Pleasant Vices

by Judy Astley

  ‘Sodding exams,’ Polly grumbled in the kitchen, drooping over her Coco Pops.

  ‘Polly! Don’t say things like that.’ Jenny hovered over Polly, who could eat agonizingly slowly on occasions.

  ‘What, exams?’ Polly asked impudently, opening her eyes wider and infuriating her mother.

  ‘Poll, not today, please,’ Jenny said, whizzing round the kitchen with a damp cloth, inefficiently trying to clear and wipe surfaces while the others were still eating. The film people were likely to take one look round and zoom off up the road to Carol Mathieson’s permanently sterile kitchen.

  ‘I might not do very well,’ Polly warned, a sly look on her face. ‘I might still be In Shock.’

  ‘From finding someone having a sleep two days ago?’ Daisy asked her with weighty sarcasm. ‘What do you want Mum to do, send a note?’ She giggled. ‘I can just see Mrs Pemberton’s face . . .’

  Jenny laughed, picked up Daisy’s school bag from under the table and thrust it at her. ‘Here, time you were all out of here. This kitchen’s going to earn its keep today. Ben, take another slice of toast with you,’ she added, habitually worried that he would soon be the longest, skinniest human on the planet.

  ‘And don’t worry, Polly,’ she said, scooping the child out of her chair and hugging her, ‘the worst that can happen is that you really don’t do all that brilliantly. Just as long as you try your hardest. There are plenty of other schools, and if this one doesn’t want to keep you, it’s their loss.’ She gave her a kiss, and sent her off to climb into Ceci Caine’s car. Polly trailed slowly trying hard to look pitifully close to tears; when she waved from the gate Jenny for once wished it was her turn to do the school run. ‘I’ll collect you this afternoon!’ she shouted suddenly, knowing that Polly was tweaking deliberately at the heart-strings. ‘Tell Ceci!’

  ‘They’re just coming round the corner!’ Jenny heard Laura’s voice calling out to her as she watched Ceci do a gear-crunching three-point turn in front of the Mathiesons’ house. Laura trotted up the path, already, at that ungodly hour, wafting a gentle smell of cosmetics. No early morning flung-on leggings-and-sweatshirts for her, Laura was already pin-neat in frill-collared blouse, floral needlecord skirt, pale green tights and principal boy shoes with little gold buckles. As Laura had said, they really were just coming round the corner. What seemed like a self-important motorcade of four or five rather scruffy vans and buses, piled into the Close, taking up enough space to annoy every resident who wasn’t being paid for their presence. A large silver truck with Picture This! emblazoned on the side pulled up across next door’s driveway, and Jenny backed nervously into her hall as she caught sight of Carol Mathieson up at her window, opening her bedroom curtains. A gun-metal grey Porsche swung confidently through Jenny’s gates just as she was about to hide behind the door.

  ‘Hi, you must be Jennifer,’ the driver called to her, switching off the engine. ‘I’m Hugo Hamilton, director on this shoot.’

  ‘Hello Hugo.’ Laura emerged from behind Jenny as they both went out on to the drive and she smiled winningly at the attractive, slightly greying man.

  He was seriously good-looking, Jenny decided, and well aware of it, unfolding himself slowly from the Porsche as if to emphasize that there wasn’t a car built that could truly accommodate his impressive, hulky body. As if someone (a wife? boyfriend?) had decided to dress him up as an archetypal Advertising Man, Hugo was wearing stonewashed jeans (with signs of impressive over-strain round the crotch), a denim shirt that looked suspiciously newish and an expensively distressed leather jacket. On his feet were cowboy boots of such extravagance that if Carol Mathieson were there she would feel obliged to warn him he could easily be mugged for them if he ventured on to the estate. Jenny and Hugo shook hands, and then with a grin that showed perfectly capped teeth and a ‘Hi darling, how are things?’ Hugo indulged Laura in a spot of air-kissing.

  ‘Sorry, but I’m afraid you really can’t let them park there,’ Jenny told Hugo, who looked blankly out of the garden at his company’s truck. ‘The neighbours might need to get in and out. Block this drive by all means, for now though,’ she added, worried that he might, after all, take off and use another location. In her head, Jenny had already accounted for Polly’s next term at school.

  ‘My lot won’t be arriving till 8.30,’ Laura said, peering with frank curiosity into the house past Jenny to make sure she had tidied her kitchen according to instructions and not suddenly repainted it purple since she’d made the booking. ‘My own venture. Catalogue for next Christmas. Already!’ Laura explained to Hugo, glancing at her watch. ‘I could really do without it all today,’ she said, skipping sideways as vast aluminium cases were hauled into Jenny’s porch. ‘I think I just might be pregnant!’ she hissed loudly. ‘Either that or my period is due right now, right this minute.’ A large bearded man carrying lights made a grimacing face which only Jenny could see, and bolted back out through the front door, away from the awfulness of women’s talk. Laura was prodding her left breast, oblivious to the bustle behind her. ‘Because they do hurt, don’t they, at either time. I can’t tell. I’ll have to do a test. I just can’t while the house is full of people.’

  ‘Perfect darling, well done as always!’ Hugo was calling to Laura from inside Jenny’s kitchen. He started, without ceremony, to rearrange furniture, piling up chairs and shoving the table towards the conservatory. ‘It will fit all right in there, I should think,’ he said to the bearded man who was doing intricate things with a silver parasol.

  ‘Would you all like some coffee?’ Jenny thought she should offer, at least.

  ‘No, no you mustn’t give them anything!’ Laura immediately reprimanded her. ‘That’s what the Katy Katerer truck is out there for. They provide everything, but everything. If you’re here,’ Laura added in a voice that suggested Jenny should definitely go out and spend the day in the Tate Gallery, ‘they might give you lunch.’

  ‘Should I not be here then?’ Jenny thought she’d better get it clear. ‘What if there’s an emergency, or they need to know about plugs, or the phone rings?’ (Oh God, she thought, men who might want flute lessons . . .)

  ‘Frankly, Jen, I find it’s best not to watch what they do to the house,’ then she added quickly, ‘though of course once they’ve gone, you won’t know they’ve been, so to speak. It’s just at the time . . .’

  ‘Table over here I think, Kev,’ Hugo was saying to the bearded man, who was single-handedly struggling through the doorway with the top half of a large round pine table, followed by a scowling blonde girl lugging a pair of bentwood dining chairs.

  ‘What’s wrong with my table?’ Jenny asked Laura.

  ‘Just something to keep the stylists and the props people occupied. Don’t worry about it, and for heaven’s sake don’t take it personally,’ Laura instructed her.

  Jenny watched her kitchen being dismantled around her, thinking murderous thoughts about Alan, who had once more escaped up a motorway on the grounds of work, and took herself off to have a peaceful shower and make herself feel human again.

  Emerging from the bathroom wrapped in a towel, deep in thoughts about what Alan’s business trip might really involve, she was startled to see Sue sitting cross-legged on her bed, calmly reading Country Living.

  ‘God, you scared me,’ Jenny told her. ‘I thought you might be one of those film people, trying to take over my bedroom.’ Alarming hangings and crashings and shoutings were drifting up the stairs.

  ‘I’ve come to move you out of the house, actually,’ Sue said. ‘You can’t possibly stay here with this lot, you’ll go mad worrying about your paintwork. I thought I’d take you out to lunch and we can pretend to be Ladies who Shop.’

  ‘OK, but I have to be back in time to collect Polly. It’s the day of the Great Exam.’ Jenny pulled a long pink shirt out of the wardrobe and Sue inspected the cosmetic collection on top of the chest of drawers.

  ‘Does this stuff actually work?’ she asked, reading the instruc
tions on the cellulite treatment bottle. She squeezed a bit out onto the back of her hand and massaged it in, sniffing at it.

  ‘Does anything?’ Jenny asked, giving her a backward grin in the mirror. ‘£25 for a spot of fantasy cream. They saw me coming.’

  ‘You and a million others. Let’s take it back for a refund,’ Sue said, shoving the bottle in her bag.

  ‘Don’t be daft! How can we prove it didn’t work?’ Jenny asked her.

  ‘Wait and see,’ Sue said mischievously, ‘I’ve got a plan, but I can’t do it on my own.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Jenny groaned, ‘are we going to make trouble? I’ve got enough already with Alan and Daisy and Ben and those people downstairs, and Polly’s exam . . .’

  ‘No this is fun, I promise. You expect justice to be seen to be done, don’t you? Well you bought something that wasn’t any use and I’ve thought of a way of getting your money back, that’s all,’ Sue said, in a deceptively simple way, her eyes twinkling at Jenny. ‘And after that we can buy a little treat for old Mrs Fingell, and go and see how she is.’ ‘Anyway, how’s business?’ she asked. ‘Loads of offers of tasty, sorry should I use that word? Tasty clients?’ she giggled.

  ‘No! Of course not!’ Jenny said, rather wishing she’d never let Sue know the awful truth. ‘I told you that was just a one-off – but goodness, we could do with the money. Accountancy isn’t what it was; if no-one out there is earning anything, they haven’t got any money that needs accounting, if you see what I mean. Alan is forever having to hand their stuff over to the Receiver people. That’s why I’m renting the kitchen out today. Loadsa cash. I’d rather rent the house out than myself – I don’t have to worry about it getting diseased, murdered or blackmailed.’

  Inside the department store, Sue led Jenny firmly through the cosmetics area to a counter staffed by a nail-filing assistant who took little notice of browsing customers playing with the test samples. Sue produced the plastic cosmetic bottle from her handbag, handed it to Jenny and prodded her. ‘Go on,’ she said, ‘tell her.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Jenny said politely, but loudly enough to get the attention of three counters-worth of staff. ‘This stuff, for cellulite, that it says you just put on and the fat fades away. It doesn’t work. So can I have my money back please?’

  The assistant, spun-sugar strawberry-blond hair as brittle as candyfloss, and her immaculate eye make-up glossy as a Vogue cover, smiled professionally at Jenny and took the bottle from her.

  ‘Sorry madam,’ she said, ‘but you appear to have used almost all of it. I can’t possibly give you a refund.’

  ‘You have to use it all to find that out,’ Sue pointed out. ‘It doesn’t do what it claims to. So can my friend now have her money back please?’

  Jenny, fiddling with the eye-shadow testers and making a muddy mess on the back of her hand, could hear a slightly menacing tone in Sue’s voice. The assistant, her smile now as fixed as her lip-gloss, was trying to be placatory, fully aware that several customers were now lingering around, sampling perfumes and sensing entertainment.

  ‘I’m afraid these things aren’t really quantifiable,’ the girl said, savouring the long word as if she’d got it straight from her training manual. ‘We have a policy of not refunding unless there’s actually skin damage.’

  ‘Consumer rights. An item has to be fit for its intended use,’ Sue insisted. And then, to Jenny’s horror, Sue turned to her and said loudly, ‘Go on, Jen, show the girl your bum!’

  ‘Hey, hang on a minute!’ Jenny hissed, watching the gleeful crowd collecting around them.

  ‘Yeah, go on, you show her,’ encouraged a plump woman pushing a double buggy. ‘I bought that stuff too and it’s a rip-off. I’d like to see someone getting their money back for once!’

  The support of the crowd and the feeling of being in the right were getting to Jenny. Sue often made her feel like she was part of some daft comedy act. Jenny quickly considered her underwear: quite respectably pretty, high-cut navy-and-white flowered M & S knickers, and her thighs weren’t that unpresentable, just a bit lumpy . . .

  ‘OK, why not?’ she said. ‘£25 of water and fancy chemicals and I should have legs as smooth as a teenager, but instead . . .’ Jenny announced to her audience, slowly raising her skirt, hiking it up at the side teasingly like the opening seconds of a bawdy nightclub act.

  ‘Da da da, de da da dum,’ someone starting singing The Stripper quite loudly and Jenny, enjoying the moment pulled up her skirt higher and turned round to give the girl behind the counter a good view of her bottom and the tops of her thighs. She glanced mockingly over her shoulder, daring the assistant, whose thickly mascaraed eyes were as big as bath-spiders, to refuse her request.

  Jenny’s skirt was up to her hips by now and Sue, like the straight man in a double act, was prodding at her flesh. ‘Look at that!’ she demanded, as everyone stared. ‘Lumpy cellulite! That stuff’s a con!’

  ‘Give her the money!’ yelled a voice from the crowd.

  ‘Yeah, go on. They make a fortune on this!’ came a cry of support.

  The assistant hurriedly opened the till and shakily counted out the notes, handing them, with the fastidious tips of her lacquered nails, across to Sue.

  Jenny, suddenly coming to her senses, lowered her skirt, patted it decently into place, and felt a blush coming on. ‘Thank you,’ she said, with as much dignity as she could muster, and the little group gave her a round of applause. Only when she dared look up and take the money from Sue did she notice that one of the figures now hurrying away, the only one not laughing delightedly, was Carol Mathieson.

  ‘Oh good grief, did you see? That was Carol. She’s everywhere, that woman. Now it will be all round the Close.’

  ‘Who cares?’ said Sue airily. ‘And anyway, isn’t the fight for justice one of the Mathiesons’ favourite themes? And just think,’ she whispered loudly, ‘you got the price of half a blow-job just for showing your knickers!’

  Carol was still trembling when she got home. She carefully eased the white Peugeot past the trucks parked in the Close and parked as near to her front door as she could. Quickly she hauled her Marks and Spencer carrier bags full of economy packs of chicken into the kitchen and flung them crossly into the depths of the freezer without the thorough labelling (re date of purchase and intention of use) that they usually got. Those two, she thought, Jenny and Sue, they just didn’t care how they behaved. She felt offended that she, Carol, who had chosen her home with such care, should have ended up living a stone’s throw from the sort of woman who was prepared to flash her bottom in a respectable department store just for the sake of a bit of a refund. If the twins had been with her, imagine what they’d have thought! Grown-up people were supposed to have standards, grown-up people of a certain background were supposed to set standards. Carol filled up the fridge haphazardly with packs of dolly-size vegetables, miniature carrots, baby beans and tiny, embryonic cauliflowers, and then went upstairs to the attic. The telescope was already focused on the Tennis Club and there they were, those two careless, wicked women, giggling on the balcony and tearing recklessly into great slabs of what looked like garlic bread. They were laughing, probably, at their own cleverness, Carol guessed in outrage. Well they’d better not behave like that in the Close, she thought, resolving to have a Little Word. She swivelled the telescope round and refocused on Jenny’s conservatory. Whatever they were doing in her house, those Picture This! people, it seemed to involve putting most of Jenny’s kitchen furniture into the garden. What a pity it wasn’t about to rain.

  Outside the school it was easy to see which mothers, that day, had daughters taking the school’s own entrance exam. Smiles were fixed, there was much hearty laughter and fake dismissal of their own children’s chances of success. Jenny, climbing out of her Golf, heard one mother boasting that her daughter, in the car that morning, had completely forgotten her entire six times table. Another was saying that she had spent the whole evening before working out how to do Venn diagram
s and was still none the wiser, her child having had no clue either. It was immoral, really, putting these girls through such a distressing selection process, Jenny considered, taking her place anxiously at the foot of the school steps. Ceci Caine, too eager to hear what Harriet’s day had been like to let Jenny drive her home, came and stood next to her.

  ‘You know, it’s not right is it?’ Jenny said, glad to have someone to hear her thoughts. ‘The school willingly took on all these little girls at the age of four, not knowing which would turn out to be the infant prodigy and which, as they put it so tactfully in school reports, the late developer. It’s as if they’ve reached judgement day, where only those who’ll be absolutely no effort to teach will get to stay on.’

  Ceci looked wary, as if Jenny had confessed to sympathy with the wrong political party. ‘Yes, but surely you want Polly to go through school with girls who can match her ability, don’t you? It’s so much more stretching.’

  Jenny saw Polly elongated, pulled like elastic between her family and the stringent academic requirements of Fiona Pemberton. All those dance classes Polly loved so much, would she have time for them in the senior department, where homework was supposed to take God-given priority? To Ceci she said, ‘I’m not sure. I mean they’ve all been OK together this far, haven’t they? And anyway, maybe Polly is one of those who won’t be staying.’