Janice Gentle Gets Sexy (14 page)

The waiter bowed. The mughlai was obviously all right.

'Behold,' said his customer, bowing back. 'I see the clear light of bliss.' He smiled at the waiter. 'Did you ever read a poet called Gerard Manley Hopkins?'

The waiter returned the smile, bowed again and withdrew. The English were very strange. Why should he know about
their
poets when he had fine poets enough of his own?

Ms Rohanne Bulbecker sat up in bed and redialled the London number unsuccessfully. Herb
ie she had consigned to the Man
hattan stars. She had hit him on the shin with her Filofax, a good aim, and now she sank back among the pillows and tried for the second time to recall her London connection. This time it rang but there was no reply. An onion bhaji was being nibbled, a life decision had been taken, and Ms Rohanne Bulbecker, rather like her London prey, stood alone.

She pushed aside the telephone, drew up her long white legs, rested her dainty chin upon her perfect knees, and thought. She was an intelligent woman. She realized that her screeching must have offended her London connection, and she also realized that there was no time to redress his umbrage. Besides, he had told her all she needed to know. Sylvia Perth was dead. Janice
Gentle
was back on the market. Action. And off the bed she tumbled.

'To London. To London. This time to win,' she sang, reaching for her suitcase, scrabbling among her clothing, cursing her ragged nails for catching in everything she touched. Since her lunch interview with Sylvia Perth, she had done nothing but bite them down to the quick, wait for them to grow, and bite them again. Loathsome, and a sign of deep personal distress. She smiled to herself. She contemplated her hands and no longer felt

distressed. Soon, very soon, she would be able to grow them back again. Perhaps the nails would be even longer and more beautifully shaped than before.

She folded her black biker's jacket, rolled up her leather trousers and threw in her Ray-Bans. Looking threatening was quite useful when you were endowed with a gamine blondeness, and she would rather wear leathers than have her hair shorn or her nose professionally broken for the blessing of being taken seriously. Someti
mes her attractions were a positi
ve disadvantage. One of the things she rather liked about Herbie was that he didn't seem to mind what she looked like — travel-exhausted or ready for the ball. But she sure as hell wasn't going to tell him that. Love was next stop disaster, and life was far too inviting to get caught up in its snares. She shivered. Look what happened if you did.

All the same, she wished he had thrown the Filofax back instead of just limping off like that. Still, i
t was the third date and about ti
me he got his marching orders. Men, like fish, in Rohanne Bulbecker's opinion, should not hang around too long.

She snapped her case shut and rang Morgan Pfeiffer. 'Sylvia Perth has died,' she said, 'and I am going to London now to find Janice
Gentle
.' Everything was arranged and with a light and happy heart, Rohanne Bulbecker set off.

As she retrieved her Filofax from the door, she thought again of Herbie. How
could
he think she wanted sex during a telephone call? Men!

Not bothering to wait for the elevator, she whistled her way down the stairs feeling very happy indeed. Success was waiting for her. Too bad about her London connection but, really, it didn't pay to be quite so fastidious in this day and age.

Chapter E
ight

I

n
Skibbereen Dermot Poll grunted and moved his head with annoyance. His chin rasped against the grey sheet that was tucked around his neck. He turned on his side and swore. 'Shite and more shite,' he groaned. 'Wouldn't you think they'd fly their planes somewhere else? Why it's scarcely the morning
..
.'

He pressed his buttocks into the ample female behind that was Deirdre', and she too grunted. What she grunted was difficult to distinguish, but the gist of it was clear.

'Pig yourself,' he retorted, and pressed his head further into the pillow. The smell of it was strong. 'If you cleaned up a bit, I'd be less of a pig — even were I a pig, which I am not.'

This
time
what she grunted was perfe
ctly
distinguishable.

'And you,' he murmured comfortably, and slept anew.

Outside in the passageway their son, Declan, tiptoed past the door. He was a man now and he was going to seek his fortune in London. And not like the others, either - it wasn't to be the building site for him. Oh no - he could sing, he had his guitar, and he had thirty-eight Irish pounds in his pocket. He pushed open his father's pub door and went out into the beautiful fresh air. Swirling behind him came the stale unwholesome atmosphere of last night's revelries. That was the last time he would sing for that drunken lot, with their tears and their anger and their patriotic, meaningless sentimentality. He inhaled long, wonderful breaths of the sea air and took the road out of Skibbereen towards freedom. And, unlike his fat
her before him, he had no intenti
on of ever coming back.

Dermot slept on, rank-breathed, raw-chinned, greasy from sleep' and odorous of excess, unaware that more waves were

breaking all around him than the silver horses on the shores of Skibbereen.

Rohanne's plane, diverted, roared on over the green beauty of Erin, but she never looked down nor gave it a thought. On her lap was a Janice Gentle book and her calculator. When she pulled this deal off it would be like the Phoenix rising once more.

She drummed her fingers on the book jacket. According to the captain they were just flying over Dublin waters. She looked down but could see nothing save greenness and sea in the morning mist. All that Ireland meant to her at that precise moment was an irritating addition to her ETA.

Chapter Nine

S

ylvia
Perth had been put on trial for her obscene sin of dying in a public place without first giving statement of intent, and being unoriginal enough to have done it of proven natural causes. The case was closed and Sylvia Perth's remains were released for interment. The media showed little interest in this small death since a member of the Blood Royal had been discovered in a massage parlour and there was a summer heat wave — 'Phew Wot a Scorcher' — both of which news items put the demise of one female literary agent into the shade. Happily, for Janice (though sadly for the Royal transgressor), she was left completely unpursued by the Hounds of Wapping.

On she waited, quietly, calmly, in her cloister of beige, certain that something was bound to turn up.

The police, in their inquiries regarding the reason Sylvia Perth should have been in the apartment building at all (and perhaps fired by the 'Sexy Royal in Oily Romps' headlines), decided that just about the only natural thing in Sylvia Perth's life was the cause of her death, and that very probably she had been visiting the apartment building in Battersea for 'Lezzie Perves in Girlie Romps' activities, not literary ones. Despite their inclinations this was not a punishable offence, though it was, of course, disgusting, and without the iron zeal of Sergeant Pitter the matter was given only a cursory investigation.

Door-to-door inquiries provided no serious leads (the only non-alibied female, being fat, bespectacled and, so far as they could tell, three quid short of a five-pound note, was left alone). Mr Jones forgot everything because he wanted to get on with life. His hearing-aid came in very useful if his forgetfulness seemed in question. Sergeant Pitter could not think beyond his pain to what caused it in the first place, and, all in all, the parties concerned in the 'Dead Body in the Lift' episode appeared to be potty.

The pursuance of potty people was not the
issue concerning the Great Briti
sh Public at the time. They wanted law and order restored; they wanted their girl guides and aunties to walk abroad at night without being mugged, raped, terrorized; even the traditional criminal classes were indignant at the nasty turn things were taking. Despite governmental pressure for more and younger and larger exposed breasts in the tabloids, the natives were becoming restive. The police were told in no uncertain terms to catch a few big-time bad eggs and made the mistake of catching out a captain of industry in a rather large city-based fraud, thus embarrassing rather than enhancing the Government, with whom (possibly metaphorically) the captain of industry was intimately involved. It was no time to go pursuing perverts unless they were perverts in high places. AH in all, the reputation of the law enforcers was at a very low ebb. The women of Battersea were not surprised. As one remarked to the other while waiting in the launderette, 'If a policeman's going to burst into tears and call an ambulance just because his back aches - well, I mean to say . . .'

Since she had no way of mourning beyond the immediately accessible, she had put the cover on her word processor. Before doing so she contemplated erasing everything to do with
Phoenix Rising
(especially the tide), but did not. Somehow it seemed right, a connection with Sylvia, to keep it all in there, even if it would never now be used. There had been no word from anyone about a funeral, and Janice was not sure she could have faced one anyway, but since she had not taken part in such a ritual, in a sense Sylvia Perth was
still
with her.

Christine de Pisan tried to encourage her. 'When I started to write, things were a great deal tougher. Those
witty
lordlings publishing their
b
lastanges de femmes
all over the place against my sex, I can tell you. And very popular they were, too. Of course I succeeded in countering the defamations in the end and published my
Cite des dames
in praise of women - to great acclaim, actually. So I can't really feel a lot of sympathy for you. Not really, I'm afraid.'

Janice spooned in chocolate mousse miserably. It's all very well for you, Christine, she thought, but you're
dead.
Janice was undoubtedly alive. Very much alive. Signs of forthcoming patronage were not. She was still but a lady-in-waiting. She glanced at the covered screen and wondered, very hard, whatever would become of it all.

*

In Croydon Derek gave a loud whoop of joy as the Vent-Axia unit slipped perfectly into the hole he had made. Not many men could have done that straight off, he thought to himself, and he felt very manly. It had been the same when he made the cellar steps. Bingo! They had slotted in just like that. But when he had called his wife to see the six-stair miracle, she hadn't shown as much enthusiasm as he would have liked. 'I hope you haven't made too much mess' was all she said, which was rather unsympathetic given all his efforts. He had taken half his annual leave to do the job. And although to him making cellar steps was as good as a week in Torquay - still, she might have been perkier. You wait, he had thought irritably, you wait until you need to come down here with your hands full. You'll be jolly glad of a decent stairway then.

So much for the cellar. Perhaps the Vent-Axia would be different. He turned on the switch and the softness of its whirring was music to his ears. He stood there for a little while basking in the achievement, and then he called his wife. He called her again. He called her from the top of the landing but still no response. Suddenly he felt extremely cross; he'd been working in the bathroom up here since after their evening meal and she hadn't come up once - not
once
- to see what he was doing or to bring him a hot drink. Other wives did that sort of thing. Ken at work had only been saying so today - and what's more, Ken at work went out to the pub twice a week with the lads. Derek had never done anything like that, being happy to stay at home and do things about the house.

Eventually she called up to him. 'Not
now,
Derek,' she said. 'Can't you see I'm
busy?'

Surely he had a right to feel hurt? Creating a non-damp atmosphere,
and
one that removed unpleasant odours (and it certainly hadn't been an easy job), was something he had done for both of them. Usually she would be very encouraging, but just rece
ntly
she had been, well, less than her efficient and supportive self. She'd said something about the receptionist where she worked, but he had lost the thread of it. It would have been all the same if
he'd
said
be
was busy. After all, what was a moment or two to pop upstairs and admire what he had done? He looked with some pride at the Vent-Axia again.

As he had pointed out to Ken at work, a diamond ring might well be for ever, but with the wrong fitting in the plughole it could soon slip off and be lost for ever as well. Hah hah! He was always thinking of things to make everything function more perfe
ctly
. She liked that, didn't she? Then why couldn't she leave off whatever she was doing and come upstairs for a moment to say so? Women were a mystery. He would bloody well go to the pub like Ken had suggested. He tried out the Vent-Axia one more time before going downstairs; it worked a treat. Then he stood at the open front door very pointedly, with his anorak thrown carelessly over his shoulder, and declared rather tersely that he was going
out.