Janice Gentle Gets Sexy (31 page)

'Of course they were,' said Janice promptly. 'They were all me. It's easy to pick up jargon, to do research' - fondly and fleetingly she thought of those cosy days in the library at Battersea - 'to create from fact. Just the same people but in different clothes, for there is nothing new under the sun. At our heart we all want to be loved, to belong - the thread to link them all.'

Rohanne fiddled with her fingers uncomfortably. It was all nonsense, of course.

'All my books have been about love, and I have loved. All of my books have been about love and difficulties, because I have experienced love and difficulties. None of my books has been about sex, because I haven't experienced it. When I meet Dermot Poll again - who knows? - it might be different. . .'

'Oh, it will. I'm sure it will,' said Erica rapturously, much inspired by the talk of love. 'I
will
find him for you. Yea, verily, even unto the ends of the earth . . .'

Gretchen resisted the urge to shout hallelujah, and looked at her pink-cheeked idol with silent emotion.

'But good grief,' said Rohanne Bulbecker eventually. So far as she knew, she had never met a grown-up virgin before and was, despite her anxiety, in some awe at the experience. 'Times are moving on. People want sex - in bed and in books. I mean, sex is everywhere, sex is of our time. Couldn't you sort of
think
sex? You must know what it comprises.'

'Biologically,' said Janice, 'I know exactly. But I might as well write about sheep mating or frogs coupling for all I could say. It would be dead writing, I am afraid. No feelings.'

Rohanne felt on easier ground. 'There aren't necessarily feelings behind it at all. There are all sorts of in-betweens. It's a bit like eating, really. Sometimes you have a big meal and sometimes — well, you snack, even when you're not hungry. Do you see?'

'No,' said Janice. 'I understand eating because I do it. I do not understand sex. How can I when I have never sung Hymen's song?'

'It could be arranged,' muttered Rohanne.

'The whole thing is a complete mystery to me and I don't understand it at all.'

'Oh, it's a very straightforward activity,' Rohanne replied as airily as possible. 'To do with pleasure, tension, release, head games . . .' She stopped. Janice was staring at her quite uncomprehendingly.

'Aren't you taking this integrity business a bit too far? I mean, you write about
men
and yet you've never known any - apart from Dermot Poll, and you only saw him for five minutes.'

'Half an hour or so,' said Janice with dignity. 'And that was quite enough. We can fall in love in a second, and by that falling we can know everything about the object of our love we need to know. In the main we create our lovers, anyway — invent what we want them to be, then set about looking for those qualities in them.'

'Is
that
what we do?' said Rohanne, intrigued. 'Then no wonder it always goes wrong.'

Janice paused. 'Does it?' she asked with interest. 'It doesn't in
my
books.'

Rohanne was about to say something acerbic, but diplomacy won. 'I'm sure it won't be like that for you and . . . er .
..
him. But why can you write about men, yet you can't write about sex
..
.? After all, you don't know how men feel. . .'

'It's my estimation that they feel just the same as us, only they express it differently.'

Rohanne Bulbecker clamped her jaws shut. This was no time for debate.

'I see,' said Erica von Hyatt thoughtfully, 'you think that they feel the same, but hide it? The strong and silent thing? Sort of more muscular about it all?'

'Men are not stone,' said Janice. 'Nor women rose petals. And there is only one ultimate, ideal desire in the world. To love and be loved back. Men are no different in their need for this. After all,' she beamed through her spectacles, 'if you prick them do they not bleed?'

'Frankly,' said Rohanne Bulbecker, 'if you went at them with a hatchet, I doubt they would shed a drop. But you have it your way and I'll have it mine.' She drummed her fingers on her teeth. 'But there must be an answer to this sex thing. There
must?

Outside the evening sun began to wane, throwing the room into violet shadow. In the softening light Erica von Hyatt looked more lovely than ever, Janice
Gentle
more gross. But Rohanne would not be beaten, she would not.

'What about reading
The Joy of Sex?
It's got a lot of pictures in it.'

'So has a book on brain surgery,' said Janice, 'but I don't think I could perform an operation afterwards . . .'

Rohanne was irritably convinced. This lady might look like a doughbag, but she had sterling brainpower. 'You could watch a film, I suppose. That might help. I could get hold of some blue movies for you.'

'Ah, now,' said Erica von Hyatt, child of the streets, survivor. She took a deep breath and out tumbled the words. 'I was in one of those films once, and the thing about them is that it's not about nice sex at all, it's about getting on with it. "Get on with it," the man with the watch and the medallion said, so you don't have time to build up to anything like you should. I mean, one minute you're seeing a man across a crowded beach and the next you're in his truck using his dick for lunch, and then it cuts to a party and he's eating your pussy for tea, and then it's two or three of you all going at it on one man, and it all gets very uncomfortable because you have to make sure your privates can be seen, and I mean, when you are doing it for pleasure, the last thing you worry about is if the camera can get a good view up your —'

Rohanne put up her hand. She had gone very pink and more than ever regretted the leathers. 'Yes, well, thanks. You have been around,' she added tersely, 'haven't you?'

'I only made one,' said Erica. 'They said I was very good, but

the next one had a dog in it, and I just wasn't going to do that sort of thing, because there are limits.'

'Don't you like dogs?' asked Gretchen, part of whose fantasy for the future had included strolling through country lanes with a dog.

'Look,' said Erica, 'I've stroked dogs, been bitten by dogs, looked after dogs, I've even
eaten
dogs -'

'Please,' shrieked Rohanne, who longed even more for the comparative calm of New York. 'I don't think any of us -'

'Eaten
dogs!' said Gretchen, suddenly feeling her affection wane. 'How?'

'With me teeth, of course,' said Erica sharply. 'I had a Chinese boyfriend, and he cooked one once.'

'Yuck!' said Rohanne and Gretchen in unison.

Only Janice listened placidly. 'What did it taste like?' she asked, interested.

'Can't remember, really. Meat, I suppose.'

'Please,' said Rohanne briskly, 'could we just get back to sex?'

'I could
show
you,' said Erica thoughtfully. 'I wouldn't mind doing that if we got a decent man. I mean, sometimes I like to imagine I'm doing it in front of a whole crowd of people, anyway. At a theatre or something, and they're cheering me on . . .'

Gretchen O'Dowd went pale. Here was the object of her desire, the princess of all dreams, offering to expose herself quite shamefully. She glared at Janice Gentle, who immediately understood. She put up a plump hand. 'Oh no, dear,' she said to the daisy-faced Erica, 'I couldn't possibly . . .'

'Yes, yes, well, well,' said Rohanne tartly, for Erica had just described one of her own pet fantasies (she favoured Ephesus, surrounded by thousands of happy tourists snapping away with their cameras), and the thought that this von Hyatt person, woman of no abode, destitute, arrant liar, should share such imaginings was distressing. 'I think perhaps the idea of watching some sort of film is best. And it had better be a fairly explicit one - given how
little
you know. Now, does anyone here know about videos?'

'Oh yes,' said Gretchen O'Dowd. 'I used to watch them all the time. You hire them from shops.'

'Good,' said Rohanne Bulbecker. 'Then you must go and get one.' She fixed Gretchen with a penetrating eye. 'You know the kind of thing we want?'

Gretchen O'Dowd, much relieved that her princess was not to perform, nodded enthusiastically.

'Excellent,' said Rohanne Bulbecker. 'That's all settled, then. Just make sure it's something really explicit.'

And Gretchen left, plucking bravely at her moustache.

'I am suddenly reminded of that bit in Langland - you know it, I'm sure - where the silken-tongued Friar tries to extract money from Lady Meed, she who represents the power of the purse for both good and evil.' Janice looked innocently at Rohanne. 'And because the aristocracy is his likeliest hope for getting funds, he feels bound to justify their exigencies.'

'Ah,' said Rohanne.

'So he says smoothly, "It is a freletee of flessh." A frailty of flesh, which, he says, is found in books. Interesting how seeing anything in print, even five hundred years ago, seems to justify anything. . .'

'Hmm,' said Rohanne Bulbecker, keeping her eyes wide and clear.

'And, Langland goes on to say it is a fact of Nature through which we all get born; if you can survive the slander, then the harm is soon forgotten. It is the easiest absolved of all the Seven . . .'

'What is?' said Erica von Hyatt, confused still. 'Sex,' said Janice Gentle promptly. 'Amen, and let's hope it is relevant to me.'

Rohanne found it immediately necessary to remove herself. She established that there was a video machine, a television, and that the two remaining players in this bizarre intermezzo knew how to work them. Then she made her excuses and left. She was beginning to ponder the disturbing philosophical point, 'Who is the more gross, Janice or me?' and she wished not to do so. She walked. 'Frailty of flesh, indeed!' She shook her head. The leathers felt nasty, sticky, hot. She wanted a bath and she wanted to be on her own for a while. Sometimes it was hard being the fixer; sure, it meant that you held all the controls, but it also meant that no one, ever, could do the fixing for you. Right now she would have liked to lean on someone else for a change, a requirement she knew would pass, for it always did.

The hotel was quiet and soothingly anonymous. She went up to her room and ran a bath and let the scented water caress her. She felt perplexed about something and she was unsure what. As she lay there, observing her toes, wiggling them occasionally, she pondered. And then it occurred to her. She had just been given the run around by a fat, middle-aged virgin, made to bend to her will rather than bend her to her own . . . She sat up and threw the sponge across the room so that it landed with a sadsfying splat against the door. Then she leaned back under the water and laughed. I'll be damned, she thought, I'll be damned.

*

Gretchen O'Dowd was much flustered by the time she found the right sort of shop. It did not look the right sort of shop, having the latest Michael Douglas on one side of its window display and a newly cut version of
Dumbo
on the other. Nevertheless, this was, according to the taxi-driver, exactly the place. It was Erica who had suggested that a taxi-driver would know where to obtain the kind of movie they needed, and it was a taxi-driver, indeed, who had tapped the side of his nose and said, 'Say no more,' when bringing her here. She smoothed her moustache with damp fingers, squared her shoulders, took a very deep breath, which enhanced the solidity of her substantial chest, and shuffled in shyly.

'I want a video for a friend,' she said.

The man behind the counter looked knowing. 'They all say that, dear,' he winked. 'And what sort of thing is your
friend
interested in?'

'Sex,' said Gretchen boldly. And then she went scarlet. The man recognized the need for delicacy. 'What
..
. er. . . kind?' Gretchen remembered. 'Explicit,' she said. 'Very explicit.' The man looked irritated. 'They are
all
that,' he said. Gretchen looked behind her at Dumbo. 'Are they?' she said. He followed her gaze. The little big-eared elephant stared back innoce
ntly
. 'But not animals?' he said jovially. Gretchen shook her head. 'For a friend you say?' Gretchen nodded. 'A close friend?'

Gretchen shrugged unhappily. 'Well, she may be one day.' He raised a finger. 'And no particular interests?' 'I don't think so.'

He rubbed his hands. 'Then I have
just
the thing for you.'

Gretchen tucked the brown package into her jacket breast and hurried back to Dog Street. 'Sorry I've been so long,' she said.