Issue 06 - Autumn/Winter 2009

A Lovely Time

She got in from the office earlier than usual because she had been lucky with buses. She thought she would write to Lucy to keep her mind off the cold. There were gas-fires in the bedrooms at Vale House, but she was determined not to light hers until she was undressing for bed; the mater was a glutton for shillings and ate a great hole in her money every week.
Only one light was allowed in the bedroom, but by means of a long flex from the ceiling she had made it into a bed-lamp, which bloomed now like an orange in the dusk it created. She sat down under it to write to Lucy, who had remained at home in Ilkeston.
‘I have just come in from the office. It is a cold night, but my little lamp makes a glow, and my little room feels very peaceful after the busy day. Oh, Lucy, it is wonderful living in London.’
Yes, it was wonderful. Especially when she wrote about it to Lucy, but her feet were very cold. She settled herself again with pen and pad, but before she could write another word, there was a knock on the door, and in came Sheila Spence, with her hair in lead curlers under a pink shingle cap.
‘Oh, you’re in at last, Barnesy darling,’ she cried. ‘I’ve been umpteen times before. You must help me out tonight. You must come out to dinner with me and Geoff Potter and Perry Gifford. Rosamund’s just telephoned to say she’s too seedy to come, and I can’t let them down. We must be four. Do say you’ll come. We’re going to Barteolozzi’s and then on to a night club sort of place. You’ll like the chaps, and Gifford writes or something. Do say you’ll come, darling!’
Alice – since she had come to London she spelt it ‘Alys’ and pronounced it to rhyme with ‘knees’; she would have liked to do something with ‘Barnes’ too, only it was difficult on account of letters from home and that kind of thing – Alice stared at Sheila while her poised pen deposited a large blot on the letter to Lucy.
‘Oh, Miss Spence…’ she breathed at last. No one had asked her out since she came to London, and now here was an invitation to dinner and a night club! Dinner and a nigh club…!
‘You’ll come then?’ said Sheila. ‘Cheers. Have you got an evening dress? Without sleeves, I mean? Good. Well, get a move on, darling. I’ve had my hair in Queen Besses since I got in from the office. What are you going to do with yours?’ she eyed Alice’s lank locks with some anxiety.
‘I don’t know. What can I do? I’ll do anything,’ promised Alice.
Sheila considered her.
‘Well, I think at Eton Crop’s your style,’ she said. ‘What about borrowing Shandon’s “Stickit”, or whatever it is she uses for hers, and then you can plaster it behind your ears. Make it sleek and smart, see?’
‘D’you think she’d lend me some? I could pay her back tonmorrow,’ said Alice hopefully.
‘Oh, don’t you bother about that. I’ll go and get it from her. She’s in.’ Sheila knew she was in because she had first given her the invitation she now gave to Alice. But Shandon couldn’t go, and Alice was Hobson’s Choice and must be made the best of.
Alice hurriedly put away the letter to Lucy and fled to the bathroom for hot water. Then she recklessly lit the gas-fire. The first time you went out with young men to dinner and a night club, you didn’t stop to cavil about a shilling in the meter.
She sang as she took off her work-a-day clothes. Fancy Miss Spencer asking her! It was most kind, because she hardly knew her really and yet she called her darling and asked her out to dinner and a night club. Oh, London life had begun! She had been lonely, she had been dull, she had been cold and felt the food at Vale House inadequate, but now the lights had gone up, the fun, the excitement, the experience she had come for were going to begin!
‘I say,’ said Sheila, putting her head in again. ‘Dutch treats, you know. We’re all paying for ourselves. That’s all right, isn’t it’
‘Oh, of course,’ said Alice, snatching at her cotton kimono.
‘It won’t be much at Barteolozzi’s,’ said Sheila consolingly. ‘But it’s jolly good food all the same. Got any cigarettes?’
‘Oh, I’m afraid I haven’t,’ said Alice. She didn’t really like the taste of cigarettes, and only smoked when she wished to be smart.
‘Well, you can get some on the way. I’ll take some too. And matches,’
‘I haven’t a fancy box for the matches,’ faltered Alice.
‘Oh, don’t bother about that. Nobody has.’
Alice smiled happily once more and went on with her dressing. She was so glad she had the artificial satin clock. It was strawberry pink and had a ruched collar. Lucy had made it for her to come to London with, but although she had been in London more than four months, she had never had it out of its box. Now she was going to wear it at last.
She recklessly cut a piece out of the top of her winter vest so that it should not show above her black frock. She knew she was being thrifless and in every way awful, but she was going to have a lovely time, and nothing, nothing must spoil it. The brand-new woollen vest must be sacrificed.
She put on the black dress. It hung from her shoulders as it had hung from its coat-hanger; in fact, there was little difference between the two means of support, for although Alice was twenty, she was as small and bony as a child. She put on a string of pink beads so pale as to be almost invisible, and draped a white ninon scarf round her neck, finishing it with an elegant knot on one shoulder.
Then she moved the bed-lamp to the dressing-table to do her face. No rouge, she decided, but plenty of powder, lipstick and eyeblack. When she had finished, she hung over the reflection in the glass, looking for herself. She was almost unrecognisable, but rather modern and highbrow-looking all the same, she thought, with a little thrill.
‘Ready?’ enquired Sheila, coming in to look her over. She herself was highly coloured, with dark curls, wet lips, green earrings, and a full bosom. She wore a green gown and her black coat with the civet cat collar.
‘Oh, Miss Spence, you do look lovely!’ cried Alice.
Sheila didn’t know what to say about Alice.
‘Have you got the hair stuff on?’ she enquired, to give herself time.
‘No, I’m just going to put it on,’ said Alice, sprinkling vigorously from Miss Shandon’s bottle. ‘Oh, isn’t it funny? It’s like boiled starch.’
‘I expect that’s what it is,’ said Sheila. ‘Here, give me the comb! I’ll do the back. Brush it very smooth. There! Well, I must say it’s made a difference to you. Are you ready now?’
‘Yes,’ said Alice, snatching up the artificial sation cloak and her handbag, and casting one more look at her unaccustomed self in the mirror.
‘Come on then. We’ve got to meet them there.’
Alice put out the light and followed in the wake of Sheila’s scent. The night was cold and murky, but although the satin cloak was thin, excitement kept Alice warm. They stopped at the corner for Alice to buy cigarettes, and then they caught the bus in the Euston Road.
‘See,’ said Alice to her self, sitting happily beside Sheila on the high seat by the door. ‘Nobody stares in London when you go out in evening dress.’
She smiled to think what a commotion she would make in a tram at home in a pink satin cloak and no hat at seven-thirty in the evening.
She wondered what she could talk about to Mr Gifford. She gathered that he would be allotted to her, because Miss Spence was evidently keen on the other one. Alice wished she had read the last works of the Sitwell family, or been able to understand what she had seen of the verse of Mr TS Eliot. At any rate, she had read The Good Companions.
She smoothed her hair nervously. The ends pricked her, it even rattled a little when she touched it. But it was smart. She thought she would buy a bottle of that stuff when she could afford to. It wouldn’t be this week, after those cigarettes. When you went out with men in London, they treated you as if you were a man too. Horace, at home, always paid for Lucy. She thought of Horace with some scorn. He wasn’t really modern. He didn’t quite know what was what.
They got out at Goodge Street and made their way to Barteolozzi’s restaurant. It was ordinary enough outside, being merely two steamy plate-glass windows, but when they opened the door, it was like stepping into another world to Alice. Her eyes fell straight away on an enormous man shoveling spaghetti into a mouth like a stoke-hole, and as she followed Sheila to the stairs, a waitress called down the life into the kitchen for ‘pane’.
Pane! How thrilling! That must be Italian for bread.
‘Pane! Pane!’ whispered Alice ecstatically. Oh, this was the wide wide world! This was even more than London; it was the cosmos. She would be able to ask for ‘pane’ when she went home to Ilkeston for her holiday.
‘We’ll bag that table near the window,’ said Sheila. ‘They don’t seem to be here yet.’
Alice followed Sheila to a table for four, and laid the pink satin cloak over the back of her chair. She got out the cigarettes and the matches to be ready, and they sat down to wait for the young men.
Sheila took a mirror from her handbag and began to fluff up her curls, powder her nose, run a moistened finger along her eyelashes and redden her already red lips.
Alice took a look at herself in her mirror too, but as her face was still satisfactorily as white as chalk, and her brows and lashes as black as coal, there was no need to do any more. Her mirror was so small she could not see that her hair had risen at the back of her head in a still hackle which caused amusement to people at other tables. She sat in bliss and ignorance, looking very small, young and a little peculiar.
This restaurant was a funny, hot place, she thought, but exciting. That notice on the wall: ‘Bianco Appasito – 6d.’ Was it a wine, she wondered, with that lovely name?
‘Bianco Appasito,’ she said that over too.
‘Gifford’s always late, said Sheila. ‘And Geoff’s almost as bad.’
Alice looked out of the window into a room across the street where they hadn’t pulled down the blind. A little boy was standing on a chair to be undressed. His enormous mother played with him, and his father stood by in his shirt sleeves. Alice felt as if she had looked right into Life.
Girls in black frocks and minute white aprons bustled past their table with bowls of minestrone and folded omelettes and unrecognisable but savoury dishes. Alice was very hungry, having lunched on salad and a new kind of milk, and had no tea at all. At home, she used to have a large high tea as soon as she got in, but now she had to wait until half-pat seven for dinner every night. She did it gladly because it was part of London life, but it often made her feel very queer. She did wish now that the young men would come and let her begin to eat.
Still, she must wait, she must bear her hunger, she told herself, because they were the means, the cause of this lovely evening. They would come, dinner would follow them, and then they would lead the way to a Night Club. Fancy going to a Night Club! It had been one of her dreams, and now it was coming true!
‘Oh, there they are!’ cried Sheila, jumping up and starting in pursuit of two young men who had turned down the room in the opposite direction.
Alice took another hurried look into her mirror, and as hurriedly put it away again. Her heart beat fast. The young men were here; London young men, and one a writer.
Sheila brought them triumphantly to the table. One had fair hair and the other was dark and disheveled.
‘Barnesy, Geoff Potter and Perry Gifford,’ said Sheila. ‘And chaps, meet Barnesy. She’s a dear and she comes from Ilkeston.
Alice wished Miss Spence hadn’t mentioned Ilkeston, but she smiled widely on the young men. Indeed, from now on, she smiled widely at everything. She was so happily excited that when anyone spoke, it was as if a string was pulled and Alice smiled.
Now that the young men had come, things began to happen.
‘Hi, Maddelena!’ called Perry Gifford, making Alice jump.
A girl came to the table and held Gifford’s hand benevolently while they discussed the menu.
‘Tournedos aux champignons is the best for tonight,’ she counseled, her kind dark eyes beamingAlice whose thinness roused her compassion. ‘You all have tournedos and sauté potatoes. Yes?’
Alice sgreed with the others, although she did not know what tournedos meant. She hoped it was abundant and eatable.
And four cocktails Barteolozzi?’ asked Maddalena. ‘Two lagers, one glass white wine ordinaire, and for you, Mademoiselle?’
Alice said water, please, and Maddelena went to the top of the stairs to shout down the order, beginning with ‘Quatro cocktails’ and ending with ‘Aqua’. Alice thought she would enjoy water as never before, since it had been called by the name the Romans used for it.
The dinner ordered, the young men turned their attention to their companions. Mr Potter stroked Sheila’s arm with one hand, while with the fingers of the other, he pressed in the waves of his fair hair, or sought the spots on the back of his neck.
Alice was conscious of the gaze of Mr Gifford and was thrilled. Pershaps he would put her in a book. She began to tear the waxed paper from the new packet of cigarettes to give herself countenance while under the observation of a writer.
She did not see the look he transferred to Sheila before he tunred away, a look that said as plainly as any words: ‘How you had the nerve to bring me this…’
‘Will you smoke?’ asked Alice, with a smile.
He looked over his shoulder consideringly at the packet.
‘Perhaps I will,’ he said.
Alice put a cigarette between her own lips, and striking a match lit first his and then her own. She was very gallant. She felt she had copied Sheila very successfully. Men used to do these things for women, but now it was the other way round. Much newer and smarter, she reflected, and was glad she had not betrayed her provincialism by waiting for him to light up for her.
She smoked very slowly, because she had read once that novices gave themselves away by smoking too fast. Once she managed to blow down her nose, but it was a great effort to suppress a cough afterwards. She decided to practise inhalation in the privacy of her room at Vale House.
‘You write, don’t you?’ she said in a respectful tone to Gifford.
‘Sometimes,’ he answered indifferently. He did not encourage enquiries about his literary activities, which were as yet unsuccessful.
‘What are you working at now?’ asked Alice softyly, in what she hoped was the right phraseology.
‘I never discuss my work,’ said Mr Gifford shortly.
Alice shrank, and looked out of the window again, but the little boy had gone to bed. Mr Gifford glared balefully at the stiff poke of hair at the back of her head, and again at Sheila, who giggled and went on eating the middle out of Mr Potter’s bread.
Something like a panic was going on in Alice’s small breast, as she kept her head turned away to the window. Whatever could she talk about next to Mr Gifford? He was so Byronic and difficult, and the other two across the table were so engrossed with each other. Topics ran through her mind like mice, but she couldn’t catch any of them. Aeroplanes, or had you to say airplanes now? Music, but she didn’t know anything about it. Theatres, but she hadn’t been able to afford to go to any yet.
‘Oh, dear… oh, dear…’ she cried silently. ‘What shall I talk about? What will he think of me?’
The eternal anxiety of youth! ‘What will he think of me?’ not ‘What do I think of him?’ Poor Alice!
‘Ecco,’ said the maternal voice of Maddalena, placing a cocktail before her.
Alice smiled again. The dreadful moment was past. She leaned her sharp little elbows on the table and drank her cocktail with the others.
‘Here’s how!’ said Gifford.
‘Happy Days!’ said Sheila and Geoff.
‘Thank you,’ said Alice.
It didn’t sound right, somehow. She was faintly worried again, and wondered if there was a little book to be bought on the subject of what to say when drinking cocktails. But the worry was soon dispelled by the mounting influence of a cocktail on an empty stomach. Alice began to feel queer, but happy. She thought her legs had left her, but when she felt for her knees under the table they were surprisingly still there.
Reassured, Alice leant impulsively towards Perry Gifford.
‘Won’t it be lovely at the Night Club?’ she said, beaming into his face.
‘That is hardly the term I should use,’ he said without warmth. ‘I should say it will be///’
He looked at her and left it at that.
Alice felt rebuked for using such a word as ‘lovely’ to a writer who must, of course, be particular about the choice of words. ‘Lovely’ was a slack sort of word; you used it for everything whether you meant it or not. She must be more careful in future.
She smiled apologetically at Mr Gifford.
The ninon scarf and the black dress slipped a little and revealed on small bony shoulder. She left it like that, and felt elegant and rather fast. She did not know her winter vest showed, but Perry Gifford did, and that, as he put it to himself, settled it.
Maddelena arrived with a steaming copper dish and proceeded to serve out the contents. Alice was immensely relieved to find that tournedos were comfortable steaks with rich dark sauce and potatoes in rosettes. She smiled happily and began at last to appease her hunger. Mr Gifford became engrossed in his dinner and did not need to be talked to. Sheila and Geoff across the table were very gay together and held hands between mouthfuls.
It was only by the exercise of great self-control that Alice managed to leave a little of the steak for manners, and the caramel cream she chose afterwards because it was the cheapest, disappeared almost before she had properly looked at it.
‘We’ll have coffee at the club,’ said Sheila, collecting the sums due for the dinner to hand over to Mr Potter. ‘Come along, Barnesy, we’ll go and do our faces. Find out what Perry keeps mouthing to me about,’ she said in an aside to Geoff. 'I can’t make out what he wants. Come along, Barnesy.’
Alice caught up the strawberry satin cloak and what remained of the cigarettes, and followed Sheila to the tiny cloakroom, where the paint was labeled wet and they had to keep their elbows into their sides as they powdered their noses.
‘Wasn’t the dinner good?’ said Alice. ‘It was excellent.’
‘Your hair’s come unstuck at the back,’ said Sheila.
‘Oh, has it?’ Alice was alarmed. ‘Oh, what can I do to it?’
‘I think you’d better wet your comb and plaster it down again,’ said Sheila. Alice thought she detected a faint coldness in her voice. But perhaps it was her fancy, because when she spoke again Sheila was quite friendly.
‘I say, darling,’ she said suddenly. ‘Could you possibly lend me five bob for tonight. I’m getting short. You know how it is when you go out. And Geoff never has any money. I’ll give it you back on Friday, I swear I will.’
‘Oh, yes, Miss Spencer, I’ll lend it you with pleasure,’ said Alice, blushing under her white powder at the embarrassment the other must feel at having to ask a comparative stranger for a loan.
‘It’s awfully decent of you,’ said Sheila.
‘Don’t mention it,’ begged Alcie, handing her two half-crowns, and looking surreptitiously to see that there was still some money left. Lending money had not entered into her calculations for the week.
‘Now for the club,’ said Sheila gaily.
‘Oh, won’t it be lovely?’ said Alice, squeezing her friend’s arm as they went down the stairs to where the young men stood. As they approached, Perry Gifford walked off to the door. He even went through it.
‘These writers are very queer,’ admitted Alice to herself.
‘Sheila, one moment,’ said Mr Potter, drawing her apart.
Alice stood at the foot of the stairs, holding the satin cloak round her and humming to herself. The Night Club, the Night Club … this is London, this is Life…!
She looked at Sheila listening to Geoff. When Sheila looked at anyone, she looked from eye to eye, from one eye to the other very fast. Alice tried to do it to an imaginary face, and felt dizzy. She hummed again. The Night Club, the Night Club… What a lot she would have to write to Lucy!
Sheila was coming towards her.
‘Now are we ready,’ called Alice gaily, advancing.
‘I say, Miss Barnes,’ said Sheila, drawing her back to the foot of the stairs. ‘I’m ever so sorry, but Perry Gifford finds he can’t go on to the Club after all. He says he’s got to go home and do some writing. You know how it is. If he feels in the mood, he has to go, hasn’t he?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Alice, her face relaxing with relief. If this was all…
‘Well, you see,’ said Sheila, fiddling with her green earrings and looking from one eye to the other in Alice’s face, which was stiffening again with apprehension. ‘Well, you see, that makes us three, doesn’t it? And three’s not much use at a dance club, is it? I mean to say, it wouldn’t be much fun for you if you went, would it? You see what I mean.’
Alice saw at last, and blushed to have been so long about it.
‘Oh,’ she said hurriedly.’ I quite understand. Don’t worry about me. I can go home.’
Home did not seem to be the right word.
‘I can go back,’ she amended.
‘I’m ever so sorry, Miss Barnesm’ said Sheila, retreating towards Geoff.
‘Oh, it’s quite all right,’ said Alice. ‘Goodnight, Mr Potter. Goodnight, Miss Spence.’
‘Goodnight,’ said Sheila, with a gushing smile, taking Mr Potter’s arm
Mr Potter raised his hat a little way, and with a wide, aching smile of her own, Alice left them.
She got a bus at the corner and went back to Endsleigh Street. She opened the door of Vale House with the key attached by string and a safety-pin to her bag, and tiptoed into the hall. She hoped to reach her room without being seen, but before she had passed the great mirror in the tarnished gilt frame, Miss Taylor came out of the dining-room.
‘Hello, Miss Barnes, you’re back early,’ she said.
Alice smiled once more and murmured ‘Yes’ as if admitting to a crime.
‘I thought you and Sheila were going to make a night of it,’ cried jolly Miss Taylor.
‘Oh, no,’ murmured Alice, slipping past her to the stairs.
‘Well, it’ll do you more good to go to bed early,’ called Miss Taylor.
Alice murmured again, and reached the haven of her room.
She took off the satin cloak, the black dress, the powder and the eyeblack. Here head ached, her heart ached and she was cold. She couldn’t light the gas-fire now, or for a long time to come. She realized with bitterness that Sheila would not pay back the five shillings. She had protested too much. She said: ‘I swear I will.’ That meant she wouldn’t. Besides, she looked from eye to eye.
Alice hurried into bed to get warm, but before she turned out the lamp she finished the letter to Lucy.
‘I went out to dinner tonight,’ she wrote, and then paused.
What could she say? She thought a long time, staring into the shadows of her narrow room. She would never be able to be gay and smart like other people, she thought; never know what to say, what to wear, what to do; never be happy and at ease. It was terrible, terrible to be so lonely, so outside…
But because no one, not even Lucy, must know that she had been thus weighed in London scales and found wanting, she wrote at last: ‘I had a lovely time.’