by Mavis Cheek
He observed his lager, held it up. Why look through a glass darkly when all around were longing for the strip light to come on? No mystery. Anatomy rather than feeling. Bones but no breath. Perhaps he should record this passing like the monks of old? He smiled at the thought. Aelfric, Caedmon, the Venerable Bede. How could they know what they had started? He smiled and placed a thin line of raita on the edge of his plate. The souring of what was once sweet. The conundrum of the modern age. Pfeiffer begat Bulbecker, and Bulbecker would beget Gentle. And who would stop them? Him? Ah, no. He could do nothing, nothing. . .
Malvern, then, and the verses of Gerard Manley Hopkins in a cold, white cell. As far removed from the bathos to come as he hoped was heaven from hell.
His chicken mughlai was brought to the table. He looked at it with clasped hands and spiritual wonder. It was probably the last rich dish he would eat in his whole life and it smelled delicious.
He began to eat. Rohanne Bulbecker could damn well do her damnedest all on her own. He would have no more of it.
'Flesh fade, and mortal trash Fall to the residuary worm . . .'
He picked an almond out of the creamy sauce and sucked it.
The waiter hovered anxiously.
'God bless the spirit of humanity, if not its works,' he said.
The waiter bowed. The mughlai was obviously all right.
'Behold,' said his customer, bowing back. 'I see the clear light of bliss.' He smiled at the waiter. 'Did you ever read a poet called Gerard Manley Hopkins?'
The waiter returned the smile, bowed again and withdrew. The English were very strange. Why should he know about their poets when he had fine poets enough of his own?
Ms Rohanne Bulbecker sat up in bed and redialled the London number unsuccessfully. Herbie she had consigned to the Manhattan stars. She had hit him on the shin with her Filofax, a good aim, and now she sank back among the pillows and tried for the second time to recall her London connection. This time it rang but there was no reply. An onion bhaji was being nibbled, a life decision had been taken, and Ms Rohanne Bulbecker, rather like her London prey, stood alone.
She pushed aside the telephone, drew up her long white legs, rested her dainty chin upon her perfect knees, and thought. She was an intelligent woman. She realized that her screeching must have offended her London connection, and she also realized that there was no time to redress his umbrage. Besides, he had told her all she needed to know. Sylvia Perth was dead. Janice Gentle was back on the market. Action. And off the bed she tumbled.
'To London. To London. This time to win,' she sang, reaching for her suitcase, scrabbling among her clothing, cursing her ragged nails for catching in everything she touched. Since her lunch interview with Sylvia Perth, she had done nothing but bite them down to the quick, wait for them to grow, and bite them again. Loathsome, and a sign of deep personal distress. She smiled to herself. She contemplated her hands and no longer felt
distressed. Soon, very soon, she would be able to grow them back again. Perhaps the nails would be even longer and more beautifully shaped than before.
She folded her black biker's jacket, rolled up her leather trousers and threw in her Ray-Bans. Looking threatening was quite useful when you were endowed with a gamine blondeness, and she would rather wear leathers than have her hair shorn or her nose professionally broken for the blessing of being taken seriously. Sometimes her attractions were a positive disadvantage. One of the things she rather liked about Herbie was that he didn't seem to mind what she looked like — travel-exhausted or ready for the ball. But she sure as hell wasn't going to tell him that. Love was next stop disaster, and life was far too inviting to get caught up in its snares. She shivered. Look what happened if you did.
All the same, she wished he had thrown the Filofax back instead of just limping off like that. Still, it was the third date and about time he got his marching orders. Men, like fish, in Rohanne Bulbecker's opinion, should not hang around too long.
She snapped her case shut and rang Morgan Pfeiffer. 'Sylvia Perth has died,' she said, 'and I am going to London now to find Janice Gentle.' Everything was arranged and with a light and happy heart, Rohanne Bulbecker set off.
As she retrieved her Filofax from the door, she thought again of Herbie. How could he think she wanted sex during a telephone call? Men!
Not bothering to wait for the elevator, she whistled her way down the stairs feeling very happy indeed. Success was waiting for her. Too bad about her London connection but, really, it didn't pay to be quite so fastidious in this day and age.
Chapter Eight
I
N Skibbereen Dermot Poll grunted and moved his head with annoyance. His chin rasped against the grey sheet that was tucked around his neck. He turned on his side and swore. 'Shite and more shite,' he groaned. 'Wouldn't you think they'd fly their planes somewhere else? Why it's scarcely the morning.. .'
He pressed his buttocks into the ample female behind that was Deirdre', and she too grunted. What she grunted was difficult to distinguish, but the gist of it was clear.
'Pig yourself,' he retorted, and pressed his head further into the pillow. The smell of it was strong. 'If you cleaned up a bit, I'd be less of a pig — even were I a pig, which I am not.'
This time what she grunted was perfectly distinguishable.
'And you,' he murmured comfortably, and slept anew.
Outside in the passageway their son, Declan, tiptoed past the door. He was a man now and he was going to seek his fortune in London. And not like the others, either - it wasn't to be the building site for him. Oh no - he could sing, he had his guitar, and he had thirty-eight Irish pounds in his pocket. He pushed open his father's pub door and went out into the beautiful fresh air. Swirling behind him came the stale unwholesome atmosphere of last night's revelries. That was the last time he would sing for that drunken lot, with their tears and their anger and their patriotic, meaningless sentimentality. He inhaled long, wonderful breaths of the sea air and took the road out of Skibbereen towards freedom. And, unlike his father before him, he had no intention of ever coming back.
Dermot slept on, rank-breathed, raw-chinned, greasy from sleep' and odorous of excess, unaware that more waves were
breaking all around him than the silver horses on the shores of Skibbereen.
Rohanne's plane, diverted, roared on over the green beauty of Erin, but she never looked down nor gave it a thought. On her lap was a Janice Gentle book and her calculator. When she pulled this deal off it would be like the Phoenix rising once more.
She drummed her fingers on the book jacket. According to the captain they were just flying over Dublin waters. She looked down but could see nothing save greenness and sea in the morning mist. All that Ireland meant to her at that precise moment was an irritating addition to her ETA.
Chapter Nine
S
YLVIA Perth had been put on trial for her obscene sin of dying in a public place without first giving statement of intent, and being unoriginal enough to have done it of proven natural causes. The case was closed and Sylvia Perth's remains were released for interment. The media showed little interest in this small death since a member of the Blood Royal had been discovered in a massage parlour and there was a summer heat wave — 'Phew Wot a Scorcher' — both of which news items put the demise of one female literary agent into the shade. Happily, for Janice (though sadly for the Royal transgressor), she was left completely unpursued by the Hounds of Wapping.
On she waited, quietly, calmly, in her cloister of beige, certain that something was bound to turn up.
The police, in their inquiries regarding the reason Sylvia Perth should have been in the apartment building at all (and perhaps fired by the 'Sexy Royal in Oily Romps' headlines), decided that just about the only natural thing in Sylvia Perth's life was the cause of her death, and that very probably she had been visiting the apartment building in Battersea for 'Lezzie Perves in Girlie Romps' activities, not literary ones. Despite their inclinations this was n
ot a punishable offence, though it was, of course, disgusting, and without the iron zeal of Sergeant Pitter the matter was given only a cursory investigation.
Door-to-door inquiries provided no serious leads (the only non-alibied female, being fat, bespectacled and, so far as they could tell, three quid short of a five-pound note, was left alone). Mr Jones forgot everything because he wanted to get on with life. His hearing-aid came in very useful if his forgetfulness seemed in question. Sergeant Pitter could not think beyond his pain to what caused it in the first place, and, all in all, the parties concerned in the 'Dead Body in the Lift' episode appeared to be potty.
The pursuance of potty people was not the issue concerning the Great British Public at the time. They wanted law and order restored; they wanted their girl guides and aunties to walk abroad at night without being mugged, raped, terrorized; even the traditional criminal classes were indignant at the nasty turn things were taking. Despite governmental pressure for more and younger and larger exposed breasts in the tabloids, the natives were becoming restive. The police were told in no uncertain terms to catch a few big-time bad eggs and made the mistake of catching out a captain of industry in a rather large city-based fraud, thus embarrassing rather than enhancing the Government, with whom (possibly metaphorically) the captain of industry was intimately involved. It was no time to go pursuing perverts unless they were perverts in high places. AH in all, the reputation of the law enforcers was at a very low ebb. The women of Battersea were not surprised. As one remarked to the other while waiting in the launderette, 'If a policeman's going to burst into tears and call an ambulance just because his back aches - well, I mean to say . . .'
Since she had no way of mourning beyond the immediately accessible, she had put the cover on her word processor. Before doing so she contemplated erasing everything to do with Phoenix Rising (especially the tide), but did not. Somehow it seemed right, a connection with Sylvia, to keep it all in there, even if it would never now be used. There had been no word from anyone about a funeral, and Janice was not sure she could have faced one anyway, but since she had not taken part in such a ritual, in a sense Sylvia Perth was still with her.
Christine de Pisan tried to encourage her. 'When I started to write, things were a great deal tougher. Those witty lordlings publishing their blastanges de femmes all over the place against my sex, I can tell you. And very popular they were, too. Of course I succeeded in countering the defamations in the end and published my Cite des dames in praise of women - to great acclaim, actually. So I can't really feel a lot of sympathy for you. Not really, I'm afraid.'
Janice spooned in chocolate mousse miserably. It's all very well for you, Christine, she thought, but you're dead. Janice was undoubtedly alive. Very much alive. Signs of forthcoming patronage were not. She was still but a lady-in-waiting. She glanced at the covered screen and wondered, very hard, whatever would become of it all.
*
In Croydon Derek gave a loud whoop of joy as the Vent-Axia unit slipped perfectly into the hole he had made. Not many men could have done that straight off, he thought to himself, and he felt very manly. It had been the same when he made the cellar steps. Bingo! They had slotted in just like that. But when he had called his wife to see the six-stair miracle, she hadn't shown as much enthusiasm as he would have liked. 'I hope you haven't made too much mess' was all she said, which was rather unsympathetic given all his efforts. He had taken half his annual leave to do the job. And although to him making cellar steps was as good as a week in Torquay - still, she might have been perkier. You wait, he had thought irritably, you wait until you need to come down here with your hands full. You'll be jolly glad of a decent stairway then.
So much for the cellar. Perhaps the Vent-Axia would be different. He turned on the switch and the softness of its whirring was music to his ears. He stood there for a little while basking in the achievement, and then he called his wife. He called her again. He called her from the top of the landing but still no response. Suddenly he felt extremely cross; he'd been working in the bathroom up here since after their evening meal and she hadn't come up once - not once - to see what he was doing or to bring him a hot drink. Other wives did that sort of thing. Ken at work had only been saying so today - and what's more, Ken at work went out to the pub twice a week with the lads. Derek had never done anything like that, being happy to stay at home and do things about the house.
Eventually she called up to him. 'Not now, Derek,' she said. 'Can't you see I'm busy?'
Surely he had a right to feel hurt? Creating a non-damp atmosphere, and one that removed unpleasant odours (and it certainly hadn't been an easy job), was something he had done for both of them. Usually she would be very encouraging, but just recently she had been, well, less than her efficient and supportive self. She'd said something about the receptionist where she worked, but he had lost the thread of it. It would have been all the same if he'd said be was busy. After all, what was a moment or two to pop upstairs and admire what he had done? He looked with some pride at the Vent-Axia again.
As he had pointed out to Ken at work, a diamond ring might well be for ever, but with the wrong fitting in the plughole it could soon slip off and be lost for ever as well. Hah hah! He was always thinking of things to make everything function more perfectly. She liked that, didn't she? Then why couldn't she leave off whatever she was doing and come upstairs for a moment to say so? Women were a mystery. He would bloody well go to the pub like Ken had suggested. He tried out the Vent-Axia one more time before going downstairs; it worked a treat. Then he stood at the open front door very pointedly, with his anorak thrown carelessly over his shoulder, and declared rather tersely that he was going out.
Perhaps she would call him back? 'Bye,' she said from the kitchen. She had her Van Morrison turned up and was humming to it.
'Will you be having a bath later, then?' he called.
She put her head round the kitchen door. 'I always have a bath, Derek, every night,' and she was gone again.
Something had definitely got up her nose. He smiled over his teeth. Well, with the new unit installed it couldn't be that, now could it?
He tried to close the door loudly but the new Softaslam fitting meant he couldn't. Everything was against him. Even the building inspector, who had said there just wasn't room to extend the loft. Derek had been so disappointed. He'd got himself all geared up for it. The Vent-Axia had been a little bit of compensation for them both.
By the time he reached the gate his crossness had evaporated. Hallo? What was this? One of the hinges not quite right. He'd have to fix that. Indeed, now he came to think of it, the whole fence looked a bit dodgy. Perhaps that's what he should do this weekend. He set off down the pavement, swinging his anorak and calculating the amount of wood required, and felt quite cheerful again.
The Little Blonde Secretary sighed with relief. She had cleaned the bath after Derek, hoovered up all his mess — in the bathroom, along the landing and in the bedroom for heaven's sake - and now she was soaking in their nice, new big bath. A faint whirring above her head made her look up. A new plastic object stuck out from the wall, ugly and irritating. The steam rose towards it, it whirred even louder. She tried to lie there with her eyes closed and think nice thoughts, which is what that article on relax your way to beauty had said, but she couldn't. It sounded like there was a dentist drilling away in the room with her. Oh, for God's sake! She got out.
As she dried herself and put on her nightshirt, she thought that surety-she had the right to feel angry. First, his mess left all over the place (was he blind or what?); and second, here she was, the first time for ages, alone in the house and able to enjoy the peace (no drills, no smell of paint, no hammering) and he hadn't even done the job properly, because, whatever that thing was up there, it was making an awful racket and obviously needed attention.
She did her nightly face cleanse, taking particular trouble with the pores at the side of her nose. These - she peered more closely - seemed to be getting
a little larger. Perhaps she should get one of those face-steamers she had seen advertised. As she plucked away at a few odd stragglers around her eyebrows, she gave a sour little snort; better not tell Derek she was thinking of buying that sort of thing or he'd volunteer to build one. But she did like everything to be nice about herself; if you looked nice, then you felt nice, and if you felt nice, then your life was nice. How that plain telephonist at work could actually be pregnant, looking the way she did was - well . . . The Little Blonde had no intention of letting herself go, ever, because once you did - she shuddered - it would be impossible to get the niceness back. That woman in the tube the other day, for example. Gross, absolutely gross . . . No wonder she stared so hard at her. Envy. Not surprising. Gross.
She read a Janice Gentle for a little while in bed, and when she felt drowsy she curled up her legs, snapped out the light and fell prettily and daintily asleep to dream of exotic places, beautiful clothes and a man who was faceless but who didn't seem to be Derek at all, because he was — odd, really — a dentist.
Derek, returning a while later, slipped in beside her and reached for that nice curving bit she had at the bottom of her stomach. He tried to wake her by squeezing it, but she rolled away and brought her knees up to her chest and slept on. Ah well. He turned his mind to the satisfying new addition in the bathroom. 'And what did you think of my little surprise, then,' he murmured happily. 'I see you had a bath. Good, isn't it?'
He ran his tongue over his teeth. He had forgotten to clean them. Oh well. If she couldn't come and look when he wanted her to, why should he do what she wanted all the time? He closed his eyes. Ken was probably right about being able to reuse some of the existing wood for the new fence. He pushed his back up against hers. As he dozed off, he reflected that he wouldn't mind a bit of the other - a little reward for all his efforts — but she was far away now and he couldn't imagine that she'd be pleased to be woken up just for that. Ah well. He put his hand on his own private bits. They'd die down soon enough. He yawned - what with the beer and everything -and, feeling very contented, he snuggled himself further into his wife's sweet-smelling posterior and drifted off to sleep.