The Commonplace Day

by Rosemary Friedman

  Suddenly it was over. The sack of Carthage, the splendour that was Rome. Grey-filled ashtrays and choking air, cress on the grey carpet and cream from the cake; pools of wet on the sideboard and crumpled paper napkins; disordered pastries, a half-eaten bridge roll, olive stones in the hearth. In the hall mirror, dismembering the final remnants of a smile, giving way to the fatigue that had been clamouring for the past hour with surreptitious glances at the clock, wondering when they were going. There was a moment of triumph, when it was all worth it. Somewhere about eleven o’clock with everyone eating and drinking and smoking and laughing and saying how marvellous Liz, did you honestly make it? You look younger than ever, Tim too, and give such marvellous parties. Animated, you believed it. Then they were gone and with them the hope that something had been achieved. With the closing of the door the isolation returned. The hollowness of nothing gained except for the burn on the bookcase, the broken glass, and the repair work which would go on for the rest of the week. The crushing burden of tomorrow.

  The dress helped. If it was right you grew wings, could reach fantastic heights. If it was a failure then so were you, doomed from the outset, brooding all evening, humiliated. You told yourself it was unimportant, it was personality that counted. You lied in your teeth. It was important; desperately. So you played the game, accepted the bondage of elegance. Like the upkeep of the home it was a constant battle against deterioration. We had to struggle with so many side issues and live as well; men got away scot free.

  In the lives of some of the girls in the village it was more than a side issue. They thought of nothing else. Olga, I knew, before she even started on the clothes, spent hours raising herself on tiptoe without touching the floor with her heels in order to slenderise her ankles, put oil on her fingernails, crushed strawberries on her cheeks. She didn’t drink because it was bad for her skin, avoided the sun on her face for a similar reason, brushed her hair a hundred times, became hysterical if she missed her afternoon rest. I didn’t go to quite such lengths in order to preserve my attraction. Attraction for whom? It couldn’t have been for Tim because Tim loved me anyway, in anything; more often than not he was blind to what I was wearing. Who did we dress for? It wasn’t for Dobbie because I’d always taken trouble and there’d only recently been Dobbie. Other women? In a way I suppose; vying, demonstrating our sophistication, youth; more likely for their husbands, making them jealous; look at Liz, lucky Tim; boosting our self-esteem. We stayed younger longer. Our mothers, grandmothers at any rate, at our age had given up. The longer you battled the harder it grew, the more time it was necessary to devote. Figure preservation was the latest thing. Half the girls in the village spent two afternoons, sometimes three, in town, in black leotards, battering their buttocks with rollers, strapped and swinging against various pieces of equipment, beating themselves endlessly against others. They swore it worked. Martha went and said you could get the same result much cheaper doing the various exercises at home. I put my fingertips together and pressed to improve my bust whenever I remembered. Fortunately I was slim and clothes weren’t too much of a problem.

  I parked the car, lucky to find a meter, a chauffeur with a black Bentley pulled out just near to where I wanted to go, and prepared for battle with the dress shop. The battle consisted in being prepared not to be talked into something you didn’t want. The assistants worked on commission; their job was to sell dresses. It didn’t matter to them if in the dress they declared ravishing you felt a dismal flop. The success of their stratagems depended on your mood. Today it would take more than a saleswoman to intimidate me. I was going to meet my lover.

  I took off my driving shoes, ancient moccasins, and put on my heels, and sixpence, listening to the satisfying whirr, in the meter.

  In the window there was a turquoise chiffon dress, quite gorgeous with coat to match, unpriced. On the floor lay a jersey two-piece, not unsmart, the come-on marked at seven guineas.

  Iris Sayers had told me about the shop which she said didn’t have to be wildly expensive although they had some exclusive models, and where she was usually successful. I was to ask for Miss Forrest.

  I opened the door and was aware of being priced up by four pairs of eyes. The owner of one of them came forward smiling calculatingly. I explained what I was looking for and whom. The interest evaporated, it was not her day. She turned to a thin superior type in a Chanel suit. “Miss Forrest, Modom’s looking for a smart little cocktail.”

  Miss Forrest came forward looking down her long nose. “About what praice?”

  “I don’t really know. I’d like to see what you have.”

  I lost a point for not answering the question. With disdain she pulled aside a curtain.

  “Has Modom any preference for colour?”

  “No. I’ve an open mind.”

  She took out a pale blue crepe, draped at the hip.

  “Not blue.”

  She took it back and exchanged it for black, similarly draped.

  “I don’t care for draping.”

  She held it against her and you could see she wouldn’t be seen dead in it. “Of course they look quaite different in the hand.”

  “But drapes. I’m not the drapey type.”

  The next one was scarlet, smart but shrieking. Miss Forrest looked at my face.

  “They’re all wearing it.”

  “It drains my colour.”

  “With a little more make-up…”

  I’d look like a clown.

  White with beads.

  “I don’t care for beading. Something plainer, with a line rather than decoration.”

  She returned the white to its plastic cover with much ado and produced a black with a high neck and low back, elegant and simple.

  “That’s more like it.”

  “Now we’re getting a little more praicey,” she said doubtfully.

  I looked at the ticket; she hadn’t been deceived by the mink tie.

  Out of nowhere, sensing difficulty, the manageress came, chic, from the Continent.

  “Modom’s looking for a smart little cocktail. She doesn’t care for drapes or beading or blues or reds,” was the indictment.

  With an air of authority the manageress produced a brown velvet and swept the moss-green carpet with it.

  “Somesing quite fabulous,” she said, gesticulating, “wiz a brooch ’ere and brown shoes, voilà!”

  “I don’t think it’s within Modom’s praice range,” Miss Forrest said, changing allegiance. “I’ve shown most of the ones that were and she doesn’t care for them.”

  I refused to hang my head.

  “I show you somesing,” the manageress said in a conspiratorial voice. She delved behind another curtain and came out with a green wool suit.

  “Frrrench and on-re-peat-able. A tiny size. Take Madame to ze fitting-room. You will see, Madame.”

  “It’s lovely,” I said, and it was, the price right too, but I wanted a dress for Pamela Talbot’s wedding.

  “I can hardly wear it for a wedding.”

  “Terribly chic. Ze colour, ze braid, and wiz Madame’s eyes…”

  “But I wanted a cocktail dress.”

  She whispered in my ear. “In Paris zey wear ze suit for every-zing. A brooch ’ere…”

  Green shoes…it was a glorious suit. I was in the fitting-room, my clothes off, the suit zipped and fastened.

  She threw up her hands. “What can I say? Walk outside, Madame.”

  The three witches led by Miss Forrest purred fabulous.

  I forced myself back to the fitting-room and removed the suit.

  “I’m sorry. It’s very nice but I want a cocktail dress.”

  “Wiz a velvet blouse, ze same green, black shoes… formidable…” The manageress walked away leaving me with Miss Forrest who watched in silence as I dressed.

  In silence like a naughty schoolgirl she led me out of the fitting-room and across the floor. On her way she shut the curtain on the blue with drapes, the white beaded.

 
“Perhaps you’ll be having some more in,” I said, warm now having undressed and dressed and feeling dishevelled.

  “I don’t think you’ll find a better selection…” Her voice was chilly. She held open the door, waiting.

  I pointed to the chiffon in the window.

  “What’s the price of that, it’s gorgeous?”

  “French.”

  Of course.

  “Unrepeatable.”

  Naturally.

  “Seventy-faive guineas. Without the coat, of course.”

  So much for Iris Sayers and her recommendations. I never had been able to buy anything with those dreadful women breathing down my neck and preferred to shop where I was known or at a store near Marble Arch where they had cheap copies of Paris models and you could riffle through and try on to your heart’s content, nobody caring.

  It was an effort to keep in the swim and it didn’t end with the dress. You had shoes to get, a struggle for fit and colour, a handbag more often than not, and sometimes a special foundation. Like small girls playing at dressing up we decked ourselves out like fairy queens and identified ourselves with our finery. Most of us at any rate. There was one sect in the village led by Myrtle Appleton whose husband was our local dentist who wallowed in suburban intellectualism and sat on the floor until all hours exchanging second-hand opinions on Mahler and Brecht. They pretended to like nothing that was straightforward and freeflowing, only the obscure, no matter how fifth-rate, and going to off-beat little cinemas or theatres and barefoot, as if this made them morally superior. They joined a two-guinea Society where all the pseudo-intellectuals had the pleasure of meeting other pseudo-intellectuals. I call them pseudos. Had they been the real thing they wouldn’t have had to convince themselves with their pseudo-exclusive Society but would have been too busy using these wonderful brains instead of sitting around gassing. Myrtle herself, hair long or flung up on her head, strands trailing, dressed in odd clothes made out of saris or antique fabrics and decorated herself with ancient beads evoking the Middle Ages or old China. She despised us, we knew, for our slavish devotion to the ordinances of fashion yet probably spent more time rummaging for her old bits of jade and amber than we did chasing the more conventional. As the years went by the more impossible to talk to Myrtle became. Everything had to be ‘anti’; music, poetry, and heroes. Tim said it was to compensate for marrying a dentist.

  In the car I put on my driving shoes again, throwing the others on to the back seat, and drove off to meet Martha. If I found a meter straight away I should be just in time. The lunch hour was always difficult.

  The fog was clearing but there were wisps of it still in places. The traffic, streets, everything looked grey. I drove down Berkeley Street, Davies Street, and Wigmore Street. There was a Hillman Minx in front of me going very slowly, obviously looking for a meter too. Two women in hats sat in the front nattering and I kept well back as Tim had taught me, knowing that they were quite likely at any moment to catch sight of something in a shop window and pull up sharply or veer to the left as a preliminary to a right turn. There was no space at all in Wigmore Street, every meter bay neatly occupied with its car. I decided to turn left. The Hillman did too and beat me to one in Wimpole Street.

  I drove on exasperated. Manchester Square then Portman Square, getting further and further away. I could see it was one of those days and going to be hopeless and thought I might as well go straight to the car park where I was meeting Dobbie and leave the car there. I parked it safely and coming out over the rough gravel which I felt through my thin-soled shoes I looked at the spot outside where in less than two hours Dobbie’s car would be and thought that by the time I drove my own car away I wouldn’t be the same person at all.

  There was a taxi passing and I hailed it sliding with relief on to the leather seat.

  Martha was sitting crossly in Bendick’s in the mink coat Jack had given her after his last successful coup and said where on earth did you get to I’ve read the menu forty-four and a half times.

  “There was nowhere to park.”

  “I always leave mine in Selfridge’s. It saves a lot of bother. Where did you?”

  “A bomb-site, miles from here.”

  “I’ll drop you off on the way to Dr Raus.”

  “I have something to do first.”

  “My appointment’s not until three, I’ll come with you.”

  “It’s nothing terribly interesting.”

  “All right, darling. I can take a hint. You’re very mysterious I must say.”

  It was a mistake to have arranged to meet Martha.

  “Am I?” I picked up the menu. “What are we going to eat?”

  Martha put on her glasses which had gold sides. “I had half a grapefruit and black coffee with Saxin this morning and we’ve steak with apple chiffon, which I adore, tonight; that comes to three hundred and fifty allowing for two helpings of the chiffon which I know I shall have to have, leaving me with nine hundred to play around with.”

  I waited patiently not really caring today about her hips. She rejected with reluctance the oeufs florentine and the scrambled egg with asparagus tips and settled for the cheese and date salad which, with a bit of cheating, she didn’t count the roll and butter she had to have because she was starving, left her with enough calories in hand for the chocolate fudge sundae, the specialité de la maison.

  “What about you?”

  It really didn’t matter, I was too worked up over Dobbie. Now that the moment was at hand I felt apprehensive and excited, eager and reluctant, all at once.

  “I’ll just have a sandwich.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Perfectly. Just not terribly hungry.”

  The waitress waited with her little book.

  “That’s one cheese and date with roll and butter and one sandwich,” Martha said.

  “No sandwiches between twelve and two.”

  I opened the menu again. “Buck rarebit. And coffee.”

  “You remember Jessica Chatterton,” Martha said.

  By her tone of voice I knew somebody had died or had cancer.

  “Wasn’t that the commercial art girl Gray used to take out?”

  “That was Margot, her sister. Jessica was the one with red hair. The very tall one. You must remember. Used to go skating every Sunday.”

  “What about her?”

  “It’s not her, it’s her husband. She married that queer-looking fellow from the Polytechnic. He didn’t have a bean and there was all that carry-on at the time.”

  I remembered now about Jessica.

  “He never did have a bean either,” Martha said, “everything he touched went wrong. Anyway, they’d been visiting her people. Her father’s that old bore on the local council. They’d just got home and were getting undressed when Tom said I feel frightfully odd and dropped down dead at her feet.”

  I tried to feel for Jessica Chatterton only of course she wasn’t Jessica Chatterton any more.

  “They’ve three children under five,” Martha said, “or perhaps it’s four. I know they seem to have another one every time you pick up the Telegraph. I don’t know what she’ll do poor soul.”

  “Shocking,” I said. And playing the game. “Who told you?”

  “Iris. She was the only one she kept in touch with. Iris’ mother hasn’t been too well either. She had this pain and they took out something and she still had the pain, so they opened her up again and had a look round and couldn’t find an absolute thing. They’ve called in somebody else but meanwhile she still has the pain. Iris is terribly worried.”

  The waitress brought our order, the butter in its individual earthenware pot.

  “There’s always something,” Martha said. “You never know from one day to the next. I’ve got to take Robert to the specialist, he complains of pains in his feet.”

  “Is his eye better?”

  “Yes, they said to take no notice and that it would correct itself. I hope to goodness they’re right. Jack has a co
ld coming on, he gets one every November.”

  “He was all right last night.”

  “He had a tickle all evening. This morning he was sneezing his head off. He’ll be furious if he’s not fit for Saturday, there’s some sort of competition. Is Tim playing?”

  “I haven’t heard about it. It’s possible.”

  “Unless of course it’s foggy.” Martha looked out of the window and people were passing by with umbrellas and it was pouring with rain and I’d neither a scarf nor umbrella. I didn’t want to meet Dobbie looking a mess.