by Mavis Cheek
*
Square Jaw was lying awake and feeling sorry for himself. He felt misunderstood and undervalued and the dry-cleaning hadn't removed all the marks of the take-away she had up-ended over him. There were no two ways about it, women were neurotic and whatever you did was wrong. They could be taken in by the contrived notion of a bunch of flowers and other such devices, while when you did do something nice they'd say it wasn't what they needed. Then if you asked, 'Well, what do you need?' they'd say, 'If I have to tell you, then there's not much point.' As if you were a bloody fortune-teller or something. Well, that was it, certainly it so far as Melanie was concerned. He could get sex any time without all this fuss. He just had to go to a club or something. There was always plenty of it flying around, and you were all right, providing you used condoms. Not that he particularly fancied sex much at the moment - he didn't seem to fancy anything much - but, then, the weather was oppressive. Of course he was all right during the day, because he had his work, which concentrated his mind completely, but apart from that the stuffing seemed to have gone out of him.
Naturally enough it was going to be a bit hard at first, but he was looking forward to being single again. It would free him up for all kinds of things. In the evenings it got a bit difficult, but he managed to watch television or go out. Last night he had been to see a film someone at work had said was really sexy, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, but it had depressed him rather than excited him. And one or two lines that the woman said reminded him of - well, they sounded familiar, anyway. So he came out again and didn't see the end. Sentimentality. That was all it was. It was also disturbing to see them making love like that. It hadn't made him horny so much as — well, a bit low-spirited, really.
Sex was what cornered you, it was sex that gave you a need for a relationship. If it weren't for that, he would probably never look at another woman again. They set snares for you with- their curves and their smiles and the way they were so accommodating at the beginning. Anyway, he had put all her stuff - scent bottles, nighde, flannel, hair-dryer, make-up, clothes (a surprising amount) - into a cardboard box and shoved it under the bed. He certainly wasn't going to sit around being reminded of all that shit, nor of her. If he found himself wondering what she was up to, he soon stopped. What good did that do? Chewing things over in your mind didn't help - he wanted to bury it all and just forget. He sniffed his jacket. He could definitely still smell the lamb pasanda, and he was sure he still had some in his ear. God - women. Melanie's face was suddenly in his head. What was she doing? He went and had a shower and turned on the hi-fi loud. He didn't want to know. He thought of that woman in the tube train, the fat one with the piece of ham lolling out. Who was to say Melanie wouldn't end up looking like that, anyway? What he must do was keep himself busy, fill up his time so that he didn't find himself alone and having to think.
Melanie had done several things. She had hit the bottle alone. She had gone out to a wine bar and felt wonderfully in control as she flirted, and the man had been lovely really, saying all sorts of nice things and being very complimentary, but suddenly she didn't want him and refused, very firmly, when he asked to take her home. 'You're mad,' said her friend Becky, 'he's really nice.' Melanie thought to herself, So was the other one once. And she went home, sorrowing alone.
Then she had sat with girlfriends, talking it all over, paring it down to the last little detail, working out what he felt, why be said this, did that, until, eventually, shaking their heads, they declared that The Way Men Were was impossible to deal with and that Melanie had had a lucky escape. It didn't feel like that when, the next night, in an unbearable rush of needing, she had driven past his flat and seen him getting into his car looking haggard. At first she felt pleased, then she cried, for his haggard appearance probably meant he had been living it up, burning the candle, sleeping with loads of women. She suddenly wanted to know if
this was true, and dialled all but the last digit of his telephone number before hanging up. She didn't want to know, just as much as she did. She had cried during a film, cried in the office, cried at home, in the car, even cried in Marks and Spencer when she saw the orchids, because they were the flowers he had brought her on their first date. The only thing that sustained her was that this terrible separation gave him time to think and understand what had gone wrong - as long as he was confronting it, as long as he was thinking about it. As long as he was, then surely he'd understand . . .?
*
In the garden in Cockermouth Red Gold was leaning on her gate, looking harassed and being talked at very earnestly by a headscarfed woman of slightly older years. 'There is too much sin,' said Headscarf.
'Or not enough,' said Red Gold defiantly, and then immediately colouring, both for the little thrill she felt and for the effect the statement was likely to have.
'That is hardly the observation I would expect of a vicar's wife,' said the shocked woman questioningly. 'What do you mean?'
Red Gold thought quickly. 'I mean,' she said, her tone suitably humble, 'that the less sin there is in the world the more righteously can the majority condemn the weak minority who sin and whom the Bible tells us to love.'
The headscarfed one's jaw dropped. There was something wrong with that but it sounded very plausible.
The vicar approached. His eyes were on his wife, on the curve of her neck, on the line of her arm, on the shape of her hand as she brushed it among the blue delphiniums. Near to the hand that brushed the flower-tops was another, gloved, clasping and unclasping the top of the fence paling. It raised itself in greeting, to which he responded with similar gesture. His wife did not look round.
'Good morning,' he said to his discomfited parishioner, 'you look startled.'
He took his wife's hand and pressed it to his lips unselfconsciously, a gesture of connection, a little piece of loving; something had made her tense, he could tell from the way she was standing.
'Your wife thinks that there is not enough sin in the world.' The parishioner was not amused. Either by the statement or by the hand kiss. Apart from anything else, the parishioner was privately in love with the vicar herself, rather as she had been with his predecessor. As the woman who did most of the flowers and polished up the brasses, she had a right to love her vicars secretly. Part of the private love was feeling sorry for him, seeing him as a man made unhappy by his married mate. When he kissed his married mate's hand like that, it was hard to sustain the pity, and if that went - well, it might be the love to go next.
His wife removed her hand. Surreptitiously she rubbed where he had kissed it; it was not that kind of kiss that had been in her thoughts. He put his hand on her shoulder, lightly, and felt her stiffness. He wanted to say that her eyes matched the flowers and to lie down with her in the daisy lawn with the morning sun warming them. God, who knew everything, would just have to accept that he had thoughts like this. She did not know, his parishioners (perish the thought) did not know, it was only between himself and his God. He touched the bone of her shoulder, and he knew that if he followed it downwards it would lead to the soft delight of her breast. He smiled appeasingly at the headscarf, who had raised her nose and stuck out her chin and was waiting, the onus on him, to hear a rebuttal.
'That,' he said gallantly, 'is because she knows I like to be kept busy. And now I am afraid that I must whisk her away. We have the donations to count before Sunday and I have no head for figures . . .'
The vicar's wife trailed her hand back and forth across the tops of the flowers, watching the pollen dust scatter and the fading pods fall to the ground.
There was not enough sin in the world. Half an hour of it last week, and she was still savouring every minute, every second. She had gone into Body Shop and made up her face (trying not to look too closely as she did so: little red lines from the cruel northern winds, puffy tissue around the dulled eyes, mouth grown thin - no longer the rose he had called her). She had brightened herself up with a scarf worn as she used to wear it, thrown around her sho
ulders - casual elegance, not the sort of thing she indulged in nowadays. Funny, all the same, how the scarf had just fallen into place immediately. A latent skill, London scarf-throwing, one which you apparently never lost. It was almost as if she were being reminded that another life existed, that this life was still there if she wanted it, still there . ..
During Question Time in the House she did not listen but watched him. Characteristically, he had his arms folded, his long legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles. She remembered the body beneath the blue serge and how it looked and felt naked. From a distance he looked only a little changed — perhaps fleshier, perhaps greyer, perhaps more formal, but still him. She thought that if she closed her eyes, she could smell his smell again. Love me, she sent the message across the House, love me one more time .. . Only once more, and that will be enough.
They had a brief tea. He asked her if he was forgiven, he kissed the palm of her hand (that, she wanted to say now to Arthur, is where you kiss a woman's hand - not the cold, bony back of it, but the fleshy, warm softness of its centre. Fool). She lied and said she was terribly, terribly (the language of the thrown scarf coming back, too) happy up in the northern country. That Arthur was a dear, that her garden was beautiful, that . . . And then she had looked him in the eyes, defiantly, and said, 'I should like to go to bed with you one more time,' and he had said, so that her heart leapt and the place between her legs tingled, 'Only one more time?'
In the taxi back from Fortnum's she took his hand and kissed the palm of it as he had done hers, then she slipped it beneath her heather mixture handknit, under her plain cotton brassiere (oh for the lace and teasing bows of yesterday, the oyster satin, the peachy silks), and for a brief moment yielded herself up to the searing experience of passion rekindled, until they reached the top of St James's, where they parted.
'Is it possible?' She stood on the pavement, holding the open window of the cab, so that it would not go until she was ready.
He knew what she meant.
He called her his dearest Alice, and it was as if the years had been wiped away. Her breast tingled. She looked at his hand, long, sensitive white fingers, curved and properly kept nails, and she thought with surprise of where it had recently been; they looked so innocent, those fingers, he looked so innocent, this Establishment Man.
'Let me know in advance next time you are coming down.' He said it cautiously.
She was rapturous.
During the last part of the conference she could not stop smiling and chuckling to herself, which caused Mrs Lovitt a great deal of confusion since the final session was about child abuse.
She arrived home, back to being Alice again. She told Arthur all the minutiae of the trip, including a description of the fat female eccentric whom she had sat next to in the tube.
'London seems to be full of madness,' she said, but she said it happily. She wanted Arthur to make love to her that night, but he did not come to bed for a long time. She suddenly remembered that she had left his Church Times in the tearoom. It was probably that which had offended him - he had been strange when he met her at the station.
Downstairs Arthur sat sipping malt whisky and wondering why his wife had come back wearing perfume and make-up, and why her eyes, always blue, looked as if she had changed the batteries in them, so brightly did they shine and sparkle now. She misses London, he consoled himself; she should have had a child, he consoled himself. He did not want to think beyond either of those. Nor why, in a desperate search for a collar stud (or was that true?), he had come across a powder compact and other little
fancies in the back of her dressing-table drawer. He thought it was the one he had bought, but it was not. It was much finer. And it had a message of enduring love entwined with her and another's initials on the lid. He sipped on, the book of Piers the Ploughman and his open Bible forgotten at his side.
Chapter Ten
J
ANICE opened the window of her little balcony, but there was no air, only the midday heat and the smell of cars and tarmac. She was beginning to panic. Nothing had happened yet. This morning she had received her monthly cash delivery from the motorbike messenger, which seemed chillingly normal. Perhaps she had dreamt it? Perhaps Sylvia Perth had not died at all? Below her she saw Mr Jones in his boiler suit retreating down his steps. He would know, but she didn't want to ask. What could she say? 'Do you remember anything of a peculiar nature happening here recently?' Suppose he said no? Would she then go on to jog his memory? 'Something odd. In the lift, hmm? A body or anything?' Hardly.
Yesterday, drawn by an urge that was stronger than the fear of madness, she had telephoned Sylvia's apartment. She had neither visited it nor telephoned it before, but Sylvia had given her the information to be used in emergencies. Well, this was a very real emergency, and though she had no expectation in mind, she dialled - quite unprepared for the shock of hearing Sylvia's voice.
'I'm sorry that I am not able to take your call right now. Leave a message and I will get back to you.'
Janice swallowed. It was as if she had not gone away at all, as if she had not ever died, as if she was still there, chic, bright, alert, a living thing. Janice ate a pound of maple Brazils while considering this phenomenon. She reached no solution, save it just felt wrong.
After that she rang the number several times, always to hear that voice, firm and alive, making the image of the torso in the lift seem unreal and remote ...
Erica von Hyatt leaned against the scratchy, embroidered scene of Khomi (beautiful sloe-eyed adulteress) pursuing Khani (sacred bell-girl disguised as a boy), and wondered what to do for the best. What little food there had been in the flat she had consumed, and she was now down to a packet of halva, a tin of dried milk (rapidly diminishing), half a tin of coffee and a few dried pomegranates, which might or might not have been put there for decoration. There was also a highly ornate drinks cabinet, into which she had so far made only furtive dips, but that could change if nothing else happened soon.
'Do not answer the telephone,' Sylvia had said, 'and I will bring you something nice when I come back tonight.' Well, that had been so long ago that Erica von Hyatt had lost count of the days. She was not altogether disturbed by this, since life in general was a series of broken promises and fraying ends - but, all the same, she had not expected it to go on for quite so long. On the one hand it was much pleasanter here than hanging out in Piccadilly, on the other it was boring. The telephone had been going non-stop and the persistent whine and whirr of the answering machine had become like a coda in her life. Click, whirr, click, pause, whine, whine, whirr. She knew it very well and it took quite a lot of self-control not to throw it to the floor and stamp on it. She had placed a couple of sequinned cushions over it, which helped, and after the first couple of days the ringing eased off considerably. Only very occasionally now did it ring, and she almost didn't hear it any more.
The silence in the apartment was nice, and she had done a great deal of what she called luxury sleeping during the time she had spent alone, an enjoyable experience, but she wished she could go out now and then. Alas, if she did, she would not be able to get back in. It was tempting, though. She had found a ten-pound note and some coins in a drawer, and she knew that there must be a food shop somewhere round about, though the view from the window showed nothing but posh grey street. Perhaps she could just slip out, leaving the door on the latch and risk someone taking the opportunity to burgle the place? But supposing Sylvia came back and found it deserted? She would be angry and throw her out for showing such carelessness. Erica von Hyatt did not want to be thrown out just yet. She wanted to enjoy cleanliness and peace and quiet for a little while longer. Living on your wits was all very well and good for the adrenalin, but it was no compensation for stretching out on a couch and watching daytime television. That, Erica guessed, was what real women did.
Her stomach rumbled. Even around Eros there had been food, for Chrissake. If not from the tourists, then of the in-house variety: st
olen fruit, the odd end of bread, a shared grimy cheese paring, all passed around with the same communal solicitude as a damp-ended joint. She did not question Sylvia's prolonged absence much. Erica von Hyatt had been left on her own a lot by her real mother before taking to the streets, and by a series of other mothers and fathers, all of whom had forsaken her sooner or later. Passing on was just a part of life, something you did when you had to do it. In her turn she had moved on from her own daughter when the time came. She had produced her, held her, kissed her a couple of times, and then left her in a doctor's waiting-room; you couldn't keep a baby on the streets. Erica had decided to stick to women after that. You didn't get pregnant and - on the whole - they weren't violent. Leaving Dawn (called that because she was born at dawn) at the surgery made Erica von Hyatt feel that she had been a responsible mother, no matter what those sentimental dossers might say. She was responsible, really. After all, she had looked after herself on the streets for years, and she was twenty-seven (or possibly twenty-eight, things got a bit fuzzy) and nothing really bad had ever happened to her. She'd been beaten up, locked up, even raped a couple of times, but you dealt with those things as part of the common lot. And you passed on, politely if possible, when the time came. She knew how to take care of rape nowadays. You just told them you had AIDS - it wasn't hard to believe when she was in her street gear - and they backed off smartish. She was pretty sure she hadn't. There had been no more men after Dawn and she didn't do hard drugs. That really was for the birds. And you just looked out for yourself.
