Janice Gentle Gets Sexy

by Mavis Cheek

  'I can't do that,' said Gretchen, 'it was given to me. And I haven't had many presents in my life.' 'The mean old cow,' said Erica.

  'Please,' said Gretchen. 'You must not speak ill of the dead.' 'Balls,' said Erica.

  Gretchen winced. Sometimes she could be a mite rough in her ways. . .

  *

  'One of the things I always thought about the ministry,' said Arthur, 'was that, like dentistry or doctoring, it is something that can be done anywhere in the world. China, India, Eastern Europe.'

  'To see China,' she said, her blue eyes going dreamy.

  Arthur smiled. 'We could stop off in Paris on the way,' he said, dreaming also, suddenly remembering their honeymoon. Three days in a small hotel near the Gare du Nord, lunching on a baguette and chocolate on the coldly beautiful steps of Sacre Coeur. 'There's a lot of work to be done in those places.'

  'Where?' She deliberately misunderstood. 'Paris?'

  He laughed. 'Even there, I dare say.'

  'Claw them back from their popish ways?'

  'That's a bit old-fashioned now that Canterbury and Rome exchange Christmas cards.'

  She laughed, too. 'Isn't that heretic?'

  'Very probably.'

  'London would be nice,' she said, dreamy again, smoothing and resmoothing the tablecloth she was folding. 'London is more or less like a Third World place. Charity colder than marble there. Perhaps you should persuade them to send us to that particular outpost.'

  'Do you miss it that badly?'

  'I don't miss it at all,' she said quickly. 'I told you when we came here. I wanted to get far away and this' - she began gathering up the lunch things jerkily, spilling the salt, dropping a spoon - 'is perfect.' She looked up at him. She was on her knees picking up the spoon. 'Oh, but I forgot — the only perfect thing is God. Sorry.' She stood up.

  He put his hand on her arm before she could turn away. 'So what is the flaw in all this perfection up here?'

  She wanted to say, 'You, Arthur,' but stopped herself. Instead, she threw back her head and laughed.

  He watched her throat move, wanting to kiss it, remembering film posters of his youth - Cary Grant or Rock Hudson bending over similarly tantalizing but willing throats. 'Well?' he asked mildly. 'Share the joke.'

  'Oh, Arthur, Arthur.' She was shaking now, voice and body strung out with tension. 'What other flaw could there be up here but the damnation tea-urn, of course? What else?'

  Her laugh was shrill in the room.

  He winced. He stood up. His usually mild eyes were not amiable. 'The joke,' he said, 'is wearing a bit thin.'

  She peered at him, her blue eyes sparkling with feverish merriment. She could see his distress, felt galvanized by it.

  'Well, I like the joke,' she said. 'And I'd like to keep it going on and on for ever. My tea-urn,' she said suddenly, like a child. Her eyes blazed, delphiniums on fire.

  He was afraid of the anger, the passion that radiated from her like a madness. He calmed himself and went to her, putting his hand on her shoulder, a gesture as if he were casting out devils. He said, 'But that's all in the past now, isn't it?' Beneath his hand her shoulder felt thinner. It was as if she were being eaten from within. 'You dealt with that last time you went to London.'

  'Yes, yes,' she said gaily, moving away from him, scrunching the tablecloth anyhow into the sideboard. 'Unless it goes wrong, of course,' she said defiantly, 'and I have to take it back.'

  'It won't,' he said posidvely. 'That one is built to last.'

  She was crying. She had turned her back, fiddling with the cruet on the sideboard, running her finger up and down, up and down the bevelled edge of the oak. She made no noise, gave no sign, but he knew that she was. He put his arms round her, turned her to him. Tears were dripping from her chin, flowing down the lines around her mouth. They stood close but their bodies scarcely touched. She was aloof, alone, held in a private world.

  'You're upset,' he said. 'Come and lie down for a while.' She shook her head.

  He kept his arms there this time, positive, insistent. 'You are already late for your class,' she said. 'You had better go-'

  'Some things are more important than unwilling ten-year-olds understanding St Paul. I want you to lie with me now.' He touched her breast lightly, closing his eyes at the pleasure of its weight and its warmth.

  She remembered the bruise that had been there.

  When he opened his eyes, he knew she had flinched at his touch and it shamed him. 'Nothing will go wrong with that tea-urn,' he said firmly. 'God will protect it.' He walked away.

  'Oh, will he?' she muttered feverishly. 'Oh, will he?'

  She picked up the telephone and dialled the headscarfed one, she of the polished brasses. 'I think,' she said, 'it is time we got the Guides to do a little tea for the old folks.'

  She of the polished brasses agreed.

  She put down the phone and went to bathe her eyes before the Creche Committee arrived for morning coffee.

  There were twenty-three of them from Kenley Grange. She watched them as they bit into sausage rolls, the slack skin of their faces moving like colourless rubber as they chewed, their wrinkled lips hooking over the cups as they sucked their tea. She felt her own cheeks and throat, already it was there, the same dropping, the same sagging, beginning, and no going' back. Arthur was talking to them, making them laugh. The sun shining down showed that his hair was thinning, she could see the scalp. Age. It was coming to them both and, until now, she had thought she could accept it. Up here it was acceptable, up here she had almost thought to welcome it. Expected. Time past, time passing, the earth and the seasons close to them.

  Not like London. London was different. In London you could hold on, stop the process, like dropping an aspirin in a bowl of flowers, arrest it for a while at least. Of course not for ever - but for a while. She wanted, needed to go back there. She wanted the key to the garden of love again. Once had not been nearly enough. She remembered more and more vividly, surprised at how the details filled out with time, like a tapestry which the more studied has the more to reveal. Every nuance, every word of pleasure he had uttered that last time she relived, until she was convinced that he, too, must be pining, regretful, longing to see her, feel her, bury himself in her once more. She looked at the table loaded with thick china cups, jugs of milk, plates of baking and the monster - settled like some toad, malevolent, oppressing the surrounding crockery, shining in its newness. She hated it.

  They were complimenting her on the tea. Yes, she had baked everything herself. Yes, the jam was her own. Yes, the scones. Yes, yes, yes to everything. Yes even to the bloody tea in their cups.

  'My wife,' said Arthur, 'went hunting the best tea-urn in London. A little bit of pride there, perhaps?' He turned to her. 'Like Lady Fee to Westminster?' He turned to the tea-drinkers as if to include them in the joke. He had been reading Langland to them on his visits. His reading voice was very good; he had acted at Cambridge. 'Like Reason, you remember? Who says, "It is no use asking me to have mercy until Lords and Ladies have learned to love the truth."'

  'Very true, vicar,' said an old man with a whiskery mouth.

  'Yes,' said Arthur, looking at her. 'Very true.'

  She thrust a cake plate at the old man, hard up against his chest so that he winced. Then she held it out to Arthur.

  'Just tea,' he said. He gave her his cup and she went to fill it, stroking the toad as she milked it, thinking it was the keeper of her secret, afraid somewhere inside that she had gone mad.

  When she came back, he continued as if he had waited for her.

  'And Lady Peacock, says Reason, must cast her finery off and lock her furs and gewgaws away in her clothes chest.' He raised a finger. 'But even though she does that, and even though the clergy feed the poor, though the government serves the public good, though St James is sought in pilgrimage to Compostela - still there will be no pity until Fee is thrown out and Reason and Conscience replace her .. .'

  'Amen,' said one of the old women ner
vously. It was all a touch too evangelical for her.

  'Which, of course, they do,' Alice said, pushing a strand of red-gold hair from her forehead, looking at her husband.

  'Which, of course, they do,' he agreed.

  They stared at each other, forgetting, for a moment, the company they kept.

  'Would you like it in Middle English?' he asked. 'Not at the moment,' she said. 'Not ready for it yet?' 'How does it end?'

  'Everybody behaves themselves as they should. With kindness, dignity, honesty and love. And the King, counselled by Reason and Conscience, if I remember. . .'

  Arthur, she thought, you are playing with me.

  '. . . The King grants it will continue that way. "God forbid that we should fail!" he says. "Let us live together for the rest of our lives . ..'"

  'Hallelujah,' said the nervous old lady.

  'Hallelujah indeed, Mrs Bell. Would you like more tea?' He took the cup. 'And you?' he asked her.

  'How can I have more’ she said, feeling like Looking-Glass Alice, 'when I haven't had any yet?'

  'No?' he said. 'I'm sorry. I thought that you had.'

  She went to take Mrs Bell's cup from him. He held it, squeezing finger and thumb tightly around the thick white china.

  'How's the tea-urn?' he asked. 'Functioning normally?'

  'For the moment,' she said defiantly.

  'Good’ he said. 'Because if it goes wrong, it will be my cross to bear to take it to London this time.'

  'Nonsense’ she said. 'If it goes wrong, I shall take it myself.'

  The old man with whiskers said, 'We've got plenty as can mend it up here and needing work.'

  'Ah,' said Arthur. 'I don't think that is really the point. Do you?'

  She went to refill the cup. The tea ran perfectly, and when she turned the handle it ceased to flow, driplessly . . . Very well, she thought, if I cannot go with you, then I shall go without you. But go I shall.

  As she walked among the nodding heads, offering tea, holding out cakes, she knew suddenly, was certain, convinced, that he, the other, would like the surprise. She wanted to see his eyes light up at the unexpected sight of her, his delight at her sudden availability. She could even check first that his wife was at home in the constituency and not with him in London. He would have nothing to fear from her surprise. She would explain how clandestinely clever she had been. They could go back to the Ritz and there would be one more night. That was, she told herself, all she required to get her through. Away from Arthur reason would prevail. He knew nothing, she was merely jumpy, suspicious, bad conscience. She would return to Cockermouth again afterwards, and never leave it. By the time she returned, she would have thought of a good excuse for her sudden departure. The tea-urn, working magnificently as Arthur remarked, no longer held any hope. She would invent something else. He, the other, would help her do so — he had always been good at deceits. She would go the day after tomorrow. Why wait? Just once, once more, she pleaded with herself. Once more before she too was set for decay.

  From the train the early-morning landscape was misty, the air fresh. She snuggled into her seat, clutching her coat around her as if it were his arms. The train's rhythm was a refrain of expectancy that beat out its miles in her head. She smelled coffee but could not drink and told herself that they could have coffee later, or tea, or champagne or anything — there was no end to what they could have together later...

  In Cockermouth Arthur slid his letter into an envelope, sealed it and got up from the table. He looked out into the dark night, still and silent, waiting for the rages of winter to stir it up. He damped down the flames, put a guard in front of the fire, and went upstairs. In their bedroom he placed her secret and his on her pillow. The powder compact next to the letter he had received from Guildford - from where the pilgrims once set out, he thought to himself ironically. Beside these he opened his Piers the Ploughman at the page about Lady Fee at Westminster. It was poetic, after all. Then he retired to the spare bedroom, which was cold and damp, the bed like a tomb, the sheet a shroud. Tomorrow he would post the letter to his bishop.

  For a while he lay awake thinking about the future. Perhaps China was the soft option? Who could know? He heard Piers's voice: 'I have never found any life that suited me, except in these long, clerical clothes. If I'm to earn a living, I must earn it by doing the job I've learned best, for it is written, "Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called."' Ye are bought with a price. Be not ye the servants of men . . .

  He wondered if, after her journey's end, she would wish to come, too. And if so, what her price to him would be . . .

  *

  Janice Gentle crossed to the kitchen and swung her carrier bags up on to the table. What did it matter if the man in the corner shop thought of her as a congenital idiot? She had finally achieved it - given her list of requirements and stood waiting for it to be fulfilled in absolute silence. Like a dentist probing for a nerve, he had rattled through a whole series of potential galvanizers, but she had remained mute. If the weather had cooled, so be it. If the price of cheese had soared, what good was comment? If the youth of today were ignorant and loutish, why remark it? In the end he had given way and finished serving her in silence, and only when she had paid and was half out of the shop did she soften enough to turn and say, 'It will probably rain tomorrow,' and wait for him to respond with, 'Garden could do with it,' before moving off swiftly lest he tried to take it any further with his runner beans and plagues of blackfly.

  Janice felt liberated. Kindness made her regret the passing of Sylvia Perth, despite her sense of betrayal. But liberation was a pleasure. It was as if she had been reborn. And now - the ritual of the food stores in place - she could begin as a true creator, to create alone.

  She smiled as she pinched the warm, doughy bread between her fingers. And she remembered, glad now that it was only a memory, how Sylvia's eyes would slit like a cat's, screwing themselves up against the cigarette smoke, and how she would say that awful opening sentence of hers, 'Well, actually, Janice, I think perhaps just one more should do it. . .' This time Janice had the feeling that this would be so.

  Butter gleamed in a dish, the bread filled the kitchen with its sensual aroma. She dipped her knife into the honeypot and spread thickly. She knew exactly what she was going to write. She would invent nothing and had only to extemporize. Her last, her greatest, her magnum opus indeed. She crossed to the machine. Once begun, she must cast out those souls who sheltered within. She had no more need of them; soon they would have to wander and fend for themselves.

  *

  The Boss Masculine surprised his wife by producing two tickets for a short break in Tenerife, leaving almost immediately. To her protestations that she was unsure if her abdominal muscles were up to flying, he said, rather shortly, 'I'm not asking you to bloody well flap your wings,' and then immediately apologized. He flapped his own arms in embarrassment. 'It's what the doctor ordered,' he said firmly and began packing the suitcase.

  She was flustered into submission, having expected him to be in Birmingham for longer, and wide-eyed with acquiescence. He seemed angry, deeply angry, and for once he did not accuse her of being the cause. She felt much better for that; it was a relief to have the guilt lifted from her for a time, like having a rock unstrapped from her back. She found herself standing quite straight, helping him with the packing, dealing with all the last-minute arrangements. She did not utter one word of criticism as she watched carefully ironed shirts squashed in anyhow and her own insubstantial wardrobe rolled up beside them. There would always be an iron somewhere. She smiled to herself, absent-mindedly brushing at his shoulders in a gesture so familiar that he did not even notice it any more. There always was an iron somewhere. She bet that even if they travelled to the ends of the earth they would find an iron waiting for them. You couldn't get away from ironing anywhere in the world. Wherever you went, you would always find your bete noire just behind. Hers was ironing. It could be worse.

  'Who
is looking after the office?' she asked.

  'That silly bitch I call a secretary,' he answered, flinging in his shaving gear. 'Do you know what she did?'

  'What did she do?' His wife surreptitiously refolded her Angela Gore.

  'Hah!' he said, immediately unfolding it again and tucking it in haphazardly. 'Got drunk, gave me a book on my slow disintegration, a hint on hair tinting and a miniature bottle of dandruff shampoo!' He made a mincing little gesture and mimicked the Little Blonde's diction. 'Because that's what her Derek uses . . .'

  His wife kept her smile to herself. Everyone has their supreme area of sensitivity, the verboten . . .

  'And’ he continued, still punishing the skirt, 'then she had the nerve to say I ought to stop smoking because it was staining my teeth and fingers!'

  . .. And some have two, she thought.

  'And she was nothing but a tease,' he said. 'Do you know she talked non-stop about sex? Orgasms and everything. I mean, I ask you .. .'

  'Difficult for you,' said his wife.

  You don't know how difficult, given the state of our marriage, he thought, but for once he forbore to say such a thing. 'I ought to sack her.'

  'You can't.'

  'I know,' he said, straightening up and smiling at her dangerously. 'But I can make it hell for her.'

  'In what way?' She was inching towards the open suitcase, smoothing the skirt again, closing the lid so that it could lie undisturbed at last.

  'Make it impossible for her to stay.'

  'How?' She clicked the latch and sighed with relief.

  'Demote her.' He nodded to himself with pleasurable conviction.

  'To what?'

  'Well, the girl on the switchboard is leaving to have a baby. I'll put her on that.'

  'Can you? What about tribunals?'

  'Same pay. They can't do anything. And she'll go. No one with any sensitivity would stay after that.' 'Who'll replace her?'