by Mavis Cheek
'Well, anyway,' Erica patted the other shoulder, 'you will never know unless you find him, will you?' She remembered her chats in the crypt. 'Faith will move mountains,' she said, 'if you believe. And we're only talking about a man, not a bleeding mountain, fuck it.' She added this last, feeling it was justifiable emphasis.
'I don't want to find out, if he's dead . . .' Janice shivered.
'Can't stop now,' said Erica. 'Otherwise you'll spend all your life wondering. Think of the parable of the loaves and fishes. He raised those from the dead, didn't he?'
There was a short period of understandable silence after this, and Erica's small congregation appeared to be lost in thought. It sounded sort of right.
'And if I've survived, then I don't see any reason for thinking he hasn't. . .' she added positively.
Janice looked at her admiringly. 'There is a fourteenth-century French poem by Jean de Meun called Roman de la Rose.' She wrinkled her forehead attempting to remember it. Rohanne Bulbecker nearly groaned out loud with despair; her new-found author looked even less appetizing when she was pondering.
Janice brightened. 'I can remember it in a sort of hotch-potch of Old French,' she said. 'Of course, it is not my idea of the grand literary ideal - it's rather deprecating about our sex -' 'Shame,' said Erica.
‘But it is not as cruel as blastanges de Femmes, and so we should allow its qualities. Now, how does it go?' Janice opened her mouth to speak, and then raised a didactic finger. 'Of course, the entire Roman is allegorical - I'm thinking of Jean de Meun's duenna, le Vielle, one of his characters, you know. He gives us a whole series of them before the Lover finally obtains the rose. In fact, the whole debate and symposium on love, which it is, of course, supposed to be. . .' - she looked over her glasses at nobody in particular - 'is interspersed and brought to life by their long, explanatory monologues.'
Rohanne thought Janice was not doing too badly herself in this department.
'The point is,' said Janice firmly, 'the point is that sometimes subsidiary characters are stronger and say more than the main protagonists.' She smiled at Erica. 'Which is something I am just beginning to find out. .. So' — she screwed up her forehead again so that Rohanne spontaneously buried her head in her hands -'something like this:
'N'onc ne fui d'Amours a escole
Ou l'en leiist la theorique,
Mais je sai tout par la pratique: Esperiment m'en ont fait sage,
Que j'ai hantez tout mon aage.'
'Ah, Ovid,' breathed Janice to herself. I had forgotten that -' 'What's it about?' Erica asked.
'Approximately it says this: "I never went to the school of love where they taught theory; all I know is through practice. The experiences I've had all my life have made me wise."'
'Streetwise?' asked Erica.
'Everywise,' said Janice. 'Like you.'
'Me?' said Erica von Hyatt. 'I don't know about that. But I bet I could find Dermot Poll for you if you wanted me to.'
'Look,' said Rohanne wearily, 'here's a deal. You write one more book for me and Morgan Pfeiffer. You get paid a fortune for it. You use the fortune you get paid to hunt down this .. . whatever he's called . . .'
'Dermot,' said Janice.
'Poll,' added Erica.
They smiled at each other.
Rohanne tried to smile, too. 'And then everybody is happy,' she added. 'How about it? One more book?'
'Go on,' nudged Erica. 'One for the road.' And she smiled a beautiful, golden smile.
'I don't suppose you would let me substitute a photograph of her ...' Rohanne gazed wistfully at the pink, the silver, the gold. And then she shook her head and sighed. That would be taking deceit too far. In Rohanne Bulbecker's opinion, whatever life was, it was not a farce, and she was not going to begin to turn it into one now. Why oh why had she been so impulsive and told them all about the beauty of her quarry? Why oh why did she think it mattered at all? She couldn't possibly ring up now and say, 'Oh, by the way — small detail, Mr Pfeiffer — I got the description the teeniest little bit wrong. Mistook the identity. She's actually a little more like a sumo wrestler than I first suggested . . .' She just couldn't. It would be zero credibility and out after that.
She checked her nails. Pretty little baby growths beginning to herald the new dawn. And now two of those had gone already. She put the third in her mouth. Through clamped teeth she began to think wildly. Invent something, an illness perhaps, unidentifiable, debilitating, contagious - something to prevent her from holding court with the media. And which eventually made you swell up like a balloon.
'AH right,' said Janice. 'If it truly means for the very last time, then I will write just one more.' She looked at Erica and smiled. 'My magnum opus. Free of Sylvia Perth.'
The telephone rang. Everybody jumped. Everybody listened. Nobody got up. The answerphone played. 'I'm sorry,' said Sylvia Perth's voice sweetly, 'that I am not able to take your call right now. . .'
Janice swung out of the couch and switched the machine off. She smiled. 'Free, for ever, of Sylvia Perth.' She rubbed her plump, sticky hands together.
Rohanne Bulbecker gazed at her forlornly. She was beginning to feel a certain amount of sympathy with Sylvia Perth.
'And if,' Janice swallowed, 'and if I have to show myself to the world, then I will -'
'Over my dead body,' muttered Rohanne Bulbecker, and then immediately apologized to God, crossed herself and took the words back. This was no time to be taking risks. 'That might not be absolutely necessary,' she said calmly. 'Perhaps just writing the book would do. You just get on with that and leave Rohanne to deal with all the rest.'
Janice thought that she had heard something very similar to that before.
'You can't even see the ship properly and there are no people in it whatsoever,' said Gretchen O'Dowd suddenly.
This received a similar response to Erica's loaves and fishes until Rohanne made the connection. 'Well, at least she gave you something? she said, 'even if you don't like the picture. Janice here has lost everything.'
'Not quite everything.'
'No?'
'Oh no. I have my Quest and I have my integrity. Twin guides to steer me as I write my last book.'
'Not too much integrity?' said Rohanne nervously.
'Enough,' said Janice mysteriously. And she gave Erica a long and contemplative smile. 'And I know exactly how to do it.' She squeezed the hand of the golden girl affectionately. 'With a bit of help from my little pinchbeck here.'
Erica was beginning to feel rather important, which was very nice.
'And I get seasick,' muttered Gretchen. But nobody heard.
Fleetingly Janice thought of her characters from the tube train and wondered what would happen now she had no use for them. Despite the whole superstition seeming irrelevant and the travel-
lers cardboard and unreal, she nevertheless felt regret. She had intended to order and fulfil their lives - the good to profit by their goodness, the bad to suffer for their sins. And now they must roam unchecked to stumble where they would. It didn't seem fair, for their stories would have no proper ending. She sighed. Nevertheless, she would have to release them soon to let them find their way.
Erica returned the squeeze of her hand. Misinterpreting the sigh, she said stoutly, 'You'll find your Dermot. I'm sure of it.'
'That,' said Janice, 'would be the very best ending of all. And the only justification for everything.'
Rohanne was not at all sure about finding Dermot Poll. Nor about anything being a justification for anything. But it was not, fortunately, her problem. At least she was going back to New York with the real Janice Gentle's book agreed. What she was going to tell them about the lack of the real (not to say substantial) Janice Gentle in person, she did not yet know. Something. Something strong. Strong fiction, she told herself wryly. And smiled.
There was, of course, one last hurdle to overcome. She cleared her throat, put on what she hoped was a breezy smile, and prepared to introduce the subject with delicacy
.
Chapter Eighteen
‘Er Janice?'
'Yes, Rohanne?'
'One small little thing.' Janice blinked. 'What?'
'Sex.'
'Sex?'
'Mr Pfeiffer wants sex. I mean, Mr Pfeiffer wants sex in the book.'
'Ah,' said Janice, and up went the finger of admonishment again. 'As with the Court of Gloriana - Virgin Queen, indeed - it has come to this .. .
'All you that love, or loved before
The fairy queen Proserpina
Bids you increase that loving humour more:
They that yet have not fed
On delight amorous
She vows that they shall lead
Apes in Avernus . ..'
'It's those amoral Elizabethans all over again,' she said, 'tampering with the purer beauties and the high ideals, replacing it with tabloid salaciousness, bringing sex and conceits and disgruntlement into everything.' She looked meaningfully at Erica. 'Avernus, of course, being another name for hell.'
'Of course,' said Erica promptly.
'And the hell in this case would be the hell of unrequited love, "to lead apes in Hell" being an Elizabethan term for sexual frustration. They should have stayed with the courtly ideal rather than reduce it to the lowest common denominator . . .'
'Urn,' said Rohanne Bulbecker, who had become quite lost, 'I think he means something a little more up to date than that. A bit more, shall we say, direct?
'You mean of an illustrative nature?' said Janice. 'Not the prose of the understood but the prose of the explicit?'
Rohanne latched on to the last word. She nodded. 'Uh-huh,' she said.
'I am afraid not,' said Janice.
'Why?'
'Integrity,' said Janice firmly. 'And because I don't know anything about that side of things.'
Rohanne, contemplating the figure before her, was not at all surprised. Nevertheless, that was the whole point of creativity -the ability to get inside and imagine and inform convincingly. Look at Frankenstein.
'You must know something,' she said cajolingly. 'Look, basically we want you to write the same kind of book you have always written. Only with one or two . . . er . . . updates, expansions, a slight changing of emphasis . . .' She shrugged. There was no other word for it. 'Sex. He wants some of that going on, as well as all the other lovely things you write about so well . . . After all, it is part of life . ..' Rohanne felt her voice growing fainter as she spoke. 'People expect it. And it means that when he markets you, he has a hook. You'll sell a lot more books.'
Rohanne felt strangely uncomfortable as she said this. In Morgan Pfeiffer's office it had been a straightforward enough brief.
'What do you mean, sex?'
'Well,' Rohanne shrugged, 'you know.'
'No,' said Janice, 'I don't.'
'Do you mean that you . .. um .. . don't know whether you can write about it, or . . . um . . . that you . . . er .. . well . . . haven't?
'Yes,' said Janice. 'Both.'
'But surely,' she said, as evenly as possible though she was quite sure that if she looked down she would see the breast pocket of her leathers going pump, pump, pump, 'you don't have to experience everything before you write about it. What about your Eastern Diplomat? What about all those heroines of yours? You've never dealt in pictures or run an hotel, yet all those women were very real.'
'Of course they were,' said Janice promptly. 'They were all me. It's easy to pick up jargon, to do research' - fondly and fleetingly she thought of those cosy days in the library at Battersea - 'to create from fact. Just the same people but in different clothes, for there is nothing new under the sun. At our heart we all want to be loved, to belong - the thread to link them all.'
Rohanne fiddled with her fingers uncomfortably. It was all nonsense, of course.
'All my books have been about love, and I have loved. All of my books have been about love and difficulties, because I have experienced love and difficulties. None of my books has been about sex, because I haven't experienced it. When I meet Dermot Poll again - who knows? - it might be different. . .'
'Oh, it will. I'm sure it will,' said Erica rapturously, much inspired by the talk of love. 'I will find him for you. Yea, verily, even unto the ends of the earth . . .'
Gretchen resisted the urge to shout hallelujah, and looked at her pink-cheeked idol with silent emotion.
'But good grief,' said Rohanne Bulbecker eventually. So far as she knew, she had never met a grown-up virgin before and was, despite her anxiety, in some awe at the experience. 'Times are moving on. People want sex - in bed and in books. I mean, sex is everywhere, sex is of our time. Couldn't you sort of think sex? You must know what it comprises.'
'Biologically,' said Janice, 'I know exactly. But I might as well write about sheep mating or frogs coupling for all I could say. It would be dead writing, I am afraid. No feelings.'
Rohanne felt on easier ground. 'There aren't necessarily feelings behind it at all. There are all sorts of in-betweens. It's a bit like eating, really. Sometimes you have a big meal and sometimes — well, you snack, even when you're not hungry. Do you see?'
'No,' said Janice. 'I understand eating because I do it. I do not understand sex. How can I when I have never sung Hymen's song?'
'It could be arranged,' muttered Rohanne.
'The whole thing is a complete mystery to me and I don't understand it at all.'
'Oh, it's a very straightforward activity,' Rohanne replied as airily as possible. 'To do with pleasure, tension, release, head games . . .' She stopped. Janice was staring at her quite uncomprehendingly.
'Aren't you taking this integrity business a bit too far? I mean, you write about men and yet you've never known any - apart from Dermot Poll, and you only saw him for five minutes.'
'Half an hour or so,' said Janice with dignity. 'And that was quite enough. We can fall in love in a second, and by that falling we can know everything about the object of our love we need to know. In the main we create our lovers, anyway — invent what we want them to be, then set about looking for those qualities in them.'
'Is that what we do?' said Rohanne, intrigued. 'Then no wonder it always goes wrong.'
Janice paused. 'Does it?' she asked with interest. 'It doesn't in my books.'
Rohanne was about to say something acerbic, but diplomacy won. 'I'm sure it won't be like that for you and . . . er . .. him. But why can you write about men, yet you can't write about sex .. .? After all, you don't know how men feel. . .'
'It's my estimation that they feel just the same as us, only they express it differently.'
Rohanne Bulbecker clamped her jaws shut. This was no time for debate.
'I see,' said Erica von Hyatt thoughtfully, 'you think that they feel the same, but hide it? The strong and silent thing? Sort of more muscular about it all?'
'Men are not stone,' said Janice. 'Nor women rose petals. And there is only one ultimate, ideal desire in the world. To love and be loved back. Men are no different in their need for this. After all,' she beamed through her spectacles, 'if you prick them do they not bleed?'
'Frankly,' said Rohanne Bulbecker, 'if you went at them with a hatchet, I doubt they would shed a drop. But you have it your way and I'll have it mine.' She drummed her fingers on her teeth. 'But there must be an answer to this sex thing. There must?
Outside the evening sun began to wane, throwing the room into violet shadow. In the softening light Erica von Hyatt looked more lovely than ever, Janice Gentle more gross. But Rohanne would not be beaten, she would not.
'What about reading The Joy of Sex? It's got a lot of pictures in it.'
'So has a book on brain surgery,' said Janice, 'but I don't think I could perform an operation afterwards . . .'
Rohanne was irritably convinced. This lady might look like a doughbag, but she had sterling brainpower. 'You could watch a film, I suppose. That might help. I could get hold of some blue movies for you.'
'Ah, now,' said Erica von Hyatt, child of
the streets, survivor. She took a deep breath and out tumbled the words. 'I was in one of those films once, and the thing about them is that it's not about nice sex at all, it's about getting on with it. "Get on with it," the man with the watch and the medallion said, so you don't have time to build up to anything like you should. I mean, one minute you're seeing a man across a crowded beach and the next you're in his truck using his dick for lunch, and then it cuts to a party and he's eating your pussy for tea, and then it's two or three of you all going at it on one man, and it all gets very uncomfortable because you have to make sure your privates can be seen, and I mean, when you are doing it for pleasure, the last thing you worry about is if the camera can get a good view up your —'
Rohanne put up her hand. She had gone very pink and more than ever regretted the leathers. 'Yes, well, thanks. You have been around,' she added tersely, 'haven't you?'
'I only made one,' said Erica. 'They said I was very good, but
the next one had a dog in it, and I just wasn't going to do that sort of thing, because there are limits.'
'Don't you like dogs?' asked Gretchen, part of whose fantasy for the future had included strolling through country lanes with a dog.
'Look,' said Erica, 'I've stroked dogs, been bitten by dogs, looked after dogs, I've even eaten dogs -'
'Please,' shrieked Rohanne, who longed even more for the comparative calm of New York. 'I don't think any of us -'
'Eaten dogs!' said Gretchen, suddenly feeling her affection wane. 'How?'
'With me teeth, of course,' said Erica sharply. 'I had a Chinese boyfriend, and he cooked one once.'
'Yuck!' said Rohanne and Gretchen in unison.
Only Janice listened placidly. 'What did it taste like?' she asked, interested.