by Mavis Cheek
So she had made her date, while Arthur held his bridal class, sitting in his deck-chair, with the girls untidily kneeled around him on a tartan rug. She saw him point at his feet and then gesture a question. The girls laughed. He had got to the bit where he asked them if they would use up their best face cream to soothe their husbands' feet. The bit about sacrifices. Time to take out the cooling drinks. Those three blank faces would need some refreshment. Sacrifices were what they would do for the rest of their lives. She ran down the stairs, scooped up the tray with jug and glasses and came smiling upon the group.
'I was saying,' said Arthur, 'that marriage is a labour of love. That each of you is required to give things up to the other's better happiness. Go into it with both your eyes and your heart open and knowing that to change, to adapt, to accept, is to succeed.' He sipped his drink, looked over the top of the glass. 'Would you say?'
'Oh, certainly, certainly,' she laughed. 'Never stop working at it, girls,' she instructed like a school-marm. 'Don't have too many dreams . . . And keep the little niceties . . .' (if they had any to keep) - she was feeling almost delirious with the bubble of pleasure, the memory of his voice on the telephone - 'the little niceties in view. Do you know that Arthur kisses my hand sometimes?'
The three girls giggled nervously. Arthur looked at her. Again she looked away. Her heart was aching for London. She should not have said that. Perhaps it was a nice image for the girls? Anyway it was too late, it was said now. Maybe he would stop doing it at last. She looked at the sniggering faces.
Later, she promised herself, I shall atone. I always do. It was the shedding of guilt. I have given him this.
'I'll get the early train,' she told him. There's no need to come to the station.'
'I shall walk with you when you go,' he said firmly. Somehow there was no room for the even the lightest of arguments against it.
And he accompanied her. They walked past honeysuckle, and the drying pods of the delphiniums gave off their dusty, peppery scent. The roses, heavy and full-blown, bent as they passed, still with the dew on them.
'The garden needs a good pruning,' she said. 'And the lawn's mossy again. I've let it go these past weeks. I shall set it all to rights when I get back.'
She resented his staying so close as they walked. She wanted the excitement to begin the minute she stepped out of the front door. Every minute that Arthur was with her meant a shaving of the pleasure time. What was she doing talking about horticulture at such a moment?
'Go now,' she said to him at the barrier. She said it more loudly, more crossly, than she had intended.
He shook his head. 'I shall see you on the train,' he said, and waved with cheerful greeting to the ticket collector as they passed.
On the station she prattled away brightly, hating his being with her. Her only consolation was that this was another penance for her to fulfil. A task, the kind of thing he talked about in his marriage lessons. Talking to Arthur now on this run-down, littered, grimy platform was hell. She must suffer it, though she wished him away from her with all her heart.
'I think I can hear the train,' he said suddenly, and moved towards her, kissing her cheek. 'You were beautiful last night. Come back to me soon.'
She moved away, smiled awkwardly, looked down the line, waiting with hope. They had made love. She out of penitential duty, the feeding of dues to Arthur, the assuaging (she hoped) of his watchfulness, which might or might not be purely in her imagination. She had done that, atoned in the dark. Could he not now let her alone to her pleasure? Last night she had pleasured him. Oddly she had enjoyed it, a surprise, a bonus. Her body shook with his at the end and her sigh of satisfaction had been real. A reminder, perhaps, of how she could respond, let her body delight, when she was lit from within. Then he had stayed close, his head buried in the well of her shoulder, damp-eyed, arm heavy around her waist, stifling, but she had not remonstrated. Now she wanted him gone.
The train, coming round the bend, was like a saviour. She had waved from the window, each wave representing another measure of freedom. And now she was alone, rocking towards London, a voucher for Carver's the church suppliers in her handbag, a room booked at Arthur's club for the night, and - the strawberry that nestled within it all - tea at the Ritz to come.
*
Outside the Ritz Rohanne congratulated herself on her achievement and looked about her with a pleasurable smile, which was somewhat diminished at the sight of a fat bag lady staggering towards the entrance of Green Park. She watched as a woman with red-gold hair pressed a coin into her hand and gave her a brilliant and happy smile before skipping off.
'What the hell makes people that way?' Rohanne asked as they entered the Ritz. Erica shook her head. 'She wasn't one of us,' she said positively. 'You can tell. She wasn't going for a touch at all.'
Rohanne was giving her another curious stare. 'Pardon?' she said.
'I mean,' said Erica, 'I don't think she was.' She decided to change the subject to something altogether safer. 'How is Sylvia?' she asked with a bright smile for her companions.
This time they both stopped and stared. This time they both said, 'Pardon?'
'You do . . . um . . . know, don't you?'
'Know? What?' Keep smiling, she told herself, keep smiling. 'That Sylvia Perth is dead.' Gretchen held up her letter and wiggled it.
'My employer . . .'
Light dawned. 'Oh yes, of course, how silly of me. So she is,' said Erica quickly. 'I forgot.'
Shame, she thought privately, but she was not surprised. The woman was a bag of nerves, really.
Rohanne's eyes widened. Even to one as tough as Rohanne Bulbecker, forgetting such an event was, well, a little unfeeling. 'Just how close were you to her?'
'Very,' said Erica von Hyatt firmly. 'Very, very close . . .' And so they had been on their one night together. Erica von Hyatt liked to keep near to the truth.
Rohanne put it down to eccentricity and the national propensity for a stiff upper lip, and they entered the building cheerfully enough for a trio so recently bereaved.
Nobody minded how they looked. Erica's pink gown and silver tassels were quite acceptable since the petro-pound had revitalized the primitive art of wearing one's wealth ostentatiously. Rohanne was not turned away for her mirrored shades and leather gear, since the petro-pound had now evaporated, and a customer was a customer .. . And Gretchen looked perfectly decent, her moustache neady tidy.
Erica felt philosophical. It might or it might not work. She might or she might not sustain the deception. The real Janice Gentle might or might not arrive and unmask her. It was out of her hands. In the meantime she would deflect personal questioning, wherein lay discovery, and make the most of the meal. At the bottom line, which is where she felt it was always sensible to begin, she'd eat better than she had ever eaten in her life. And they can't take that away from me, she thought.
She smiled at Rohanne through a mouthful of bread.
'Champagne?' said Rohanne.
Erica nodded through the bread.
Champagne was ordered.
Then Rohanne sat back and looked fondly at her protegee. 'I'd like to know all about you,' she said encouragingly. 'Tell me about yourself.'
Erica von Hyatt smiled back. She went on chewing, slowing down so that the process became more like a bovine exercise. Erica's mind had gone blank. Rohanne Bulbecker, retaining her encouraging smile, had begun to drum her ragged nails on the tablecloth. The waiter intervened and poured the wine, and, without thinking ahead, Erica picked up her glass and took a gulp. Which dispatched the last of the protective bread. Now she was on her own.
'Well. . . urn,' she said.
Gretchen O'Dowd was looking at her with quite as much interest as Rohanne Bulbecker. She took advantage of the silence to ask what she longed to know. 'Have you, for instance' - she shrugged as if it were immaterial, but her heart was pounding in her breast - 'ever been a barmaid?'
'Yes,' Erica said, deciding to be positive about everythi
ng. 'I have.'
Gretchen sighed. 'I knew it,' she said. Her pounding heart was irretrievably lost.
'You have been around,' said Rohanne, determined to think positive. Erica put more bread in her mouth, chewed and smiled gummily.
Gretchen talked regretfully of her now dashed plans for Sylvia's earthly commitment. 'Oh yes,' she said dreamily, the champagne giving her wing, 'she would have lain in the open coffin for a day and a night with candles at the head and foot and dressed in her white satin Hartnell with the rose at its breast. There would have been huge arrangements of summer flowers, including scented lilies, to hide the smell.'
'What smell?' asked Erica, interested.
'Putrefaction,' said Gretchen promptly.
'Yes,' said Erica, 'we had one of those once. When I lived under the arches at Kennington. He'd got a washing-machine box, nice and big, still with the top flaps, so he closed them up at night. It was really very private. And none of us knew for days that he'd snuffed it. It was during that hot summer. Remember, last year? Twice as hot as this. Anyway, it wasn't until this smell began to get everywhere that we realized what. . . had. .. happ-ened.' Her voice slowed and trailed to a halt as she realized that Rohanne Bulbecker, spoon to lips, was staring at her as if she had died in a box herself.
'Charity work,' said Erica promptly, remembering a November evening when their homes had been invaded by do-gooders bent on suffering alongside them for a night. 'Take me with you, Guv,' she had called mockingly after their sad-eyed leader in the morning, but he appeared not to hear.
Rohanne relaxed again. 'Just for a moment there I thought...' she said, and then shook her head, putting a spoon of consomme between her teeth.
'Go on,' said Erica to Gretchen. 'What else?'
Gretchen explained about the walk over the fields.
'Very nice,' said Erica.
'Jeezus,' whispered Rohanne under her breath and continued to smile.
Suddenly she felt humble. Instinct and character told her to rebel at these stupidities. Discretion in matters of business prevailed. But given the growing weirdness of everything, she broke her rule and took another glass of bubbles. Which did, indeed, make the world seem easier to bear.
Two glasses of Chateau Haut-Brion were brought. Rohanne herself was happy with sole. Given the nature of the proceedings, sole seemed about as much as her stomach was up to. She smiled across the sensitively arranged goujons as Gretchen described the wake, the food at the wake, the music at the wake, the dancing .. .
'Dancing?' Rohanne put down her fork. She could eat no more under the circumstances.
Gretchen nodded. 'Dancing. I thought that would be nice . . .'
Erica, who had been only half listening while looking covetously at Rohanne Bulbecker's still-full plate (her own having been emptied and wiped for some time), said, 'Don't you want that?' pointing at the scarcely touched fish. Rohanne watched, astonished, as Erica stretched across and pulled her plate towards her. She was even more astonished to see that while she did this with one hand, the other was furtively concealing bread rolls in the folds of her swinging pink gown. Rohanne Bulbecker shrugged. Best not think about it. Only the dessert to go, she counselled herself, and then it will all be over.
Erica requested to go back to Dog Street. She was vague about her own home and, in any event, Gretchen O'Dowd was feeling very firm on the matter of inheritance. 'Until they prove beyond reasonable doubt' - she had watched a few courtroom dramas in her time - 'that I am not her heir, you have my permission to be there.'
'Is there anything you need?' asked Rohanne.
'Well,' said Erica, 'There's not much of anything in the flat. Not even toilet paper. Pink would be nice.'
Rohanne remembered the bread rolls. 'What about food?'
'There isn't much of that.'
Rohanne sighed with relief. At least it was some kind of explanation. 'Sylvia's solicitors are in Knightsbridge. We'll get something from Harrods afterwards.'
'Harrods?' said Erica ecstatically, 'I once lifted four cooked chickens from right under an assistant's nose. He never saw. But when I went back to do it again . ..' - she yawned - 'they'd moved them out of reach.'
They watched her taxi move off. 'In the bag,' muttered Rohanne doubtfully. Once again she felt peculiarly alone.
Gretchen O'Dowd and Rohanne Bulbecker walked down to Knightsbridge. Rohanne had her nose deep into a pile of papers.
'What are those?' asked Gretchen.
'Oh, just a few documents I picked up at Dog Street -accounts, stuff to do with Janice Gentle, things like that. . .'
She read for a while. 'Look,' she said eventually, and she gripped Gretchen's arm so tightly that Gretchen feared very much what was coming next, 'when we get there, pretend I am Janice Gentle's American lawyer. OK?'
Gretchen shrugged and nodded. That, at least, was a harmless suggestion.
*
Janice Gentle wished increasingly that she had not chosen such a hard task for herself. She expected Sylvia's side of town to be elegant, mannerly, refined, but by comparison with Battersea it was worse than a medieval stew. It was certainly as threatening. So far (and she had only got to Piccadilly) she had been accosted by a fist-shaking old woman with a mane of matted hair, cracked shoes and the vestiges of violent action around her eyes and temples - scabs, bruises, abrasions. 'What do you want?' Janice had asked politely. 'Revenge,' said the woman, and .pushed Janice over in the gutter. Nobody came to help her up, and one woman hissed, 'Drunken bitch,' as she stepped over her. Not much further on a man with dreadlocks and a prayer book was standing on a street corner declaiming on the evils of the world, while boys jostled him, shouting obscenities, pitching into him though he stood his ground. 'The day of the Lord is nigh,' he averred. 'Go back to the jungle,' they replied. The man with dreadlocks was right: the world did, indeed, seem to be on the edge of something and full of menace and despair. Less and less did Janice feel she was participating in a Burgundian celebration or Chaucerian cavalcade, and more and more did she feel she was treading the path of the post-Black Death social degeneracy.
She had parted with over ten pounds in change before she realized that she could not go on sparing a quid for a cuppa every time she was asked, and when she had refused, finally, to grant such a request, the pinched-faced young woman with a battered pushchair and two head-lolling children had rammed her legs and cursed her with cancer. She tried resting in Green Park and was given a pound coin herself by a passer-by. When she handed it on to a weird young man with a jewel in his nose, he spat (though she didn't think it was particularly at her) and went savagely on his way. Dogs snarled at her. One shop asked to see her money first and another tried to short-change her. She was refused permission to a public lavatory, and, on showing her money, was allowed in only to find it was better to risk disgracing herself in the street. All in all it was hell on earth out here. She could not wait to switch off Sylvia Perth and get back to the safety of her own little cell.
By the time she turned into Dog Street - a journey that had taken a good deal longer than it might after her A-Z had been snatched from her hand - she felt she had suffered enough, even for the noble Sylvia. The tube journeys had, at least, been contained. This - this was a rampant free-for-all, and none had showed themselves to be kind. Except the woman with red-gold hair who had pressed the pound coin into her hand saying, 'Have this for love.' But even she had wanted something in return. 'Wish me luck,' she had urged, 'wish me lucky in love.' But she was gone before Janice had time ... If she had not looked so much younger and so much more frivolous, Janice would have sworn it was the same woman she had noticed on the tube.
Well, Dog Street at last. She looked up at the building. 'Top Flat' said the disc on the keys in her hand.
Well, it would be, she puffed, beginning on the stairs. Nothing seemed designed to be easy any more.
*
Unusually for Square Jaw it had been a spur-of-the-moment thing. He had got into the car, bought a bunch of sod
ding flowers on the way, and driven to Melanie's place. He had put the box of things in the car, just in case she was cool, and when he rang her bell, his heart thumped, which was crazy given how long they had known each other. And after all that - shit - she had been out. Again. But he waited, just in case she was held up at work. He waited for an hour in the car, listening to Clapton, chewing Murray Mints, thinking each sound might be her. He felt quite at home waiting there. Like in the old days. In fact — he looked at his keys in the ignition - in fact, he still had her key on his ring. He could, if he wished, let himself in. He didn't, though. He waited through the whole of Behind the Sun and Greatest Hits, and then drove away. He felt angry, cheated. He could have left her the flowers, but she might laugh at them, or maybe she would come back with somebody else who would laugh at them.
He stuck them in the sink when he got home and listened to his answerphone messages. There was one from Jeremy's girlfriend. 'He's away in Hong Kong,' she said, 'and he's asked me to tell you we're having a party.' She sounded slightly peeved (he recognized that kind of tone from Melanie sometimes). 'Apparently Jeremy has got the deal and wants to have a celebration. Come around nine.' She gave him the date.
I might just do that, he told himself, but he didn't, really, think that he would.
Melanie returned with a heavy heart. Oh, the misery. Oh, the tears. It had been a spur-of-the-moment thing, creeping past his place in the car, looking up at dark windows, empty silence. So where was he, then? She was tempted to use her key, but what had once been open territory was now banned; she would be a trespasser. And if she did go in, what? To sit up there and wait for him? Maybe wait all night? Or wait and find him coming back with somebody else? She sat in the shadows, further down the street, she waited for an hour. She listened to the Eurythmics and Annie Lennox made her weep (she always did). Eventually, after 'Savage' and 'Be Yourself Tonight', she drove home, taking the river route and sobbing to the moon.