‘Are things better in that sort of factory?’
She blew out a long stream of dgarette smoke and shook her head. ‘So why did I not arise and go to inflict myself on some school closer to home?’
Although the question was in her mind, Lu shrugged non-committally.
‘Because I would have always been Alfred I. Lake’s tommy-opposite daughter and I wanted to get as far away from that as was possible. Had I chosen a village school nearer to home, I should have had my father against me, and that would not have been easy.’ She smiled. ‘And I am sure that my mother would have felt compelled to send me over nourishing broth and pies. In my first job as a teacher, I went as far south as I could without falling off the edge: a hamlet near the Tilly Whim caves in Dorset, and worked my way eastwards until I obtained my headship in Portsmouth.’
‘And you like it?’
She stubbed out her cigarette with an air of finality, but added, ‘You have seen my small cabin built there, of clay and wattles made… Yes, I find work in Lampeter entirely to my liking.’
The waiter brought a fresh pot of tea, which gave Lu time to consider this experience of being treated as a friend rather than as a charge. ‘I suppose I must have been more of a disappointment to you than I realized over the scholarship.’
Miss Lake considered the tablecloth, then looked up. ‘I was – yes, to an extent I was. But then, the girl who I had thought to mould into something had ideas of her own, and stood up for what she wanted against everyone with great strength of character. That was not disappointing. She was doing what I would have done, in fact what I did do, saying, No, I’ll lead my own life, thank you very much.’ She put out her hand and briefly touched Lu’s fingers. ‘And look where it has got us. Leaving England on the boat-train and heading for the Continent. Would this have happened to a grammar school girl? Who knows? As my mother is fond of saying, “There is more than one way to skin a cat.”’
Lu supposed that this meant approval. ‘Why a cat?’
‘A cat? Oh, heaven only knows. Perhaps my mother’s nourishing pies are not rabbit after all.’
Lu made a face and Miss Lake smiled.
Something had happened between them, Lu felt. Their relationship had become more that of equals; she seemed at last to have left Lampeter Street school behind.
The rest of the journey was filled with new experiences which she stowed away in short cryptic notes to be translated into her journal later – the boat, the crossing, strange, almost public sleeping arrangement, Calais and at last Paris.
Paris. Paris. I am in Paris. Those are French people and I am a foreigner. None of the little French she knew was of any use – she could not understand the quick, run-together words with odd inflections – but Miss Lake spoke the language fluently.
She sent a letter poste restante to Ken, wishing that she could see his face when he received it.
I’ll bet that puzzled you, seeing my handwriting on a letter posted in France. Well, yes, it is me, and this is the life. Even after this short while I understand why you always sound so enthusiastic about being out of England. I knew that somewhere there must be some trick exit through which people who grew up in the sort of places we did could escape. Here in Paris, I’m having a peep through. Do you remember the story in that science-fiction magazine you used to take about there being a fault in Time and Space and people from the past and future and other worlds kept falling through? I think you fell through something like that and landed in Spain. Now I want to. I would come looking for you and then keep going with you. Oh my, Ken, the prospect of such freedom and adventure. To be where no one knows you, to be whoever you want, to be anybody or nobody, to be just passing through, or stopping off.
I don’t know what I shall do from here on. ‘How’re they goin’ to keep ’em down on the farm, now that they’ve seen Paree?’ Now that they’ve had a carriage ride, now that they’ve visited the Louvre, been to see the Tuileries. Did you go? Goodness, Ken, what extraordinary things kings did with the money they stole from their people. I suppose it’s the same at home, except that palaces in England aren’t open to the public. I can imagine you and your Marxy friends there.
Miss Lake is with me (I shan’t go into detail of how it all came about. Suffice to say that it is a business trip – don’t that sound grand? – to show a buyer a new style that ‘Queenform’ is starting off in Paris), and of course being Miss Lake we had to go to the Louvre, not to see (as she put it) ‘pictures that are on every calandar and in every popular art book ever made’, but to look at one or two works of real importance. I think I could really get very interested in the ‘Impressionists’.
While I’m at it, I should tell you that I have been invited to a posh dinner-dance at the shore base in the docks. No, not the usual coach-load of factory girls invited to entertain the sailors, but a long dress affair in the officers’ mess. Miss Lake says she will lend me a dress, black, I’ve never worn black. Très chic (I think that’s right). I would like my own, but beggars can’t be choosers. I am meeting my escort at the Queen’s… yes, the Queen’s Hotel on Southsea front, and am being taken on from there.
Don’t ask, Ken, because I’m not going to tell you, only that he is a very nice man, and an exceptional dancer. We are great show-offs, and there’ll be no one to touch us in the officers’ mess. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned against the working class. Oh, but Ken, life is so exciting that I hardly care. Ray doesn’t even know this much, so don’t mention it, he just thinks I’m going to a dance at the base. I have to do this sort of thing these days, because he doesn’t seem to realize that I’m grown up and quite capable of looking after myself. I told you all about Bar coming to live with us in my last letter – I’m hoping that with her there Ray isn’t going to be picking at everything I do. I’m really looking forward to her being there. I only hope it all works out and she’s happy living in Lampeter Street. Imagine what her life must be now if her magic door opens to Pompey.
I have no idea where I am going, but I do know that I am going somewhere. I have to, I am a plant that has taken all the available nourishment from my original plot. If I don’t move away, then I shall never bloom, but will wither in the bud. I feel that it is the same for you. How much better I seem to know you now. Keep going, Kenny, your journey inspires me.
Lu wrote to Kenny on the night of her arrival, before she went to Lascelles’. She probably wouldn’t have told him about the episode anyway; he might quite likely have been as censorious as Ray. Lascelles’ was a store that prided itself on the exclusivity of its clients (not customers) and the quality that went with a Lascelles label. It glittered with crystal hanging lamps and whispered with carpets and refined assistants. Her own part in convincing M. Lascelles himself that the ‘Princess’ had the quality and style fit for his store lasted about an hour and was surprisingly unstressful, and involved no embarrassment to herself. For the purposes of modelling, the corselette was worn with a modesty skirt of filmy georgette pinned to the hem.
M. Lascelles’ chief sales-lady, Mme Manet, a beautifully groomed woman, helped her step into the boneless corselette, pulling and tweaking until it was like a second skin, then arranged Lu’s breasts in the brassiere of the ‘Princess’, adjusting them with a finger until Lu’s nipples were pointing directly ahead. Finally the modesty skirt was attached.
Miss Lake looked on, absorbed in the procedure. ‘Heavens, Lu,’ she whispered when the fitting seemed to have been done to Mme Manet’s satisfaction, ‘I hope working girls are going to be able to jump into these things a bit more quickly than that.’
Lu, who had been standing on a plinth watching herself in the many mirrors surrounding her, said, ‘It is pretty, though. I expect it won’t be long before every bride will include one in her trousseau.’
‘And we shall all be rich.’
Lu didn’t miss the irony. ‘It will give us factory girls a lot of work, though, won’t it?’
‘You must learn to sift the propaganda. I’m not saying t
hat you won’t find a grain of truth, but don’t swallow the thing whole. The purpose of the exercise is not to keep you all in work – except only incidentally.’
In an odd way, although dressed only in undergarments and wisps, Lu felt invulnerable. Perhaps it was Mme Manet’s expression of approval at the position of Lu’s nipples and the smooth curve of the elastic panel over her buttocks which gave her confidence. She looked at herself in the mirror and saw a Lu she hardly recognized. Mme Manet had tied Lu’s hair on top with a white ribbon, allowing the bundle of curls to fall down over the right temple. If I saw myself in a painting, I’d think, She’s really beautiful. I am. At this moment, if never again, I am beautiful.
As she smiled faintly at herself she caught Miss Lake’s eyes watching her, and almost imperceptibly she too smiled. At first, Lu couldn’t interpret the look, then it occurred to her what it might be. She had no means of knowing because, although she knew half a dozen names for ‘pansies’, homosexual women were only known to her through literary references. But that look was no different from those that Duke or David or any one of half a dozen of the ‘Queenform’ cutters gave her. Miss Lake must be a lesbian woman. Until now, she hadn’t really believed they existed outside the story of the women of Lesbos. She and Bar had loved one another since they were girls, and she had been unable to imagine any other sort of love between women.
But now she saw it in Miss Lake’s eyes. Miss Lake would have liked to arrange her breasts and pin on the gauze. The idea didn’t offend her, neither did it excite her. What it did do though was to make Miss Lake admirable. If she was not attracted to men, then all that worrying about finding a husband was gone.
The reappearance of Mme Manet stopped her line of thought in its tracks. ‘Z’ gentlemen are ready Mam’selle.’
Miss Lake left, giving Lu an approving nod. ‘You know that I don’t approve, but you do look splendid, absolutely.’
‘Please, Mam’selle, makes the body relaxed. Monsieur Lascelles has never seen the “Princess” except as the garment. Monsieur Ezzard wishes to show that here he has something which is soft and boneless, you understand? Yes, like that. Perfect. I like this very much, so that Monsieur Lascelles must like it also. It is sold, you see. Lascelles will have “Princess” on offer to special clients before the end of the summer.’
She pulled open the drapes, and at once the dressing room was transformed into a kind of small stage with mirrors on three sides. The fourth side was open to an audience of about a dozen. Lu kept Mme Manet’s pose as still as a statue, and looked into a space where there were no faces. There was a little flutter of female voices voicing approval, followed by a patter of clapping. She raised her eyes and met those of Miss Lake, who nodded almost imperceptibly. As Lu had argued with Ray, there was nothing immodest in revealing no more of herself than she would on Southsea beach. True to an extent, but bathing costumes do not have six satinized suspenders topped with six little bows.
M. Lascelles rose and made a little bow to Mr Ezzard, who said, ‘Well, Paul, what did I tell you?’
‘Aah… this is the one, Jacob. This is the break with traditional styles that the modern young women do not yet know that they want, but will know that they must have it as soon as they see it.’
They walked towards Lu, followed by a group of Lascelles ladies. They all walked round her, looking at every inch, every curve, every seam and bow. She might have been a window dummy. Although the men, when discussing detail, outlined seams to within an inch of her body, she was never touched.
She must have stood there for a full fifteen minutes. Eventually Mme Manet said, ‘Messieurs, may I take the model away?’ Without a glance in the direction of ‘the model’, M. Lascelles nodded. ‘Yes, yes. Then you come to my office and we will discuss with Monsieur Ezzard.’
Lu relaxed as the drapes were drawn across and the stage became a dressing room once again. ‘Miss Wilmott?’ Mme Manet threw a large peignoir around Lu.
‘Yes, Mr Ezzard?’
He drew the curtains a little apart. ‘Well done, Miss Wilmott: very well done indeed. I have come to the conclusion that in future every new style “Queenform” presents to the trade will be modelled by our own employees.’
‘Even the “Empress” and the “Grand Duchess”?’
For a moment he looked blank, then he smiled. ‘Perhaps Nellie Tuffnel for the “Grand Duchess”. I should have to think about “The Empress”.’
‘I have an aunt who is exactly that figure.’ You should smile more often, she thought.
‘My wife suggested that you would make a good model, and she has been proved right. She often is.’ You should be a little more human more often, she thought.
‘Cynthia, would you mind?’
Miss Lake appeared round the curtains and took up her seat again. ‘Cynthia, I should like Miss Wilmott to have something to take home, something with a Lascelles label, of course. Perhaps you wouldn’t mind helping her choose?’
‘Of course.’
‘Don’t be sparing, it won’t break the bank.’
Lu noticed the sour look Miss Lake gave him, but didn’t understand what it was for.
The dinner gown was so beautiful and so expensive that Lu could hardly bear the embarrassment of having chosen it. Equally, now that she had tried it on and imagined herself walking up the front steps of the Queen’s Hotel and then on into the officers’ mess, she could not bear the thought of letting it go.
‘I think the Ezzard accounts department can stand the shoes as well, don’t you? English shoes will never look right with a Lascelles gown. I’m sure Mr Ezzard won’t quibble.’
The gown was so dark a blue-green as to look almost black, until the light caught the weft of the fine fabric which was somehow compressed down its length into minute concertina pleats. This was a gown only for a youthful figure; one still held together without the aid of cortiel and bone. Anything but the sheerest of undergarments would show. The bodice was two pleated cups that became wide shoulder straps which met at the back then continued on down the pleats, expanding over the hips then contracting again to become a flaring fish-tail skirt. Although it was packed in folds of tissue and placed in an enormous Lascelles gown-box, the gown itself was so fine that it could have been rolled up and slipped into a handbag. Part of the gown’s appeal for Lu was its double life: on the hanger it looked nothing more than strings of crumpled cloth, but it was a chrysalis of a gown that turned into a wonderful butterfly on a woman’s figure.
She had never suspected gowns this beautiful existed anywhere but in films, and when it became hers it aroused in her memory that same emotion as the amazing diamond comet hair-slide that Peggy at The Bells at Southwick had spontaneously given her. Perhaps the surprisingly generous gift of a Lascelles gown was not quite as simple a gesture as Peggy’s had been. For a moment – a moment only it was true – she thought Mr Ezzard had looked at her with the same explicit interest that Miss Lake had done.
Cynthia Lake had been against this scheme to promote Lu as a model for several reasons, all of them to do with Lu’s welfare. Her talents were certainly being wasted in that factory, but for her to have agreed to consider this modelling work was no improvement. That the girl’s experience would be widened by the trip was all that could be said for it, but when it became obvious she was not going to be deterred, Cynthia Lake was forced to say that she would go along. Who could blame the girl; it must have seemed like a chance in a thousand, which of course it was, but not really the chance she would have wished upon a girl who had shown such promise.
On their return to Lampeter, Jacob Ezzard stopped his car outside the headmistress’s house, carried her bags into the sitting room and accepted her offer of a glass of whisky. He was well pleased with himself, all affability and cigar puffing, thanks for her help, and compliments about how well the girl had performed.
‘I know that you were against the idea, Cynthia, but you have to agree that the exercise was a success. I must use the girl again.’
‘No, Jacob.’
He was taken aback. He hadn’t even intended her to think that he was seriously asking her agreement. ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said, no, don’t even consider it. Leave Louise Wilmott alone.’
‘I’m sorry, Cynthia, but I don’t like your tone. You might spend your days telling little girls what to do, but it doesn’t wash with me. What plans I have for my own employees are no concern of yours.’
‘But I make them my concern, and I shall continue to do so.’
‘Now you listen to me. I’ve taken girls into my factory that I would not consider were it not for your friendship with Alma. She likes to think she’s doing some good among the poor, and I don’t mind that. She has some very confused notions for a woman who has never worked in her life, or gone short of any creature comfort, and it pleases me to help salve her conscience. When I took on the Wilmott girl, I didn’t really have a vacancy – she came along weeks after the school-leaving intake – but to please you and Alma, I found one. The same with the girl who was involved in that incestuous affair. I used my influence to get training for her and found her a place in the factory. I haven’t minded too much – both girls have turned out to be good workers – but I will not have you meddling in company policy. If I decide that this girl will become attached to my sales department as a part-time model, then that is what she will be. I decide, not you… not Alma.’
‘Not so that you can go creeping along hotel corridors in the middle of the night.’
She had been sitting in her hotel room with the light out, smoking and watching the comings-and-goings of night-time Paris. No matter how careful, no one can move about perfectly quietly; certainly trying to creep quietly in a stiff moire dressing-gown is hardly possible. By the time Cynthia Lake had reached the door and opened it a crack, he had already started to walk away from the room occupied by Lu, obviously having thought better of it.
‘Sour grapes?’
‘Ha! Why would anyone suppose that I would want sexual attention from you?’
The Girl Now Leaving Page 33