by Susan Moody
Names were funny things, shaped you in a way. She remembered telling her mother – she must have been three or four – that she wanted to change hers and Mum saying she couldn’t. Why did you have to call me Jane, it’s such a boring name, she’d said, I want to be something pretty. And Mum had laughed and said, Jane is what you are. Jane. Plain Jane. I like the name Jane, Dad said, a good solid name, no frills to it, you know where you are with Jane, and anyway, she’s not plain, she’s my beautiful girl, aren’t you, darling, and she’d run to sit on his knee and burrow into the old green sweater he always changed into after work to save his shirts, and feel safe and loved.
Plain Jane. She didn’t ask to change her name again. She believed her mother: looking into the mirror, she saw no reason to think otherwise. I am plain, she told her reflection. Plain Jane. That’s what the girls at school called her, though not in a particularly unfriendly fashion, but although at first it hurt, she soon learned that she had other qualities which they didn’t. She had a brain, for one thing, and she knew how to use it. And she had ambitions beyond marrying the first boy who got her pregnant, and spending the rest of her life in a council house.
She read a lot, too, gulping down books as though they were strawberries, finding small epiphanies in phrases which leapt out of the pages at her, each time giving her a jolt of pure pleasure at the precision, the rightness, yes, that is exactly how it is, the sense of exhilaration that by using words, someone could reproduce an emotion, a sensation, with such exactitude, storing them away until she had time to scrutinize them more closely. She learned many things from books, chief among them being that if she wanted something, she had to plan for it. It didn’t occur to her that she might be unusual in her single-mindedness, nor lonely, nor that there was another life to be lived beyond the one she had.
She could still remember Miss Barker’s voice: ‘You can do anything you want to, girls. Be anything you choose to be, anything at all.’ Jane found Miss Barker inspirational: no-one could call her pretty, not like the French teacher with her Parisian clothes, or newly married Mrs McCallum, the history teacher, all aglow with love and smelling faintly of sex when she came to school in the mornings.
And of course it had to be tarty Leonie Bryson who put up her hand and, looking round at the other girls for admiration at her daring, asked in a false tone of earnest desire for information, ‘Miss Barker, suppose I was hopeless at everything else and decided I wanted to become a high-class prostitute,’ while around her girls giggled behind their hands and looked down at their desks.
Miss Barker looked Leonie up and down, then smiled kindly. ‘For you, my dear, I’d imagine that should present no problem at all.’ Jane loved her for that, especially when Leonie didn’t have the brains to see that she had been insulted, even if everyone else did. She much admired the English teacher, who wore suede skirts and long black boots with heels, a hand-wrought (Jane loved the word ‘wrought’) necklace of black and silver, bras whose outline you could see under her blouses.
After one lesson, Jane waited until the rest of the girls had gone. ‘Miss Barker,’ she said, ‘I need some advice.’
‘How can I help?’
‘The thing is, I’m not particularly clever—’
‘You’re certainly not stupid, Jane.’
‘Well, I’m not academic or artistic in any way. I’m not interested in music or art, I don’t know much about painting, though I know what I like.’ (Miss Barker had winced at this and Jane determined she would never use the phrase again, although until then she had felt it carried an air of sophistication.) ‘And I know perfectly well I don’t have looks or charm.’
Although Miss Barker privately agreed, she said, ‘Who told you that?’
‘My mother, for a start.’
Miss Barker drew in a deep breath. ‘Don’t listen to her! My mother was the same. She never believed in me, so I had to believe in myself.’
‘Exactly. I’m not hugely ambitious.’ (Hugely was a word Miss Barker herself used, well, hugely, and Jane had appropriated it.) ‘I’m never going to be Prime Minister, I wouldn’t want to be, ruling the country and everybody complaining about everything you did, but I do know what I want.’
‘That’s a big start. Most people spend years faffing about, trying to decide what they want, and in the end settling for something else because time starts running out. And you should know, Jane, that ambition and self-confidence in a woman are far more appealing than mere looks, so whatever your mother may have said, ignore it. Anyway, you said you knew what you wanted to do.’
‘Firstly I want to get a bookkeeping qualification. That’s easy, because I can do that next term, here at school. And then I need to improve my accent: I know I don’t have a good speaking voice, and I wondered if you could tell me how I can make myself sound better. Ideally, I’d like to sound like you.’ Crossing her fingers behind her back, she smiled at the teacher in a way that Miss Barker could see had nothing to do with sucking up, and everything to do with pragmatism. Doors always open if you have the right kind of accent, Jane had learned that long ago.
‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?’
‘Well, you have to, don’t you?’
‘And where do you hope to end up?’
‘Running my own business.’ She was very clear about that. ‘Not hairdressing or a café, or a florist, I’ve looked into all of them and they’re not for me. I’m thinking perhaps an employment agency, or a party-organizer, one of those firms which organize conferences for people. It’s a field which is only just opening up and I think it’s going to be big. So any more advice you can give me, I’d be glad to have.’
‘It seems to me, with your path so clearly before you, you don’t need much advice. I take it you haven’t discussed your plans with your parents.’
‘There’s only my mother. My father died about four years ago.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Yes, well . . .’ Jane didn’t want to go there, poor old Dad, twenty years older than Mum, who never let him forget it, down the pub most nights in order to get away from her, but never drunk, not ill but not well, out the door every morning quiet as a mouse, back in the evening with no more noise than a shadow, just slowly slipping away from them until the morning he wasn’t there any longer, just his body lying under the covers, his cold yellow hand on the counterpane and a look of peace on his face which Jane would never forget.
Miss Barker moved on quickly. ‘A Saturday job is a good way to start, to get experience.’
‘I’ve already got one.’ Jane hoped her face hadn’t flushed. ‘Behind the cosmetics counter at Boots.’ She enjoyed that, plenty of free samples of foundation creams and lipsticks, cleansing pads and soaps. She did double shifts in order to improve the rate at which her savings increased, and she let Mr Retton, the manager, suck her breasts after hours, as well as put his fingers inside her: he paid heavily for the privilege, the disgusting perv, with his sweaty scalp and smelly shirts. Sarah Retton, his daughter, was in the same class as her at school, a fact that Jane reminded him of from time to time, while assuring him of her absolute discretion. In moments of depression, and there were plenty of those, she thought of her nest egg, or Nest Egg: it was big enough now to justify the mental capital letters. Starting out the size of a quail’s egg, it had grown into a hen’s, then a duck’s, now it reached towards ostrich proportions. Every time she checked the steady growth in her balance, excitement flared, and the promise of the future, her own business, whatever that might be, beckoned like a lighthouse.
‘And you’re absolutely right,’ the teacher continued. ‘A course in bookkeeping could lead to all sorts of other things. You could also try further education if there are any other courses you’d be interested in: I’ll look out some possibilities for you at the Adult Education Centre, if you like.’ Though as she said it, Miss Barker was sure that this remarkably self-possessed young woman had already studied all the evening-class opportunities av
ailable.
‘Thank you very much. Actually, I’ve been doing Spanish once a week for a few months.’
‘Spanish? Why?’
Jane wasn’t about to tell Miss Barker, even though she seemed sympathetic enough to understand, about Miranda, or that she thought that Spain, or the idea of it, at any rate, offered a romantic vision which was singularly lacking in her own semi-detached existence. She’d feel stupid trying to explain how often she dreamed of Spain, of herself (Margarita, Conchita, Isabella, Miranda), in the arms of a sway-backed lissom youth, a girl gone chancing, dancing, backing and advancing, to the insistent clack of castanets, her mousy hair suddenly turned long and lustrous, put up in a huge bun at the back of her head, staccato clapping from the men around and the skilful plangent notes of a guitar, a dress covered in huge polka dots, while the moon shone through the palm trees and turned the sea to silver. Do you remember an inn, Miranda? (Do you remember an inn, Jane? didn’t have the same ring at all.) ‘I thought it might be useful,’ she said.
‘As for the elocution . . .’ Miss Barker hesitated. ‘If you like, I could give you a couple of hours a week after school.’
Jane tried to keep the satisfaction off her face. This was what she had been angling for all along.
Thoughtfully Miss Barker watched her leave the classroom. The girl had very little sense of humour, no sense of the romance and thrill of youth, she was too old too soon, Miss Barker thought, but with that steely-eyed determination, she could go far; it was a pity that she seemed to have no wish to do so.
Twice a week, Jane went round to Miss Barker’s house when school was finished for the day. It was like something out of My Fair Lady. The teacher showed her how to stand so that her head reached for the ceiling and her back was straight. She gave her elocution exercises to practise: Mr Haystee the Bayker made maydes of honour and choc-o-layte éclairs, and Oh, oh, Antonio, over the fields you go-o-o, opening her mouth and stretching the vowels into golden nuggets of self-improvement. She looked round Miss Barker’s sitting room as she spoke, making a note of the photographs in silver frames, the complete absence of the fluffy toy dogs and shepherdesses holding out their skirts which Mum collected, the flowers in crystal vases, the single colour accent that a raw-silk cushion made against a neutrally upholstered sofa.
Miss Barker was obviously from an upper-middle-class background, and Jane didn’t quite understand why she was wasting her time teaching in a comprehensive school, rather than one of the upmarket girls’ schools. She understood that Miss Barker had taken her on as her personal project, and looked on her achievements with the pride she might have done had they been her own. And for the first time since her father died, Jane was conscious of something she had not even realized that she no longer had: concern, warmth, someone caring about her.
How nay-ce of you to let me come, she sang, checking her underarms in the bathroom mirror before she went out dancing on a Saturday night. In Hhhertford, Hhhereford and Hhhampshire, shaving her legs, wishing she looked even vaguely like Audrey Hepburn in the film. Thah rayne in Spayne stays maynly on the play-ayne. She couldn’t speak like that at home, of course, her brother would have gone into jeering overdrive. Oh, la-di-da, he’d have said, pinching her arm in the soft place above the elbow where it hurt most, Little Miss High-and-Mighty are we? But she noticed immediately the difference in shops and on buses, when she used her new Miss-Barker-trained voice.
At school, she no longer bothered to turn up for irrelevancies such as RI or history. She worked hard at the vocational classes in secretarial studies, she continued at French, and, of course, English, more for the pleasure of hearing (and imitating quietly in her head) Miss Barker’s voice than for any instruction she might receive. She would leave school at the end of the school year: she’d have several GCSEs, good grades, and she would start working immediately, in fact already had two carefully chosen jobs lined up, one as a part-time bookkeeper in a small factory making something or other out of plastic, the other part-time in Belinda’s, a dress shop which would give her the chance of big discounts.
Eventually, the time came when she wanted to move on from both of these and get a proper job. She waited for the Sales and then, using her staff discount, bought a black suit, a really expensive one, designer label, which she’d seen featured in the fashion mags: short skirt, jacket flared just on the hip, narrow velvet lapels.
‘You look a real treat in that,’ Belinda said. ‘Going for a full-time position, are you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t put on any weight. That suit is really gorgeous on you, though I say it as shouldn’t.’
Jane wondered what she meant by that, why shouldn’t she say such a thing, it was surely what the customers wanted to hear. And Belinda was right, she did look a treat, later, when she went to the interview, a plain white shell underneath, a string of pearls borrowed from Miss Barker, and a good handbag and shoes. ‘Always buy the best shoes you can afford, ditto the bag,’ she’d read in the fashion mags, and that’s what she did.
Of course she’d got the job, no problem, not much of one, but the first step on the ladder, working in an office along with a lot of dreary old men, apart from Neville, the owner’s son, fresh down from Edinburgh University, with whom she fell madly in love, though she didn’t let on, having a pretty shrewd idea that if they started anything, it would mean absolutely nothing to him. Nonetheless, she let him take her out a few times, and she noted how he held his knife and fork (different from the way Mum did), how he ordered wine, how he spoke to the waiters (polite but not friendly). He had no idea of her background and she had no intention of taking him home to find out. The job lasted eighteen months, until she handed in her notice, moving on to a better-paid, more responsible position. She left the books impeccably kept, and the old boys threw a party for her, supermarket champagne, plastic glasses, olives and nuts, tiny little nibbles which they heated up in the microwave in the office kitchen. Neville even kissed her, but she could feel his heart wasn’t in it, only the swelling in his trousers.
By now she had three designer suits, plus a wardrobe of good-quality separates, a shoe storage rack hanging on the back of her wardrobe door, holding six pairs of expensive shoes. Two years after she’d started working at Parties Unlimited they had a phone call from someone wanting them to organize a corporate ‘do’ for the parent company of the corporation he worked for, and the boss told her to handle it, she was experienced enough, she’d done brilliantly on the corporate tent at the race meeting.
‘The Grand Central would be nice,’ said the voice on the phone from London, adding that he wanted a three-course dinner for a hundred and fifty guests, gorgeous flowers, some kind of middle-of-the-road entertainment, no smutty jokes, no mother-in-law jokes either, not like that fat comedian on the telly, a band for dancing after dinner, but nothing too contemporary, the guests will be of a certain age, know what I mean, but the managing director wants it to be very high-class, very discreet, we want to impress our overseas customers.
‘No problem.’ She was already riffling through her book of contacts.
‘Thank you, Janine. You have done a truly wonderful job for us.’ It was the senior partner of the company which had thrown the party.
‘I’m glad.’
‘My customers have been so impressed, our managing director also.’ Janine had met the MD at the party and taken an instant dislike to him, partly because he was a cocky little bantam in a shiny Italian silk suit and a tiepin that from a distance looked like a pair of women’s legs in frilly panties and on closer inspection proved to be exactly that, partly because he had roving hands, but mostly because he reminded her of her brother.
The senior partner stepped closer and reached into his breast pocket. ‘This is for you.’ He handed her an envelope and winked at her. ‘Don’t tell your manager, OK?’
‘It’s all in the day’s work for us to do the best we can,’ she said. ‘I can’t possibly take it,’ though she knew very well tha
t she could – and with a little persuasion, probably would.
‘Why not? It’s not a bribe, it’s not unethical; this is business, Janine, it’s like in a restaurant: you do a good job of waiting on me, I give you a good tip. That’s all this is: a tip.’
‘Well, thank you, thank you very much indeed.’
‘And of course we shall use your firm again.’
A week later, he had telephoned and asked for her. When she came on the line, he said, ‘Will you have dinner with me tonight?’
She knew his voice at once, wondered if the ‘good tip’ had been nothing more than payment in advance for her favours. ‘Well . . .’
‘Of course you will. I’m staying at the Grand Central. I’ll meet you in the Cliveden Bar at seven.’
Dressing for the evening, she analysed herself unemotionally, as she did everything: olive skin, black hair (thanks, Dad!), small boobs, thick black bush, her body, secretive and her own, not brilliant, not voluptuous, not designed to make men catch their breath, but OK. She wouldn’t have time to go home and change, so in the lunch hour had gone along the High Street to Belinda’s and chosen a glamorous silky top in silver and blue, very simple, with spaghetti straps, to go with her black suit. She stared down at the glass-fronted case of costume jewellery and sighed over a thick rope of tiny black, silver and blue beads. ‘I love it but I really can’t afford to buy anything more . . .’
Belinda shrugged. ‘Look, we know you, we can trust you. Why don’t you borrow it for tonight?’