Pleasant Vices

by Judy Astley

  ‘Is Mummy home, Emily?’ Jenny asked the child.

  ‘What do you mean “the man said”? Which man?’ Paul demanded of the little girl, who promptly burst into frightened tears. ‘Right that’s it. I’m going in. Could be murder in there,’ Paul declared, as if he was ready to storm the gates of hell.

  ‘No Paul, wait,’ Jenny said, grabbing his arm, but it was too late and with the groans and roars reaching a crescendo, and the sound of glass breaking, Paul flung open the door of the Benstones’ sitting-room.

  Laura emerged from the kitchen with Charlotte, a smaller version of Emily, looking calm and serene, just as Jenny and Paul were taking in the scene on the polished wood floor. Harvey was lying on the floor on his front wearing only a pair of Fred Flintstone boxer shorts. His gingery-furred legs (which for a moment reminded Jenny of Biggles) were gathered up behind him and across them, forcing his weight onto Harvey’s shoulders, was a delectably muscled young man in bulging purple cycling shorts but nothing else, scowling up at them crossly. It looked to Jenny like torture, and it also looked like the kind of torture people pay to enjoy, though surely not with the entire family also at home?

  ‘Er . . . sorry to intrude,’ Paul said, for once quite deflated.

  ‘Emily!’ yelled a blushing Harvey, his eyes rather glazed from effort. ‘What did Jeremy tell you about coming in here?’

  ‘T’ai chi massage,’ Laura explained simply from behind Jenny. ‘Terribly good for his back. All that sitting around typing does him no good at all. Have you come for your cheque?’

  Back at home Jenny folded the cheque into her building society book and did a few additions. There was enough, she calculated, to keep the family for maybe a month if Alan was really suddenly unemployed, and together with savings and a couple of life insurance policies, there could be enough for Polly and Ben’s school fees for the rest of the year, and perhaps even further. This was the moment for regretting that she’d been so insistent that Ben stayed on at his school to take A-levels, when he’d so much wanted to leave and go to the sixth form college. When it was Daisy’s turn they’d let her. How casually she and Alan had committed themselves to finding the necessary eleven thousand extra pounds that the two years would cost! And what would Ben get at the end of it? Three good A-levels, exactly the same as he would have got free at the tertiary college. She looked out of the bedroom window, down the Close to where Mrs Fingell could be seen stuffing another of her newspaper-wrapped parcels into her dustbin. I must tell her about the bottle bank, Jenny thought. I don’t mind taking them there in the car for her. Mrs Fingell looked up and waved to her before disappearing back into the house. Her sitting-room light was on, and the curtains open. Perhaps, Jenny reflected, retired tarts still liked to spend time sitting at lighted windows, remembering the bad but busy old days. She had a sudden rather sad mental picture of Mrs Fingell sitting under a red light with her skirt hitched up over her support-stockings, squinting at a knitting pattern as she turned the heel on a lemon bootee for her latest grandchild. She must visit her soon, Jenny thought, sensing loneliness along the road.

  Fiona Pemberton had had years of practice at expelling pupils. She had collected quite a wide range of methods, all skilfully based on letting parents know, as if bestowing some kind of secret privilege, that they could do far better for their child than educate them at her school.

  Alan and Jenny, dressed with the same sort of smartness they would have adopted if they’d been summoned to attend court, waited in front of Fiona’s desk while she chose her words carefully, very much the headmistress and not at all the neighbour. Her office, inconveniently placed at the top of the school so that visitors arrived panting and wilting from climbing the two flights of stairs, was positively sumptuous compared with the tatty squalor of the rest of the building. Fiona had peaches-and-cream-striped wallpaper, a determinedly feminine shade of baby pink carpet that no over-nervous first-year would ever dare be sick on, and a framed array of the best of the sixth form A-level work. On shelves stood appealingly lopsided jugs, brightly painted ceramic plates and several clay cats on loan from the school pottery room. Jenny smiled expectantly, waiting to be told that clever Polly had achieved at least the school drama award, which would give her free extra speech and drama lessons and a guaranteed starring role in every school play for the next seven years. She tried to keep out of her head the vision of Fiona’s husband haggling on her doorstep for sexual services.

  Alan, gloomy about his future and confident only of disaster, was therefore less shocked than Jenny when Fiona began her well-rehearsed speech, both arms resting on the desk and her ample bust stacked firmly on top of her blotter.

  ‘. . . abilities that would be far better catered for in a more artistic environment . . .’ Fiona was saying, her face lengthened into her well-practised ‘this hurts me more than it hurts you’ expression.

  ‘Polly will be quite a loss to the school, such a, er, lively pupil.’ She stopped to sigh, as if this was on a well-learnt script, and continued with a decisive ‘But . . .’ just as Jenny was opening her mouth to protest. ‘But it is our responsibility, our duty, to put the child first, even at the expense of losing one of our more colourful pupils. That is the creed upon which this school, and its consequent success, is based.’

  Alan looked out of the window, watching cars whizzing through amber traffic lights, and wishing he was in one of them, heading perhaps for the distant wilds of Scotland, with just Jenny.

  Fiona wasn’t entirely without scruples, especially when she had to share the Close with these people, and had now moved on to the practical suggestions, leaning forward eagerly to sell her idea to Jenny and Alan. ‘Polly will do reasonably well academically wherever she is. But the academic field is not where her main interests lie, as I am sure you know.’ She paused to smile, waiting for them to agree that here was a headmistress who really understood her young charges, before delivering her chosen solution. ‘Have you thought of a school for the performing arts? I happen to know the principal at . . .’ and before Jenny could so much as ask a question she had reached down to scrabble in her desk drawer and handed over a large and glossy brochure featuring students on the cover dressed as the rude mechanicals from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

  ‘Well, no, we hadn’t thought of it, not at all,’ Jenny told Fiona, surprised to find that she still had a voice to use, so dismayed as she was that they were having this conversation at all, and flicking obediently through the prospectus.

  In what seemed like seconds, Jenny and Alan had been expertly dismissed, whirled down the staircase by the secretary and were out on the street wondering what to do with Polly for the next seven years.

  ‘I wonder why Fiona wants Polly out. Do you think it’s because of Daisy – worried that criminal behaviour runs in the family?’ Jenny asked Alan.

  ‘Possibly, Daisy’s a bit wild, maybe. And Polly’s reasonably bright but no genius. Perhaps the school is over-subscribed with Oxbridge hopefuls and there’s no room for the good all-rounder.’

  ‘Or in Polly’s case, the slightly below average all-rounder.’

  ‘Anyway, what do you think?’ Jenny asked Alan, watching him glance through the brochure again as he walked back to the car. ‘Do you think it’s Polly’s sort of thing? Hours of singing and dancing and drama and dressing up? Longer hours than regular school, too?’ She waited for him to prevaricate, to pass the responsibility over to her, as it fell within the domain of home-and-family. Before, when the children had been at the school-changing stage, he had left everything to Jenny, telling her he was sure she would be better at making the right choices than he was, and so never having to endure the hectic scrums of open days. But then, with a decisiveness that surprised her, Alan looked up and announced with a broad smile, ‘I think it’s exactly Polly’s sort of thing. She’ll absolutely love it.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  What was it about weddings? As Sue and David exchanged their optimistic vows in the clinically pale gree
n register office, Jenny dabbed at her eyes with a tissue and felt her eyeshadow dissolving. Daisy hissed a cynical ‘Oh God, Mum,’ secretly eager to impress Sue’s younger son home from boarding school, and not wanting her embarrassing parents drawing the wrong kind of attention to her. Sue looked radiant, as a bride should, in cream silk moiré, pleased with herself and everything else. Her blue-rinsed mother in a lavender-and-pink flowered Queen Mother hat, beamed all round at everyone, delighted with her daughter, as if this wedding was Sue’s first real one, and the other two had been merely insignificant trial runs. Outside in the mellow spring sunshine, the proud old lady roamed regally, waving an elegant kid-gloved hand at all the guests and mishearing all the introductions. ‘A lady registrar!’ she exclaimed loudly to Fiona Pemberton, perhaps recognizing equally queenly qualities. ‘We haven’t come across one of those before, have we Susan dear?’

  Sue’s new husband David, now successfully down to just one stick, had no trouble with the register office steps, and posed happily for photos in the formal garden along with most of the Close residents, Sue’s pair of large sons, and a riotous selection of Welsh supporters who had arrived noisily by hired coach. The photographer set up his tripod, directed grudgingly by Paul Mathieson, who felt that, as owner of the precious Nikon and subscriber to Amateur Photographer, he should have been invited to do it.

  ‘You’ve got to be in these as well, Jen. Got to have all the witnesses!’ Sue called as Jenny stuffed her damp hanky back into her bag.

  ‘In a bit, shove up close together!’ the photographer ordered, and Jenny found herself squashed against David, smiling apologetically at him.

  ‘That’s a huge favour you did me,’ he whispered to her as the photographer bustled about arranging people. Jenny felt her heart step up its beat rate and she just knew she was in for a dread lifetime of neighbourly embarrassment.

  ‘No, I don’t mean that!’ he went on, laughing. ‘No, I mean if it wasn’t for you I wouldn’t have met Sue! Best thing that ever happened to me, believe it.’ His face, when he looked at Sue, was so unashamedly thrilled that Jenny could feel tears threatening to choke her again.

  No-one had looked at her like that for quite some time. Alan had come pretty close the other night after he’d told her about Serena and the likelihood of losing his job, gratified, relieved probably that Jenny hadn’t immediately told him to sling his rotten hook. But that sort of look, the David to Sue look, you didn’t get that after years of murky marriage; it required some sort of naïve and joyful expectation somewhere.

  ‘Smile everybody!’ the photographer roared above the chat, and Jenny hoped that on the photos she wouldn’t be the one who looked as dewy as a person with brand new contact lenses.

  ‘Talking to Hugo the other day.’ Laura, gliding like a tall-ship in many layers of expensively mangled butter-coloured silk, approached Jenny later at the reception which had spilled over into Sue’s garden. ‘He says to send love to your Polly and he’ll be sending a rough-cut video of her advert any day now. She was awfully good, he says. Everyone adored her.’

  ‘How sweet of him!’ Jenny replied taking a glass of champagne from the wobbly tray carried round by Sue’s younger son on leave from his famous public school, (and trailed at an admiring distance by Daisy, who liked his rarity value). ‘Hugo might be interested, actually. We’ve decided to send Polly to a school that specializes in the performing arts. She’s thrilled with the idea, can hardly wait for audition day.’

  Polly could be seen across the garden, showing off her splits and cartwheels in her best dress to Sebastian and Marcus, who were enjoying frequent glimpses of her purple knickers.

  Laura’s face was arranged in a little questioning pout, her lips puckered amusedly, and then she smiled broadly as if she’d just unfathomed a riddle. ‘Oh! I see, for a moment I thought you meant a stage school!’ she trilled.

  ‘Stage school? Who on earth is going to a stage school?’ Carol Mathieson, forgetting to watch her powder blue suede high heels on the lawn, tripped into their conversation, spilling a fizzing trickle of champagne down the front of her navy blue sailor jacket. She waited expectantly to be told whatever news was going.

  ‘All those lovely long-necked girls from the Royal Ballet school in Richmond Park,’ Laura went on dreamily. ‘They stand at the bus stop with their hair in neat little buns and their feet out in third position. So pretty. Polly is a lucky girl.’

  Carol looked at them both expectantly and Jenny felt ganged-up on. ‘She’s not going to White Lodge,’ she announced firmly. ‘She is actually going to a stage school. And before you say anything, it isn’t all hair in ringlets and constant auditioning to be the next Milky Bar Kid.’ I’m sounding defensive, she thought, voicing some of the prejudices she’d had herself only days ago. She caught sight of George Pemberton leering his approval at her from behind a tray of canapés. Fiona noticed and tweaked him viciously back to attention, ordering him to help do the rounds with the food. Jenny decided it was time to go and find someone else to talk to. She was also wondering where Mrs Fingell had gone. Sue had definitely invited her to the party, and she’d been there at the ceremony, exuberant in a cherry red hat. ‘Sorry, must just dash back home,’ she said to Laura and Carol, whose expressions were stuck in astonishment, as if she’d just told them that Polly had had her name down since birth for the nearest Young Offenders’ Institute. Jenny retreated. ‘Got to go and collect Sue and David’s present. Didn’t want to take it along to the register office with me. See you later.’

  She picked her way carefully through the crush round the doorway, hearing as she went the unmistakable voice of Carol confiding to Laura ‘. . . teaching the pupils to speak frightfully badly, so they can get parts in EastEnders . . .’ Just wait till Polly’s the juvenile lead in some upmarket BBC2 period drama, she thought, or playing Juliet at 13. One day they’ll be showing off that they’ve known her since she was this high.

  Jenny walked carefully down the road in her favourite going out but-only-if-there’s-somewhere-to-sit-down shoes. Could it be true, she wondered, as she tottered painfully up to the front door, that one’s feet actually grew a bit as one got older? Surely a size 5 at age 23 was going to be still a size 5 at 42? She left the front door open, kicked off the shoes in the hall and, noticing the answerphone flashing at her, flicked the ‘on’ button. The tape was getting mangled and most of the message was lost, but Jenny heard just enough to catch the gist (‘wondered about whether you felt up to taking on an entire boys’ school ha! ha!’). ‘Not today thanks!’ she said to the machine, and switched it off abruptly. Hurrying now, she went into the kitchen to collect the present. Absorbed both in her blissfully released toes and in searching the dresser for the gift-wrap ribbon, she wasn’t at first aware that anyone else had come into the house behind her.

  ‘Thought I’d join you, having a little breather from the hordes,’ a familiar voice said from the kitchen doorway. Jenny, startled, swore with anger as she trapped her hand in the drawer.

  ‘George! Why are you creeping up on me like that?’ she demanded crossly. ‘You’ve got a nerve, following me here!’ She actually felt quite alarmed. George was already drunk, swaying slightly, and his breath was gusting heavily. ‘Thought while we’ve got a few minutes alone . . .’ he said, looking her up and down slowly. Jenny backed nervously towards the conservatory, hoping to sidestep him as he followed her in and then make a dash for the front door. ‘Wouldn’t take long . . .’ George said, with a rather desperate pleading note in his voice. He reached for the zip on his trousers, still keeping his rheumy old spaniel eyes on Jenny’s face, hoping for some sort of expression of surrender.

  ‘Not a chance, George,’ she said firmly, then watched incredulous as he brought out from the baggy folds of his ancient special-occasion trousers a fully erect penis, all raring to go as if, Blue Peter style, it was one he’d prepared earlier.

  ‘Cooee, only me!’ came the hugely welcome (to Jenny) voice of Mrs Fingell from the front door
.

  ‘Bugger! The old witch!’ George said, dashing, dick in hand, to the seclusion of the conservatory.

  ‘You in here?’ called Mrs Fingell as she came bustling along the hallway, opening and closing doors as she went. ‘I saw the front door open,’ she said as she reached the kitchen. ‘Just popped home to see to the dog.’ Then seeing Jenny propped feebly up against the Aga and looking pale, added, ‘You all right? Seen a ghost?’

  ‘No I’m not really,’ Jenny confessed shakily. ‘I was just in here getting some ribbon for the present and guess who followed me in?’

  Mrs Fingell’s face broke into a knowing smirk, but before she could voice her guess, a long, deep groan emanated from the conservatory. Whether it was a groan of agony or ecstasy was hard to tell, but Jenny, quailing at what sounded like the results of over-excitement, prayed she wouldn’t have to go in there with a mop.

  ‘Disgusting old man, following me here like that,’ she said furiously. ‘Stay there and I’ll get him out and make him go away.’ She strode angrily into the conservatory about to confront George, grateful to have Mrs Fingell there to give her courage, but George wasn’t as she expected, shamefacedly adjusting his clothing, but was instead lying half on and half off the sofa, a twisted grin on his face and his eyes gazing sightlessly at Alan’s potted herb collection. His penis, now at half-mast, lay pink and obscene against his best-trousered groin.

  ‘Good God,’ Mrs Fingell exclaimed sharply from just behind Jenny, ‘he’s stone dead!’

  I mustn’t panic, Jenny thought, followed by the fervent prayer that surely this couldn’t be happening to her.

  ‘Well, the first thing we’d better do is make him look decent, poor old bugger,’ Mrs Fingell said, taking over with authority.

  Jenny could feel her whole body start to tremble. ‘I’m not touching him, not touching that,’ she said, wondering if this was what it felt like before you actually fainted. ‘Are you sure he’s dead?’ she whispered, though she didn’t really need to; there was absolutely no doubt.