Bond Street Story (6 page)

Then there had been the suite-in-Claridges period when she had married her American. But that, too, had proved a disappointment. He had moved out one night in a great flurry of fancy-looking suitcases, clasping his World Airways ticket-folder in his hand and begging her to wake up just once before she was really dead. That had come as a great shock to her. She never had been able to understand the American way of putting things. But he had behaved very decently. For a start, he was the sort of man who understood divorces. He had realized that a woman can't live on old memories. And the settlement had been generous. Even lavish. But his health had been shocking. He had died suddenly in a dude-ranch somewhere outside Houston—taken his own life she learnt afterwards—just when the bottom had fallen clean out of his particular corner of the stock market. And because it had always been a hotel suite that they had lived in, there wasn't even a house and furniture that she could sell. For all the good it had done, that marriage might simply never have occurred.

Luckily, she had kept up her modelling. And it was round
about this time that, always beautiful, she had suddenly assumed the Madonna expression. What's more, finding that it suited her, she had stuck to it.

She had been with Rammell's for nearly eleven years now. That was what was so alarming. There aren't really that number of years in a model's life. And there certainly wouldn't be eleven more. Or ten. Or nine. Something more like three or four, probably. And, after that, a steadily descending scale. The sunset period. Free-lancing. Trips into the provinces. Autumn collections in the seaside towns. Going to places as one of the second best-dressed women. Or, worse still, not going at all because another brand-new Marcia had turned up from somewhere.

She had left it too late now to do any of the other things that had once been enticingly dangled before her. Films, for instance. Naturally, all the agents in turn had been after her. They could hardly afford to have neglected anybody who was so much photographed. So eminently photographable. There had been screen tests. Conferences. Auditions. It was the auditions that had been the stumbling block. Because at auditions you have to speak. And this was Marcia's weakest side. It was something that she had never properly got round to. She had been too busy ever since she had left school, getting married, being divorced, divorcing, standing in front of cameras, wearing clothes that didn't belong to her. There had been no time for amateur theatricals. Or verse reading. Or anything like that. No time even for ordinary elocution lessons. And this was a pity. Because Marcia's was by no means the kind of voice that could be allowed to speak for itself. Apart from a slight huskiness that might once have been possibilities, there wasn't even anything to work on. It was pure Kilburn. In the pursuit of refinement she had gone over her vowels so frequently that she had trodden them quite flat. There was scarcely a breath left in one of them. When she did speak which was rarely because Marcia couldn't usually find very much to say—it was like someone murmuring under an anaesthetic. Not that this was surprising. There was a distinctly coma-like quality to Marcia. She had been going about in an elegant daze for years.

She glanced at her watch. Eleven-fifteen. Time to be getting on with things. The first parade at Rammell's was at lunch. And there would have to be a big change in her appearance, a complete transformation of everything, by then.

Slowly, gracefully, in the smooth undulating way in which
she always moved, she slid out of bed. Then she drew her wrap around her, and went over to the dressing-table. Because it had been late when she had got back last night and because she had been tired, things had rather a messy, flung-about appearance this morning. She had upset a powder-box when she put her bag down. The black velvet of the bag was now all smeared and grubby looking.

It was to avoid that kind of thing that, she kept telling herself, she should have had a lady's maid. It was having had one once that had spoiled her. Because since she had lost her, she had never really taken proper care of anything—unless, of course, it was something of Rammell's that she had on loan. It was because she never remembered to put things away that she had to spend such an awful lot on herself. It wasn't that she was particularly extravagant. Or indulgent. Or even changeable in her tastes. It was simply that she couldn't manage. And all the time at the back of her mind there was that horrid shadow. The knowledge that the time would come when it wouldn't be so easy to go on like this. A voice from nowhere kept reminding her to be careful.

She sat for some time in front of her mirror, turning her head this way and that like a canary in a cage. Not preening. Merely looking at herself. Sideways. Full-face. Sideways again. On the whole, the effect wasn't so bad as it might have been. Not nearly so ghastly as she had feared. The new mud massage that the Rammell Beauty Parlour was providing had freshened her skin quite remarkably. It might have been the skin of a girl of twenty. The only thing that worried her was the fact that the full course was only six treatments. And she had taken five of them already. Apparently if anyone took more than six in a row it was the skin as well as the mud that came away afterwards as soon as the scraping began. And she couldn't afford to go back to the old flat complexion with which she had been getting along for the last six months. It had been one of the fashionably sallow periods then. All pretty women had been looking slightly Asiatic. But that was over and done with now. The blood was being worn much closer to the skin this season.

Then her hair. It was the fineness of it that was the difficulty. Other girls—the phrase “other women” would have seemed all wrong to Marcia: she wouldn't have realized that she was included in the conversation at all—had hair like wire. The hairdresser's scissors could scarcely get through it. But her own was as soft as floss. That was why it had to be soaked in oil so often. Otherwise it would get ruined every time a wave was put into it. It was dark hair. And she was wearing it at the moment a little
shorter. Ever since February, the lobes of the ear had been left showing.

Dressing was always rather a slow business with Marcia. She examined everything carefully before she put it on. Compared with her manner at night-time, it might have been a different person who was handling her clothes in the morning. She held out each garment at arm's length and went over it seam by seam, practically stitch by stitch like a wardrobe mistress. But this was only to be expected. It was the public Marcia, the one who was going out, who was preparing herself.

And once in the street, she felt better already. It was only in that pokey little flat that she felt so awful. So suicidal. Out here, life was going on all round her. And she was part of it. Contributing to it. Before she had reached Knightsbridge she had felt herself being looked at. Recognized. Desired. Thought about. She became reconciled to life again. Happily conscious of being permanently twenty-three.

Then at the corner of Sloane Street she stopped suddenly. The Madonna expression faded. And a frown that belonged to a different kind of face altogether appeared beneath the veil. She felt for her handbag.

“Oh, God,” she said. “Mum's postal order. I've forgotten all about it ...”

Mum was another of Marcia's troubles. They hadn't lived under the same roof for years. Not since Marcia was sixteen. Practically never saw each other nowadays. Didn't correspond very much, either. And never telephoned, because Marcia's mum wasn't on the phone. So it couldn't be said that Mum was a nuisance. Or even difficult. Just a drag.

And in a dim vague sort of way Marcia was still fond of her. Needed her at times. Would have liked to visit her. Take her out somewhere. But that was impossible. Their lives had grown too far apart. Old Mrs. Tutty in her back bed-sitter in Kilburn and Marcia in her flat off Cadogan Gardens didn't belong in the same world any longer. Simply couldn't be seen about out together.

That's where the tragedy lay. It was harder on Marcia than on most girls who have a poor widowed mum tucked away somewhere. Because other girls could always slip in during the week or pop across on Sundays. And Marcia couldn't. She hadn't got the right kind of clothes to wear. The last time she had made the attempt and had gone toiling up the Edgware Road by bus all the way to Pitter Street, it had been disastrous. It was a simple mink stole that she had on. And in those parts, mink stoles, real or
artificial, meant only one thing. People who passed her kept thinking terrible thoughts. In short, the gulf was too wide. It was unbridgeable.

In consequence, she had been reduced to show her love, her devotion, by sending little gifts. But even that was difficult. Because she didn't like giving Mum's address at Rammell's. Or at Fortnum's. And Marcia wasn't the kind of girl who could buy the things and make them up in a parcel afterwards. Never had been any good with brown paper. And knots. And all that kind of thing. Cheques were no use either. Mum had never had a private banking account. So postal orders were really all that was left. And now Marcia had forgotten even that. All the week she had been reminding herself to send a couple of pounds. One for luck. And one because she had completely overlooked Mum's last birthday ...

Not that there was anything that she could do about it. She had just got time to get along to Rammell's for the luncheon salon. It was lucky that the only food she ever allowed herself at midday was cinnamon toast and a cup of black coffee. Otherwise she would have been late even for the dress show.

 

Sunday had come round at last. The weekly miracle had occurred. And London had died in the night. The City, from St. Paul's to Liverpool Street, was simply for archaeologists. Fleet Street and Ludgate Hill might have been a deserted mountain pass. Bond Street itself was a smooth, unencumbered stream—practically a lagoon—meandering past curtained windows. With only the cats and the caretakers peering out.

Like one vast flock of homing pigeons some two or three million Londoners, all simultaneously released and all urged forward by a common impulse had popped out of their week-day imprisonment and made a bolt for their ancestral dove-cots.

Some of them, moreover, were doing quite nicely in their new surroundings. Mr. Preece, for example. Wearing a pair of smartly-pressed grey flannels and a sports coat obviously cut only for the mildest kinds of sport, he was sauntering round the garden in his idlers, feeling simple. Primitive. Bucolic. One of the Carshalton peasantry. In his left hand he carried his sécateurs, and in his right a tin of patent ejector insecticide with which he gave each rose bush a little friendly death blast as he passed by. He was in fact an entirely happy man. His new denture was bedding down at last exactly as the dentist had said it would. His eldest son had just won the school economics prize for an essay on Trade Balances. He kept remembering a strangely poignant and beautiful dream of cycling with an attractive but unknown girl through Portugal, a country which he had never visited. Mrs. Preece's new Swiss girl seemed positively to like washing-up. His petunias, after rather an anxious and uncertain start, were now safely established. He had done his exercises. And he had not thought about Rammell's once since breakfast when he had jotted down two little entries, one about gloves and the other about travel vouchers, in the small leather note-book which he carried even in his sports coat. All in all, life seemed very nearly perfect.

Not so with Mr. Rammell. At this moment he was standing in the bathroom bending forward over the basin and peering into the mirror to inspect his tongue. It was horrible. A pale,
white-flannel tongue. And bundled up in his scarlet silk dressing-gown, with his hair still sticking up like feathers, the whole appearance that he presented to himself was obnoxious. This, the regular morning disillusionment, saddened him. And he stood gloomily reflecting. For a start, he had not slept well. At one-thirty he had got up and mixed himself a dose of Bisodol. Then, once awake, he had not been able to go to sleep again. He had lain there in his tall bedroom in Eaton Square thinking unquiet thoughts.

He kept remembering that last visit his father had paid him. Nearly two hours completely written off. Destroyed. Wasted. It was a severe nervous strain even having the old man in the office at all. So far as Sir Harry was concerned, life was one long conspiracy nowadays. Keeping things from him. Concealing future plans. Innocently deceiving him. If only he would finally agree to throw in the sponge and retire gracefully ... But it wasn't only his father who had kept sleep away from him. It was Mrs. Rammell as well. She was the prime cause of his dyspepsia. Not intentionally, of course. There was nothing deliberately malign about her slow-murder treatment. It was simply that she couldn't relax. Couldn't for one single moment ease up like other women. Simply had to go on and on tormenting him. Last night, for example, she had invited two Hungarians to dinner. And, as though she were actually proud of it, she had explained that one of them was a sculptor who did flower pieces in stainless steel and the other a film director engaged exclusively on abstracts. Mr. Rammell recalled, these two unheard-of émigrés from old Buda, all bortsch and botched accents, lapping up his claret and flattering the one woman in London fool enough to have been taken in by them. And in his 2 a.m. mood would have been ready to commit homicide, cracking the abstract film director over the head with one of his fellow-conspirator's cast-iron daffodils.

And in the stillness of the night, with the startling clarity of all-night thoughts, he realized suddenly how like his mother Tony really was. Artistic. Musical. Restless. The boy was completely indifferent to everything that went to make up responsible adult life. And more than indifferent. Openly hostile. He lived, hermetically sealed off from the world. A chrysalis inside a cocoon of pure selfishness.