by Judy Astley
Alan was in heaven, oblivious to life’s cares, drooling over the Provolone and Dolcelatte on the cheese counter at the Italian deli in the same entranced way the other men were doing over the soft-porn video display round the corner at Rentavid. Like them, he was in no mood to be interrupted, and visibly leapt when Paul Mathieson tapped him on the shoulder.
‘You been sent out shopping too?’ Paul asked him in a sheepish bid for sympathy. He was clutching a two-tone leatherette shopping bag, holding it in front of him as if determined not to learn the easiest way of carrying it.
Alan felt immediate antagonism, and fought down the feeling that this was perfectly reasonable – after all, Paul was just being friendly. ‘No, I enjoy it. Something of a hobby really,’ he confessed. ‘Very restful, cooking,’ he added, gazing back at the display of buffalo Mozzarella, ‘though I don’t suppose Jen would agree, when she’s dashing around trying to feed the kids between picking them up and dropping them off at all their various after-school activities.’
Paul could think of no reply. Cooking was something Carol did with vigour and adeptness but no real sign of delight. Offhand he couldn’t think of anything she did do with delight, unless he counted petting those skinny cats. Relaxing was not a word he would have applied to the atmosphere in their kitchen when Carol chopped, mixed, sliced and stirred. He thought of the sheer brutality with which she broke and beat eggs, the awe-inspiring violence of her dough-kneading.
‘Just look at that Parmesan,’ Alan was murmuring. ‘D’you know that here they sprinkle it between the layers of fresh lasagne before it’s packed ready to sell?’
‘Well, no, I didn’t. Doesn’t it go all over the floor when you unwrap it?’ Paul asked, thinking of Carol’s outraged face when confronted with an unexpected mess.
‘Yes, of course, but who cares? It’s well worth it!’ Alan told him, turning to the pasta cabinet and picking up a couple of packs of the stuff. He shoved some into Paul’s hand. ‘Try some!’ he said expansively. ‘Or what about the cuttlefish tagliatelle?’
Paul looked disbelievingly at the jet black pasta, which seemed even worse than the blue Smarties that Marcus was so fond of. He thought he’d wait till Alan left, sneak the lasagne back on to the shelf and collect a pack of their usual dried version from the supermarket. Meanwhile, there was something he was aching to know, the reason for which he’d entered this terrifying shop. ‘What was going on in your back garden last night?’ he said, then tittered nervously in case the reply was something too honestly sensual. ‘Looked like a witchcraft meeting – the Close Coven perhaps!’ An alarmed feeling was creeping up inside his head that he might have got it accidentally correct. They might put a curse on him. He’d never quite stopped half-believing that people could be changed into frogs, which was probably why he never could stand up to Carol. He stared around the shop, waiting for Alan to laugh it off, pretending he was studying the jars of sun-dried tomatoes and wondering why they hadn’t removed the cloudy bottles of Podere vinegar from the shelves; surely it was looking slightly off?
‘How on earth could you see into my back garden?’ Alan asked him with quiet menace. ‘And for what reason would you be looking?’
‘Oh well, it was just the noise and the lights flickering, you know, could have been burglars, anything, kids got in from the estate, you know . . . Happened to be in the attic . . .’ he bluffed lamely, guarding his chest with the shopping bag, aware that the shop had gone very silent and several customers in the shop were openly listening. Most of them were men, large menacing ones. He felt suddenly like an unwelcome intruder, an epicureally-challenged gatecrasher in this haunt of gourmets. It would be ages till he was served, priority customers being Italian speakers or, like Alan, friends of the owner. He’d be much happier in Sainsbury’s, in the single basket, cash-only queue. He smirked nervously. ‘Just taking a neighbourly interest.’ Alan, grinning coolly, hit him none too playfully on the head with a large olive-stuffed ciabatta loaf.
‘Well don’t,’ he told Paul.
The doorbell rang just as Jenny was coming down the stairs. ‘You can stay up till 10, just for once, but no later,’ she called back up to Polly, as she glanced into the hall mirror. Her hair, which had taken thirty-five minutes to pile up, was collapsing already, but with the deep and gooey red lipstick and plenty of mascara (eye-care by Estée Lauder this time, not the greengrocer), she looked and felt quite gorgeously tarty.
‘George!’ she exclaimed, surprised to see him standing rather shamefacedly on the doormat. ‘Fiona sent you over to borrow a cup of sugar?’
‘No. I’ve come to see you,’ he said, staring intently at the rather low front of her tight black velvet dress. Jenny put a protective hand towards her cleavage.
‘Me? Oh look George, I’ve told you before. It’s no. And it’ll be no next time you ask too, just to save you the trouble,’ she hissed firmly, pulling the door behind her a little so no-one could hear, then realizing she had enclosed the two of them into the dusty intimacy of the porch. She could smell over-wintering geraniums and George’s pungent anticipatory aftershave.
‘Oh look, I do make an effort,’ he pleaded like a schoolboy excusing inadequate homework. ‘I try them all, from King’s Cross knee-tremblers to colonic irrigation. All I want . . .’
‘You sound like a walking health hazard. I know exactly what you want,’ Jenny told him, glad that she was wearing high heeled shoes and had the authority of being slightly taller than him, ‘and I’m sorry, but you’re not getting it from me and that’s that!’ Her harsh treatment of him was having the wrong effect, she realized, he was now looking positively lascivious. Another minute and he would be drooling on the doormat.
‘You look wonderful. Edible,’ he told her breathily, looking her up and down and licking his lips. Jenny shuddered, though mostly at the thought that he must at one time have said things like that to the formidable Fiona. She wondered how Fiona had reacted. With commendably firm discipline, she imagined, for which George had probably married her.
‘Look George,’ she said, changing over to reasoning sweetness, ‘we’re just going out for the evening. Alan and I. You’ll have to go away.’ Jenny opened the front door a bit wider, trying to frighten him off, and the hall light exaggerated the hangdog pallor of George’s mournful face. It looked as worn out and hopeless as his corduroy jacket. Then the sound of Alan on the stairs startled them both and George muttered a quick goodbye and shambled off to the gate. Poor old soul, Jenny thought, making a half-hearted effort to salvage her hair in front of the hall mirror. The world seemed full of men like him. She couldn’t take them on – if she wanted to get more actively involved in charity work than running the local Help the Aged collection, she could think of much worthier causes.
‘What did he want?’ Alan asked, checking his tie in the mirror.
‘Just my body,’ Jenny told him with a cheeky wink as she went back upstairs to say goodnight to Polly.
‘Long way to go for dinner with people we wouldn’t really choose to go out with,’ Alan said apologetically in the car.
‘I don’t mind, it’s just good to be out, and the food there is supposed to be miraculous,’ said Jenny. ‘I’m beginning to feel I’m living in a goldfish bowl in the Close, with Paul and Carol and their obsession with watching everyone. It’s getting beyond a joke. I feel like writing up a list for them of exactly what I do in one particular day – everything including the times I go to the loo and what junk mail the postman brought. Perhaps they’d get the hint then.’
‘No they wouldn’t. Paul thinks we’ve taken up witchcraft. He told me in the deli, he was watching the candles in our garden last night and thinks we were calling up the devil.’
‘Makes me want to hold naked rituals out there and mix up spells in a cauldron,’ she laughed. ‘We could invite him to join. I bet Carol would jump at the chance. There’s sure to be something interestingly repressed and seething under her M & S bodyshaper.’
‘She’d make a go
od Head Witch,’ Alan agreed, nodding solemnly. ‘Very good at keeping order. Dominatrix type.’
Must remember to suggest her to George Pemberton, thought Jenny, next time he comes round wanting to buy some sexual services. Perhaps they’d suit each other nicely.
At the traffic lights, Alan reached into the door pocket for a suitable tape. He came across the Beach Boys, but rejected it, remembering how irritated Jenny used to get with his out-of-tune attempts to join in with the irresistible harmonies. It was all right for her with her perfect pitch. All the same, ooh-oohing his way through Good Vibrations was something best kept for the privacy of lone motorway journeys. Rummaging about, he finally found a dusty old Fleet-wood Mac album, the first cassette tape he’d ever bought after finally conceding that the 8-track car stereo was, like Betamax, unlikely to have a future.
‘You used to look a bit like the singer, Stevie Nicks was it?’ he said to Jenny as they cruised through Wealdstone High Street. ‘Remember?’
‘Do I ever!’ she said, wrinkling her nose. ‘Perilous platform boots and hanky-point floaty skirts. Not bad, those skirts. I should have kept one. Daisy would probably have worn it.’
‘This week isn’t it? Her appointment with the Chief Constable. Do you have to get her out of school early?’
‘No thank goodness, so there’s no need for Fiona Pemberton to know anything about it. Though she probably does; the staff must have heard the girls gossiping to each other about it.’ Jenny felt uneasy, thinking about Daisy’s brush with the law. Perhaps these things really were genetic. She wished she could ask Alan to take time out from the office to go instead. It was worse for her than going to the dentist. Many years ago, she had been arrested on the one time she had called at the escort agency to collect her commission and tell them she wouldn’t be working for them again, and the police had chosen that moment for a raid. The thought of the long-ago detective leering and sneering into her face with a mixture of disgust and lecherous curiosity still gave her a nauseous shiver. ‘We could have you up for being a common prostitute,’ he’d threatened. ‘Must turn some of them on, a bit of posh. Prostitute you may be, common you’re not.’ Jenny shuddered at the memory and turned up the car heating.
‘I think you over-estimate staff-room loyalty,’ Alan tried to be reassuring, ‘if you think they’d report what they heard to the headmistress. I’m sure she’ll be the last one to hear. And it won’t be the worst thing that’s ever happened at the school; I heard a thirteen-year-old got pregnant a couple of years back, and they’re always dropping out of the sixth form because of drugs, and being passed on to those extortionate crammers in Kensington.’
The restaurant was a famous one, written about in countless weekend newspapers. Food writers liked going there; it was far enough from their office to necessitate taking an entire day out just to go and do their report. Glowing references to its meals were overlaid with more than a hint of incredulous journalistic wonder that such culinary skill could be found beyond the boundary of the M25. They wrote things like Well worth driving out of London for, as if the whole world resided in SW3. Alan tended to read out the more irritating quotes over breakfast on Sunday mornings. ‘Listen to this Jen: “Rather a clever little terrine de bouillabaisse”. What exactly’s that supposed to mean? Patronizing bastard,’ he would grumble across the toast and Jenny would murmur a soothing ‘Mmmm’ in agreement from deep in the Books section.
The restaurant sounded full when Jenny and Alan walked in, but it was, in fact, more than half empty, only noisy with the strident sound of regular customers braying greetings to each other and loudly ensuring that everyone in the place knew that the head waiter had remembered which tables they preferred. ‘So clever of you, Henry, to remember about Barbara’s contact lenses and the air conditioning,’ Jenny overheard. Turning her attention away from the unpretty sight of a portly weekend executive schoolboyishly rubbing his stomach and exclaiming ‘Yum yum!’ as he read the menu at the bar, she had a quick look at the décor. Someone had been reading the right magazines: no dated, over-chintzed floral frills here, just plain, straight-hung calico curtains tied to simple iron poles, pale cream walls lightly overwashed with burnt sienna, and on the floor, seagrass carpeting, which must be hazardous to high heels on less than sober customers. Even the stylish Laura Benstone had refused to have it in her house on the grounds that if the children were sick on it, it would be a bugger to clean up.
Bernard and his wife Monica, a chunky, comfortable couple in late middle-age, with matching hair cut short and striped in shades of grey, were already at a round table, which was laid for six. There was also one younger woman that Jenny did not know, though it took just the briefest heart-stopping second to realize that this elegant girl with sleek, nut-brown hair tied back with a purple scarf and wearing a dusty pink silk jacket that could almost be Armani could only be Bernard’s niece Serena.
‘Frankie’s just gone off to the loo, won’t be a sec,’ Serena said as the introductions were being made. Jenny sat down and fiddled with her napkin, glanced at Serena’s overloaded handful of heavy rings, and wondered why it had never occurred to her that Serena might even be married. What kind of evening was it going to be, making dinner-party conversation with the woman she suspected of dallying with Alan? Did her own husband, if that’s what he was, this Frankie, have the same painful suspicions? She resolved to take safe and childlike refuge in appreciating the food.
At too many dinners the deliciously extravagant flavours eluded her in the tension of meeting new people, keeping the chat going and simply getting through an evening. Sometimes, late at night, on journeys when Alan was raving over the supremacy of one sauce or another, she could hardly recall a thing she’d tasted. She looked across the table at him sitting between Monica and Serena. She noticed that he seemed positively exuberant, beaming broadly and already calling a waiter to order drinks. Perhaps, she thought venomously, he was excited by the juxtaposition of wife and mistress. Surely he couldn’t have known about this?
‘Always a bit nerve-wracking, going out to eat with an expert such as yourself,’ Jenny heard Bernard confessing to Alan, ‘so I thought, just to be on the safe side and make sure everything’s up to scratch, I’d bring this along.’ Jenny watched a flicker of incredulous dismay pass across Alan’s face and looked at the tatty, torn-edged scrap of pale blue newsprint that Bernard had fished out of his pocket. ‘It’s an old Restaurant Watch notice from The Sunday Times,’ he explained to those who didn’t know. ‘You put it on the table so the waiters know that you expect only the very best service. Knew you’d appreciate that.’ Jenny knew that Alan, who thought such a thing the height of insulting rudeness, did not, and was feeling grudging sympathy for him as the last guest slid into the seat next to her. ‘Hello, I’m Frankie,’ Jenny heard, and turned to look at Serena’s friend, who was fair-haired, stocky and thirty-something. Interestingly, the friend was also female.
It was Emma in Daisy’s bathroom who came up with the solution to the big problem. ‘We’ll take Polly to the party with us. Simple. We’ll be back before your parents, they’ve gone absolutely miles away and they’ll never ever know,’ she declared optimistically.
‘We can’t,’ was Daisy’s immediate reaction. ‘Polly will tell. Besides, I don’t want to go to a party towing my baby sister along. Whatever kind of twit will I look?’ In spite of her doubts she was still getting ready. There had to be a way, some last-minute salvation. She’d wondered if she dared ask Mrs Fingell to babysit, but hadn’t enough left of her allowance to pay her with. Besides, Daisy could hardly ask her not to mention it to Jenny. If she did, Mrs Fingell might not only refuse to come, but might tell Jenny anyway. It just wasn’t worth the risk of asking her. Daisy would get out somehow though, with or without Polly. The dress with the stars on was neatly ironed, she’d found a pair of black tights that only had one ladder in them, and now she was carefully sticking on a pair of rainbow-coloured false eyelashes. ‘Do these look stupid?’ she asked, blinkin
g hard at Emma’s reflection in the bathroom mirror.
‘No they look great. Hurry up, we’ve only got to fix Polly and then we can go; it’s gone eight already.’
She’s dying to get at Ben, thought Daisy, appalled that she was about to spend the evening at the same party as him, and no doubt have to watch him snogging her best friend. Taking Polly looked like being the only possible thing to do. ‘How much fun am I going to have with Poll watching my every move?’ she moaned, wondering how Oliver would ever get the chance to pounce on her.
‘Well at least you’ll be there – you won’t be missing it, that’s what matters. She’ll probably fall asleep under a table or something. Stop worrying and let’s go and persuade her to come. Will we need to bribe her?’
‘Threaten maybe. She likes to watch Casualty on Saturdays, counts how many patients get rushed into Crash and never come out alive. Nearly all of them, she says.’ Daisy fluffed out her hair so that the desired amount dangled over her left eye. The blue ends looked just the right shade against the dress. She couldn’t waste all this effort.