Deception and Desire

by Janet Tanner

  ‘You didn’t tell me you had a sister who looked like this!’ Graham said.

  ‘It’s only Jane – and she’s done something peculiar to her hair.’

  ‘It doesn’t look peculiar to me,’ Graham said. For a sixteen-year-old he had quite a smooth line in patter and there was a knowing, age-old sparkle in his blue eyes. ‘I think it looks nice.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jane said primly.

  ‘Don’t be so bloody soft,’ Martin said crossly. He began to push his bicycle up the drive but Graham did not follow.

  ‘What are you doing tomorrow night?’ he asked Jane.

  She shrugged, her heart beating very fast.

  ‘There’s a disco on in the village hall. Are you going?’

  ‘I might be.’

  ‘Great,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you there.’

  Jane was first excited, then terrified, then worried. What would she wear? She’d spent all her money on the jeans and shirt and she couldn’t, simply couldn’t wear one of her old home-made dresses. Next morning she got on her bicycle and pedalled over to Miss Makim’s cottage.

  It was now the middle of the summer holidays. Jane was afraid Miss Makim might be away, but she found her sitting in the garden and sketching the cat who was asleep under the weeping willow tree.

  ‘Jane!’ she greeted her. ‘ Good heavens, I’d hardly have known you.’

  ‘I’ve changed my hair,’ Jane said, feeling pleased.

  ‘And not only that! My goodness, that diet seems to have worked wonders! What brings you here?’

  Jane told her. ‘I know it’s a cheek but I wondered if you might lend me a skirt to wear with this cheesecloth blouse,’ she finished.

  Miss Makim smiled. ‘I think I can do better than that. Come in and try some things on.’

  A few minutes later the contents of Miss Makim’s wardrobe were spread out on the bed and Jane had selected a looseish dress in cream cheesecloth with a handkerchief hemline.

  ‘You look terrific,’ Miss Makim said, pleased because she felt personally responsible for the transformation. ‘ Who is the lucky boy?’

  ‘His name is Graham.’

  ‘I see. Well just be careful, Jane. I should think this Graham will find you irresistible and I shouldn’t want you to get yourself into a situation you are not ready for.’

  ‘Miss Makim!’ Jane said primly, but the warning struck her as funny. She was ready for any situation, after reading Cosmopolitan far into the night. She fancied Graham like crazy and she fancied experiencing at first hand some of the things she had read about. Like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis Jane was more than anxious to begin on life and living, and the sensuous personality, so long submerged beneath rolls of fat but developing along with her body all the same, was ready too.

  Nothing much happened that night. Graham spent most of the evening with the other boys. But he did walk her home with his arm around her waist and he did ask if she would like to go for a walk the next day.

  ‘Oh yes!’ Jane said, so excited she could scarcely breathe.

  He arrived on his bicycle, which he propped up against the garage wall. Martin, put out by the direction events had taken, was very offhand with him, but Graham did not seem to mind. They walked out of the village, past the pit where her father was undermanager and into the fields between the slag heaps and the river. He put his arm around her then and began kissing her, and Jane responded eagerly. She might never have been kissed before, but she certainly liked it. And it was not at all difficult – after five minutes Jane felt as if she had been doing it all her life. But Graham, she sensed, was a little awkward. He wasn’t shy, or ‘backward in coming forward’ as her mother would say, but there was a sort of breathless eagerness about him that made him slightly clumsy, and quite suddenly Jane felt as if he, and not she, was the novice. It was a good feeling.

  When he slipped his hand inside the cheesecloth blouse she let him. She did not feel threatened, she felt powerful, and she exercised that power when he tried to undo the zip of her jeans, removing his hand firmly and placing it in the small of her back, whilst at the same time pressing herself against him in a provocative manner that seemed to come as naturally as kissing.

  ‘Jane!’ he groaned, sliding his hand back to her zip again. ‘Come on, let me just touch!’

  And after a while she let him.

  She wouldn’t go any further, though, not this time. It was much too soon, and besides, half the fun was in allowing just so much and no more, to have him begging, this handsome older boy, to play him like a fish that has taken the bait. That was the most exciting thing of all, feeling she could hold him and all his turbulent emotions in the palm of her hand.

  Each time they went out she allowed him to go a little further, and when she judged she really would be asking for trouble to tease any more she suggested he should purchase a packet of Durex. It did not occur to her that this might sound calculating, any more than it occurred to her that she was not yet sixteen. She simply knew she had embarked on something she had been born to be good at.

  It was a disaster, that first time, but the disaster was not her fault and she felt not diminished by it but more powerful than ever. His rumblings and his blushes and the rush with which it was eventually over made her believe more strongly than ever in the superiority of women. Never in her life had Jane felt threatened by a man and she did not feel threatened now. It was her mother, a woman, who called the tune at home; it had been the girls at school who had made her feel foolish and gauche and unwanted. Men didn’t do that. With men she was Queen Bee, giving or withholding as she chose.

  ‘Can I see you tomorrow?’ Graham asked.

  And playing that power game with ever increasing confidence, she replied: ‘Oh, not tomorrow. I’ve got things to do. But there is a film on in town I want to see. Will you take me on Saturday?’

  ‘Yes, if you like …’ But his disappointment was obvious. Jane smiled to herself.

  ‘We don’t want to do this too often, do we? I think we should save it for really special occasions.’

  And Graham had no choice but to agree.

  By the end of the summer it was all over, petering out as youthful romances so often do. But it left Jane changed for ever.

  In spite of constant nagging from her mother she kept her hair coloured red but she decided against losing any more weight. Boys seemed to like her the way she was, a statuesque size 14. They flocked around, attracted partly by the way she looked and partly by her reputation. The girls at school began to view her in a different light, cultivating her in the hope that they too might be sought after by the Graham Tooheys of this world.

  Social success bred the sort of confidence to enable Jane to excel in other spheres too. With straight As in Art at both O and A level, she did a foundation and then a degree course in fashion design, emerging with a First. Her career took her to several well-known giants of the high street but she stayed nowhere for long. She was restless, eager to move up and move on, always looking for new challenges, new horizons to conquer.

  Along the way she changed the spelling of her name from Jane to Jayne and acquired a husband, Drew Peters-Browne. She had met him at art school and had been attracted to him in the first place because his family was extremely well placed socially – aristocracy, almost – and this offered the status Jayne had always hankered after.

  It was an unconventional marriage. Drew was bisexual, with a leaning more towards the homo- than the heterosexual. He had, for a time, been the keyboard player with a moderately successful rock group, and though he now wanted only to paint masterpieces he had retained the tastes he had acquired then – good whisky and fine old wines, exclusive restaurants and foreign holidays, not to mention the use of certain illegal substances. His father, though he could have well afforded to, refused to support Drew in what he considered his profligate lifestyle, and it was left to Jayne to supplement the little he made from selling his paintings.

  She was quite happy to do
this. Since he had reverted to his preference for men she had no sexual power over him, and holding the purse strings made up for that.

  The Vandina post had cropped up when Van had been killed and Dinah needed assistance with design. It had appealed to Jayne for a number of reasons, not least that Vandina was one of the most prestigious names in the fashion world. She had applied for the job and got it, she and Drew had moved into a cottage in the area which was perfect for his work, and everything seemed set fair.

  Steve was just the icing on the cake.

  She had made up her mind to have him as soon as she met him – just as long ago she had made up her mind to have Graham Toohey – and she had gone after him just as determinedly. He thought he had been the instigator of the affair, of course, but Jayne did not mind him thinking that. Leave him some illusion, she thought, for the sake of his pride.

  But he had turned out to be more of a challenge than any of her conquests for a very long time. For one thing he was Dinah’s son. That in itself added spice. But beyond that there was a hard edge to him that somehow gave her a feeling of … yes, that was it, danger.

  Jayne looked down at the handsome face, felt the hard muscles of his shoulders and upper arms under her hands and the strong narrow cage of his hips beneath her well-rounded ones, and smiled.

  Not bad for a plain little fat girl, she thought. Not bad at all. And this is just the beginning.

  Chapter Nine

  By lunchtime Maggie’s migraine seemed to be easing. Her eyes felt heavy, as if she had been drugged or had slept too long, but at least the terrible sharp pain, as if someone was boring into her skull with a pneumatic drill, had eased and when she dared to get up she found she was no longer shivering or feeling sick.

  She padded gingerly across to fetch Ros’s dressing gown, praying that this might be one of those occasions when the tablets worked quickly and the migraine lasted only a few hours instead of a couple of days. Apart from the sheer bloody misery, the desire to do nothing more than die, she always resented the time wasted; now, anxious to continue the search for Ros, she resented it even more than usual.

  She went downstairs, half expecting the pain and dizziness to begin again, but moving about did not seem to make it any worse and she brewed herself a good strong cup of tea (best not to have coffee with a migraine, she had learned from experience), squashing a teabag in a mug and adding just a splash of milk.

  With the tea she took two more of her tablets – her ‘block-busters’, she called them – and nibbled a piece of dry toast. So far so good. Whilst she was eating it the telephone rang. The sound of the bell seemed to go right through her head and she answered it as quickly as she could.

  ‘Margaret, is that you? Or is it that wretched machine again?’

  It was her mother. Maggie’s heart sank. ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Where are you? I was expecting you for lunch.’

  ‘Mummy, I never said I’d come today. I was going to ring you but I’ve got a migraine …’

  ‘Oh really!’ Dulcie’s tone was reproving and Maggie found herself remembering how impatient her mother was with anything less than robust health in others. Even as children Ros and Maggie had learned to expect little sympathy; chicken pox and mumps were just another form of wilful naughtiness in Dulcie’s book, contracted for the express purpose of inconveniencing her; colds and coughs were a source of extreme irritation. ‘Do you have to keep hacking?’ she would enquire. ‘Do try to stop it – you are driving me mad!’ As for Maggie’s headaches, she had always maintained that they were psychosomatic. ‘ She doesn’t understand,’ Ros had said once. ‘She’s hardly had a day’s illness in her life.’ It was true – in spite of her almost fragile appearance Dulcie enjoyed the rudest of good health.

  ‘I don’t know why you get those things!’ she said now with disdain. ‘You should see someone and get something done about them.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Maggie was feeling too washed-out to argue.

  ‘Well, just as long as you haven’t disappeared too,’ Dulcie said, implying that Ros’s disappearance, like Maggie’s migraine, was just another deliberate annoyance. ‘When can I expect to see you, then?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Maggie said, her patience exhausted. ‘At the moment my first concern is finding out what has happened to Ros. I’ll phone you, I promise.’ She put the receiver down and was immediately overcome by guilt. Why did she allow her mother to rile her? It was always the same – uncontrollable irritation followed by filial remorse. Other people didn’t have this love-hate relationship with their parents – or did they? Ari certainly didn’t. He adored his mother and indulged her shamelessly.

  Whilst she was in the hall Maggie checked the mail box, but there was no post at all today. Then she finished her tea and made a fresh cup. The headache was definitely lifting and the relief of it made her feel more cheerful. She even thought she might be able to eat something – some tinned soup, perhaps, or baked beans? She opened the door of Ros’s little larder to see what she could find and immediately saw the keys, hanging on a cup hook at eye level.

  Ros’s spare car keys. She’d said she’d look for them and here they were, practically presenting themselves for her attention. Maggie decided to forgo the soup and go straight into Bristol to check out Ros’s car. She ran a bath and the warm water revived her further; by the time she left the cottage, albeit still moving at a slower rate than usual, the headache was not much more than a dull throb.

  Driving into Bristol she found herself thinking of Mike and the spark of attraction she had felt for him; it seemed now almost like a dream sequence that had never really happened at all. And as the traffic built up for the city Maggie, who had not driven in Bristol for years, was forced to concentrate hard on trying to remember which lane she should be in to get to the railway station. There were roadworks at the Bath Bridge causing congestion and confusion but she negotiated them at last, turned into the station forecourt and found a parking space. Then she set out to look for Ros’s car and eventually found it, parked not far from her own.

  As she had expected the car was scrupulously clean and tidy. There was a telescopic umbrella and a silk scarf on the rear seat (how Ros loved her silk scarves!), a box of tissues in the rear window and a chamois leather, a road map and a wallet containing the car’s service history in various pockets. Otherwise, nothing. Maggie slid into the driver’s seat and sat quietly, running her eye over the dashboard, covered now with a thin film of dust, and fighting a feeling of disappointment. Trust Ros to remove every scrap of rubbish. Her own car, she knew, would be a mine of information, however useless, on her activities of previous weeks – shopping lists and empty cigarette packets, sweet wrappers and used tissues. She yanked open the ashtray. There were no cigarette ends, of course – Ros didn’t smoke – just one screwed-up stick-on ticket from a pay-and-display car park, dated two weeks earlier, and showing four hours’ parking bought in the nearby city of Bath. Beyond that there was nothing.

  Maggie leaned back in the seat, hands on the steering wheel.

  Why did you park here, Ros? Where were you going? And why haven’t you come back? Can’t you tell me – wherever you are? Don’t you know I’m worried about you?

  Quite suddenly she stiffened. Unconsciously she had stretched out her legs into a driving position – but she had not encountered the pedals. Gooseflesh ran up her arms. She sat up, reaching out again with her legs. Her toes met brake and clutch, but that first instinctive suspicion was confirmed.

  She couldn’t drive the car with the seat in this position and certainly Ros, who was, if anything, an inch or two shorter than she was, couldn’t have driven it either. The police had said that the fact that the car was parked here at the station meant Ros must have gone off somewhere on a train, implying she must therefore have left of her own free will. But the position of the driving seat proved one thing beyond doubt.

  Whoever had driven it here and left it, it had certainly not been Ros.

 
When her head stopped spinning Maggie glanced at her watch. The shock of her discovery had made her head start thumping again; now all she could think of was that she wanted to talk to Mike.

  The hands of her watch showed 3.24 – too late, certainly, to telephone the office of the school where he taught. They would be closed now, if she knew anything about school offices, pulling down their shutters with the last bell. Would Mike have left yet? He wouldn’t be teaching now but he might be running some after-school activity or relaxing in the staff room with a cup of tea.

  Almost feverish in her haste, Maggie locked Ros’s car, hurried back to her own hired one and drove out into the afternoon traffic. The congestion around the Bath Bridge was worse than ever, a huge chaotic jam, and she sat tensely, edging forward nose to tail, willing a gap to open and let her through. She knew more or less where Mike’s school was situated; what she didn’t know was his home address. If he left school before she got there she didn’t know how to contact him, and because of her dinner date with Dinah Marshall she wouldn’t be seeing him this evening either.

  Beyond the Bath Bridge traffic jam the road was reasonably clear. Maggie put her foot down as hard as she dared whilst searching for the road she wanted, and then the ‘School’ sign. She was lost; admit it, these streets all looked identical – rows of houses, all similar, a small arcade of shops, a couple of tower blocks of flats – she’d never find it, even calm and with all her wits about her, never. A couple of women were wheeling pushchairs along the pavement; Maggie pulled over and wound the window down to ask directions, her hand shaking so much she could scarcely turn the handle.

  To her intense relief the women knew the school, which was, they said, just around the corner. She followed their directions and there it was – a gateway topped with a huge signboard, sprawling dirty-grey buildings and, unbelievably, a playing field where a game of cricket was in progress.

  There was something almost incongruous about seeing a game of cricket being played here, in the middle of this run-down area of the city, as if a village green had somehow been uprooted and plonked down, a piece of a jigsaw that did not quite fit, and the gaggle of mini-skirted girls lounging in the sunshine to watch in no way resembled the spectators Maggie had ever seen outside a pavilion on a summer afternoon. What was good about it was that since Mike was head of PE the chances were that if a match was being played he would still be here.