Pleasant Vices

by Judy Astley

  Sebastian, from the safety of the far side of an oak sapling, thought about the bits of girls he hadn’t yet seen, that probably no-one at school had seen, and wouldn’t they all be jealous if that was what Polly was promising. Harriet was giving her a doubtful look, as if she wasn’t sure she was prepared to go along with this. Sebastian didn’t really mind showing his willy, his mum and Matron at school looked at it all the time, just to see if the end was getting tight like Marcus’s had and would have to be trimmed.

  ‘OK what will you show us?’ he asked, prepared to bargain.

  ‘Well,’ Polly said slowly, ‘have you ever seen . . .’ she looked across at Harriet, making sure she could count on her joining in. The two boys leaned forward, eagerly, and Polly asked in a loud, excited whisper, ‘Have you ever seen a dead body?’

  Marcus gasped, Seb looked sceptical and Harriet stared intently at Polly, wondering which way to play it. She rather thought, on balance, she’d prefer to show the boys her fanny than have to go with them and look at a corpse.

  ‘Yeah. I know where there’s one, really near, near where you’re sitting now!’ Polly continued, her eyes blazing with dramatic importance. ‘And it’s only me that knows, so you have to do what I say if you want to see it.’

  Marcus felt prickly with fear. He didn’t at all want to see anyone dead, but even more he didn’t want Polly to know this. There was a moment of silence, while decisions were made.

  ‘OK,’ Sebastian said simply, standing up and lowering his trousers. ‘Come on Marcus, get it out.’

  Reluctantly, but with a sigh of inevitability, Marcus stood up and fumbled with his trousers. He wondered if Polly would touch it, and if it would go up at all. He reminded himself how envious the boys in his form would be when he told them. He hoped he could rely on Seb to exaggerate a good bit, make it all sound infinitely ruder than the cool, silent, clinical inspection that Polly and Harriet were now making.

  After a few minutes, Sebastian shoved Harriet, who was peering horrendously closely, back into the grass and hurriedly re-dressed himself. ‘That’s enough. Now let’s see this dead person,’ he demanded.

  ‘Oh, I didn’t say it was a person, did I? I’m sure I didn’t . . .’ Polly said, sneaking away towards the garden fences and giving the boys a sly look.

  Harriet, relieved, caught on, and giggled. ‘No, she didn’t say it was a person, she never said that!’ she told the boys contemptuously, skipping towards Polly and safety.

  ‘I will show you a body though. There’s a bit of old rabbit that a fox left . . .’ Polly called, laughing, over her shoulder. It’s round this corner . . . and she disappeared at a run behind a clump of blackthorn. Sebastian and Marcus dashed after the girls, hellbent on revenge. From out of sight there came a blood-curdling duet of screams.

  ‘They’re putting it on,’ Marcus said. ‘You just wait till we get you!’ he yelled.

  ‘Yeah, we’ll get their knickers, they deserve it,’ Sebastian said, hurling himself painfully through the blackthorn. Then he stopped, and looked at what had made the girls scream. Harriet had her hand over her mouth, looking as if she might be sick. Polly’s eyes were wild with terror. The four of them stood and gazed at the stretched-out, gape-mouthed, twisted body of old Mrs Fingell.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘Mugged,’ was Paul Mathieson’s immediate and authoritative verdict, although Mrs Fingell showed no obvious sign of injury. Paul, Carol, Jenny, Sue and the four children stood around the still and solid body like a silent gathering at a wake. Harvey and Laura Benstone were picking their careful way across the damp grass towards the group, respectfully shushing their oblivious little girls who whooped and shrieked in the unaccustomed freedom of the great open space. Sue’s dog, an aged and bad-tempered Airedale, whined and tugged at its lead, furious at having its daily snuffle through the rabbit warrens interrupted, and irreverently eager to take curious sniffs at the body.

  ‘Alan’s phoning the police, and an ambulance,’ Jenny whispered, shivering and rather frightened in the presence of the corpse.

  ‘Not much use, getting an ambulance,’ Paul commented bluntly. ‘The police will bring their own mortuary van. Of course not yet, seeing as it’s murder . . .’ he said, proud of his extensive knowledge.

  Bloody know-all, Jenny thought, moving closer to Sue and sliding her arm through hers for warmth and comfort.

  ‘Are we sure she’s dead?’ Sue suddenly asked. ‘I mean, should we do the kiss of life or something?’ There was a distinct rustling of the grass as feet were guiltily shuffled. No-one was actually prepared to touch Mrs Fingell and check for signs of breathing and pulse. Even when alive, she had carried a certain aroma of decay.

  ‘Oh God, I feel awfully faint,’ Laura Benstone squeaked feebly, pressing a limp hand to her forehead.

  ‘We’ll go home, darling. Take the girls away from this. They really shouldn’t see,’ Harvey said eagerly, pulling at Laura’s arm. Then he turned to the others, feeling he should apologize for shameful curiosity. ‘We only came in case there was anything we could do . . .’ he murmured. Jenny felt Sue’s body twitch slightly, and realized she was, typically, trying not to giggle. ‘We could take her dog perhaps?’ Harvey continued, desperate to be useful, and bumbling off after Mrs Fingell’s scuttling little orange poodle which was happily sniffing around the base of an oak tree.

  ‘They’ll have to cordon off this part of the Common,’ Paul was saying, gazing around. ‘One of those little tents they’ll have, too, to cover the body. We shouldn’t really be here, you know, trampling on Evidence.’ Jenny was watching Paul’s face, which was vibrant with excitement and importance. ‘As your Neighbourhood Watch representative,’ he started to say pompously, getting well into his stride, ‘I feel I should recommend that you all return to your homes and wait to be summoned for evidence. I’ll have to wait here, naturally. The police will no doubt wish to interview you all in due course . . .’ He was interrupted by a loud sniff from Carol, who, to Jenny’s amazement, was actually crying.

  ‘Oh what is happening to the world?’ Carol suddenly wailed dramatically, putting a protective arm round the shoulder of each of her highly embarrassed twins. ‘A poor old lady can’t even walk her pet on the Common without being mugged and murdered by a bunch of louts from the estate!’ She looked up, as if appealing for a response from the heavens.

  Sue covered her face with her hand and shook helplessly, and Paul smiled across with unctuous sympathy, not realizing she was hiding an attack of the giggles. Jenny nudged her to stop, feeling a sinful and inappropriate smile creeping over her own face. Some people, she recalled, do have this nervous reaction to terrible things, an outrageous and uncontrollable desire to laugh.

  The police arrived, swarming across the Common in a number large enough to satisfy Paul. He strode off to meet them, proudly confident that this time, at last, he had something that wasn’t a waste of their time.

  ‘Shouldn’t we cover her up?’ he heard the voice of Polly saying as he came level with the now-familiar police sergeant. An angry yowl of protest and series of shocked screams followed, and Paul and the police rushed to the little group. Sue was now laughing openly, clutching Jenny for support. Carol’s tears had halted abruptly and she was now staring with silent fury at Mrs Fingell, who was thrashing around beneath Jenny’s Barbour.

  ‘Where’s the corpse?’ the police sergeant asked Paul.

  ‘She was dead . . . ! Really, a minute ago . . .’ he babbled.

  ‘Dead drunk more like,’ said a young constable, winking at Sue. He bent down to take a closer look at Mrs Fingell and she rolled on to her side, revealing an empty sherry bottle.

  ‘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 imagin
ed 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.