Pride, Prejudice and Jasmine Field

by Melissa Nathan

  Josie just laughed bitterly as she stood on tiptoe and put all the crockery into the cupboards that were

  built too high for her.

  “Come round for dinner one night,” pleaded Jazz for the hundredth time. She'd stopped taking Josie's rejections personally. “Without Ben or Michael. Like the good old days.”

  “I can't. Ben won't go to sleep unless I'm there and once he's off, Michael wants his dinner and I'm too pooped to do anything.” Josie said gently, “When will you realise the good old days don't exist any more?”

  Jazz felt blind fury at her stupid brother-in-law. She wanted to slap her sister and tell her to stop being so pathetic. Instead she just said, “Has Michael's life changed at all since he's become a father?”

  Josie took this calmly. “Sometimes he gets up in the night,” she said quietly. “And he's very good at weekends. He's knackered too, you know. He's been working very hard since his promotion.”

  Jazz looked at her kid sister and felt a wave of longing for the old Josie she knew and loved. She vowed for the trillionth time never to marry.

  Mo joined them in the kitchen. She clapped her hands loudly and then rubbed them together.

  “Right, what can I do to help?”

  “Eat cake,” shouted Jazz, and threw her a tea-towel.

  “Never again,” Mo swore. “I feel wonderful.”

  Martha turned round. “Mo? Is that you? I thought it was your shadow.” She was genuinely concerned.

  “Thanks, Mrs F,” grinned Mo.

  Martha ignored Mo's mistake and turned back to discuss Jeffrey's latest arthritis treatment with George while Josie was called into the lounge because Ben had hurt himself. He'd screamed even more when his daddy had tried to help.

  “I've booked us in for a class tomorrow,” said Mo to Jazz.

  “Pardon?”

  “Step aerobics. You'll love it. Then we'll have a steam room and a sauna.”

  Jazz just stared at Mo. “You hate me, don't you?”

  Mo just smiled smugly.

  * * *

  How should George chuck Simon? For the first time in her life, with her thirtieth birthday drifting away from her at a startling speed, Georgia Field was about to chuck a perfectly good man. Well, a man with all his limbs intact anyway. How to do it, though? And what if Jack proved to be a non-starter?

  George had thought about this long and hard. She had considered phoning Simon at his office and telling him they "Had To Talk", but decided against it because that was so melodramatic. She was going to take the bull by the horns and do it now. In the car on the way home from the tea-party.

  Now.

  She got into the passenger seat of his car, her heart thumping. She stared straight ahead into the drizzle as he reversed out, put on his shades and turned on his multi-layered CD shuffle function. She didn't know why he bothered with that, every single CD in it was one by Phil Collins anyway. Surely that was reason enough to chuck the man?

  They drove in silence for a while. She just didn't know how to start the conversation. What if he got so angry that he drove them into an oncoming car so as not to lose her to anyone else? What if he shouted at her? What if he talked her out of it? But then one thought gave her courage. She pictured Jack's smiling, intent face.

  She gave a small cough.

  No reaction. He was mouthing the words to "Mama", his all-time favourite Phil Collins track and tapping - out of time - on the leather steering wheel. Before she realised it, he was parking in West Hampstead. And now he would ask her if she'd be able to supply him in the caffeine area. She always hated it when he did that.

  He turned the engine off, took off his shades, smiled at her and rested his hand on the wheel.

  “Fancy furnishing me in the caffeine area?” he asked with a wink.

  “Uh huh,” she said weakly and they got out of the car.

  * * *

  George flicked on the lights and Simon immediately plonked himself down in the middle of the three-seater couch. With a big sigh he picked up the paper lying on the coffee table, and turned it to the sports page. Suddenly George realised she hated him.

  “We have to talk,” she said.

  He didn't take his eyes off the paper.

  “Sure, shoot,” he said.

  Oh good God, did he really have to use sporting metaphors? Well, here was a googly for him.

  “Um,” she said softly. “Um”

  He looked up and smiled at her expectantly, his eyebrows raised, as if she was a blithering fool. She blinked at him like a blithering fool.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  Her ashen face answered him eloquently and for the first time he got a bit concerned. He'd seen that look before.

  “Are you about to chuck me or are you dying of some mysterious disease?” he asked in mock seriousness. It was early days in the relationship and he wasn't sure yet which piece of news would hit him worse.

  George's jaw dropped. “I'm not dying of some mysterious disease,” she managed to say pointedly.

  There! She'd said it! It wasn't so difficult after all!

  “Right,” nodded Simon slowly. That hadn't worked out quite so well as he'd hoped.

  There was a pause.

  Now it was out in the open, George felt the black cloud that had been hovering over her head for the past month dissolve and disappear. She was suffused with a sense of goodwill to all men, including Simon.

  “Coffee?” she asked sincerely.

  Simon stared at her. “Have you just chucked me?” he answered ungenerously.

  Oh dear. She thought they'd cleared all that up. She tried again.

  “Well, I don't have a terminal illness,” she said pathetically.

  Simon frowned and sat forward on the couch.

  “Are you chucking me?” he repeated.

  George swallowed.

  “Well . . .”

  No sound came out.

  “I think it's a simple question, don't you?”

  “Yes - I ..." she came to a halt.

  “Yes . . . you think it's a simple question or yes, you are chucking me?”

  “Yes ... I think it's a simple question,” mumbled George, growing uncomfortably hot and finding her feet rooted to the spot.

  “So you're not chucking me?”

  George could only nod weakly.

  “What does that mean? Yes you're not chucking me or yes you are chucking me?” Simon was vaguely aware that he was making a prat of himself.

  “Yes I am chucking you,” she whispered, her eyes down. Really, she hadn't expected him to make it so difficult.

  There was an uncomfortable pause.

  Simon put the paper down and looked round her flat. Nothing much had changed. Except he was single again. Shit.

  “Right, so that's that then.”

  He got up suddenly from the couch. George flinched, which seemed to disgust him.

  “My God, what do you think I'm going to do?” he asked. “Hit you?” And then he added under his breath, “Wouldn't waste my time.”

  George thought she was going to be sick. Please, just leave, she thought.

  Simon tried to laugh carelessly. “You'll be all right,” he said, pretending to be fine about it. “Go and see a soppy girlie film and eat chocolate cake - that's what you girls do, isn't it?”

  George tried to smile. Maybe she'd been wrong about him. He seemed to understand her so well.

  He stood up to go. “And I'll just get rat-arsed and pick up some bird in a nightclub. Bye, doll.” And he gave her one last wink and slammed her front door so hard, she thought it would fall off its hinges.

  She heard him stamp downstairs. Then silence.

  She was free!

  Her head felt light. Her stomach relaxed. Her flat was her own again. No more Phil Collins! No more afternoons watching rugby!

  She looked round the empty room. And then rushed to the bathroom where she just made it in time before she was sick.

  * * *

&nbs
p; The lunchtime rehearsal the next day between Jack and George turned into an afternoon movie which turned into an evening meal which turned into a nightcap at George's flat which turned into a very passionate night together.

  The next afternoon, when they finally got up, they wandered into West Hampstead for some food. They found Mo and Jazz in George's favourite cafe. Jack seemed genuinely delighted to see them both there and the four of them fell into easy banter. Jazz was overjoyed to see her George so happy. And Jack seemed totally besotted with her, as was right and proper. The very air around them sizzled. She hoped to God that he treated her right. Not everyone realised how fragile George was.

  Eventually Jazz had to tear herself away.

  “A step class? Whatever for?” demanded George.

  “To repent for all my sins,” answered Jazz. “Mo's turned into a fitness freak. She's unbearable, she's—”

  “Thin,” interrupted Mo merrily.

  “Save me?” implored Jazz.

  But George looked far too happy to bother saving anyone today.

  Jazz picked up her gym kit. She hadn't worn her trainers since she had played netball with her old schoolfriends eight years ago. She had borrowed Mo's kit - a skimpy pair of gym shorts and a leotard that split her up the middle. Mo was kitted out in yellow and white Lycra.

  An hour and a half later, Jazz was lying on a mat in a position she never thought she'd be in until she gave birth, flexing muscles she didn't know she had.

  The step class had been the longest hour of her life. Sweat dripped into her ears and stung her eyes as she lay drenched on the mat.

  She hated the aerobics instructor. She'd bounded in, all teeth and tits, with a bottom like two tennis balls wrapped in cellophane and asked them all indecipherable questions, while fiddling with the earpiece round her head.

  “Iny anjuries? Beck problems? Inyone prignant? Iny priblems?”

  Jazz was too busy staring at her own legs in the mirror to answer, “I think I'm in the wrong class, is this Oriental Karma?” She'd never realised until this moment just how white she was. She was so white she was blue. Every time she caught sight of herself in the mirror she thought there was a lighthouse in the room.

  Then the aerobics instructor put on Pinkie and Perkie's 70's Classics and started marching on the spot.

  Oh right, this is easy, thought Jazz, and started to march. After a few moments, she realised this might be a little more difficult than she thought. Somehow, the instructor looked decidedly cool marching on the spot, while Jazz was doing exactly the same movement and yet looked like a complete arse.

  Suddenly, with no warning, the instructor yelled: “Ligs apart, stumech flut, bottom een, knees ovur fit, RIELAX!”

  Jazz had just got the position when the entire room bounded off to the right. The woman on her left bumped into her and didn't apologise. It dawned on Jazz that those instructions had just been the way to stand correctly. This was the real thing.

  The steps Ingrid the Instructor inflicted on them were so complicated and the instructions so inaudible over the noise that Jazz had spent most of the hour looking like she was a contestant on The Generation Game. To Jazz's untrained ears, the instructor was speaking a different language. Thank God there had been a man there. He made her look positively sophisticated. Why had he come? It couldn't be worth humiliating himself so much just to get a look at tight buns in Lycra, surely? Then again, thought Jazz bitterly, he was a man.

  Every time Ingrid shouted, “SWAP LIGS!” Jazz wanted to shout, “Bagsie yours.” Every time she bellowed “RELAX!” Jazz looked for the couch. It was hell. Never again.

  “Give yourselves a big round of applause,” shouted Ingrid at the end, as Jazz stood, fixed to the ground, panting heavily, wondering if they still burnt witches. Mo came over to her.

  “Wow!” she said, looking at Jazz's beetroot face. “I think you've burst a blood vessel in your head.”

  “Don't talk to me - ” breathed Jazz “ - ever again.”

  They trudged heavily up to the changing rooms where Jazz took a long shower and then, when she felt barely human again, joined Mo's pink, moist body in the steam room. It was how she imagined heaven would be. All steam and heat. She didn't like the sauna as much but at least in here, without the steam, they could talk. The heat and the silence were wonderful.

  “So what are you going to do with this new body of yours?” asked Jazz dreamily.

  “Get happy. Get laid. Get a promotion. Dunno.”

  Jazz didn't say anything. Sweat was slowly building up on the gentle curve of her stomach.

  Mo sighed loudly and put one sweaty arm above her head. “Jazz, I'm not an idealist like you—”

  Jazz interrupted. “Me - an idealist? Where did you get that from? I'm as cynical as they come. Anyone will tell you that.” She turned over slowly and let the sweat drip down the dip in her back.

  “And anyone will tell you that a cynic is a disillusioned idealist,” countered Mo. “I don't care if the "personal" is the "political", I don't care if I'm setting a bad example to my "sisters". I just want a man. Sorry, Jazz, but that's the way it is.”

  “But why diet for it?” asked Jazz gently. “Don't you want a man who will accept you as you are?” She swung one foot lazily in the air.

  Mo got angry. “I can't find any man who will accept me as I am. Can't you get that into your thick head? They're shallow, superficial scum. And I want one.”

  Jazz decided she had to get out of the sauna. It was too hot.

  Chapter 11

  The first of many cast parties was due and rehearsals were well under way when Jazz realised that it wasn't her imagination, Harry Noble did keep staring at her. And not just when she was acting. During every break, when she was usually either relaxing with Mo or Wills or trying to escape Gilbert, she could feel Harry's eyes boring into her. It made her feel constantly on trial. She was sure he was just waiting for her to do something stupid, like trip over her shoelaces or giggle at the wrong time or something. Was this his way of intimidating her?

  Instead, Jazz would make a point of having a riot with Mo and George to show him that it was much more fun with the plebs than with the top set.

  But one time, when Jazz was sitting with Mo and George, she'd felt so annoyed by Harry's surveillance that she'd turned and stared rudely back. It had taken all her self-control not to stick her tongue out at

  him like a four-year-old. To her extreme frustration, he took this as encouragement and came straight over and joined the threesome. It was unprecedented. The entire room turned to watch.

  “Are you checking up on us, Mr. Noble?” asked Jazz, looking up at him. Annoyingly, Mo made room for him on the chair next to her and gave him an encouraging smile. Without smiling back, he moved it to face Jazz so the four of them were in an untidy square.

  “What would I be checking up on? You're allowed your breaks,” he shrugged, before crossing one beautifully long leg over the other and settling into his usual staring trick.

  Feeling responsible for his coming over and spoiling the chat, Jazz started talking in an effort to entertain the girls.

  “Well, you can be assured that we're all too exhausted by your rehearsals to have any energy to rebel against your firm leadership,” she said. “I'm completely pooped. My feet are absolutely killing me.”

  There was a pause.

  “Perhaps you'd appreciate a lift home then?” asked Harry seriously.

  Buggery bollocks. He must assume she'd said that to get an offer of a lift. But she was determined not to accept a lift from him.

  “Mo'll give me a lift home, I live with her,” she answered shortly.

  “No I can't,” answered Mo. “Unless you want to go via Sainsbury's and the gym.”

  “Well, George only lives a road away.”

  George blushed and looked over to Jack. “I'm — I'm going straight off somewhere else. Sorry, Jazz.”

  Jasmin was stuck.

  “Well,” said Harry. “Looks like
I'm your knight in shining armour.”

  Jazz snorted unattractively. “Do I look like I need saving?” she demanded. “I...”

  “Hardly,” clipped Harry. “It was a turn of phrase. It wasn't intended to insult you.”

  Jazz felt momentarily embarrassed. “Thanks,” she forced. “OK.”

  Harry simply nodded and walked away.

  Jazz tore into the girls. “Traitors!” she hissed.

  The girls didn't understand.

  “I don't want a lift with him, I hate him—”

  “For God's sake don't overreact, Jazz, it's only a lift,” said Mo. “From the most dishy man on the planet.”

  “Most arrogant man on the planet, you mean.”

  Mo looked at her. “What is going on?” she asked. “Possibly the most famous and respected - and gorgeous - actor of his generation is asking for some prime time with you alone. And you're a journalist. Where's your sense of professionalism?”

  Jazz looked at her hands in her lap. The girls were right. She should see this as research.

  “More importantly, where's your sense of taste?” smiled George. “He's amazing. I'd get in his car any day, arrogant or not.”

  “Yeah, and I'd pay the petrol,” agreed Mo.

  “God, listen to you two,” said Jazz. “Anyone would think your brains turned to jelly in the presence of a man. Does the word emancipation mean anything to you? Women burnt their bras for you, you know.”

  “Why?” asked George, nonplussed. “Were they planning to wear backless dresses?”

  “If anyone burnt my Wonderbra, I'd boil their heads,” said Mo.

  Jazz put her head in her hands.

  The rest of the rehearsal was spoilt for her. Every time she thought about the lift home a knot formed in her stomach.

  She detested that man, and to have to spend any time alone with him was too long. Also, it meant that

  she wouldn't be able to hang around chatting to Wills. She wanted to spit. At the end of the rehearsal,

  she was even ruder to Purple Glasses than usual.

  “I didn't see you wearing your shawl in Act Four, Scene Two,” said Purple Glasses as soon as Jazz was alone.

  “Really?” asked Jazz innocently. “Have you had those glasses tested recently? How many fingers am I holding up?” and she held up her middle finger and walked off before Purple Glasses could comment. She wasn't proud of herself, but there was no denying it felt good.