Janice Gentle Gets Sexy (32 page)

'That's all right. We've been talking,' said Erica von Hyatt proudly. 'Or, rather, I've been talking. Janice has been listening. And writing.' Janice
Gentle
put down her notebook and took the proffered parcel. 'Thank you,' she said and stared at its plain wrapping.

'He said it was just the job,' Gretchen muttered. She set up the machine and then, taking Erica von Hyatt by the hand, she led her to the door. 'Erica,' she said firmly, 'you and I are going out.'

'Oh, why?'

'Because. . .'

'Because what?'

'Because I don't want you getting corrupted.' Erica's laughter echoed up the stairs.

Janice smiled at the sound. Then, before pushing the switch, she picked up the empty case, considered the picture on the cover for some
time
, shrugged, put it down, polished her glasses, took up her notebook, and waited for the show to commence.

Rohanne had changed into a skirt and shirt, twisted up her pale, damp hair and scrubbed her face clean of the day and clean of cosmetics. It gave her a nice sense of innocence.

Back at Dog Street, she tiptoed in to find Janice sitting alone and thoughtful. 'Gretchen has returned the film,' she said.

'Good, good. How did it go?'

Janice smiled.'Quite well, I think. I learned quite a lot about the art of love.' She smiled. 'And it all fits in rather well with this particular story.'

'Excellent,' said Rohan
ne, and she hurried off to the ti
ny little kitchen. 'How about a cream cake?' she called. 'As a reward for effort?' And she returned with a plate piled high with Harrods' best. She held this out, and Janice was just doing 'eeny meeny miny mo', when Rohanne asked, 'Now, when do you think we can have the book? Mr Pfeiffer will need to know a deadline.'

'Oh, not long at all’
said Janice. 'I know exactly what I'm going to write' - her outstretched fingers prepared to descend upon a strawberry tartlet - 'and you can have the manuscript just as soon as
I
have found Dermot Poll.'

The strawberry tartlet was whisked from under her grasp. She looked up inquiringly.

Rohanne's smile resembled a death mask, and for a moment she distinctly heard Sylvia Perth laughing in her ear. 'What?' she said.

'Well’
said Janice Gentle evenly, 'it seems safest. Given the way I have been tricked in the past.'

Yes, distinctly, Rohanne Bulbecker heard Sylvia Perth cackling away. She took several very deep breaths. Keep smiling, she told herself.
Keep smiling.
And still she held the cakes out of reach. 'Couldn't we have the manuscript, anyway?' she asked. 'And then find this . . . er . . . Poll man?'

Janice shook her head. 'I think not,' she said. 'Once bitten, you know.' She looked yearningly at the plate.

Rohanne nodded. She understood completely. No doughbag at all. No Dermot Poll, no book. She kept the cakes hovering just out of reach.

'Otherwise there is really no point.' Janice blinked up at her. 'Is there?'

When Gretchen O'Dowd and Erica von Hyatt r
eturned, they found the interesti
ng tableau of Janice, Rohanne and the cakes. 'I'll bet I know
exactly
where he is,' said Erica. 'Oh?' said Janice. 'Where?' said Rohanne.

'He'll be in Skibbereen, where he first came from. You can bet on it.'

'But what about Charlie Chaplin?' said Janice, which was ignored.

'I'll
find Dermot Poll for you,' said Erica very positively, 'while you get on with your book.'

'We,'
said Gretchen, 'will find Dermot Poll for you . . .' She looked at Erica. 'I shall never let you out of my sight again. And I will follow you to the ends of the earth.'

*Well, for the time being,' said Erica, looking a little hunted. 'And it's only to Ireland. One day at a time, you know. One day at a time.'

'And when we return, I shall find us a little house all of our own,' rhapsodized Gretchen, 'where we will live happily after . . .' Erica von Hyatt said nothing, just smiled. She had heard it all before.

Chapter Nineteen

I

n
Oxfordshire Gretchen bought wool at the little haberdashery. She would knit them each a jumper. Their trip to Ireland would take place in the depths of winter and she did not want her fragile beloved to catch cold. As usual, the woman in the wool shop was very nervous at selling what she considered to be the mysteries of female accoutrement to this man who seemed not to find them a mystery at all. Macrame, tapestry, tatting - he had mastered them all, and now he was going through the pattern books as if it were the most natural thing
in the world. It was no consolati
on to know that the Archbishop of Canterbury also enjoyed working with wool, for he had a very high voice and she had always had her suspicions. As usual, the woman in the haberdasher's was jolly relieved when the choice was made, the money paid and her customer departed. Gretchen left with a cheery bounce, elated by the singing blue and sturdy brown she had chosen for their respective jumpers, and the fact that she had the whole of the autumn ahead with her loved one in the Queen Anne house. Rent-free, which was better than nothing, though it
should
by rights have been hers. As she passed the pub, the barmaid, breasting a window-ledge, leaned out and waved. Gretchen walked on with no more than the slightest response of recognition. That sort of thing was all in the past now. Once again she had someone of her own to cleave to and care for.

As she crunched down the gravel of the drive, she saw the faerie figure of Erica von Hyatt gathering blooms until she was all but hidden by them. There was a distinctly surreptitious quality about the way the girl garnered the flowers, a constant looking over her shoulder, a nervousness, despite Gretchen's telling her that she was welcome to pick as many as she wanted. Now the house was full of blossoms, scattered around in vases and bowls, looking dumped and forlorn.

She waved. The human wall of blooms attempted to wave back. Fronds of gladioli and chrysanthemums parted to reveal that delighted, adorable smile. Suddenly Gretchen knew exactly what to do. She would teach Erica the skills her own mother had taught her. Erica would not only pick the flowers and garner the fruits, but she would learn how to display them beautifully, too. Gretchen sighed with satisfaction and gave her moustache a loving little tickle with her fingers. What could be more companionable than that?

*

The
Little
Blonde Secretary was feeling very put out. She had assumed that the decision was as good as the deed, and yet here she was again, checking the calendar, checking the temperature chart and preparing for yet another attempt at Making it Happen
. The Vent-Axia was whining irrit
atingly as she bent over the basin to wash her hair, but she had put the issue to one side for the moment. A harmonious body makes a harmonious child, she had been advised, so altercations over something so trivial (and which could be removed - and
would
be once she was safely pregnant) were counter-productive. Instead, she thought sweet thoughts and continued with her toilette. Derek was hardly what you would call
ardent
any more, and she found it extremely irritating to have to make the running all the time. If he had once tried to surprise her with something like roses or bath salts, it would have made things a bit more romantic, but he didn't seem to understand. She had even read him out the closing passage from
Scarlet Ice
where the hero comes back to the heroine and produces a filmy red nightie wrapped in black tissue-paper, but when she shut the book and sighed meaningfully, he was already asleep.

She rinsed her hair with scented lotion and thought of one day having a sweet
little
girl, in her own image, holding her hand in the supermarket and being complimented by everyone in the queue. She began pinning careful
little
curls and dangly bits all over her head - something that
the magazine arti
cle said held an enticing hint of danger about it. Her little girl would never have a runny nose or grazed knees, nor howl for chocolate buttons and throw tantrums on the floor. She would leave the likes of that to the lump in Reception, with her stodgy smile and her tight jumpers that showed every line of the growing bulge. When
she,
Little Blonde Secretary, got pregnant she would show
her
how to do it attractively. At least nobody - except Derek - knew how long they had been trying . . .

In the lounge she reorganized the growing pile of books and magazines on the subject into proper order. The ones about getting pregnant, the ones about being pregnant, the what-hospital guides and the parentcraft guides. She had built up quite a library and there wasn't a lot left to know. All that was required was the one essential; she ferve
ntly
hoped that tonight would do it. She had rung Derek at work
to remind him to be here promptl
y, and something told her - she hummed as she dotted Loulou behind each ear - that tonight really would be the night. She hoped so, because with that out of the way she could concentrate on the conference in Birmingham next month. The Boss Masculine was very keen and she wanted to be at her efficient best. Organized, she liked to be organized. And with that she began to concentrate on thinking nice thoughts. Not long now until he got home, unless the five-fifty-two was delayed for some reason . . .

In the bedroom she slipped a Barry Manilow moody-music cassette into the machine and practised turning it on at exactly the right place. Derek's lateness was most likely due to travel problems, London was chock-a-block nowadays, but she refused to get wound up about the progress of the clock. He would be here, in good time, because she had told him it was an
important
night. He had said, 'What, another one?' Which had made it quite hard to keep her smile down the telephone. But keep it she did, just.

She slipped into her filmy new nightie
dangerously
filmy, the assistant had said), clipped on her ear-rings, wriggled her little painted toes into her boudoir slippers, and went down to the kitchen to wait. While she waited, she pottered, washing the vases, which she liked to do by hand, being careful to wear her yellow rubber gloves. The clock continued to try to make her feel cross, but she would have none of it. After the vases she washed the inside of the drainer cupboard. And after that she began on the windows. She hummed and underlying the hum was the consoling thought that he could bloody well have a sandwich when it was all over, and not the very nice fish pie and peas that were ready for heating up.

Derek slapped Ken's back, missed and, since Ken was not insubstantially built, took this as a sign that he had drunk enough

When he got home he opened the front door with difficulty and had a sense of foreboding that was not entirely to do with the odd slooshing sensation in the pit of his stomach. He looked up, focused, and saw his wife. She was smiling at him, or at least her mouth was, and she looked - he blinked - she looked - well,
frightening.
The light of the kitchen behind her showed the outline of her perfect little body beneath the nylon stuff that draped it.

Her dainty
little
feet were encased in what appeared to be bits of fluff, and her face glowed like a film star's beneath a powder puff of blonde curls that looked as if they had exploded. But all that, disturbing as it was at whatever time of night, was nothing compared with the final embellishment, the ultimate horror, the last thing he noticed before sinking to the floor and into thankful oblivion - she was wearing a pair of bright yellow plastic gloves, and he could not,
would
not, bring himself to imagine what she might do to him with
them . . .