Pleasant Vices (16 page)

‘Thought it was getting a bit uncomfortable,' she said, grasping the bottle and hurling it into the shrubbery. ‘One less for the bin,' she said, cackling wickedly.

‘Anyone here going to walk this lady home?' the sergeant said looking round. Carol's mouth was pursed up tight with disapproval, though at Paul, Polly or Mrs Fingell, Jenny couldn't be sure.

‘We'll take her,' said Sue, bending to pick up one of Mrs Fingell's skinny arms and guide her to her feet. ‘Come on, love,' she said. ‘We'll make you a cup of tea.'

‘Bugger tea,' Mrs Fingell retorted, scrambling to her feet and squinting through the trees to check the angle of the sun. ‘Looks to me more like time for a gin.'

Jenny and Sue each took one of the old lady's arms and escorted her carefully back into the Close, followed at a safe distance by a trail of dogs, neighbours and children. Polly marched ahead, one hand on her hip, the other twirling a stick, pretending she was leading the Putney Shangri-la Majorettes. Alan was still sitting on the pavement, smoothing off the last of the mortar as the small procession drew level with him. ‘Oh. Glad to see you're all right,' he said rather fatuously, grinning up at Mrs Fingell.

‘Oh don't you worry about her, she's all right,' Carol said grimly, and then looked at the wall closely, taking comfort from what she saw. ‘Did you realize those new bricks aren't
quite
the right colour?' she asked Alan sweetly.

‘I'll put the kettle on,' Jenny volunteered as she and Sue tugged a happily swaying Mrs Fingell into her sitting-room, and parked her on the sofa. ‘I think gin would probably really finish her off.'

‘Good idea,' Sue agreed. ‘Anyway, I fancy tea even if she doesn't.'

‘No need to talk about me as if I'm not here,' Mrs Fingell grumbled, shifting her bloomered thighs up onto the tatty sofa and settling comfortably into the cushions. ‘They all do that, my daughter-in-law, her kids, the people from the Welfare . . .'

‘Sorry,' Sue said. ‘Now, are you hungry? Can we get you something to eat?'

Jenny, searching in the kitchen for tea and milk, made a face at Sue through the open door. The cupboards, like Mother Hubbard's, were almost bare. ‘I'll go down to the shop for you if you like,' Sue volunteered.

‘No need. My son's coming later. Taking me over to his place for supper. One thing that wife of his can do is cook.' Then Mrs Fingell sniggered. ‘About all she's good for, certainly no good for the other. Even walks with her knees glued together.'

Jenny, still bustling in the kitchen, heard her and laughed, wondering why it always seemed so outrageous when old people showed evidence of a filthy mind. After all, she couldn't imagine either herself or Sue suddenly becoming all prim and proper the minute they got to bus-pass age.

‘Here's tea,' she said, bringing the tray and putting it on a dusty little table next to an equally dusty ancient grand piano. ‘I found some biscuits, too.' The small, smelly dog, returned by Harvey, whined to be fed and Sue took him off to the kitchen where she found a stained tin opener and a can of Chum. Jenny poured tea and had a quick, fascinated stare around the room. The curtains had a very 1960s pattern of bold brown and orange flowers, the sort that were now only seen in run-down hospital out-patient departments. The carpet had obviously been a good one in its long-ago day, and was grass green, with darker patches that might indicate the incontinence of the orange dog (or Mrs Fingell, Jenny wondered squeamishly). On the beigey-yellow wall over the bleak fireplace hung a vast flag, an American Southern Cross. Looking round at the piano, Jenny also noticed a large, silver-framed collection of black-and-white photos, about twenty of them, which on close inspection were all of cheerful young men in US army uniform.

‘Looking at my boys are you?' Mrs Fingell said fondly, turning a little on the sofa.

‘Yes. Who are they? Friends of yours? Relations?'

Mrs Fingell chuckled. ‘You could call them relations. Of the carnal sort. One of them is my Lance's dad.'

Sue joined Jenny, and together they peered at the photos. ‘Oh, that's interesting, which one?' Sue asked. Mrs Fingell gave a delighted snort in her tea.

‘Goodness love, how would I know? Could have been any one of them. Or one or two others, who didn't have a photo on them at the time. I did like to collect the photos.' She sighed, remembering.

Sue and Jenny looked at each other, wondering if they'd heard right. ‘But surely . . .' Sue began, and then stopped. Deciding which of two or possibly even three men could be your child's father was just about an understandable quandary, but which of a possible twenty or more . . .

‘Shocked you have I?' Mrs Fingell, pleased with herself, looked at Sue. ‘You young things don't know the half of it. How do you think we all got by in the war? Did you think rationing and all that was really done on a fair shares basis?' She pulled herself up on the sofa and reached over for her tea, dunking a custard cream biscuit messily into it. ‘My family was bombed out of the East End. By rights I should have gone into a prefab, and then if I was lucky by now I might be stuck on the top floor of one of those prison blocks on the estate. But you don't just think, you know for sure, that you might as well live as if there's no tomorrow, and you'll do anything. Just for you and yours. Everyone did. All that love thy neighbour stuff, I never saw much of that. It was dog eat dog. And people eat dog, I even saw that.' She leaned forward, a look of bitter recollection on her face. ‘Do you know, my aunt actually cooked a piece of cocker spaniel she found in a bombed terrace. When you've seen your family down to that, it's no hardship to trade a quick shag for a pound of sausages, I can tell you.'

‘The wages of sin, this house,' Sue said to Jenny later as they carefully closed Mrs Fingell's rickety front gate.

‘I wonder when she retired?' Jenny mused, looking at the rotting window frames and the ramshackle garden. ‘Puts my little venture into humble perspective doesn't it?' she went on. ‘There was me dabbling in a spot of paid naughtiness, just so I could go on having life's little trimmings if Alan decides to take off, and down the road all the time is a woman who took to prostitution just to survive.'

‘Well she could have got another kind of job after the war,' Sue reasoned. ‘Though with tarting you can choose your own hours and take time off if your kid's ill. I wonder if she was ever actually married, or if she just calls herself “Mrs” like cooks always used to.'

‘Imagine,' said Jenny, ‘what the Mathiesons would say if they knew. Not just one, but two houses of ill-repute in one small suburban cul-de-sac!'

Alan was lying on the sofa. As she walked up the path, Jenny could see him through the sitting-room window, feet up, beer in hand and his eyes half-closed. He looked as if he intended to stay there all night, slumped and exhausted from his efforts with the wall. Jenny went into the house, and was immediately pounced on by Daisy rushing down the stairs pursued by Ben, who tripped and missed the last couple of steps, landing in an untidy heap at Jenny's feet.

‘Hey, slow down!' she said, pulling Ben upright. ‘What's the panic?'

‘She's got my headphones,' Ben said, reaching across to grab them from Daisy's hand.

‘Well you're going out, you won't be needing them.'

‘I need them while I get ready!' he snapped at Daisy.

Jenny felt that at their age she shouldn't have to be refereeing, and marched straight on into the kitchen where she banged about looking for things for supper, wishing she couldn't still hear every word of the din.

‘No you don't,' Daisy snarled, ‘you'll get toothpaste or something all over them. And what's that poovy pong?' she added, wrinkling her nose.

‘Aftershave,' Ben told her, blushing and making for the stairs.

‘After what? Do me a favour!' she snorted.

‘She's only jealous because she can't go out.' Ben leaned over the banisters and loudly appealed to Jenny for support.

‘I don't want to know. Just carry on arguing amongst yourselves!' she shouted.

No wonder Alan is looking elsewhere she thought, finding enough ingredients for a
Salade Niçoise
. He must be lying on that sofa right now wishing he was somewhere quiet and peaceful, with someone quiet and peaceful. As she boiled eggs and chopped tomatoes, she imagined Serena in a pale and tranquil apartment, surrounded by the trappings of a grown-ups-only life, tasteful and delicate sculptures, intricate, unchipped glass ornaments, creamy, unmarked silk cushions. She thought of a high, wide bed, perhaps of elegant blond wood, hung with drapes of sheer silk that ten-year-olds hadn't wound themselves in to giggle and hide from their scruffy friends. A bed piled with Floris-scented white antique lace cushions that a teenager hadn't flumped carelessly into as a handy nest from which to watch
Neighbours
or monopolize the phone. Jenny sighed and whipped up a fast salad dressing, knowing it wouldn't be as good as Alan's, but reluctant to play the useless wife and disturb him. Serena wouldn't have any problem with curdling walnut oil, Jenny concluded, whisking the dressing more in hope than expectation. Viciously she tore some leaves from the nearest of the four basil plants lined up on the window ledge. Blinded by love, Alan would probably be thrilled to be served readymade Paul Newman stuff-in-a-bottle by the object of his desires.

Ben suspected he'd overdone the aftershave. If you can smell it yourself, he thought, it's probably too much, even if the stuff is right under your own nose. There was supposed to be just a hint, just enough for Emma to scent appreciatively as she nuzzled close to his neck. There wasn't supposed to be enough to make her eyes water. He started to feel hot at the thought of Emma as he trudged down the Close on his way to Oliver's house. He didn't want to get sweaty, and his armpits were safely stiff with a triple spraying of Right Guard, but the picture that kept creeping into his mind of her adjusting her games skirt and showing off her thighs was quite irresistible. He could feel the stirrings of an erection even as he walked, and wished it would go away. He tried instead to concentrate on the other feeling he always got on the way to Oliver's, a certain amount of stark terror, as Oliver, with a full scholarship to their expensive school and a council grant for his uniform, lived right in the middle of the estate, as overlooked by tower blocks as was the Close. His house had four bedrooms, and his family was large – six children – run on chaotically anarchic lines by ex-hippy parents, a dedicated mother who educated three of her younger children herself at home and a session guitar player who was using his increasing bouts of unemployment to take over more and more of the surprisingly large back garden for organic vegetables. The fence, to stave off residents who were too idle to get as far as the greengrocer on the edge of the estate, was of coiled barbed wire like a military base.

As Ben walked, his right hand was clutched tightly round the clingfilmed three ounce stash of dope in his pocket. He couldn't afford to be mugged for that, or there'd be no profits for him and Oliver to share. Crossing the main road in front of Sue Kennedy's house, he took a deep breath and entered the estate, treading carefully round the mountainous heaps of dog shit from the estate's enormous and free-ranging population of Dobermanns and German shepherds. Ben wished he could borrow Sue's grouchy Airedale, just to get him safely across the open space ahead, where teams of circling boys with heavy-duty mountain bikes, state-of-the-art trainers, bandanas and backward-facing baseball caps eyed him with interest and suspicion.

‘You going to Mick's?' one of the boys called out.

Startled, Ben looked round to check it was really him the boy was talking to. ‘Yeah you, you look like one of his brother's mates.' The boys were cycling closer to him now, starting to weave slowly and expertly round him, just close enough to intimidate. It was impossible, with the spotted, drug-runner style bandanas covering the lower halves of their faces, to see their expressions. His hand on the stash in his pocket grew hotter and he wondered if the stuff would melt.

‘Yeah, I'm going to Mick's,' he answered, as casually as he could manage. The kids were no more than Polly's age, he reminded himself, wondering if the Right Guard was going to last out the evening.

‘Well tell him we've been waiting for him and we're getting pissed off,' another of the boys said.

‘OK, I'll tell him,' Ben replied, walking across the last bit of the square and wondering if they'd grab him as soon as he got to the deserted narrow passageway by Oliver's house.

‘Cheers,' the boys yelled, and cycled off across the square again. I'm getting like Carol Mathieson, terrified of anyone who isn't exactly the same tribe as me, Ben thought, angrily correcting his politics from the safety of hindsight.

‘Going out' for Ben and his friends mostly involved finding somewhere to gather where the maximum number of girls could be found. All places of teenage entertainment had been closed down either by people fearful for their furnishings, or those chasing fatter profits. Even on the estate they were banned after 7 p.m. from the community centre, which was taken over for bingo sessions. The two local discotheques charged £2.50 for a bottle of mild Mexican lager (including slice of lime) and wouldn't allow in anyone under 25, or in jeans, trainers or leather. In the town, the police patrolled in pairs, separating groups of bored teenagers looking for fun from nervous proprietors of hamburger bars, where occasional knifings took place between groups whose sole difference was the chosen shape of their trousers.

Ben and Oliver, each now also equipped with a night's supply of booze, headed for the river towpath, beside the bridge, watching carefully to see if they were being followed by hostile raggas or goths. Both were aware that their hair was the unmistakable public school style – floppy, and over-long at the front, and their clothes, despite a fashionable hint of unkemptness about them, were too clean.