Berkeley Square escorts, W1J: a showroom, a sale room and a court dressmaker's door

Jack Barclay began selling motor cars in 1927 and brought the business to Berkeley Square in the early 1950s. It has dealt in Bentleys from number 18 ever since, and the showroom keeps its chequerboard floor and its Art Deco lettering, so that the room is very nearly as much of an exhibit as whatever is standing on it. Barclay had raced the marque before he sold it: in 1929 he won the first 500 Miles race at Brooklands in a four and a half litre Bentley, sharing the wheel with Frank Clement.

The trade has an older tie to these streets as well. Charles Rolls, who put his name beside Henry Royce's, was born at 35 Hill Street, off the western side of the square, in 1877. It is not a trade that hurries.

Bruton Street leaves the square eastwards and ends at New Bond Street. At number 26 a blue plaque records Sir Norman Hartnell, court dressmaker, who lived and worked in the house from 1935 until 1979. His salon on the first floor, all glass and mirrors, was designed for him by Gerald Lacoste in the middle of the 1930s.

It was in the workrooms here that the Coronation dress of 1953 was made, behind windows blocked up so that nobody should see it before the day; the wedding dress of 1947 had been his as well. The street has kept the habit of discretion. Fashion houses and picture dealers hold its ground floors now, and a fitting is still something arranged beforehand.

Phillips, the auctioneers, were founded in 1796 by Harry Phillips, who had been clerk to James Christie, and they moved their London rooms to 30 Berkeley Square in October 2014. Before a sale the lots go on view, and the viewing is open to whoever walks in. No ticket is asked for and no intention to bid.

For a guest with an hour in hand it is a civilised way to spend it. For two people who have only just met it supplies the one thing a first conversation wants, which is something else to look at.

A short way south-west of the square, at 9 Curzon Street, Geo. F. Trumper has been a gentlemen's barber since 1875 and sells colognes under its own name. The shop still seats its customers in mahogany cubicles, with the bottles in glass cases, and it keeps a second shop across Piccadilly in St James's. It is an errand better finished before an evening than attempted after one.

East of the square the ground rises to Dover Street, and Albemarle Street, which gave this house its name, runs beside it one block further on. Dover Street lent its own name to a market of fashion stalls that opened there in 2004 and carried the name away to the Haymarket in 2016. The picture galleries stayed behind, and so did the tailoring.

None of this is an evening, though all of it leads to one. A viewing closes, a fitting overruns, and the square is left to its garden, where a small pump house of about 1800 sits under a Chinese roof at the centre and nothing at all is for sale.

An evening arranged by this house need not begin at a door. Tell Octavia the room and the hour, a viewing or a table nearby, and the companion she names comes straight to it, dressed for that room, and returns with you afterwards to the hotel or the flat.

Escorts in Berkeley Square are arranged the way the square arranges everything else. Send Octavia the date, the hour and the address; her reply puts forward one companion and one figure, and nothing is agreed until you have answered it. She does not send a list, because she knows each companion by more than a portrait and would rather make one good suggestion. A private address is treated exactly as a hotel is: the street and its door number, given once.

Reckon on about an hour once Octavia has confirmed, more when Piccadilly is slow; the hour is from £600, the journey to any door inside the two central zones is part of that fee, and past the second zone she prices the taxi out and back and shows the whole as a single figure, all of it on the rates.

Green Park station is a 4 minute walk, Bond Street station 6 and Hyde Park Corner 10; Mount Street carries the shopping on towards Hyde Park, Piccadilly closes the district to the south, and the whole of it is described on the Mayfair page.