Getting It Right

Elizabeth Jane Howard

• Publisher: Open Road Media
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781504036726
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

A London hairdresser's life begins to change dramatically when he meets two very different women at a party in this delightful social comedy.
 
Thirty-one-year-old Gavin Lamb is a shy hairdresser in London's West End. Self-educated, he likes Mozart and can quote Tolstoy, but being something of a late bloomer, he still lives at home with his parents. Although he's a master of the styling chair, he simply can't work out how to be around women—not least his own mother. And the misguided efforts of his best friend, Harry King, don't do much to assuage Gavin's unfulfilled dreams of love.
 
One night, he reluctantly attends a party where the hostess, Joan, is a grotesque vision in an orange wig and silver lamé. Joan is rich and married, and Gavin soon finds himself opening up to her. That same night, he meets Minerva Munday, who's taking a nap on one of the guest beds. Minerva crashed the party and claims to hail from a royal bloodline.
 
Both Joan and Minerva—polar opposites—will transform Gavin's life in ways a lot more exciting than his nightly fantasies. But true love continues to elude him. Will he ever get it right?
 
The bestselling author of the Cazalet Chronicles has written a witty and perceptive comic novel that went on to win the Yorkshire Post Novel of the Year Award and inspire the 1989 film starring Jesse Birdsall, Jane Horrocks, and Helena Bonham Carter. A man looking for love in all the wrong places, Gavin may come to realize his soul mate has been in front of him all along.
 

TWELVE

‘Gavin!’

‘Hullo, Mum.’

‘Is that you?’

‘Yes, Mum – it’s really me.’

‘Don’t you be cheeky – this is the expensive time for phoning but I never seem to get you in the evenings.’

‘I’ve been out.’

‘Oh – so that’s what it was. Are you all right?’

‘Yes. I’m fine. How’s Aunty Sylvia?’

‘As well as can be expected … I didn’t have to tell her about Timmie, Gavin – she knew. That’s why she never asked about him – she knew all the time … The hospital says they may let her out at the weekend … If they do, we shall be coming back on Monday. If they don’t – we shall have to see … It’s the funeral tomorrow. I’ll send a wreath from you; I thought you’d like me to.’

‘Yes, Mum, do.’

‘Is the house all right?’

‘Yes – everything’s all right. Don’t hurry back because of me, Mum, I’m perfectly okay.’

‘You’re not warming up any of those pies twice, are you?’

‘No.’

‘Because you know what’ll happen if you do a thing like that?’

‘It’s okay, Mum. How’s Dad?’

‘He’s laying a floor in their sun lounge. Under my feet all day. If it’s not one thing, it’s something else. Well, I’ll be saying good-bye to you now, Gavin – we’re not millionaires.’

This conversation meant that he couldn’t finish the washing-up (from the night before last) without risking being late again. He put everything to soak in the sink, shoved the empty milk bottle outside the front door and set off. If she was coming home on Monday, it meant cleaning up the house a bit; it was beginning to look dusty – not a question of specks, to each one of which she paid furious and daily attention, it was more a miasma; he had a feeling that he could write his name with his finger on the top of the telly – something that would not go down at all well.

There was another aspect to her coming home that he thought about in the train the whole way to London, which was that her return put paid to Jenny’s cultural visits. There was no way that he was going to be able to persuade his mother that having a girl in his bedroom to listen to records was because they wanted to listen to records … She would take an instant dislike to whoever he invited upstairs. Poor Jenny wouldn’t stand a chance. Even if he was engaged to somebody, she wouldn’t countenance it. If he did try it, she would probably keep coming up with cups of tea, but really to see how they were getting on. If she happened to come up when they weren’t actually listening to records, were perhaps simply talking, she would instantly believe the worst. And if she found out that Jenny had had an illegitimate child – well, he’d never hear the end of it. The possibilities seemed many, likely and awful. This led him to experimenting with the idea of moving out; getting a place of his own: ‘Thought I’d move out – get myself some sort of flat,’ he said to himself – as though he was telling someone about it. It sounded all right. It sounded all right, but what would it be like actually to do? He hadn’t got enough money to buy anywhere; he’d have to get a mortgage. Would that mean that he was laying cork tiles every night and having five-year plans like Peter and Hazel? No, it bloody well wouldn’t. All he wanted was one room – quite simple – and a bathroom – and, he supposed, somewhere to cook: Harry might have ideas about where to look for that – supposing that he should ever want such a thing. Anyway, he’d only been casually wondering about it: it wasn’t the kind of thing he would decide in a hurry.

Walking from the tube to work, he thought about Joan. Last night, he’d considered writing to her, but almost immediately had felt defeated about what to say. Better to ring her and sort of see how things were. An irrepressible part of him began to wonder whether things would be at all as they were last time, but he squashed that part as selfish, unpleasant, arrogant, shameful and heartless, and altogether like him. Even saying he was surprised at himself didn’t carry conviction but, once having said it, he was well away.

By the time he reached the salon, the Courts had had a field day with Gavin Lamb, who had been tried, and found wanting or guilty about practically everything. The worst thing about him was his shallowness: the moment something wasn’t in front of his nose, he stopped caring about it. Take Minnie, for instance. He’d been in a fair old state about her last night, and look at him now! A clear case of out of sight, out of mind! And his only reaction to his mother’s news had been to worry about not having the house to himself. It hadn’t occurred to him to send a wreath for Timmie. She’d had to think of that: even to send a wreath on his own seemed beyond him. And yet, when he’d heard about Timmie, he had felt deeply sad – or so it had seemed at the time. And Joan: sacrilegious to be thinking about sex when she’d just been left by the person she adored. (Here there was a vestige of stuttering defence: she had, after all, spent the night with him while she was in love with someone else. He didn’t understand why – but the fact remained that she had done so.) The summing up was that he simply didn’t seem to have enough concern to go round – even for the sort of ordinary life he led. He wished a few things would happen that he didn’t have to care about: Mr Adrian breaking a leg, for instance – both legs … By the time he was walking up the stairs to the salon, Mr Adrian had been in a really quite serious accident: broken his jaw (so he couldn’t speak), and got two black eyes, a broken nose and a fractured right arm as well as his legs. He was going to recover, but it was going to take a very, very long time, and suffering would radically change his nasty nature into something quite different – humility and gratitude would be to the fore. ‘I can’t thank you all enough for the loyal way in which you have kept my business going, but the least I can do is to make all four of you partners …’

‘Better wipe that smile off your face – the boiler went out in the night, the water’s stone cold and his Lordship’s on the warpath.’ Iris made a small throat-cutting gesture.

Daphne said: ‘He’s sending the juniors down to the basement to get buckets of hot water off the caretaker.’

Just then, the salon door was kicked open and Jenny staggered in with two brimming buckets. Gavin took one look at her: her arms – like little sticks – looked as though they would break; she was breathless and she looked more than usually like a disgruntled owl.

He relieved her of the buckets; took them over to the basins, and then – his heart hammering with rage – went to beard Mr Adrian.

He found him with his feet up in his cubicle, telephoning on his private line, ‘… and finally, at fifty to one, twenty each way on Nepalese Boy,’ he was saying.

‘And what can I do for you?’ he said when he had replaced the receiver. His tone implied that there couldn’t be anything.

‘I understand that the boiler went out.’

‘You understand correctly.’

‘Well, if water has to be carried up from the basement – we should be doing it – not the juniors. It’s too much for them.’

‘And who is we?’

‘The men. Me, Peter, Hugo – and you.’

There was – what was meant to be, Gavin recognized – a dangerous and frightening silence. But he was too angry, fed up, to be frightened.

‘Are you suggesting that these young people are utterly unable to do any physical work at all? Are you suggesting that someone with a heart like mine should jeopardize it, solely because young people whom I am paying to train should not soil their hands with any menial job whatsoever? Is that your case?’

‘I’m just saying that I don’t think young girls should be made to carry weights like that when there are people who are physically stronger and perfectly able to do it. That’s all. And I’m also saying that I won’t have my junior made to do it. That’s final.’

And he swept out before Mr Adrian could retaliate.

He heard Mr Adrian calling him back, but luckily for him Lady Blackwater had come in and Daphne was loyally claiming his attention at the desk. This time, though, she really wanted him.

‘A friend, calling you,’ she said.

It was Harry. ‘You wanted Joan’s telephone number. Got something to write with?’

Daphne gave him a pen and he wrote it down.

‘Thanks, Harry. No more for now.’

Jenny was washing Lady Blackwater, so he went to Peter and said what he thought about the buckets. Peter agreed, but said that Hugo had varicose veins and he didn’t think carrying heavy buckets would do them much good. ‘The water should be hot in about an hour and a half: or hot enough. Iris needs water too, for washing the tints off,’ he added. ‘So I’ll do Hugo’s water, if you’ll do Iris’s.’

Mandy came through the door with steaming buckets. She was flushed, and said that the caretaker was a dirty old man and he’d pinched her bottom and she didn’t fancy going down there again.

‘Isn’t Sharon in yet?’ she said. ‘Trust her to get out of anything.’

‘You won’t have to do any more. Take a bucket through to Iris – she’s been asking for you.’

Gavin set Lady Blackwater, with Jenny handing him the rollers and pins. Lady Blackwater said how tiresome it must be for them having no hot water, and wasn’t it interesting how one took things for granted until one was without them, but that she supposed that that was simply human nature, something that she, personally, had never got to the bottom of …

Gavin, glancing in the mirror as he finished the last roller, saw that Jenny was looking at him. When she caught his eye, she grinned faintly and rolled her eyes. The message was something like, ‘Cor! How boring!’ and her expression so quickly reassumed its look of choirboy innocence that he wanted to laugh.

‘A net on Lady Blackwater, and put her under the dryer,’ he said, and went to collect a couple of empty buckets.

It was a hard morning – Thursdays were usually busy, and the water wasn’t hot enough to use before noon. Gavin tried ringing Joan in his – rather late – coffee break, but there was no reply.

He tried again in his lunch hour and got what he presumed was one of the Filipinos, as a voice answered and said: ‘Madam out – no answer.’

‘Is she in this evening?’

‘Madam engaged this evening – no answer.’

‘Thank you.’ He rang off. Afterwards he thought it had been silly of him not to leave his name; next time he rang, he would.

At some point in the afternoon, Jenny said: ‘I’ve read that book.’ She paused expectantly.

‘Did you like it?’

‘I loved it! It was just what I’d like Andrew to have.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘You know: a secret garden that he could do wonderful things in. I thought it was going to be sad – about Colin, you know, but it wasn’t. If you ask me, they were very silly about him in the first place. I loved Dickon best. I had a bacon sandwich for supper last night – just like him … It was a lovely book. As soon as Andrew’s old enough, I’m going to get a copy and read it to him.’ She paused again – expectantly. And when he didn’t immediately say something she said: ‘When will you give me another one?’

‘Tonight, if you like,’ he found himself saying. ‘I’ll play you some Mozart and find you another book. You could come back with me, if you like. We’d have more time that way.’

‘I’d have to see whether my mum could put Andrew to bed. If she’d mind, and if she thinks he’d mind.’

She rang from the station after work and he stood outside the box. After a minute, she opened the door and said: ‘She thinks it’d be all right. She doesn’t mind at all, but she thinks she’d better have your telephone number in case Andrew starts to kick up.’

It was rather enjoyable travelling on the tube with a girl. They had to stand the first bit and he put her in a corner and stood in front of her so that she didn’t get bashed by other people. Then when they got seats – opposite each other – he played the game of pretending that he didn’t know Jenny, t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Dedication
• One
• Two
• Three
• Four
• Five
• Six
• Seven
• Eight
• Nine
• Ten
• Eleven
• Twelve
• About the Author
• Copyright Page