda drew the line. The shop’s window had been full of creepy little woollen vests, tenderly laid out on brass T-shapes and draped with yellow cellophane to keep the sun off – as if it mattered what bloody colour the things were – but once inside, she was surprised to see a rail of gaudy fat sun dresses. The woman who ran the shop looked quite surprised herself. A salesman had been round and she couldn’t resist the lovely flowers – like seed packets – but when she’d tried putting one in the window it looked all wrong somehow so they were left on the rail inside. Her regular customers just tutted at them or said they’d make nice loose covers.
Jane told her she worked at Vanda Modes and offered to re-do the window for her. Only took ten minutes. She put all the vests and elastic stockings in the side window and left just two frocks in the main one, one on each side, with a hand-written ticket: ‘Perfect for dancing. Only sizes eight and ten remaining.’ They were actually the only sizes the woman had got.
‘He had bigger,’ she confessed, giggling, ‘but I can’t see big girls wearing all those flowers, can you?’
She could if she went to the Locarno. The dance floor last summer had been heaving with size fourteens in yards and yards of waxed cotton begonias and peonies and sunflowers. Like a great big, sweaty municipal flowerbed.
Jane had taken the bus into Streatham and met her old schoolfriends outside as arranged. Two of them were engaged already – tiny little diamonds to prove it. The other two were working on it, slyly eyeing up the Brylcreem boys and spotty Herberts who stood round the edges of the room ready to make a move when the music slowed down. Couples were showing off their practised steps, plain girls were dancing with each other. It was yet another filthy hot night and the room stank of body odour and Evening in Paris.