by Mavis Cheek
'Thank you,' said Janice, in a wondering voice, and to hide her confusion she buried her nose deep into the bunch.
Rohanne stared. She was not in the habit of buying anybody flowers, and it grieved her to see this caring gesture appropriated by the wrong person. Quite the wrong person. In fact a really, altogether disgustingly wrong person. She crossed her arms and looked defiantly at the body attached to the arm and the sausagey digits.
'What the hell are you doing?' said Rohanne Bulbecker, the shock making her forget that a moment before she had been at one with the world. 'Those flowers are for Janice.'
'I am Janice,' said Janice, quite used to such aggression since her sortie from her cell. 'Janice Gentle. I write books.'
She closed her eyes and waited. She waited not in vain.
Rohanne pointed a finger, keeping another in her mouth, tantalizing the edge of her teeth with its nail . . . 'You are who? And you do what?'
Wearily Janice repeated the two short sentences. 'I am Janice Gentle. I write books.'
Once more she closed her eyes.
Once more it was not in vain.
She did not see Rohanne look at Erica, nor Erica return the look with a shrug of apology and a nod of assent.
Then it came. First an intake of breath, followed by a gurgling of a throat, and then the soft voice of Rohanne Bulbecker saying, 'Fuckyou, fuckyou, fuckyou. . .'
'Oh,' said Janice, suddenly very annoyed at the triple invocation of such crude Anglo-Saxon. 'I'm going home.' But the door was already barred by the pale-haired woman in black, who rested one arm across it as if she defended the very deeps of her own honour while chewing at her free hand's finger-end. Janice felt in her pocket. If all else failed, there was still that.
*
Morgan Pfeiffer and Enrico Stoat took a glass of champagne together. 'To Janice Gentle and the future,' said Enrico Stoat, raising his glass high. 'And to marketing.'
Morgan Pfeiffer sipped and looked pleased. 'I thought Ms Rohanne Bulbecker would do it. They don't come much tougher than her.'
'To her, then,' said Stoat, raising his glass again. 'To Ms Rohanne Bulbecker,' agreed Morgan Pfeiffer, and they drank.
*
The object of their praise had recovered a little. Not very much. Merely enough to form words and project them coherently.
Everything, then, was in ruins. She had been fooled by that bogus beauty, and she had trumpeted her befooled state to the Pfeiffer world. They were expecting gold and she would bring them only dross. She looked at the real Janice Gentle, who looked back at her owlishly.
Rohanne closed her eyes. 'What am I going to do?' she wailed. A rhetorical question.
'About what?' asked Janice politely.
Rohanne knew it was weakness. She knew it opened her up, made her vulnerable, allowed the listener to have something over her. All the same she could not stop herself. She needed to speak out, she needed to tell the truth. To this fat and unspeakable stranger she poured forth her terrible quandary. About Morgan Pfeiffer and Enrico Stoat and her own depressed position. There was no point in trying to hide any of it from Janice Gentle. It was far too late for equivocation.
'I suppose,' she said, when she had finished, 'that we could go on pretending she was you.' She pointed an accusing finger at Erica von Hyatt, who was sitting, serene and philosophical, next to Janice Gentle on the couch, while Gretchen O'Dowd stood behind her, uncomprehending but stalwart, Saturn and Mars.
'I don't mind,' said Janice Gentle. 'I'm not at all interested in writing any more books. I really only came here to switch Sylvia off. And to check she really was dead.'
'She is certainly that,' said Rohanne impatiently. 'And her mother has buried her.'
'Her mother?' said Janice, interested. 'I didn't know she had one.'
'Not you as well,' said Rohanne irritably.
Janice remembered the brave Christine's advice to older women in the state of virginity. Maidens should remain moderate and tasteful and never get into arguments or disputes with anybody.
Sometimes the road was hard. ‘I shall go home now,' she said, and she placed the beautiful bunch of flowers on the couch wistfully.
'No,' said Rohanne Bulbecker. 'Not yet. I've just come from a lawyer's office. And knowing what we now know, I wouldn't be too sure about never writing another book again.' She looked Janice up and down defiantly. 'Not if you want to eat . . .' Rohanne squatted down on her haunches and brought her face on a level with those pale, rather frightened eyes. Let me tell you,' she said, 'a thing or two about your dear Sylvia Perth.'
*
Square Jaw saw them before they saw him. He stopped the car and watched them furtively. Melanie was wearing a very short skirt - too short, far too short - and boots that came up to her knees - white boots, for God's sake. She looked like a tart, a tart. Sexy and daring. He did not want her to be sexy and daring. Especially he did not want her to be sexy and daring in the company of the bloke she was with, who looked, from the back at least, a right smooth bastard. A bright shirt, rolled-up sleeves, jeans, casual, confident - confident about what? Confident about bloody Melanie, from the look of it. He knew all those dodges. The way the bloke held her elbow as they reached the restaurant door (why that restaurant? Close to his place, a favourite, they'd walked there often enough), the way he put his hand on her lower back to guide her in. The gestures of possession, the gestures of I mean to have. Square Jaw remembered them. They were one of the reasons he enjoyed a long-term, one-to-one relationship, why despite the difficulties he had persisted in it - because he could let go of all those petty formalities, all those attendances that kept you on your toes, let go of them to just relax and be. That smooth bastard was on the make, moving in for the kill and she - white boots, short skirt — was encouraging it to happen. He got out of his car and stood on the pavement. He could go in there — have a pasta or something - and why not? He lived just round the corner, he had every right - more than they did. He got back into the car. Shit, he thought, who cares? He saw her turn and smile as the door swung to. Melanie happy. So why wasn't he? Well - he could bloody well be happy, too.
He got back into the car, reversed noisily, the power of the engine, the futile roaring of the clutch, the screeching of his tyres, the fright of the passers-by - all stupidly satisfying. The roar again as he changed gear and drove off into the twilit night, the aggression and the speed dispensing with any other feelings that feebly beat their wings. He'd show her, vroom, vroom, vroom. Oh yes. She'd be getting her presents gift-wrapped now, all right, she'd be turning the screw about flowers with somebody else, and soon somebody else would start getting things wrong. They'd hear her say, 'Well, if you don't know, I'm not telling you' - all that, all that - and he was welcome to it. Poor, poor sod, he could have her. He was going to that party after all. He, too, was embracing life. He took the amber light at sixty and the power made a knot -in his gut. Hadn't taken her long to get over him, and just as bloody well. . .
Melanie sat down in the restaurant and looked at each of the tables, wondering if he might be there. If he could see how she was getting on with life, how she was attractive to other men, how she could laugh and enjoy herself, he would be stirred to do something. Her heart had been really thumping when they came in. Now that he wasn't there, she felt the pumping draining away and she just felt miserable again. She gave the man opposite her a very bright smile. Yes, she would like a drink - a very big drink, and very quickly. Of course, he might come in later, or walk by and see her inside. She must keep bright at all costs. She must look happy, relaxed, fulfilled - not like the old Melanie, not the old, unhappy, neurotic burden.
She leaned forward and put her chin in her hands, provocative, appealing. 'Now tell me,' she said to the man opposite her, 'what made you choose income tax as a career?'
Later she excused herself and went out to the Ladies'. On a whim she rang his number. If he answers, she told herself, I shall say something funny like, 'Help, I'm stuck in Popinjay's with a real
ly boring man. Come and rescue me.' They should still be able to wear jokes like that - they knew each other well enough. It was all so silly this being apart, and stupid, stupid, to pass up all that knowing for this . . . She dialled and waited. Somebody had written the line of a song on the wall by the telephone. 'Tell Laura I love her', and somebody had added underneath, 'Tell her yourself . . .
*
'Do you mean,' said Janice Gentle, 'that I made a lot of money and Sylvia Perth spent it?'
Rohanne Bulbecker nodded.
'All of it?'
'More or less. Of course, you'll get some of it back in time.' 'How long?'
'Years,' said Rohanne. And then, because Janice looked so woebegone, she melted a little. 'I'm really sorry. Didn't you ever even suspect?'
Janice shook her head.
'Where did you think all the money went?' (Oh for a fraction of it, thought Rohanne Bulbecker.)
'Sylvia just looked after me. That's all. And there was always enough for my needs. What was left over was supposed to help me find Dermot Poll. Only there was never quite enough.'
This left the listening trio in some confusion.
Rohanne Bulbecker thought Der Mottpoll might be some kind of Germanic Mountain of Wisdom.
Erica von Hyatt thought it was something to do with the poll tax (the existence of which was one of the few benefits of calling a box home, since you did not have to pay it).
Gretchen O'Dowd thought of the North Pole and wondered what the most northerly part (she had watched many Open University programmes in her country solitude) of the earth's axis had to do with being a writer.
'Perhaps I should explain,' said Janice. 'Dermot Poll is a man.'
'Ah,' they said in comprehending unison. 'Of course.'
For what else could be at the centre of such a muddle? Even despite the woman's grubby countenance and undesirable curves.
'I shall begin at the beginning,' said Janice the storyteller. And she took herself back to a cold, dark, wet February night when the whole world seemed coloured by magic.
*
Red Gold was laughing to herself as the train pulled out of the station. She had wanted to take the tea-urn into the carriage with her, but the guard hadn't allowed it. 'You can't put it on the seat, it's too big for the floor and if it falls off the luggage rack you could be killed.'
'So?' she had wanted to say. There was something recklessly bizarre and amusing at the prospect of such an apposite end. But she had let him take it away without too much fuss. What a joke. How they had laughed about it last night. Amid the crumpled sheets and her spilling hair they had howled with merriment at its absurdity.
'I shall think of you,' she had said last night, 'every time I use it.'
'Ah,' he said, laughing wickedly, 'but which bit of me?' And he took her hand and pressed it to that most private part of him, the part she celebrated knowing, the part she liked to recall when she saw him dressed in his perfect tailoring, his proper shirt and tie.
Of course, she had been lying. She knew that as soon as the passion ebbed from them and he slept.
'Once and only once, for old time's sake,' was what she had said at the Ritz.
He looked at her across his champagne, the perfectly manicured fingers holding his glass, the neat white cuff, the dark, expensive blue of the sleeve above. His eyes were intelligent, considerate, amused. She wanted to kiss them closed, touch their lids. 'Are you absolutely sure?' he asked. 'I don't want to hurt you again.'
'Nonsense,' she said gaily, 'that's all in the past. Why, this is just a bit of fun . . .'
But he already had.
He had told her in that one sentence all she needed to make her heart ache afresh. It would be once and once only. He would be able to walk away and never return, he would not be hurt by seeing her go.
'Of course,' she continued, still smiling flirtatiously, 'we are both old married troupers now. You are a cabinet minister and I am a vicar's wife. We could not do it more than once. It would not be at all proper. It was only a whim on my part, just a lovely whim.'
'A dangerous one,' he said.
'Not at all,' she replied.
For a minute she read his thoughts. He was weighing up the adventure of it, the heightened romance, against the risks. She knew what to do to allay his fears, and removed from her pocket her return ticket.
'I have to get the midday train back,' she said crisply, 'and I want to avoid any possibility of suspicion.'
He was seduced by that. Whereas the shadow of her curves, the message in her eyes were expendable, the promise of detachment without future responsibility won him. So she had had her illicit walk in the garden of Love before climbing back over the wall into her cabbage-patch life.
She leaned her arm on the parcels beside her and ran her fingers through her loosened hair. She cared not a damn for suspicion now. She had almost convinced herself that the old ghost was sated, the dream laid to rest, and that one such beautiful night was all she would ever ask. She must not enter that garden again, must never seek to. This was the last gate she could pass through, the key had been taken from her. Coming back, she was on her own. He had retained the key when she left him this morning. She must never enter there again. He had said so, stroking her hair, kissing her neck, his eyes dry, tears in hers.
'Only this once,' he had said.
'Only this once,' she had agreed.
Easy to say it then.
She began tucking her hair into a band, preparing to claim the tea-urn, descend the train, go back. She laughed as she looked in the mirror, and then she put her ringers to her mouth, for the laugh had been mirthless.
Arthur was on the platform, waiting, waving as her carriage passed him by, following the train as it slowed. Like a shepherd, she thought, in search of his lost lamb. A favourite text. If a man have a hundred sheep and one goes astray, does he not rejoice more for the one that is found than for all the others safe within their fold? Rather like her. With all the sheeply blessings she had in her life, still she sought and wanted the one which eluded her. She waved back. Arthur should really get out of the Bible and his precious Langland and come up to date. Did she want him to know? Did she care? Would it not be exciting to have an explosion of emotion? On her breast she bore a purpling mark. He who had been so careful had been too weak to resist her passionate insistence, too aroused to think beyond the offering-up of her flesh to be bruised. Now it was the mark of her guilt, the lover's brand on the sheep returning. She did not care.
Arthur held out his hand to help her down from the carriage. It felt like the hand of a cripple, without strength, without hope. He looked at her with an expression she could not fathom and then he released her.
In the car he said, 'Was everything satisfactory?'
'I think I got everything,' she said, brushing away a tendril of hair irritably.
'Nothing to go back for? Nothing you have forgotten?'
'I have forgotten nothing,' she said positively, 'and I got everything I needed, thank you.'
But already the slowness of the car, the bumping of the country roads, his unsophisticated hands on the wheel, even the smell of the upholstery were like a closing-in.
'Arthur,' she said, 'you haven't given a sermon on the lost sheep for ages. Don't you think you should?'
'Perhaps,' he said.
She stretched out her legs, letting her skirt ride up over her knees. 'I need shriving,' she said mischievously. 'London is such a wicked place.'
He said nothing.
'And I have entered the temptation of superstition.'
'Yes?' he said, turning the car through the gates. Rabbits in the dusk were caught spellbound in the headlights, feet up, ears stiff, noses twitching. 'How?'
'I gave a beggar woman a pound for luck instead of trusting in the Lord.'
'And were you lucky?'
'I think so.'
He smiled wryly. 'Maybe it was God's will all the time. If the tea-urn is unscathed from its journey, than we should gi
ve thanks for that.'
'Why?'
He turned off the ignition and looked at her. The lights showed her eyes wide and brilliant, unblinking like the rabbits. 'Because now it has arrived here whole, you will never need to go back for another.'
She shivered. The mischievous smile faded. She got out and slammed the door, leaving him to bring in the offending item. The rabbits, galvanized by the noise, scattered for safe haven. At the door she turned and looked back. She watched how he handled it with painstaking care and how he carried it with firm, sure steps towards the house.
Drop it, you bastard, she wanted to shout. Please, please, drop it.
*
'Suppose he is married?' asked Rohanne Bulbecker.
Janice wished not to hear. 'What?' she said.
Rohanne was a direct woman and erred on the side of insensitivity. So she spoke louder. 'I said, "Suppose he is married?"'
Janice looked at her blandly, eyes unwavering behind spectacles. 'He won't be,' she said.
'He might be,' said Rohanne. 'He might very well be . . .'
'A knight can always love a lady though she be married to someone else,' she said dreamily. 'It is allowed.'
'Nowadays,' said Rohanne crossly, 'it's divorce and alimony.'
Janice sighed. 'Then there won't be any need to write any more, and I shall retire from life completely.'
'But I doubt if he is,' said Rohanne, quick as a gunshot. 'In fact, thinking about it, I am quite sure he isn't.'
'Funny, that's what Sylvia said.'
'I'll bet,' muttered Rohanne.
'He could be divorced,' said Erica kindly.
'He could be dead,' said Gretchen O'Dowd with equal solicitude.
Rohanne glared.
'Dead?' said Janice, and she pushed another sugared almond between her lips. 'Perhaps that is why he never arrived.'
Rohanne patted her shoulder and grimaced at Gretchen. 'Why not take a walk?' she said sourly. 'Now, Janice, why should he be dead? He sounds like a survivor to me.'