Janice Gentle Gets Sexy (34 page)

As she drove the familiar route, Melanie thought about that twerp tonight, and all the other twerps that were likely to be on offer. She shuddered. Who knew what other groping aliens might be around the corner? Hundreds. She had already met enough to last a lifetime . . .

She felt excited, in love again. She parked the car as quiedy as she could and enjoyed the thrumming of her heart. He would be in bed, he would be asleep. She might slide under the covers with him, still with her clothes on, of course, just to talk, maybe just to have a cuddle, or a hand hold - some form of contact, anyway. Anger had melted away to regret. They'd had long enough to think things over, and besides - she had to be rational - men just weren't as good as women at knowing how to behave in emotional situations. They were unformed in that department, and it was no use expecting it to be otherwise. That was
like expecti
ng a penguin to fly just because it was a bird - the breed's wings were too small, that was all. Well, she, Melanie, could handle that. A little time on her own had done wonders.

'I will be good,' she muttered to herself as she hurried up the steps to his door. The surprise would take away some of the awkwardness. She laughed to herself, happy again. Pasta and zabaglione and being courted indeed! There were things worth a lot more than
that.

*

Janice pondered on the love that would give up a child for its better good. It seemed to her that there could be no love greater. She got out of bed, padded to the kitchen to make a sandwich, and then took it to her desk.

She began to write. 'He hath put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree.' Then she ate, and thought, and wrote again. 'Though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge' - which, after all, she argued, was absolutely true of the writer - 'and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing . . .' Indeed, indeed. 'Love suffereth long, and is kind
.
..'
So, so — it is so. 'When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child; but when I became a woman I put away childish things . . .'

She looked at the long row of books on the shelf before her, every one bearing her own name. Baby slopes, mere baby slopes. And through the long night, with spontaneous visits to the bread bin, Janice wrote.

*

He had won two Grand Prix, which was very exciting, and made up in part for his not being able, quite, to get off to sleep. Despite needing the bathroom, feeling thirsty, having pins and needles and a whole series of discomforts, he felt it was easier to he there than risk waking her again. He might, eventually, get off to sleep and - who knew? - perhaps when he woke up, she would be the first to say, 'Now let's be modern about this.' Pigs might fly, but it was a comforting possibility. She moved her body fractionally, but not the leg. He began breathing regularly just in case she should be listening. He wanted to be a free man. He did, he did .
..

He looked down again. Her face was no more than a glimmer on the pillow, her breathing was even, she smelled of scent and sex and female - and she could, he thought with detachment, be anybody. He went back to Le Mans, but this time the racing itself evaded him. All he could tune in to was the afterwards, the women smiling — big teeth, big smiles, big everything. And the champagne - enormous — the neck of the bottle quite distended as he opened it and sprayed them, wetting the fronts of their
‘I
-shirts, revealing that they wore nothing -
absolutely
nothing -underneath . . .

Square Jaw shifted his position very slightly and felt her reciprocal shifting to accommodate him. She was soft against him; her breathing had changed, become shallower. He held his breath. Don't wake, he pleaded, but yet, oh yet . . . He began stroking her thigh again. Another part of him, quite separate from his brain but not his imagination,
did
want her to waken, was already sdrring at the very idea of it, and she was stirring too as he pressed himself against her. Somewhere a voice was telling him
Don't do it,
but the another just urged him on. What he found himself thinking as he nuzzled her ear and stroked between her thighs was that it was unfair: they could just lie there, asleep, and still turn a man on, and then, as often as not, assume no responsibility for it, so that the poor sod with a stiffy had the choice of suffering it, dealing with it himself, or waking her up and being rejected nine times out of ten . . . All the same - he stroked on, losing care, getting caught up in the moment as she stirred and sighed and pressed her warmth against him - all the

same, this one was not going to do any of those things, this one would be responsive, this was early days. He murmured her name. Might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb. He thought briefly of Melanie, wondering if her boots had done the trick, and then he put all thoughts of her from his mind and began to concentrate. . .

Somewhere beyond the usual noises of the bed - the creaks, the sighs, the rustlings - he thought he heard another noise. Like a door, perhaps? Like a latch clicking gently? But he was being kissed and kissing back, which left no time for further conjecture.

Chapter Twenty

'I
was thinking,' said Janice
to Rohanne, 'of the Pardoner.'
'Who?' said Rohanne caudously.

'Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrim. It sounds such a lovely thing to be, a Pardoner. But, if you remember, the tale is mere crudity, vulgarized allegory, tasteless decadence. The Pardoner himself had no gift of pardon, he was a bogus, a flatterer, a fool.'

'Very apt,' said Rohanne, 'in the case of Sylvia Perth.'

Janice smiled, folding her serviette neatly. She had eaten a goat's cheese souffle, sauteed monkfish, roast guinea-fowl,
crime brulee
with spiced pears - and she was feeling quite benign. It was the first
time
she had ever been in a restaurant, and it was not, for all her fears, an unpleasant experience. On the contrary, the people who ran it and who hovered about her positively
wanted
her to eat well and enjoy the experience. Indeed, when she ordered her pudding, they had practically cheered, and the chef had come out to congratulate her personally. Stilton had been promised but was still on its way. Janice could wait.

'But even the Pardoner had the opportunity of redemption. If he so chose. If he had faith. People were closer to faith in those days. He
was
on the way to Canterbury, after all. He might not only have been going there with a view to making money
en route.
Part of him might have been hoping for forgiveness, for the lifting of his burden of sin. I expect Sylvia was a bit like that, too. Curate's egg, not all bad, but totally infected all the same.'

'I think that is very nice of you,' said Rohanne, 'but I still think she deserves a stake through her heart.'

Janice shook her head. 'Not really. She was the victim, not me. All those fancy assets . . .'

'Including Erica von Hyatt?'

'Including Erica von Hyatt. They meant nothing, really. A hole wher
e once was a soul, never to be f
illed no matter how much gold she poured in . . .'

'Not to mendon Chanel suits, Gucci handbags, rugs from the Orient and a country house
...'

Janice smiled. 'But wearing a hair shirt the while. At some point Sylvia had to sit with just herself and the mirror. No. I feel sorry for her. And Fd rather be me. Soul intact.'

'And integrity,' said Rohanne wryly.

'And integrity,' agreed Janice with the slightest hint of amusement behind her spectacles. 'Sorry.'

Rohanne shrugged. 'Your privilege.' She looked up. 'Jeezus, here comes the cheese.' She gazed at it with horror.

'Judge not,' said Janice wryly, also looking at the cheese, 'lest ye be judged . . .'

An entire Stilton, blue-veined and crumbly, was set before them. Rohanne Bulbecker, putting a discreet hand to her nose, declined. Janice, savouring a morsel, said, 'Thank goodness for food. It can be such a comfort, you know. I frankly don't know where I would have been without it. . . Sure you won't try some? It's a very superior cheese, named after the town of Stilton in Huntingdonshire.'

'Er
...
no thanks, all the same,' said Rohanne Bulbecker. She leaned back, discreetly gasping for air. 'But you go right ahead.'

When the meal was finished, Janice said, 'I wonder what it was really like then?'

'When?'

'Five hundred years ago. Going on a pilgrimage. Even such a short one as London to Canterbury. Dangerous, I should think, more dangerous than now - the wooded route hiding the disenfranchised, the outlawed, the mad, the diseased, the souls with nothing left to lose. Very much more dangerous. And therefore more noble, more rewarding. I've often thought I ought to tread the path they took, just to experience a real pilgrimage. Not by train or car but on foot, by mule or horse, like them. Think of all the pondering you could do on that long, slow meander . . .' Her voice sounded dreamy, seduced. She ran a fingertip around the line of crumbs on her
plate and then sucked it ruminati
vely. 'In a way, though, I've sort of done one. Going to Sylvia Perth's apartment was like a pilgrimage. It was certainly fraught. But it's hardly the sort of thing Chaucer's lot had in mind. I
wonder
if it could be done today . . . There must be maps of the old route . . .'

Rohanne went pale. 'You aren't planning a trip to Canterbury, I hope?' It would just be her luck if this prize of hers underwent a religious conversion.

'Oh no,' said Janice
Gentle
. 'Not at all. After this I'm going to stay lodged in my Battersea cell and write. A new book, a new departure. It comes to the same thing, really. And, of course, I shall be making my own pilgrimage in due course - when I go to meet Dermot Poll.'

Rohanne kept her smile bright. 'Sure,' she said. 'I wonder how those two love birds will make out.' She raised her glass. 'Here's to Dermot Poll. And here's to the new book. What's it going to be about, by the way?'

Janice raised her own glass, and smiled. 'Ah-ha,' she said. *Wait and see.'

*

Enrico Stoat worked hard into the night. 'As if Jane Austen had lifted her petticoats,' he wrote, and he smiled at the brilliance of the comparison.

*

Square Jaw was somewhere between the desire and the spasm when a noise different from any of those emanating from himself or the alien woman made him resurface. He felt a bumping under the bed, which, he was sure, had nothing to do with what was
happening on top of it. He negoti
ated himself into a position where he could peer over the edge and came face to face, dim in the shadows, backlit by moonlight, with Melanie's eyes.

'Bastard,' she said. 'I can't move the sodding thing.'

Not surprisingly the alien woman began to sit up and make noises of inquiry. With a reflex action he pushed her down and pulled the duvet up to cover her. There was a noise not entirely indicative of approval from beneath the bedding, but he hoped she would construe it as a chivalrous gesture.

Take this nightmare away, he begged sile
ntly
, but Melanie did not vanish. She merely went on attempting to pull out her box, wildly and without success. He put his hands in his hair and hung his head. Through laced fingers and gritted teeth he said, 'Melanie, this is my bedroom. It is three a.m. What are you doing here?'

'I'm getting my things,' she said, and continued scrabbling ferociously.

He spread his hands over his knees. The nightmare faded. Now it was like starring in a very bad film. He wanted to laugh. Or possibly cry. Both, really. 'Why now?' he said, daring to look up.

'You invited me,' she said.

'I did?'

The figure beneath the duvet twitched. He felt a terrible urge to pat it and say, 'Down girl, down.'

'Look,' he said, standing up, 'I think we should go into the other room.' He could sense the rage in her, almost hear her heart thumping. He had never felt quite so naked, and he had visions of her doing him some actual bodily harm. Was he imagining it in the shadows, or were her knees twitching dangerously? He grabbed a pillow and held it to himself until in the gloom he could recognize his underpants. He picked them up and stepped into them quickly. He felt slig
htly
more in control of things with them on.

He sidled towards the door.

'That's right,' she said, 'walk away from trouble.'

‘I
am not walking away,' he said, grabbing his dressing-gown, slipping it on. 'I am walking to somewhere we can talk.'