‘Not yet . . .’ she said. She might have meant things were not that desperate, but just possibly that she did have something in view. ‘No, I’m making plans, about various things – you’ll see.’
‘Oh, OK,’ said Johnny. ‘About work, you mean.’
She smiled but didn’t quite look at him. ‘You’ll see.’
It was late for lunch when they got off the bus outside Burlington House, but clearly Francesca had no hidebound ideas about mealtimes. ‘So where do you want to eat?’ Johnny said. He was ravenous.
‘We’re going up here,’ said Francesca. And as he followed her up Bond Street, past Asprey’s and other old jewellers whose names he didn’t recognize, past clothes shops English and Italian, the Fine Art Society soon on one side, Sotheby’s on the other, with not a glimpse of anywhere to have lunch, he began to feel not only hungry but resentful. Francesca, striding onward in her scarlet boots and black coat, was the match for any of the mannequins in the windows; men and women coming towards them dwelt on her with just a hint of amusement at her style, and looked at him too to see how he was related. He felt he had to absorb, or share, or repel their varying reactions to her, the penalty of the shy with the un-shy. ‘Here we are,’ she said, leaning suddenly on the tall glass door of Fenwick’s and with a second’s show of weakness as Johnny reached above her to push and hold it open.
‘I’ve not been in here before,’ he said, ‘have they got a cafe?’ All he could see was the complicated gleam, mirrors among panels of white and gold, the round and square stations of the cosmetics sellers with their glass display counters and further small angled mirrors, among which you had to thread your way to reach hats, scarves and lingerie. A strolling woman in a wide-shouldered suit offered Francesca a squirt from a tester and as she ignored her Johnny bared his wrist instead. In the fifteen seconds before it dried, flapping his hand obligingly, Johnny caught a sweet stab of freesia – it was a game the assistant didn’t much like playing, with a woman’s perfume. To him it was a memory of a game, with his mother, in Freeman’s at home, or for a big day’s shopping in Coventry, she quite firm, when they went in, about what she wanted, but testing anything on offer. ‘I’ve no space left,’ she would say, ‘try it on him!’ In the car going home he offered her his wrists in turn, she took her hands in turn off the wheel, and they shared a world of sensation and suggestion, not always agreeing. He saw Francesca on the far side of the shop, and went after her.
She was standing with her hand on one of the tall stools where customers perched for consultations, and gazing at a woman on a similar stool two counters across. The intervening displays half-concealed her, though the young woman in a black frock who was applying the make-up was perhaps aware they were being looked at. The customer was a woman of about fifty, in a green floral dress – she had taken off her coat, which lay on the counter beside her handbag. She had something awkward but committed about her, greying hair fiercely permed, the fading discomfort of someone still hot from the dryer. Francesca said nothing, but her raised hand brought Johnny under the puzzling spell of the moment – were they avoiding an encounter, or springing a surprise, or simply spying? He wondered for a minute if the woman might be a member of the Memo Club (but he didn’t think so); a friend of Iffy’s, perhaps . . . ? The girl moved round to fill in the merely sketched make-up of the left eye and eyebrow and Johnny saw her now full on. Framed by the upright of a cabinet on one side and by a pillar on the other the cosmetic artist was a work of art in herself, her large oval face burnished with graded layers of pink and something close to gold. Her eyes glittered between long black lashes, her mouth was a glossy purple red. It was flawless, a make-up for the camera, a diva on a box set, and with something underneath it pressing through none the less, a certain heaviness of resistance. She glanced across at them now – with a twitch of the mouth which might have been amusement or irritation at being watched.
Perhaps the customers were stirred by the glamour of the staff, who were advertisements as well as artists. Johnny felt unhappy watching, with other shoppers passing by, but Francesca’s outstretched hand made him play the strange game. The woman raised her chin and turned her head patiently, as prompted by the large girl in black; when she could, she glanced in the mirror on the counter. She was unaware of the spectators, but determined to present a new face to the world, to the street, when the session was done. She looked somewhat anxious, but the session itself was a treat, and not to be rushed. There was a sense besides that the girl had nothing else to do, and was lazily stretching the job out, anchoring her customer’s attention with a raised knuckle under her chin, two fingers at the temple to steady her as she darkened the doubting lashes into beating signals of attention. She said things to her, barely audible, now and then, calming and convincing her. When the woman looked down, the girl turned to Francesca and Johnny, stared for a second, and stuck out her tongue.
At last it was done, the customer stood, looked quickly in the mirror over the counter, put on her coat. She didn’t want to stare at herself, transformed now like the assistant, a Turandot among the Thursday afternoon shoppers. She bought a little box, like Johnny’s watercolour tin, coloured squares, and took her purse from her handbag. Francesca came forward, smiling like a waiting customer, her impatience concealed in a cool concern for the customer before her. ‘You do look nice,’ she said.
‘Oh . . . !’ – the woman looked at her uncertainly, almost touchily, but a compliment had to be taken for what it was. ‘Thank you.’ The girl gave her her change, which she put into her purse, and then, very quickly, as if forced to perform some intimate act in public, she took out a pound note, folded it, and slipped it into the girl’s relaxed but retentive hand. ‘Till next time,’ she said.
They watched her go, her tight-curled head passing out into the street.
‘Lovely,’ said the girl.
‘Wasn’t she a darling,’ said Francesca.
‘Mrs Tucker,’ said the girl, ‘from Guildford.’
‘Mm, and where is she going now?’
‘She sees her friend Sylvia in Clapham once a month. She always comes to me first.’
‘Wise woman,’ said Francesca, with a funny chuckle.
Johnny was aware the girl was looking at him, as she tidied the counter. ‘Hello,’ she said.
‘Johnny, this is Una.’ Una put her hand out coyly, but when he shook it her grip was firm. He stood there in the well-meaning uncertainty of introduction to the friend of a friend.
‘Johnny Sparsholt,’ he said. She studied him, as she must have studied strangers twenty times a day, with the still competence of the professional. She saw problems and possibilities.
‘We’re going upstairs, dear,’ said Francesca.
‘OK,’ said Una, turning to replace her pencils and brushes beneath the counter.
‘Who’s on this afternoon?’
‘Not sure – Greta?’
‘Oh, I love her.’ Francesca drew him on, with a hand for a moment under his upper arm. ‘See you in a bit.’
They went through to where the steep-stepped escalator trundled untiringly upwards.
‘Is Una coming up here?’
‘She’ll come up when she finishes. She’s meant to have forty minutes, but if they’re busy . . .’ – she looked at him, on the step below but level with her: ‘Poor thing, she works so hard.’
In the cafe everything was small and expensive, a menu of items you didn’t precisely want; he ordered fish pie. As the waitress turned away Francesca excused herself and went off to the Ladies, and Johnny sat back and slipping the coloured band off his wrist pulled his hair into a bunch and snapped the band around it. He looked blankly at the menu in its stand, and was sunk for a minute in the department-store mood, the dim murmur of voices beyond rhythmical escalators, the air of refuge from the street, the interest and tedium of shopping for clothes, toiletries, soft furnishings. It was his own school holidays again, only child of a mother who didn’t work, but kept busy, who took him in with her through glass doors, over flashy marble downstairs, along carpeted perspectives above, where men in late middle age fussed for you over measurements and checked on the phone about discontinued lines. All the shop’s promise of abundance was pinched and sorted into lines, things in stock, or on order, or no longer available. The most imperious shopper must adjust herself to the available, fall in with the range, the season’s styles, become in a way the servant of the shop – or of course take her custom elsewhere.