Janice Gentle Gets Sexy (25 page)

'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 jo
stle
d 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 resti
ng 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 sodding 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 waiti
ng there. Like in the old days. In fact — he
looked at his keys in the igniti
on - 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 slig
htly
peeved (he recognized that kind of tone from Melanie sometimes). 'Apparently Jeremy has got the d
eal and wants to have a celebrati
on. 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.

On the answerphone there was a message from a Gerald she had met with Becky at that wine bar last week. Oh, why not? she thought, but with little convic
tion
.

*

Janice climbed the stairs. She felt philosophical about their steepness and the fact that Sylvia Perth lived -
lived? -
right at the top. What pilgrim, what traveller after redemption ever had it easy? She puffed on.

She thought of Christine with her pen, cold within thick winter walls, writing into the night in the meagre light of too few candles.

Langland, storm-blasted on a pastureside, distilling poetry and morality from the harshness . . . Do well, Do better, Do best. 'Contrition is on his back asleep and dreaming,' Peace said. 'Then by Christ! I will become a pilgrim and walk to the ends of the earth to find an honest livelihood
..
.'

An honest livelihood? Janice
Gentle
strove upwards though her heart was pumping and her inner thighs were raw with chafing. Would that
were
her journey's end. As it was - and at best - she would switch off Sylvia. And at worst? She shuddered. She could not think beyond the switching off of her agent's voice.

When the world seems to scorn and reject you, take the courage of Christine de Pisan's fifth spear, the one wielded by Lady Hope, who is loved by Patience and protected by the shield of Faith, she told herself.

Above her she heard footsteps, the slam of a door, the rattle and crash of breaking botdes as if scattered by flailing feet. A yoghurt pot, cracked side dripping, came bouncing down the stairs. She stopped. The footsteps descended, bringing with them an eddy of ire. Janice pressed herself into the wall as a young woman appeared, running and muttering like a well-dressed White Rabbit. 'Now I'm late. Now I'm late.' And then, 'Why me?' She stopped, wild-eyed, to ask, 'He's in Hong Kong — what am I doing here?'

Janice shook her head, trying to look like an interested party.

'Haven't J got a job to do? Would he come and clean
my
sink?' The young woman suddenly looked at her hands. Despite her immaculate dress, she was wearing a bright yellow pair of rubber gloves. She stared at them as if she were staring at blood. 'Look at these,' she said.

Janice obliged.

The young woman ripped one off with a loud and rubbery smacking sound, throwing it carelessly over her shoulder like a Russian on party night. 'I ask you. Would he come to my flat and do that for me? Would he? Would sodding Jeremy do
that}
¹
With the stylishness of a mannequin she peeled the remaining glove off slowly and let it fall, plop, on to the floor. And with a click of her sparkling high heels, she turned the corner below, and vanished.

Janice thought of the beautiful Dermot Poll, and she wondered, sadly, if he had a sink. And if he did have a sink, she wondered if he cleaned it himself, and if he didn't clean it himself, did he have anyone who cleaned it for him? It could, were things different, have been her .
..

She picked up the yellow gloves. It was all so unsatisfactorily topsy-turvy. As if she had been living inside out and needed righting.

'The rule is, jam to-morrow and jam yesterday — but never jam to-day,' said the White Queen. 'It must come sometimes to "jam to-day",' Alice objected. 'No, it can't.
..
It's Jam every other day: today isn't any other day, you know.' 'I don't understand you,' said Alice. 'It's dreadfully confusing!' 'That's the effect of living backwards,' the Queen said kindly: 'It always makes one a
little
giddy at first -'

So thought Janice, coming upon the mess and mayhem. She dropped the yellow gloves near by and tapped at a broken milk bottle with her heel. A note rolled over, saying 'Recommence delivery from today.'

She took several deep breaths, swapped her pilgrim's wimple for the braveness of a crusader's shield, and continued towards Sylvia Perth's front door.

Chapter Sixteen

G

retchen
O'Dowd watched and listened in wonder as Rohanne Bulbecker infiltrated the solicitor's office. She told such enormous lies that Gretchen half expected the floor to swallow them both up - but it stayed in place. 'Stinking fish,' said Rohanne finally to the man in the pinstriped suit. 'You lawyers have colluded in stinking fish, and I intend to expose it. Now, shall we talk?' The man, who had hitherto suggested that they make an appointment some time next week, blinked once, retained his expression of blank distaste and led them into his office. 'I can give you precisely five minutes,' he said. Rohanne proceeded to lay out on the desk before him a number of documents and to point to their relevant parts. The five minutes passed unremarked and led into ten and then an hour. The pinstriped man had coloured slig
htly
but remained calm as clay. Rohanne called for tea, which came in little bone-china cups, and she was pleased to note that the solicitor's cup tinkled a little as he replaced it in its saucer.

*

Derek was holding the
Little
Blonde Secretary's legs up in the air after intercourse. Even he, not one to make judgements on such matters, found these gymnastics (of a purely obstetric nature) deflationary. Nowadays she was always getting him into bed with her and going at him in a variety of ways that he didn't know she knew and he didn't think she knew she knew, either, until recently.

They were trying to get pregnant.

'It's time to start a family,' she had said, and though she had taken out her cap rece
ntly
she still didn't feel pregnant at all. Well might that magazine article say don't worry but she did. And she felt that a firm hand was needed. Derek was getting altogether too tired, what with the garden fence and visiting the pub. He needed to put his heart and soul into it.

'You need to put your heart and
soul
into it, Derek,' she said. 'And eat more salad.'