Fay Baines and her friend Myra Parker were sitting in a booth in Repin’s eating toasted sandwiches, because they were going to a five o’clock, and since it would not finish until after their usual dinner time they ought to have, as Myra pointed out, some proper food to keep themselves going instead of ruining their figures by stuffing themselves with ice-creams and chocolates to stave off their hunger half-way through the film. This was the sort of forward-planning for which Myra was always to be trusted.
Myra’s head was much better screwed down than Fay’s; Myra had a knack for managing the affairs of life. She was now a hostess-cum-receptionist in a nightclub, with a considerable dress allowance, but she did not take advantage of Fay’s discount privileges at Goode’s, because the evening frocks at Goode’s, she said, were not the type of thing.
‘I need something more glamorous,’ she told Fay. ‘I’ll try the Strand Arcade, or maybe the Piccadilly.’
It was the Saturday following that wan Monday when Fay had sat in front of a salad in the canteen and made such a poor (but interesting) impression on Patty Williams, and she still wasn’t looking her best even though she’d now clocked up several good nights’ sleep. Myra poured herself a second cup of tea from the heavy little silver-plated teapot; she leaned back comfortably in her seat and lit a cigarette, and peered at Fay as she exhaled the smoke.
‘Honey,’ she said—Myra tended to meet quite a few Americans in the line of her duties—‘honey, I don’t like the looks of you today: you don’t look your usual lovely self. Is anything up?’
Fay looked at her plate. What could she say?
‘It’s probably just this new face powder,’ she improvised, ‘I think maybe it makes me look pale.’
‘Then you’d better not use it,’ said Myra. ‘You don’t want to look pale. You can use some of mine when we go to the Ladies’. You want to look your best later on, don’t you?’
Myra smiled slyly, and blew out more smoke. She was referring to a dinner engagement with two men she had met at the nightclub.
‘I’ll bring my friend,’ she had said when the date was suggested to her, ‘she’s game for anything—but a really nice girl: you needn’t get any funny ideas, youse. Fay’s a nice girl. And so am I, in case you hadn’t noticed.’
‘That’s exactly why we want you to go out with us,’ said the more extrovert of the two men, ‘don’t we, eh?’ and he nudged his friend in the arm.
‘Oh yeah, right you are!’ said he.
‘We’ll meet you at the Cross, then, eight-thirty, at Lindy’s,’ said Myra. ‘And don’t keep us waiting.’
‘As if we would,’ they said. ‘Eight-thirty sharp!’
Fay’s heart sank. She had been meeting these men, or others resembling them in every important particular, throughout her adult life. She had eaten their dinners, drunk gin-and-limes at their expense, and she had danced in their arms; she had fought off, and sometimes submitted to, their love-making. She had travelled this particular road to its bitter and now dusty end and her heart now failed her, but to decline this evening’s engagement had been a thing impossible: Myra would have thought she was mad.
‘Gee, yes,’ she told her friend. ‘You never know, do you? He might be the one I’ve been waiting for. Is he tall?’
Myra thought about the less attractive of the two men: the other she had bagged for herself.
‘Not very,’ she said, ‘but he’s not short. Just medium. Listen, though,’ she added, quickly, ‘I think he’s rich. I think I remember seeing a gold watch on his wrist. I reckon you’ll like him; I reckon he’s your type. Wait and see!’
‘Yes, okay,’ said Fay, a tiny flicker of hope and courage stirring within her sad heart. ‘I’ll wait and see.’
‘That’s the stuff,’ said Myra.