by Mavis Cheek
Janice waited ail day with her hair in curlers. She hummed and she sang and she was strangely cheery with her mother.
'Spring, spring, spring,' she sang, for although it was dreary February she felt very much that spring was in the air. Every activity that had once been so mundane was now filled with significance. She dressed herself after teatime in her brightest colours - fiery oranges with rich brown whirls that streaked through them like chocolate. She removed her curlers, set up her station on a chair by her bedroom window (at the front of the house since Mrs Gentle preferred the silence at the back) and sucked her knuckles in anticipation. She tried to read, first The Paston Letters and then - as she thought more fittingly - Christine de Pisan's Oeuvres poetiques, but these soon fell by the way. It was no longer her books she sought, it was Dermot Poll, for there, she was sure, lay her future.
Midnight and beyond. Every step in the street, every movement of a tree or distant sound of a bicycle or car, every motion of a shadow made her start and believe it was he. Lurch, bump went her heart, which had not calmed down once since her encounter at the bus stop yesterday eve. But gradually, gradually, throughout the long vigil, she began to fear the unthinkable, pushing the unthinkable away each time it surfaced, time and again bringing the memory of his words to bear over the rising anguish that he was never, really, going to come. Not until the morning darkness lifted and real life moved beneath her window again, did she yield herself up to the misery of knowing that the rising anguish had won. Dermot Poll was never going to arrive. She had got it all wrong, been confused, should be somewhere else, waiting for him in another place altogether. Australia, America, China had taken him. They had met too late. He had lost her address, he had broken his leg, he had ... he had . . . Rattle, rattle went such thoughts. Even now he was roaming the streets searching. She ran out into the dawn - out along Worple Road, up towards the Ridgway, flying tears and hair streaming down Christchurch Hill.
Everywhere she could feel his presence, nowhere could she find him. She waved her arms from the gates of Holland Gardens, looking into the yellow distance of the creeping dawn. She walked home, vowing on the way that she would find him one day, wherever he was. At Raynes Park Station she found a sixpence and put it in the chocolate machine. That helped, that soothed, and with it she fed the shape that he loved. She sucked on it, savouring it, for the short walk home. Then she put away her orange and brown finery, dressed herself in an old beige sweater dress, and lay with her aching heart on the top of her virgin's bed.
'I shall never wear colours again,' she said to herself. 'Not until I see Dermot Poll.' And she fell asleep to dream of palfreys and pilgrim lovers and herself and Dermot Poll on a ribbon road in moonlight, horse to horse, hand in hand.
'Dermot who?' asked her mother in the morning. Janice told her.
Mrs Gentle raised her eyes to heaven above her battered nose. 'Irish!' she said. 'As well as being a man. Can't trust either.' She looked at her daughter. 'I warned you, I warned you, didn't I?'
Janice turned over and slept again. When she woke she drank tea and ate toast with melted cheese and butter on top. 'So this is love,' she said to herself, through the crisp and oily mouthfuls, and she thought that for the first time she really understood courtly lovers of old, who were willing to die for their joy.
After Mrs Gentle's death it might have been correct to put on the certificate, 'Primary cause: meticulous daughterly attention. Secondary cause: heart failure.'
Certainly by the time the Grim Reaper called, Janice's mother was probably more than ready to go. For years she had watched her daughter become gross and pale, as unhealthy-looking as a slug in hibernation. The peaceful closeting of their life together had given way to an uneasy proximity of necessity, and was dull. Very dull indeed. Television, what to eat, radio, library books and bed being the order of things, although in summer Mrs Gentle did a little pottering in the postage-stamp garden. But it was not enough to sustain life. Mrs Gentle, though unsure of what was to follow, appeared to breathe her last with a sigh of profound relief. What she was going to could certainly not be any worse than what she was coming from, and listening out for the rustle of a biscuit packet from the kitchen or the chink of spoon on bowl from Janice's late-night bedroom was something she would be more than happy to shed. Her last words to her daughter were 'Brighten up a bit, Janice - there's a dear. And for goodness' sake find yourself something to take your mind off things.'
By 'things' Mrs Gentle meant food. But Janice took the suggestion at its word. She had better get something to occupy her now that Mother was gone. But what?
It took her three months of solid writing and by the time she had finished she felt she had been wrung dry. There were she and Dermot Poll, reunited - recriminations, vindications, vengeances all accounted for and dealt with, the clear, pure light of being ahead of them. Companionate, harmonious, his journeyings done, coming to rest with her in a love that would last until Death divided them.
Ah, she thought, when it was finished, if only it were really and truly like that, how happy I should be. She never lost hope that one day either he would return to find her, or she, travelling life's highways, would find him.
She put the manuscript to the back of a drawer, where it might have remained had not the maiden aunt's annuity dried up, a factor not at first noticed by Janice's bank, which went on paying bills and cash for some time before the mistake was recognized. The bank manager was particularly annoyed about this, since he was about to retire and wished to get all the ends tied up properly. Janice Gentle was the only black mark on his copybook. After he met her he was not surprised. Decidedly overweight, he thought, and possibly retarded. She sat there, heavy as a sack of potatoes, putty-faced and expressionless. He persevered. He did not seem to be making much headway. He had explained that she was in debt. He had explained that she needed to earn some money. He had not explained the bank's culpability, because it was not appropriate. Nevertheless, he wished to get the difficulty dealt with to save any ... er ... further investigation by his successor. Miss Gentle did not seem to recognize the urgency of the problem, and he had made little progress in the matter of a job.
'Well,' he said with an exasperated raising of his hands, 'what do you do?'
Janice was feeling very confused. Men in suits with demanding voices were not her usual experience. She was watching his gold signet ring, which he twirled as he spoke, and she had become mesmerized by the motion, forgetting to listen. She looked at him dumbly. Did he mean what had she been doing in the last five minutes? Or the last five years? Or what? Perhaps he meant her daily routine? Perhaps this was social chit-chat, ice-breaking? She decided it was conversational and went for her daily routine.
He stopped her when she got to the bit about washing her hair on Thursdays. 'I do not mean activities of a personal nature,' he said testily. 'I mean how have you occupied yourself since your mother' - he was too irritated to euphemize - 'died?'
'Oh,' said Janice, glad to have something positive to say. 'I have written a book.'
'What sort of book?' He was sceptical. Could one so fat and dull really have achieved such a thing?
'Um,' said Janice, 'a story.'
'I see. Good, good. Well, well. Now, then.' He picked up his pen, unscrewed the cap and prepared to write. 'And how much have you been paid?'
'For what?'
'The book?' His pen was fairly itching to begin.
'Nothing,' said Janice. 'It's in a drawer at home.'
The pen nib splayed. 'Well, it's no good there, is it?'
The upshot of this meeting was that Janice should go away and consider her position - both with regard to the immediate and pressing concerns of her debt to the bank, and with regard to the future concerns of making a living. Janice should then return the following week with some clear ideas. Frankly, he thought, after she had gone, the likelihood of her doing any of those things was remote. The issue preyed on his mind. Only three more months to go and bright and bouncing Bar
nfather would be sitting in his chair, and he didn't want bright and bouncing Barnfather dining out on this. It was extremely irritating and took far too high a profile, as he kept telling himself, but if he wanted to hold his head erect in the golf club he needed to find a solution.
A day or two later, enthroned in the en suite, and having become bored with rereading the Harpic bottle, which celebrated the fact that his wife's preferred toilet cleaner contained sodium hypochloride and should not be allowed to enter the eyes (and who, he wanted to know, would want to put it anywhere near their eyes but a mental defective?), he brought Janice Gentle back to mind. He reached for one of the magazines his wife kept to while away the evacuatory hours, and flicked through it. A competition caught his attention and, with the juxtaposition of Janice Gentle and the page, a possible, if remote, solution raised itself. The competition was for a 'first novel by a yet unpublished woman writer'. Well, Janice Gentle was certainly that. Why not? It was a chance. He tore out the page, took it to his office, got his secretary to ring her — he being weary of any further encounters -and request delivery of the manuscript. Janice, not much inclined to relinquish it, was reminded that she had a responsibility to do so, and did. The secretary scooped it from her unwilling hands and passed it on to the bank manager, the bank manager passed it on to his wife, and she, in turn, passed it on to her daily. Both women thought it was wonderful. The bank manager's wife liked the lack of smut, the daily liked the romance of it, and the bank manager, who did not read it, sent it off to the magazine. It did not win. It did not even qualify.
The magazine immediately put it on the reject pile because it was handwritten; the rules specifically stated it should be typed. And, lest detractors bemoan this as a cavalier approach to literature, they should first be made to sit in a silent room attempting to interpret spider scrawl and backward slopes day after day after day. Despite Janice's manuscript being reasonably legible, on the reject pile it remained. And would have done so for ever were it not for the bounty of England's temperate clime.
The judge of the competition, her task completed, rang for a taxi after her final meeting with the magazine's editor. The winner had been chosen and a lady from Bournemouth was about to be honoured for her nineteenth-century tale of a shepherdess made good.
It was raining.
The judge, in years to come, had reason to bless this English phenomenon. While she waited for the taxi, she grew fidgety and began sifting through all the failed manuscripts - rejects, non-qualifiers, plagiarists. She picked out one at random, then another, then a third. She expected to laugh or at least to smile deprecatingly. It was something to do and a literary agent, for such was the calling of the judge, is never more at home than with a manuscript in her hand and half an hour to kill.
In Bangkok the trishaw drivers positively thrive, burgeoning like desert blooms, during the heaviest showers. In Madrid, given a cloudburst, you can scarcely move for taxis. In Venice, for some quaint reason, even the water taxis are not averse to helping a stranded pedestrian when a flood descends on San Marco. Interesting, then, that in London this particular mode of transport seems to shrink and wither when the finest drizzle appears. 'Not for ages, love,' said the taxi company to the judge when one of their number was requested - and ages meant ages. Sylvia Perth, for she it was, settled back to wait, with nothing but a whole pile of rejected first novels for entertainment.
The rain continued and, true to their word, the taxis of London did not come. But Sylvia Perth no longer cared. She was reading, suddenly, with that rapt avidity that Muhammad the Wolf might have experienced when first he lighted upon the Dead Sea Scrolls (had he not been illiterate).
And when, eventually, the snub, black-nosed creature did condescend to appear, its driver was much discomfited to be met not by a hair-tearing wreck, but by a freshly lipsticked, uncritical female, who, contrary to his expectations, was not at all put out that he had taken so long to arrive. She even tipped him to excess when he finally set her down on the pavement outside thirty-two Arterberry Road, so that he was forced to say with civility, 'Would you like me to wait, lady?' And to receive the gracious, smiling reply, 'No thanks. For I may be some time . . .'
Chapter Four
J
ANICE Gentle makes her way back to Battersea, feeling relieved and positive. Relieved because her characters are delineated, positive because she always does feel positive about going home. There is another reason for these twin emotions. She can now telephone Sylvia Perth, who has been waiting in heavy silence, and say that the deed is done, the book is afoot, decisions have been made. Today she will invite her over for tea, she decides, and tell her. Another little ritual. Sylvia Perth awaits the summons to Janice's tea-table as a relative to the reading of a will, outwardly tranquil, inwardly afire with impatience. All Janice knows is that the announcement is long overdue and that Sylvia Perth has shown a touch more agitation than usual during the six months or more that she has been waiting for teatime to be announced. Well, teatime is here at last.
On taking the timely decision, some of Janice's positivism dies. She has nothing in. Which means she will have to buy something in. Which means the tribulation of the corner shop. She sighs. She really is not good with people. In fact, she is very bad with people. She recalls its proprietor and shudders. Sometimes she thinks she will brain him with his own bubble-gum machine, and quite a lot of the positivism dies in her as she approaches the door. She takes a deep breath, enters, and at the same time decides that she will not, she is determined, be enticed into conversation. Whatever he says to her, she will remain mute apart from giving her order. 'Two packets of chocolate digestives, one cut loaf, a pot of raspberry jam, four scones and a half a pint of thick cream.' That is all she will say. She will repeat it if called upon to do so but she will say no more than that.
Alas, on entering, she stumbles. 'Enjoy the trip,' he calls.
She clamps her mouth shut. The bubble-gum machine stands innocently beside her. It would only take a minute . . . 'Nasty out again,' he says. She gives him her order. 'Ah,' he says, 'sweets for the sweet.' She stares at him. 'Raspberry, did you say?' 'Raspberry,' she repeats.
'Hot one minute and wet the next.' He shrugs. 'July? Never like this years ago. Greenhouse.'
Janice places jam, biscuits, loaf and cream in her bag and waits for the scones, silently.
'Six?'
'Six,' she repeats. She is not going to make the mistake of saying he is wrong. And what, really, is a couple more scones here or there?
'I thought you said four.'
'Six, please.'
She runs a plump hand over the bowl of the machine, looking at the fading wrappers of its contents. 'Brown or white?' 'White scones,' she says.
'I prefer 'em myself. All this brown stuff tastes like rope, eh?' 'Yes,' says Janice. 'It does.'
And then she shuts her mouth with a snap, but it is too late. She has begun to converse and he takes it up keenly.
'Course, I remember when they used to put little wooden pips in the jam to make it seem like raspberries.'
'Really?' she says, and sighs.
'That's how the Co-op came into being, you know.' He rests his hands on the counter in waxsome mood. 'To improve the standards of food. Of course, nowadays . . .' He is off.
Janice awaits patiently, putting her mind to more engaging things. She remembers, more cheerfully, that she has chosen her triumvirate of characters. She is here to buy tea for the ritual of beginning, and she wonders, as the history of modern social retailing unfolds before her, where her triumvirate will take her, and where she, in turn, will take them.
*
In the office of her Boss Masculine the secretary with blonde hair, pink lips and a daintily turned ankle stands. The man has dandruff on his dark lapel and two warts on his left hand. His face is tired. She hands him a cup of coffee and wishes he were like the boss in her magazine story, the one called Hugo. Hugo would look up abstractedly with his darkset eyes, and momentarily his
guard would slip and she would see the real man behind the tough facade. Something would have begun between them, but she would not, yet, know what. But the Boss Masculine does not look up and behind him there is no mirror to reveal - perhaps - a broadset body with powerful shoulders, only a sales chart awash with blue pin flags. She takes a sheaf of papers from the side of his desk and departs. Only her scent remains in the room, vying with the stale tobacco smells. He lights his third tipped cigarette that morning and puts through a call to Birmingham. His wife is to have an hysterectomy next week and the unspoken hope between them both is that their long-dead sex life will be revived. Perhaps it will be a medical miracle, though he has little hope of this. The hospital has given him a book on how to cope with a woman whose womb has just been removed, and it has depressed him. Convalescence can, it seems, take months and requires patience and gentleness. He seems to have run out of both commodities over the years. He sighs as Birmingham comes through, picks up the telephone and lifts off into his dynamic businessman role. It is the one he is best at, the last saving grace of his life. He has failed pretty badly in the marital one.
The Little Blonde Secretary beyond his door also sighs. In her magazine it discusses the all-engulfing multiple orgasm as a Woman's Right, which makes her feel anxious about herself. An unusual experience. There is also another article, as yet unread, on how to avoid the trap of boredom in your marriage: 'Yes, it can happen even after six months.' This makes her doubly anxious and doubly convinced that it is best left unread. She fingers the cover of her Janice Gentle, which also sits in her drawer. Here there is no such thing as a physical description of the all-engulfing multiple orgasm. Only at the end of the book, when the right couple are united, when good has won over bad (which will reliably happen, though with many a twist and turn on the way), only then will it begin to express itself. The Little Blonde Secretary has her own concept of what it is like, this desirable state of paradise: it is like the sea breaking wave upon wave as a suntanned male face with even, white teeth and an expression of tenderness places his warm, moist lips upon her own. Then there will be three dots on the page which represent the fulfilment of the dream. The unfamiliarity of this experience is somewhat explained to the sighing secretary because Derek goes pink in the sun and has slightly buck teeth. When he kisses her, there are no dots at the end of the line to express what comes next. His hand reaches straight up her nightshirt and between her legs, and it is no use calling, 'Dot, dot, dot. . .' for he never reads, anyway. He is too busy mending the window sashes or cleaning out the gutters to pick up a book. Mind you, she thinks tidily, at least they get it over with quite quickly nowadays.