Bond Street Story by Norman Collins Read Free Book Online Page B

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 roundabout 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.
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    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 whichshe 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