A Glove Shop In Vienna (15 page)

He had been summoned from the Research Laboratories of which, though absurdly young for such a responsibility, he was the head, and whisked by private lift to the thirtieth floor from which, flanked by picture windows, Mexican breadfruit plants and tropical aquaria, the ‘Old Man’ ruled the most powerful chemical combine in Britain.

‘But I can’t do that, sir! I’m a
chemist
,’ said Richard, whose response to girls in bathing costumes and high heels was to turn the television off— and fast.

The Old Man looked at him. Young Whittacker had come to them after getting the best First in Biochemistry which Cambridge had produced for twenty years. Even his Ph.D. had thrown out some enormously interesting angles on the isomorphism of oxonium compounds. Since then he had done extremely well for Galaxy and the tragic ending of his marriage, regrettable though it might be in itself, had produced an output of work that was remarkable by any standard. The way to the thirtieth floor and a place on the board was undoubtedly open to young Whittacker. If, that was, his academic background did not conceal an inability to deal with the seamier side of things: with pressmen and pressure groups and the lunatic fringe. Ordeal by fire commonly faced those seeking the higher path. Ordeal by beauty competition, as the Old Man proceeded to make clear, now faced Richard en route for the board room.

‘Might I ask, sir, why Galaxy is organising this contest? What benefit do we propose to derive from it?’

‘Benefit?’ The Old Man looked shocked. ‘This, dear boy, is strictly a matter of charity. Of course, it’s true that Galaxy Cosmetics have lapsed a little behind our other interests. I don’t know if you’ve seen the figures…’ He became technical. ‘But that’s by the way. Now here is all the information you need,’ he went on, handing over a massive folder. ‘I know I can rely on you. And remember the motto that has always sustained us at Galaxy: “Everything clean. Everything fair”’.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Richard dully – and was dismissed.

Three months later it had all been done. Richard had commandeered the Woodward Hotel, organised the trips down the river, the visit to Marlborough House and the ballet, the charity banquets and kissing of babies in suitably selected orphanages – all the events which were to occupy the girls until the actual contest in the Albert Hall.

Now, flanked by assistants and chaperones and some more than usually foul-mouthed pressmen, he waited at Heathrow to welcome the last of the arrivals. Already bedded down in the Woodward were Miss
USA
, a charming and curvaceous blonde so pretty and friendly that it was generally agreed she had no chance of even being placed and Miss Rumania whose awe-inspiring bosom seethed with contempt for the Western world. He had obtained study facilities for Miss Germany, who was finishing a thesis on ‘Schiller’s Nature Imagery’ and arranged for Miss Canada, a motherly brunette, to share a room with Miss Papua New Guinea who seemed to be allergic to something or other and had come out in bumps.

He had also welcomed to the opulence of the Woodward this year’s hotly tipped favourite, Miss United Kingdom.

Miss United Kingdom was a raven-haired, blue-eyed, dyed-in-the-wool professional who could hold her winsome, girl-next-door smile for twenty minutes flat if there were cameramen around and walked even to the bathroom with the pelvic undulations so characteristic of those who have spent their life on ramps. She was also — and it was this which had brought a frown to Richard’s face – a girl called Delma Lasenbury with whom he had tangled briefly during his time at Cambridge.

It had been during his last year there; he was doing postgraduate work and Delma had just arrived at one of those cookery-cum-secretarial colleges which have mushroomed around the older universities, enabling pubescent girls to get a nibble at the flower of British manhood without the strains of scholarship.

Richard’s tenure of Delma had been brief and due to the fact that he had scored an unexpected success in an
OUDS
production of
The Winter’s Tale
where, in plum-coloured velvet and a silver wig, he had played Prince Florizel.

For one delirious summer, Delma had been his Perdita. Even then she was beautiful, even then her beauty was for her a kind of creed. Richard’s memories were of an almost incessant bodily horticulture, oiling her back in punts, brushing her hair as they picnicked on the Backs. Nevertheless, when she moved on, he was desolate. And then, two days ago she had swept into the Woodward surrounded by publicity men and later, when they were alone, made it quite clear that she remembered him. To find that the organiser of a contest she was hell-bent on winning was an old flame was almost too good to be true. What is more, Richard had found himself responding just a little. That summer on the river had been very sweet — a time of lost innocence before the agony that had ended his ill-starred marriage.

‘Everything clean, everything fair,’ he reminded himself — and went forward to disentangle the newly-arrived Miss Denmark from the attentions of a bunch of women’s libbers protesting (with some justice, he could not help feeling) against the degradation of the contest.

He despatched in taxis a series of dusky beauties whose names bore witness to the rapid rearrangement of the African continent, found the succulent Miss New Zealand obscured by luggage and lusting cameramen — and was scanning his list to see if he could call it a day when he felt a tug at his arm and saw a thin girl with vestigial amounts of bright red hair looking up at him.

‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘but I was told to get in touch with you. It’s about the Miss Galaxy Contest.’

Richard nodded. ‘Yes, well… I’m sorry, but I have all the secretaries I need – there really aren’t any jobs left at all.’

‘Actually, it isn’t that,’ said the girl, talking for some reason in the softest of Highland accents. ‘I’m… sort of supposed to take part. I’m something called Miss Toto Islands.’

Richard’s look of amazement lasted just too long before he changed it to a smile of welcome.

‘I know, it’s absolutely ridiculous,’ she said, grinning. ‘It was all a mistake, really – there were only six of us and some were pregnant and so on. I won’t be a nuisance to you, honestly. What I really want is some golfing umbrellas for the turtles and a really good pipe for my father and some raffia for the lepers…’

‘Raffia?’ said Richard dazedly. ‘Isn’t there plenty of that where you come from?’

Gussie shook her head. ‘It’s the wrong kind. The best raffia comes from Madagascar and of course the lepers feel—’ She broke off. ‘Oh, look, a proper English pigeon! But surely he shouldn’t be
inside
the airport? Couldn’t we take him out?’

‘He’s all right, honestly,’ said Richard, watching out of the corner of his eye a reporter approaching. ‘They get plenty to eat, I promise you. Is that all the luggage you’ve got?’

Gussie nodded and let herself be fed into a taxi from which, in the intervals of comforting Miss Trinidad and Tobago who wanted her mother, she hung ecstatically, commenting on the extreme Englishness of the razor-blade factories, leaden skies and rickety hoardings of the approach to London.

She was still exclaiming when, in the foyer of the Woodward, Richard’s chief assistant, on the look-out for sacrificial victims, informed her that she was to have the honour of sharing a room with no other person than Great Britain’s own contestant, Miss United Kingdom herself.

Delma Lasenbury was lying on the bed, almost totally obscured by fruit. Strips of avocado closed her eyelids, slices of cucumber adhered to her cheeks; her throat and shoulders frothed bloodily with egg-white and crushed strawberry. But she opened her eyes when Gussie entered.

‘Good God. Don’t tell me you’re a contestant!’

Once more, Gussie explained.

‘Well, well! And what are jour measurements, I wonder,’ said Miss United Kingdom nastily. And then: ‘Pass me a towel, will you?’

Gussie passed the towel and, subsequently, a hair switch like a compressed Pekingese, a massage vibrator and a packet of eyelashes with which one could have towed the
Titanic
, deeply honoured to assist in the creation of the impeccable product that was Delma Lasenbury.

‘You’re sure to win,’ she said admiringly. ‘Only… I mean, are you sure you
want
to? Wouldn’t it be rather awful, kind of wandering about like the Flying Dutchman, opening things and closing them and never being able to go home?’

Delma’s pansy-blue eyes stared at her with contempt. ‘You bet I want to. It’s five thousand quid for a start and a lot more where that came from. And with Richard on the committee—’ She broke off, biting her lip.

‘Is that Dr Whittacker? He’s awfully nice, isn’t he?’

Delma nodded. ‘Quite a dish,’ she said, languorously establishing ownership.

But Miss Toto Islands was frowning. Gussie, that arch-escorter of turtles, orphans and booby birds, would greatly have liked to escort Dr Whittacker from whatever it was that made him look the way he did.

It was not only Delma, however, who took up Gussie’s time. Herded together at the Woodward the bewildered girls, like the turtles of Toto, seemed to be constantly at risk. Miss Isle of Man’s left breast, due to some defect in the silicone, subsided dramatically, sending the poor girl off into understandable hysterics. Miss Iceland, a majestic 36-26-38 who could hardly have sunk even into the maw of one of her native geysers, had a phobia about plug-holes and had to be removed to a room with a shower, and Miss Trinidad and Tobago, still awash with homesickness, had attached herself to Gussie like a hatched duckling and refused to leave her side.

But it was Miss Korea, a tiny dental student tottering about on six-inch heels, clutching a textbook with pictures of horribly carietic molars, who tore most at Gussie’s heartstrings. For within half an hour of her arrival, one of Miss Korea’s contact lenses had fallen into the depths of the fountain in the Palm Lounge, leaving the bereaved contestant to face the shame of representing her fatherland in horn-rims.

On the first evening, the girls were invited to a reception in the Woodward itself – a formal affair for the Lord Mayor, members of the organising committee, the BBC… Standing beside the Old Man, Richard thought how stunning Delma looked in a black dress high at the throat but slashed to an impressive decollete around the armpits. None of the others had her assurance and panache. Delma would win all right.

It was a while before he noticed that many of the girls, instead of circulating among the grey-suited dignitaries, were bunched together in the centre of the room from which there emanated an excited, multi-lingual twitter.

He moved across and reluctantly they parted to let him through.

The fountain was deep, chlorinated and heavily fringed with ferns. Then, even as Richard stared, there emerged a figure which already seemed strangely familiar: a girl, thin to the point of emaciation, freckled, dripping from every pore – but radiating now an air of unmistakable triumph.

‘I’ve found it!’ cried Gussie exultantly. ‘It was a miracle, but look!’

And as she held out the tiny glass object to the delightedly hopping Miss Korea, the cameramen converged.

The picture of Gussie emerging from the fountain, made the front page of almost every newspaper the following day. If Delma was furious, Gussie’s fellow contestants reacted differently. Rising from the breakfast table, Gussie was waylaid by Miss Canada from whose arm half-a-dozen bathing costumes dangled.

‘We had a whip-round, Gussie,’ she said. ‘Because quite honestly, yours just won’t do.’

‘I mended the hole,’ said Gussie, a little hurt. But she accepted the offer in the spirit in which it was intended and even allowed Miss Holland to substitute a white silk sheath for the pink taffeta evening dress with puffed sleeves and heart-shaped neckline which – in order not to cause expense to her father – she had borrowed from one of his laboratory technicians.

Even so, she ran into trouble over her national costume at the afternoon’s dress rehearsal in the main lounge.

‘What on earth is
that
?’ sneered Delma as Gussie emerged from the changing-room in a single strip of bleached cotton which fell from her arm-pits to just below her knees.

‘It’s a lana,’ said Gussie. ‘It’s what they wear on Toto — at least, they used to.’

‘Oh my God!’ said Delma.

Gussie looked at her. Delma was wearing that well-known British national costume of skin-tight Union Jack, white thigh-boots and diamante trident. Next to her, Miss Finland dazzled the eye in a head-dress made of that most Scandinavian of birds, the ostrich…

Once again, Gussie’s growing band of friends came to her rescue. Miss Trinidad and Tobago stripped herself of a plastic hibiscus
lei
and hung it round Gussie’s neck. Miss India culled five of her ankle bracelets, Miss Guam contributed part of a cardboard palm – and Richard, arriving to take stock, was just in time to see Gussie’s resigned and acquiescent head sink beneath an enormous, solitary pineapple.

The national costume of the Toto Islands had been born.

There now began the five-day cultural jamboree which preceded the serious business of the contest. Richard had brought to the planning of this the same meticulous care that he gave his research and he made it a point of honour always to be present. For Gussie, the days were a delight: the sight of London’s skyline from her river;
Swan Lake
at Covent Garden; the Tower looking so marvellously like pictures of itself- and always Dr Whittacker’s humour and intelligence highlighting the experience.

On the day before they were to start serious rehearsals, Gussie decided to go shopping. Accordingly, she put on jeans and a raincoat and went downstairs.

‘Hey, hinny,’ said the security guard, an ex-heavyweight boxer from Tyneside. ‘You’re not allowed out without your chaperone.’

‘How do you know I’m a contestant?’ said Gussie. ‘How do you know I’m not one of the maids?’

‘Saw your picture in the paper, coming out of the fountain. And the one where you were taking the stray cat out of the Lord Mayor’s Banquet. You’re Miss Toto Islands.’