Pleasant Vices

by Judy Astley

  ‘Depends how you look at it. Not very naughty. I don’t think so anyway, but I think maybe Mrs Spencer does.’

  Jenny strode up the steps into the grandiose Victorian building, wishing she wasn’t wearing her oldest jeans and sweatshirt but was one of those mothers who always dressed as if they were about to go to a charity lunch. The building was scruffy, a large converted house forming the tacked-on junior department of the High School. Few of the parents here had ever visited an ordinary modern primary school, but had they done so they would have realized that no state school would have tolerated the dingy corridors and lack of space that parents here were taking out second mortgages to pay for. What they wanted and got for their money was to have their little daughters grandly presided over by the formidable Fiona Pemberton, to learn French from the age of eight, and to scramble at eleven for the forty or so places reserved for them in the famously successful senior department of the school.

  Ahead of Jenny a gaggle of the velvet headband brigade (pie-crust collars and cashmere to match) were discussing the forthcoming exams, which would weed out the no-hopers from those who would make it through to the senior school and safely on their way to Oxbridge, exams which would make lifelong enemies out of politely ruthless mothers. The crowded corridor, cheerfully lined with splodgy paintings, smelt of brown rice and chicken, overlaid with the soupy aroma of pre-pubescent little girls. The lino floor was scratched and filthy, and Jenny wondered, if it wasn’t in the interests of keeping the place clean, why the uniform list required the girls to have three pairs of shoes each.

  Jenny took a deep breath and knocked on the open door of Polly’s classroom. She felt guilty herself, summoned like this to the teacher’s presence. She should have waited and got some idea about what Polly had actually done before she rushed in, then she could have prepared an informed defence. Mrs Spencer, a brisk young woman with neatly bobbed, conker-brown hair, was sitting at her desk marking the day’s maths.

  ‘Ah. Mrs Collins,’ she said, but didn’t continue, and Jenny thought, Oh God, it’s so serious, the poor woman doesn’t know what to say. ‘Ah. Mrs Spencer,’ was the most tempting reply, which Jenny, wisely, didn’t make.

  ‘Polly tells me you want to see me,’ she said instead, as evenly as she could manage.

  ‘Yes. Mrs Collins, I’m afraid I found Polly and her friend looking at this during the lunch break.’ Glancing nervously towards the open door, Mrs Spencer pulled the Playboy magazine from under the pile of exercise books. Jenny could feel her mouth twitching treacherously into a smile and fought to resist it. Mrs Spencer had put the magazine down and moved her hands down to her lap, as if not quite liking to touch. She’s only young really, Jenny thought, early thirties perhaps. Where do teachers leave their sense of humour? In a staffroom locker every morning? Is it confiscated by the head teacher and kept in a cupboard till the end of term?

  ‘She’s just a typical little girl with a highly developed sense of curiosity,’ Jenny said, getting in quickly with her defence of Polly.

  Mrs Spencer regarded her coolly. ‘There are plenty of things for little girls to feel curious about at ten, Mrs Collins. Pornography isn’t usually one of them.’

  You’ve been dying to say that, Jenny thought, you’ve been rehearsing that all afternoon.

  ‘She says she found it in your house.’ The teacher leaned forward slightly and stared at Jenny intently and with scarcely-hidden curiosity. ‘Should you have left it lying around do you think?’

  Oh no, thought Jenny, she thinks we’re regular readers. She’s sitting there wondering if Alan is trying to perk up a flagging sex life. Jenny had already realized the magazine must be Ben’s (mustn’t it?). Who but a teenage boy would want to gaze at these glossily sanitized gynaecological studies? Who but a teenage boy and blasted Polly.

  Jenny felt as defenceless as when she herself had been caught smoking at her own school. ‘I’ll have a word with her,’ she promised, giving in feebly and mindful of the exams. ‘It won’t happen again.’

  Behind Jenny there was a brisk rustle and a slight breeze, and Fiona Pemberton, looking queenly in something floral and silky swept into the classroom. Jenny wished that she and the magazine could hide under the desk. ‘Glad to see Daisy is feeling better. We missed her yesterday. You do know you’re supposed to send a note of course, but as it’s you . . . Trouble with Polly?’ Fiona suddenly said, her face switching from all-purpose professional smile to furrowed concern as she caught sight of the magazine. She picked it up, thumbing through it with no hint of the genteel repulsion of Mrs Spencer. Her frown deepened, as her well-practised brain sorted out what was happening. ‘Can’t have this you know, Mrs Collins. Corrupting the other girls. I’d be sorry to see Polly turning into a Bad Influence.’

  ‘Just a bit of childish fun, I expect, Mrs Pemberton,’ Jenny said firmly, standing up both to leave and to feel on more equal terms with the headmistress. She’d never liked being loomed over. ‘I must get back. I’ve got a pupil at 4.30.’ Fiona was still flicking through the magazine and Jenny smiled at her as she walked towards the door. ‘Do keep it if you like,’ she couldn’t resist saying, and then could have kicked herself. She could hardly add, after that, ‘I suppose a job’s out of the question?’

  Chapter Four

  Daisy was wrong if she imagined, on her return from school, that the destruction of her Walkman would result in any leniency in her punishment for fare-dodging. A girl at school was having a party a few Saturdays ahead, and Daisy was quietly desperate to go to it. Everyone else was going. She put on a desolate, wronged expression and wandered sighing round the kitchen, toasting a crumpet on the Aga and waiting for Jenny to feel sorry for her. The Walkman suddenly became her most prized possession, now lost for ever together with her new Senseless Things tape, her absolute unchallengeable favourite. She put on an expression that she hoped looked like deep mourning.

  But, with an end-of-the-day headache from a hopeless Grade 1 pupil shrilling and stumbling over his scales, and no fruitful response to her advert, Jenny was adamant. ‘No of course you can’t go out to parties. You haven’t even missed out on one single weekend yet. You skived school and you stole; you can’t expect us to overlook it completely.’ Jenny then smiled with some sympathy. ‘Look, it won’t be for ever. But it will be long enough for you to think about what you’ve done.’ She reached for her jacket, hanging on the back door. ‘Keep an eye on Polly for a bit will you, love,’ Jenny went on. ‘I’m just going round to tell Paul he needn’t worry about replacing your Walkman.’

  Daisy flipped from feigned misery to real anger, waving her crumpet in the air and dripping butter onto the floor. ‘Oh Mum, that’s not fair! Why should I have to lose out on that too?’

  ‘Don’t jump to conclusions! I’ll get it on the house insurance! Or from those trigger-happy police.’ And she made her escape, before Daisy could wear down her resistance.

  ‘Good thing I was home, really. Anything could have happened,’ Paul Mathieson was bragging to Carol as he watched her chopping leeks. In the ice-white, germ-free kitchen she chopped fast and firmly; bits did not fall off the scrubbed board onto the floor, or stick to the knife in an undisciplined way. The knife was stainless steel, it wouldn’t dare be otherwise, and the shining blade flashed up and down. Paul, flinching, put his hands in his pockets on their way to a gesture of protection.

  ‘Anything could not have happened, Paul,’ Carol said, stopping briefly to point the knife at him. ‘There was nothing in that bag but Daisy Collins’s Walkman. I think that Mr Hasty is going to have to volunteer to pay for that, isn’t he?’

  ‘Yes Carol,’ Paul conceded meekly, wondering if it would be all right to help himself to the sherry, even though it wasn’t quite time yet. He glanced into the sitting-room at the glass cabinet containing the decanter. If it wasn’t locked, she wouldn’t hear him opening the door. But if it was locked he was in trouble, for although the lock was tiny, it had a distressingly loud mechanism to it that no amoun
t of oiling could silence. ‘Can I tempt you to a teeny drink, my pet?’ Paul said, thinking to entice her to early alcohol. He took a hopeful step towards the cabinet. A couple of sherries inside Carol, and she might be in the mood for a bit of conjugal access later on.

  ‘Not until you’ve fed the cats,’ she replied sternly, not even looking up from the chopping.

  Paul turned back and dutifully opened the catfood cupboard. Ming and Mong, the matched pair of squint-eyed pale Siamese cats yowled at him from the kitchen floor, plaiting their skinny bodies round his legs. Greedy little buggers, he thought, why should their dinners get priority over me and my drink?

  He held his breath as he scooped the foul-smelling Whiskas. The two food bowls had the word ‘Pussy’ in ornate script painted on them, bought in humourless innocence by Carol, but which never failed to bring a silly schoolboyish smirk to Paul’s face. He bent to put the dishes on the floor, keeping the evidence of his dirty mind turned away from Carol, in case she caught him and gave him one of her looks. The cats, tigerish, hissed at each other over the food and jostled stupidly for the same bowl, ignoring the other one. Paul squatted on the floor to push them apart, getting scratched for his effort, then sat back on his heels and watched Carol’s bum jiggling slightly in its tight mauve trousers as she vigorously cut carrots. It was a trim bum, apple-round and temptingly biteable, it seemed to Paul. He could see the imprint of her knickers showing through the fabric, and knew they were the blue lacy ones, cut high and trimmed with jaunty satin frills round the legs. Paul, influenced by the cats, bared his teeth in semblance of a lecherous snarl, just as Carol turned to look at him.

  ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded, incredulously.

  ‘Er . . .’ The doorbell rang, saving Paul from inventing an explanation. Rearranging his features into a twisted grin, he scrambled up from the floor and leapt into the hallway, almost falling through the frosted glass into the porch in his eagerness to be away from Carol’s interrogation. ‘Come in, come in!’ he yelled into Jenny’s surprised face. ‘Come and have a drink.’ He steered Jenny into the sitting-room and placed her firmly in front of the drinks cabinet, opening it (damn, unlocked all the time) with a flamboyant flourish and hauling out the sherry bottle.

  ‘Er, actually have you got something else . . . ?’ Jenny was saying, but found herself holding an engraved schooner, with copper-coloured liquid being slopped shakily into it.

  Carol bustled through from the kitchen, wiping her hands on a flower-appliquéd towel. ‘Jenny, Paul is so sorry about Daisy’s tape player,’ she purred, and then added waspishly, ‘aren’t you Paul?’ as Paul was looking resolutely blank.

  ‘Oh yes. Of course. Though it was an understandable error. You never know these days, crime is all around us, bombs, terrorists, drug dealers. It’s a war out there,’ he waffled, swilling down his sherry and reaching for a refill. ‘Top-up Jenny?’

  Jenny, who thought it wasn’t really very understandable at all and had barely sipped her sherry, put her hand firmly over the top of the glass. ‘No thanks, really, this is fine.’

  Carol took over, guiding her to the squeaky sofa. ‘Of course you know, Jenny, he’s right in one way,’ she said. ‘The increase in crime, especially burglaries in areas like this, well it’s appalling. I blame all those unemployed boys with nothing better to do.’ She leaned forward eagerly, and then back again, frowning as she caught Paul’s gaze homing in on her cleavage. ‘Have you been in that estate up across the main road? All day long, absolutely heaving with people, all milling about with nothing to occupy them. We’re heading for a revolution, that’s what I think. They’ll come pouring across that road and ransack nice, law-abiding places like this, just like Russia.’

  God, she’s mad, thought Jenny. Stark staring. Carol would never go across the main road into the estate, in case she was robbed both of her values and her valuables. How could she possibly have a clue what went on over there? But Carol, her spun-sugar hair jerking briskly like a rooster’s crest, was just warming up.

  ‘And the children, not a father present between them! No role models. I thank God we were able to send our boys safely off to a decent prep school where they can learn what’s what. And there’s a lot to be said you know, for joining the cadet force. Channels their energies.’

  Into learning how to kill each other, crossed Jenny’s mind, but she said instead, ‘They could learn what’s what here at home, surely, with both parents present?’ suddenly keen to defend her own version of family life, ‘if all you think they need is a father-figure?’ Carol gave her a sly look, something conspiratorial, as if what Paul could teach her sons wasn’t likely to be worth knowing.

  ‘You know,’ Jenny told her, ‘the vast majority of crime by young people is done by boys. The same lone parents are also bringing up girls too. So surely it’s the messages that are getting across to boys in society that are damaging, not necessarily their family structure.’

  Carol, for a moment looked stumped, but soon rallied. ‘Oh well, the girls, we all know what they’re doing don’t we? Getting themselves pregnant and straight up the housing list, that’s what.’

  In the face of such prejudice, Jenny could only give up. It was time to go before Carol progressed to the benefits of bringing back National Service. ‘I must get back, I’ve got a chicken in the oven,’ she said, leaving her sherry glass on the floor beside the sofa and hoping that one of the snaky cats would knock the dregs out of it onto the cream carpet. No wonder they had to send the boys away to boarding school, she thought, the pastel furnishings would never stand up to healthy wear and tear. In any normal family, that pallid sofa would have a generous quota of felt pen marks.

  ‘We haven’t paid you for the Walkman,’ Paul said, pulling his cheque book out of his pocket. ‘How much, about thirty quid?’

  ‘Thirty-five should just about cover it,’ Jenny answered, wondering why on earth she’d ever thought of going through all the bother of claiming on house insurance.

  ‘Though, really I suppose,’ Paul wavered, ‘if it wasn’t for Mrs Fingell poking about . . .’

  ‘If you’ve got it, I think Daisy would actually prefer cash,’ Jenny persisted ruthlessly.

  ‘Oh, right.’ Paul slowly counted out the notes. ‘Here you are then, and do tell her it was only out of a spirit of neighbourliness, won’t you?’

  Alan felt self-conscious in the pub. It hadn’t felt like this in Dorset, perhaps this time it was because he was still wearing an office suit. Serena was buying the drinks. He watched her queuing at the bar, her long legs in black lycra, her long body in an oversized cream silk shirt and embroidered waistcoat. She didn’t look conspicuous – every girl in the place was dressed in some sort of version of what she had on. It was Serena’s idea of what to wear to the office. A bit whacky for accountancy, Alan’s partner Bernard had thought, but she was the most highly qualified of the new young applicants, as well as Bernard’s niece, and as Alan pointed out, they weren’t exactly offering the kind of salary that would run to power-dressing.

  Alan felt he still smelt of the office, but worried more that when he got home he would smell of smoke and pub, and that Jenny would be needing an explanation. He worried, too, about Serena and the flowers; she hadn’t said anything, perhaps his daft romantic gesture had embarrassed her. He imagined her giggling about them, heartless and youthfully brittle with her flat-mate. It wasn’t likely that she had, in her shared basement flat, anything suitable to put them in; things like huge, expensive vases were accumulated by people like himself and Jenny over many years of organized domesticity. She’d probably dumped them in a plastic bucket. Maybe it was too much, they’d only gone to a casual gig together after all, not for a night of passion at the Ritz. It had been a rare spontaneous gesture, the result of relief at finding, right there in his own office, someone to share his interest. It was easy with his cooking, everyone could eat and appreciate the results and say all the right things. But music was a different matter. At home, it was only
when he was drunkenly playing air-guitar to Free’s Alright Now at the tail end of one of his own parties that he could feel uninhibited about his tastes. That they weren’t shared by his family and friends usually became obvious as Ben and Daisy left the room in over-exaggerated embarrassment (‘Oh Dad’) and life-long friends started looking for their coats and car keys. He’d never, in all truth, shared Jenny’s love for classical music, although years ago the sight of Jenny, dizzily blonde and slinky, playing her flute in tight black velvet had attracted him quite madly. There was still something sensuous about watching her play; the way she licked her lips and carefully prepared her soft mouth for the flute. But Mozart did not move him, Mick Jagger did. In polite company, where middle-aged, middle-class musical taste had settled at the point of unobtrusive Dire Straits CDs as dinner party background, he hoarded this secret as guiltily as if he still had a yearning to stand anoraked and train-spotting on Crewe station.

  The pub was pretty sordid, with a brownish swirl-patterned carpet disguising goodness only knew what kind of stains. There was a smell of stale beer and air freshener and the walls and ceilings were murky with congealed fumes from micro-waved chips. Alan rarely went into pubs with Jenny; perhaps on holiday in Cornwall looking for a beer and a sandwich, always to somewhere clean, rural and picturesque with lavishly planted hanging baskets, where hearty, home-made bread and organic Stilton would be served. Outside this one, the traffic roared past on the North Circular and an ancient greasy roadie in the corner was sound-testing a microphone, murmuring the usual ‘one, two,’ into it. Alan liked that sound, it was like a comforting, long-familiar mantra. His suit felt ever more out of place as the bar filled, everyone else in jeans or leather or cords. He should have taken a change of clothes into work with him, he thought, like he had in school days, hiding his fur-trimmed parka in his bag for travelling home on the bus and trying to pull girls from the grammar school. You got detention if you were caught doing that, he recalled. He wondered what the punishment, if Jenny could catch him now, would be.