by Eva Ibbotson
‘Might I ask, sir, why Galaxy is organising this contest? What benefit do we propose to derive from it?’
‘Benefit?’ The Old Man looked shocked. ‘This, dear boy, is strictly a matter of charity. Of course, it’s true that Galaxy Cosmetics have lapsed a little behind our other interests. I don’t know if you’ve seen the figures…’ He became technical. ‘But that’s by the way. Now here is all the information you need,’ he went on, handing over a massive folder. ‘I know I can rely on you. And remember the motto that has always sustained us at Galaxy: “Everything clean. Everything fair”’.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Richard dully – and was dismissed.
Three months later it had all been done. Richard had commandeered the Woodward Hotel, organised the trips down the river, the visit to Marlborough House and the ballet, the charity banquets and kissing of babies in suitably selected orphanages – all the events which were to occupy the girls until the actual contest in the Albert Hall.
Now, flanked by assistants and chaperones and some more than usually foul-mouthed pressmen, he waited at Heathrow to welcome the last of the arrivals. Already bedded down in the Woodward were Miss USA, a charming and curvaceous blonde so pretty and friendly that it was generally agreed she had no chance of even being placed and Miss Rumania whose awe-inspiring bosom seethed with contempt for the Western world. He had obtained study facilities for Miss Germany, who was finishing a thesis on ‘Schiller’s Nature Imagery’ and arranged for Miss Canada, a motherly brunette, to share a room with Miss Papua New Guinea who seemed to be allergic to something or other and had come out in bumps.
He had also welcomed to the opulence of the Woodward this year’s hotly tipped favourite, Miss United Kingdom.
Miss United Kingdom was a raven-haired, blue-eyed, dyed-in-the-wool professional who could hold her winsome, girl-next-door smile for twenty minutes flat if there were cameramen around and walked even to the bathroom with the pelvic undulations so characteristic of those who have spent their life on ramps. She was also – and it was this which had brought a frown to Richard’s face – a girl called Delma Lasenbury with whom he had tangled briefly during his time at Cambridge.
It had been during his last year there; he was doing postgraduate work and Delma had just arrived at one of those cookery-cum-secretarial colleges which have mushroomed around the older universities, enabling pubescent girls to get a nibble at the flower of British manhood without the strains of scholarship.
Richard’s tenure of Delma had been brief and due to the fact that he had scored an unexpected success in an OUDS production of The Winter’s Tale where, in plum-coloured velvet and a silver wig, he had played Prince Florizel.
For one delirious summer, Delma had been his Perdita. Even then she was beautiful, even then her beauty was for her a kind of creed. Richard’s memories were of an almost incessant bodily horticulture, oiling her back in punts, brushing her hair as they picnicked on the Backs. Nevertheless, when she moved on, he was desolate. And then, two days ago she had swept into the Woodward surrounded by publicity men and later, when they were alone, made it quite clear that she remembered him. To find that the organiser of a contest she was hell-bent on winning was an old flame was almost too good to be true. What is more, Richard had found himself responding just a little. That summer on the river had been very sweet – a time of lost innocence before the agony that had ended his ill-starred marriage.
‘Everything clean, everything fair,’ he reminded himself – and went forward to disentangle the newly-arrived Miss Denmark from the attentions of a bunch of women’s libbers protesting (with some justice, he could not help feeling) against the degradation of the contest.
He despatched in taxis a series of dusky beauties whose names bore witness to the rapid rearrangement of the African continent, found the succulent Miss New Zealand obscured by luggage and lusting cameramen – and was scanning his list to see if he could call it a day when he felt a tug at his arm and saw a thin girl with vestigial amounts of bright red hair looking up at him.
‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but I was told to get in touch with you. It’s about the Miss Galaxy Contest.’
Richard nodded. ‘Yes, well… I’m sorry, but I have all the secretaries I need – there really aren’t any jobs left at all.’
‘Actually, it isn’t that,’ said the girl, talking for some reason in the softest of Highland accents. ‘I’m … sort of supposed to take part. I’m something called Miss Toto Islands.’
Richard’s look of amazement lasted just too long before he changed it to a smile of welcome.
‘I know, it’s absolutely ridiculous,’ she said, grinning. ‘It was all a mistake, really – there were only six of us and some were pregnant and so on. I won’t be a nuisance to you, honestly. What I really want is some golfing umbrellas for the turtles and a really good pipe for my father and some raffia for the lepers…’
‘Raffia?’ said Richard dazedly. ‘Isn’t there plenty of that where you come from?’
Gussie shook her head. ‘It’s the wrong kind. The best raffia comes from Madagascar and of course the lepers feel—’ She broke off.
‘Oh, look, a proper English pigeon! But surely he shouldn’t be inside the airport? Couldn’t we take him out?’
‘He’s all right, honestly,’ said Richard, watching out of the comer of his eye a reporter approaching. ‘ They get plenty to eat, I promise you. Is that all the luggage you’ve got?’
Gussie nodded and let herself be fed into a taxi from which, in the intervals of comforting Miss Trinidad and Tobago who wanted her mother, she hung ecstatically, commenting on the extreme Englishness of the razor-blade factories, leaden skies and rickety hoardings of the approach to London.
She was still exclaiming when, in the foyer of the Woodward, Richard’s chief assistant, on the look-out for sacrificial victims, informed her that she was to have the honour of sharing a room with no other person than Great Britain’s own contestant, Miss United Kingdom herself.
Delma Lasenbury was lying on the bed, almost totally obscured by fruit. Strips of avocado closed her eyelids, slices of cucumber adhered to her cheeks; her throat and shoulders frothed bloodily with egg-white and crushed strawberry. But she opened her eyes when Gussie entered.
‘Good God. Don’t tell me you’re a contestant!’
Once more, Gussie explained.
‘Well, well! And what are your measurements, I wonder,’ said Miss United Kingdom nastily. And then: ‘ Pass me a towel, will you?’
Gussie passed the towel and, subsequently, a hair switch like a compressed Pekingese, a massage vibrator and a packet of eyelashes with which one could have towed the Titanic, deeply honoured to assist in the creation of the impeccable product that was Delma Lasenbury.
‘You’re sure to win,’ she said admiringly. ‘Only … I mean, are you sure you want to? Wouldn’t it be rather awful, kind of wandering about like the Flying Dutchman, opening things and closing them and never being able to go home?’
Delma’s pansy-blue eyes stared at her with contempt. ‘ You bet I want to. It’s five thousand quid for a start and a lot more where that came from. And with Richard on the committee—’ She broke off, biting her lip.
‘Is that Dr Whittacker? He’s awfully nice, isn’t he?’
Delma nodded. ‘Quite a dish,’ she said, languorously establishing ownership.
But Miss Toto Islands was frowning. Gussie, that arch escorter of turtles, orphans and booby birds, would greatly have liked to escort Dr Whittacker from whatever it was that made him look the way he did.
It was not only Delma, however, who took up Gussie’s time. Herded together at the Woodward the bewildered girls, like the turtles of Toto, seemed to be constantly at risk. Miss Isle of Man’s left breast, due to some defect in the silicone, subsided dramatically, sending the poor girl off into understandable hysterics. Miss Iceland, a majestic 36–26–38 who could hardly have sunk even into the maw of one of her native geysers, had a phobia about plu
g-holes and had to be removed to a room with a shower, and Miss Trinidad and Tobago, still awash with homesickness, had attached herself to Gussie like a hatched duckling and refused to leave her side.
But it was Miss Korea, a tiny dental student tottering about on six-inch heels, clutching a textbook with pictures of horribly carietic molars, who tore most at Gussie’s heartstrings. For within half an hour of her arrival, one of Miss Korea’s contact lenses had fallen into the depths of the fountain in the Palm Lounge, leaving the bereaved contestant to face the shame of representing her fatherland in horn-rims.
On the first evening, the girls were invited to a reception in the Woodward itself – a formal affair for the Lord Mayor, members of the organising committee, the BBC … Standing beside the Old Man, Richard thought how stunning Delma looked in a black dress high at the throat but slashed to an impressive décolleté around the armpits. None of the others had her assurance and panache. Delma would win all right.
It was a while before he noticed that many of the girls, instead of circulating among the grey-suited dignitaries, were bunched together in the centre of the room from which there emanated an excited, multi-lingual twitter.
He moved across and reluctantly they parted to let him through.
The fountain was deep, chlorinated and heavily fringed with ferns. Then, even as Richard stared, there emerged a figure which already seemed strangely familiar: a girl, thin to the point of emaciation, freckled, dripping from every pore – but radiating now an air of unmistakable triumph.
‘I’ve found it!’ cried Gussie exultantly. ‘It was a miracle, but look!’
And as she held out the tiny glass object to the delightedly hopping Miss Korea, the cameramen converged.
The picture of Gussie emerging from the fountain, made the front page of almost every newspaper the following day. If Delma was furious, Gussie’s fellow contestants reacted differently. Rising from the breakfast table, Gussie was waylaid by Miss Canada from whose arm half-a-dozen bathing costumes dangled.
‘We had a whip-round, Gussie,’ she said. ‘Because quite honestly, yours just won’t do.’
‘I mended the hole,’ said Gussie, a little hurt. But she accepted the offer in the spirit in which it was intended and even allowed Miss Holland to substitute a white silk sheath for the pink taffeta evening dress with puffed sleeves and heartshaped neckline which – in order not to cause expense to her father – she had borrowed from one of his laboratory technicians.
Even so, she ran into trouble over her national costume at the afternoon’s dress rehearsal in the main lounge.
‘What on earth is that? sneered Delma as Gussie emerged from the changing-room in a single strip of bleached cotton which fell from her arm-pits to just below her knees.
‘It’s a lana,’ said Gussie. ‘It’s what they wear on Toto – at least, they used to.’
‘Oh my God!’ said Delma.
Gussie looked at her. Delma was wearing that well-known British national costume of skin-tight Union Jack, white thigh-boots and diamanté trident. Next to her, Miss Finland dazzled the eye in a head-dress made of that most Scandinavian of birds, the ostrich …
Once again, Gussie’s growing band of friends came to her rescue. Miss Trinidad and Tobago stripped herself of a plastic hibiscus lei and hung it round Gussie’s neck. Miss India culled five of her ankle bracelets, Miss Guam contributed part of a cardboard palm – and Richard, arriving to take stock, was just in time to see Gussie’s resigned and acquiescent head sink beneath an enormous, solitary pineapple.
The national costume of the Toto Islands had been bom.
There now began the five-day cultural jamboree which preçeded the serious business of the contest. Richard had brought to the planning of this the same meticulous care that he gave his research and he made it a point of honour always to be present. For Gussie, the days were a delight: the sight of London’s skyline from her river; Swan Lake at Covent Garden; the Tower looking so marvellously like pictures of itself – and always Dr Whittacker’s humour and intelligence highlighting the experience.
On the day before they were to start serious rehearsals, Gussie decided to go shopping. Accordingly, she put on jeans and a raincoat and went downstairs.
‘Hey, hinny,’ said the security guard, an ex-heavyweight boxer from Tyneside. ‘You’re not allowed out without your chaperone.’
‘How do you know I’m a contestant?’ said Gussie. ‘How do you know I’m not one of the maids?’
‘Saw your picture in the paper, coming out of the fountain. And the one where you were taking the stray cat out of the Lord Mayor’s Banquet. You’re Miss Toto Islands.’
‘Gussie’s the name,’ said Gussie sadly. ‘The thing is, I have to go out and I share a chaperone with Miss United Kingdom and she—’
‘Oh, aye. Heard of her. A proper Tartar. She’ll win, mind. I’ve got a fiver on her.’
‘Have you?’ Gussie’s eyes lit up. ‘You wouldn’t put some money on for me, would you?’
The guard nodded and added his views on the likely order of the runners-up. Then he said, ‘Well, I suppose you won’t come to any harm. I’ll turn my back for a moment – but don’t be out long, mind.’
Gussie thanked him and set off for the shops. The raffia proved surprisingly difficult, the golfing umbrellas amazingly expensive. But in that Mecca of pipe smokers, Dunhills, she found for her father a briar pipe as strong and finely made as any Stradivarius. This done, she wandered delightedly along Piccadilly, flattening her nose with indiscriminate enthusiasm against windows displaying exotic cheeses, necklaces plucked from Egyptian mummies or gentlemen’s shirts. And found herself standing entranced by the gates of a little churchyard with an ancient, propped catalpa tree, a fountain flanked by greening cherubs, squares of lovingly framed grass …
She went in. An old woman sat on a bench, knitting. A quiet-faced statue held out an olive branch. The church, graceful and simple, was by Wren.
Suddenly she stopped, amazed. The only man she knew in England was standing with bent head, looking at a plaque set in the sooty wall.
He turned. ‘Oh!’ said Gussie. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Richard managed a smile. ‘It’s all right. It’s not private, this place.’
‘It’s so beautiful. As though … everything that makes up London is compressed into it. You know, like in that poem: “A box where sweets compacted lie”.’
‘Yes.’ There was a pause. Then he said, ‘My wife loved it. We met here. A pick-up. She was drawing the catalpa.’
Gussie looked past him at the plaque in the wall: ‘In Memory of Caroline Whittacker’. No inscription. No date.
‘I killed her,’ said Richard.
Gussie was silent, became part of the leaning tree, the sooty wall, scarcely breathed.
‘I was driving. They said it wasn’t my fault – the man who hit us was drunk. But I was driving. And I didn’t have a scratch. Not a single scratch.’
Gussie looked up, saw his face. Then, without really meaning to, she began to cry.
Two nights before the actual contest, Gussie went to bed early. She had swopped beds with Delma who had discovered a draught from the window by the fire escape, washed out five pairs of Miss United Kingdom’s tights and now, leaving her room-mate locked in some mysterious ritual in the bathroom, composed herself for sleep.
She was just drifting off when she heard the window slide softly open and, lifting her head, saw the curtains parted by a black-gloved hand. But even as she tried to cry out, the masked man had reached her, was pressing something down over her face … and everything went dark.
The kidnap of Miss Toto Islands from the Woodward Hotel produced a furore in the press. Pictures of what everybody hoped was the Toto Islands appeared in all the papers, along with speculations about the island’s importance as a source of uranium, oil or foreign agents. The girls who had befriended Gussie (which seemed to be almost all of them) were interviewed; Miss Trinidad and Tobago went into a decline.
‘It’s me they were after, Richard, you do realise that, don’t you?’ said Delma furiously. ‘It was me! I changed beds with Gussie.’
‘Yes, the police know all that,’ said Richard absently. He had neither eaten nor slept since Gussie had vanished, rushing between Scotland Yard, the Woodward and Galaxy.
‘You do seem in a state,’ said Delma. ‘Why, you hardly know the girl.’
Richard smiled crookedly. ‘Don’t I?’ he said – and was gone.
Gussie woke in a bare room with drawn blinds. She was lying on a pile of blankets and two men were standing over her looking extremely sick.
‘Oh, my Gawd!’ said the elder, poking Gussie with his shoe.
‘Well, it wasn’t my fault. She was where you said, on the bed by the window. How do you know it’s the wrong one?’
‘Look, England may be in a bad way but we ’aven’t got so as we’re sending something like that in for Miss Galaxy. The one we wanted ’ad boobs like melons and she’s the floozy of that guy in Galaxy who’s in charge of it all.’
‘You said—’
‘Aw, shut up, will yer?’ He stared down at Gussie again. ‘Who the hell’s going to give us a quarter of a million quid for that? Not Galaxy. Not anyone.’
Gussie closed her eyes again. So Galaxy was going to be in trouble because of her – and Galaxy meant Richard. Richard who loved Delma but had been so wonderfully kind. Surely – oh, surely – there had to be something she could do?
The show, however, had to go on. The girls were herded into the Albert Hall, paraded up and down ramps and told to smile at ‘camera one’ as though it was their mother. Bookies touted the odds, with Miss United Kingdom still hotly the favourite; technicians hammered, sound engineers with earphones called to each other like courting kittiwakes. The judges, a panel of eight celebrities, were assembled. Police were everywhere, reporters hid in the dressing-rooms. The kidnap of Miss Toto Islands had sent interest in the contest soaring sky-high and thirty million viewers were expected in Great Britain alone.