Janice Gentle Gets Sexy (42 page)

*

It had been a wild and thrilling night. Looking out of her window, Janice saw a dustbin lid flying down the road, and people of quite substantial proportions being blown off their feet. It was exciting weather - if you were not out in it, and she had cause, as she pulled her cardigan round herself, to feel very grateful for her sanctuary. She took it as a sign, she took it to mean that this journey to Ireland was always meant, for she had had a very narrow escape. Thank heavens for cocoa. It was cocoa she was making when a piece of somebody's chimneypot crashed through her big picture window. A few minutes before she had been standing there, looking out, when the urge for cocoa came upon her. Without that urge she would have been dead, ribboned flesh, bleeding freely. Yet here she was, whole, undamaged. It must be a suitable omen for the
Tightness
of her cause and she felt positively uplifted. Mr Jones came and put up brown board and said the glaziers would visit as quickly as they could come, local damage being what it was. Janice did not care about that, either.
When
they came, she would already be far away.

She crossed to her trunk and removed the detritus of years that stood upon the lid: yellowing papers, old magazines, a few glued china fancies that had been her mother's. She put all this to one side, opened it and breathed in the smell of lavender and camphor. She took out her coat of many colours and smiled as she examined the cloth. Neither time nor moths had damaged it at all.

Dressed, she let herself out of the flat and patted the door with a sigh. Everything was done. All over now. And she was on her way - not via Walsingham, it was true, but Heathrow Airport could justifiably be thought of as a contemporary staging-post.

She knocked on Mr Jones's door. When he opened it, muttering, irritable, impatient, she was engulfed in an odour of warm oranges. At least somebody was still making real marmalade.

'Good morning,' she said.

'Um,' said Mr Jones.

Janice handed him her spare keys and a sheet of paper. The paper contained the address in Skibbereen. Mr Jones had been insistent. 'After all,' he said, 'your windows are out. . .'

He peered at her. 'You look different.' He peered again. 'Brighter.'

'I expect I do,' she said, and swung off with her case into the waiting taxi.

*

Morgan Pfeiffer stared, his eyes misted over with rage, blinked, and refocused again. Then he roared. He roared with all the might of a jungle lion who has learned to tolerate the chronic pain of a thorn in his foot until a passing elephant steps on it. He closed the manuscript and looked at the photograph of his good wife, deceased, through a veil of pain.

His roar was not an inarticulate one. It got itself easily around the human larynx and formed the sound shape, 'Stoat!' It formed the sound shape twice more for good measure. And then he waited. There was a satisfactory explosion of activity outside his door. The roar had been heard. His secretary jumped.

Morgan Pfeiffer resettl
ed himself at his desk, got up, paced about, sat down again, picked up his cigar, picked up the manuscript, flicked at its pages as if in a vain effort to be proved wrong, shook his head as if knowing that he was not.

'Mr Pfeiffer?'

'You did not knock, Stoat.'

Stoat stood there for a moment wondering what to do. 'Well, Stoat?'

Lunacy prevailed. 'Sorry, sir,' he said, and went out, knocked, and waited.

Morgan Pfeiffer crossed to the door in the gliding fashion that seemed to betoken calm - recognizable only as its opposite to the photographic one now deceased. He opened the door gently.

Stoat smiled and squeaked. 'May I come in?'

Morgan Pfeiffer gave an expansive sweep of his hand. 'By all means,' he said through syrupy lips. He watched Stoat enter and walk to the desk, and was slightly mollified to observe that he had shrunk by quite a few inches. That helped. It didn't make it better, but it helped.

'Bring in the Gentle contract,' he said smoothly to his secretary, 'if you would be so kind.' He noticed that she had spilled correction fluid all over her desk. That helped, too.

'Read,' he commanded Enrico Stoat, and he pushed the opened manuscript towards him. 'Read the sex scenes just to begin with, Stoat. I have marked them for you.'

Stoat did so, his mouth making silent word shapes as he forced his concentration over each page. 'My God,' he breathed from time to time.
'My
God,
my
God,
my
God
. . .' His jaw dropped, his shoulders sagged, his eyes bulged, he seemed to shrink even more, and he looked, Morgan Pfeiffer thought with satisfaction (it was the
only
satisfaction), like a dying Hobbit.

'But, Mr Pfeiffer,' he said when he had finished, 'we can't use this. This is . . . well . . . this isn't
straight
..
. Mr Pfeiffer, sir, this is . . . er . . . deviant. She can't do this!'

'She can, and she has, Stoat.'

Morgan Pfeiffer's secretary entered and handed him a file. Morgan Pfeiffer took it and the secretary scuttled away.

Enrico Stoat, expiring Hobbit, felt for his medallion and wept openly.

Morgan Pfeiffer waved the contract file under his dripping nose. 'And there is nothing in here, Stoat - nothing at all - to stop her.'

'Jeezus,' said Stoat. 'I don't believe it.'

'Believe,' said Morgan Pfeiffer, suddenly and frighteningly quiet. 'Believe.'

Stoat sat down, very suddenly and without requesting permission.

'Now,' said Morgan Pfeiffer, advancing. Stoat stood up. Morgan Pfeiffer pushed him back down as easily as if he were oiled. 'Read some of the
story
line. What you like to call "ballast". Tell me whether you don't think it's an itsy-bitsy bit
chocolate
box. Hah!' He spun Stoat's chair and walked over to the window. 'READ!' he roared.

Stoat read. He stayed in the revolving chair. Permitted or not, he very definitely could not stand. 'Oh
my
God,'
he repeated. 'Oh my God,' he said and looked at Pfeiffer.

'Does anything strike you, Stoat? Anything not quite right? A bit out of the ordinary perhaps for the kind of market we are after? The sex scenes, for example? Our "Janice Gentle gets sexy" scoop? Anything in particular about that?'

Stoat nodded and groaned. 'Yes,' he whispered. 'Yes, Mr Pfeiffer.'

'And
what
in particular strikes you, Stoat?'

Stoat mouthed some words.

'I can't hear you, Stoat. Speak up now. Say it.'

'Oh, Mr Pfeiffer,
sir,'
said Stoat. 'Well
...
urn
...
er
...
the women, the
...
er . . . encounters mostl
y seem to be . . . er . . . gay . . .'

Morgan Pfeiffer permitted himself a bitter laugh. 'Lesbians, Stoat.
Lesbians!
More dykes than on a Dutch beach. Let me tell you, throughout the book there is not a desirable dick in sight.' He raised a finger. 'There is
one
. . . er . . . piece of masculine equipment offered the reader. Right at the beginning. You may have missed it. That rather over-friendly superintendent in the children's home. Remember him?'

Stoat shuddered.

'Apart from that? Not one. Dogs, we've got. Arthritic old dykes in wheelchairs, we've got. Even a kinky male fish merchant . . . We've got "home is a cardboard box", we've got a hose-down near the London Ritz, and we've got an abandoned baby. The only shopping that appears to get done is of the light-fingered variety and centres around sustenance, the only fashion notes seem to be of a hard-wearing and waterproof nature. And the sex scenes, as you say, are . . . nothing but deviant filth.
Gay?
He leaned on his desk so that even the photograph quivered. 'So, what are we going to do, Stoat?'

Stoat swallowed. 'We'll sue,' he said.

Morgan Pfeiffer thrust the papers he held into Stoat's hand. 'Sue? Sue for what?'

'Sue for breaking contract.' 'She hasn't done that, Stoat.

'Stoat,' said Morgan Pfeiffer, 'I think you should go away and concentrate on reading the whole book. I think you'll find the main character, the story and the plot all of great interest. It's

about an itinerant girl who lives on the streets, by her wits and with the aid of casual prostitution and the occasional sugar-mommy.
Mommy,
Stoat, not
daddy
.
..
She gives up men for a variety of entertaining reasons, many of which will be an education to our readers!'

A small light entered the deadness of Stoat's eyes. 'Rohanne Bulbecker,' he cried. 'Rohanne Bulbecker. . .'

'Forget Rohanne Bulbecker. From now on I deal with this myself.' He picked up a small piece of notepaper attached to the manuscript. 'Miss
Gentle
has been kind enough to send Miss Bulbecker a copy all of her own. She has also appended her address in London. So I shall not wait for Ms Bulbecker's interference. I want to see Janice
Gentle
, I want to speak with her in the flesh. We'll see if she still thinks she can play this kind of trick when I'm through with her. Oh she thinks she has been so
clever
- laughing all the way to the bank. Recluse? I tell you, Stoat, by the time I've finished with her she'll wish she lived on
Mars
...'

Chapter Twenty-five

They
have
found
him.
He
has
an
inn
at
Skibbereen!
So
here
is
the manuscript,
sent
with
my
love.
I
hope
you
like
it,
I
do.

The little piece of paper fluttered to the floor as Rohanne Bulbecker reached eagerly for the manuscript. Whatever she had expected, it was not this. The glow of her snow-tan began to fade long before she reached the end and, by the time the very last page was laid aside, she both looked and felt quite pale. That it was good was not in dispute. That it had conformed, exactly, to the contractual requirements of Morgan Pfeiffer was not in dispute. Whether it was acceptable was not in dispute, either. It was not, and never would be. She weighed the pages in her hands, thinking. Even were she to find the best editors in the land, they could do nothing with it, nothing to make it the awaited, expected book. She puzzled over its sexuality. How could Janice Gentle have gone down that particular path? And then floating into her mind came the eager face of Gretchen O'Dowd and with it that familiar gesture of fingertips to moustache as she set off to get the video.

And then Rohanne laughed. It seemed like the best joke of all, though it was clear from Janice's writing that she did not see it as a joke, merely as a story, a good story, and one that she very much wanted to write - passionately wanted to write if the compelling qualities of the novel were anything to judge by. And what was more - Rohanne went over to the telephone and dialled the Pfeiffer number - what was more,, it ought to be published. It was too good
not
to be published. And she would tell Morgan Pfeiffer so
..
.

'He has gone to London,' said the flat voice.

'In that case may I speak to Enrico Stoat?' 'Enrico Stoat,' said the voice impassively, 'is no longer with us.'

*

Morgan Pfeiffer was not a happy traveller. Travelling alone and in angry mood to an uncertain destination for an uncertain and undoubtedly acrimonious meeting was not conducive to harmony. He could not even read the newspapers since there were reports on every page to remind him of Janice
Gentle
's nasty book.

By the time he reached Heathrow, he was ready for war. He shouldered his way through the milling airport travellers, each and every one placed there purely to annoy him. In the taxi he growled rather than spoke the address of the loathsome Janice
Gentle
in Battersea. When Mr Jones told him she had gone away, he assumed it was because she felt guilty.

'Where to?' he asked Mr Jones.

Mr Jones, annoyed to find that this was not the glazier, was quite short with him. 'A place called Skibbereen.'

'Near here?' asked Morgan Pfeiffer, lighting a cigar for comfort.