Janice Gentle Gets Sexy (37 page)

'Oh, look,' he said, giving her lower back a much stronger pressure as he ushered her into the room, 'a bottle of champagne and two glasses. It must be a gift from the management.'

'Oh,' she said. 'How nice. Hie!'

He took her arm and led her towards the bed. 'I think we had better open it, don't you?'

'Well,' she said, 'just one glass. Thinking about orgasms! Oh dear,' she giggled. She had meant to say babies, but never mind, the two were rapidly becoming synonymous in her mind, anyway.

'Of course,' he said, smiling wonderingly down at her. 'Now you sit there and tuck your legs up comfortably w
hile I pop the shampoo.' The l
ies continued. Cautiously he put a very
little
in both their glasses. It was a fine line to draw between releasing inhibitions and ending up snoring or worse. This he vaguely remembered from his teenage years. Besides, she seemed more or less released from her inhibitions already.

She watched him, marvelling at the deftness of the act, the film-star sound of the eager cork, the fancy bubbles cascading into the long glasses. He handed her one and she sipped. 'Lovely,' she said, and then she looked at the tulip shape in her hand. 'But you'd have thought they'd have given us proper-shaped glasses. Those flat ones are best.'

'Are they?' he said, and sat next to her. 'To you.' He raised his glass.

'Cheers,' she said, and giggled again. 'Honestly, if Derek could see me now
..
.' And she burst into tears.

Which, from the point of view of advantage, the Boss Masculine thought pretty damn near perfect. He put down his glass and picked up a package from the bedside table. 'There, there,' he said. 'Look, I think this is the right time to give you this
..
.'

She opened the pretty parcel and held up the scrap of lawn and lace. It delighted her - it was romantic, it was feminine and it was tasteful. 'Oh
thank
y
ou,'
she said, giving him a resounding kiss on the cheek. 'Thank you, it is the sort of thing I really like. Derek doesn't -' She stopped, drained her glass, and burst into tears again. 'Derek doesn't—'

'Derek doesn't what?' he asked, sliding a
little
closer on the bed, then kissing her shoulder.

She looked down. From where she sat she could get a really good close-up of the dandruff problem. 'Well,' she said, a little mesmerized by the extent of it, 'Derek is very practical.' She put the hanky to the corner of her eye and dabbed delicately. 'I shall always treasure this,' she said.

He put his arm round her waist.

She dabbed at the other eye and then looked at the lace admiringly. 'Mine isn't nearly so exciting,' she said. 'It's an aid, really.'

'Aid' had an interesting ring about it. He moved his arm up a fraction, towards the warmth of her armpit and other areas. 'Oh, I'm sure it is,' he said, and then, because he was unclear what they were discussing (and he was having a great deal of difficulty concentrating) he added, 'What are you . . . er . . . talking about?'

'Your present.' She sniffed anew. 'It's not half so nice as yours, and you've been so-o-oo' - she mopped another tear — 'kind.'

'I'm sure it's as enchanting as you are,' he said. 'Never mind that now . ..'

As he bent to kiss her again, she looked at his shoulder and had another terrible urge to brush him down. She moved away and stood up, swaying slig
htly
.

'I want you to have it,' she said positively. And picking up her key she tacked across the room, out of the door, and into her own.

While she was gone, he made a hasty visit to the bathroom, squirted some Gold Spot into the further reaches of his mouth and dived back on the bed again in time to look as if he had never moved. He switched off one of the side lights to make the room more
...
intimate. He heard her turn the door handle and looked up expecta
ntly
. In she came, a little smile of hesitation on her delectable, freshly pinked lips. She crossed to the bed, sat down near him, removed her hand from behind her adorably feminine back and held out to him her presentation. Her token of esteem, her favour, her emblem of regard.

He stared.

He swallowed.

His mouth became a desert.

His stomach filled with ice.

She continued to smile her pretty little smile, pressing the gift into his hand.

'Take it,' she said, 'I sent off for it from one of my magazines.' The pretty little smile stretched like pink elastic. 'I think it is just what you need.'

The book she held out had a title,
Men:
The
Middle
Years
-
A Maintenance
Guide.

He took it, zombie-like, and stared anew. 'Oh, thank you,' he said.

'Don't mention it,' she replied. 'And look
..
.' She tapped a small bottl
e, which was attached to the cover. 'Free gift. . .' He stared.

He
was staring at a miniature bottl
e of Head & Shoulders shampoo.

'I thin
k you will find’
she said happily, 'that will do the trick.
' She lowered her voice discreetl
y. 'And there are things on the market for grey hairs, too
...'

Bloody little tartlet, he thought, as redness rose angrily within him, but before he could tell her to leave she had reached the door and was peeping round it coyly on her way out. She gave a
little
wave of her hand and a rallying eye-screw of compassion. 'Enjoy!' she said. And, forgetting all about orgasms, she went.

*

Janice, travelling in the lift with
no further psychological diffi
culties, entered-her apart
ment. The machine sat there waiti
ng. She ran a finger over it, remembering her characters for
Phoenix Rising.
She must release them soon. She had a compulsive urge to feed Rohanne Bulbecker into the software, too. But she did not. She felt that, perhaps, she did not need to.

Rohanne looked out at the night view of London for one last time. She was tired and glad, more than she had realized, to be going home. Mission accomplishe
d, she told herself, always mis
sion accomplished. She kicked off her shoes. On the small table near by was a tray, two glasses, a bottle of champagne in a cooler and a card. She opened the envelope and read, 'All my love as usual, Horace.'

Horace?
Horace?
Despite the many men in her life, she couldn't remember one of those. She looked at the envelope. Wrong room number. In her current state it would be far less wearying to take the thing next door herself rather than summon the fuss of room service. She picked up the tray, stepped into the corridor, and knocked at the suite next door. An elderly man in a silk dressing-gown, closely accompanied by an elderly woman in pink quilting with daisies, peered out from the door.

'Horace?' said Rohanne, extending the tray which he took. 'It came to the wrong room.'

'We were just wondering’
he said. 'Thank you so much . . .'

'Don't mention it’
said Rohanne, 'And have a nice .
..'
She

was about to say 'day', but smiled and said, 'Have a nice night,' instead.

All of seventy, she said to herself, seventy if they were a day. And she shook her head. But she lay motionless on her bed and thinking for a long, long while.

Chapter Twenty-two

E

rica
agreed with Gretchen that the picture was a bit basic. 'Why,' she said, 'you can only just tell where the sea ends and the sky begins. I'd chuck it if I was you.'

'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. Someti
mes 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, wanti
ng 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.