Janice Gentle Gets Sexy (38 page)

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 unti
l Fee is thrown out and Reason and Conscience replace her
..
.'

'Amen,' said one of the old women nervously. 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 ti
g
htly
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 exa
ctly
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 . . .'