Janice Gentle Gets Sexy (5 page)

'I think perhaps I love you, too,' she said, astonished. 'You will come to see me tomorrow? You really will?'

'But of course. And then I travel the world.' He burst into song again. 'Each and every by-way . . . and did it my way . . .' Dermot was looking up at the sky as he spoke. He was lost in the dark clouds, a traveller.

'I shall wait for you tomorrow after dark,' said Janice eagerly. He reached out his hand and, still looking up at the veiled sky, ran his fingers over her contours, lightly and not concernedly touching her round shoulders, her plump breast, her generous belly. 'I love this shape,' he whispered to the firmament. 'This shape, round and full, is the essence of Woman.'

Janice blinked slightly as the hand slid gentl
y over her bosom, but finding it was all right and nothing else was expected of her (thus finally disproving Mrs
Gentle
's maxims on men), she relaxed. She saw them travelling the world together, a troubadour and his Lady. Arterberry Road and its unpleasant associations put down at last.

Dermot Poll swayed a
little
. She, too, felt like swaying, swooning perhaps, in the joy of it all. Chance encounter: Dante on the bridge seeing Beatrice, A
belard coming to lodge in Heloi
se's house, Dermot finding Janice on a bleak February night in south London.

'I will wait for you,' she said with conviction. 'If necessary, I will wait for you for ever.'

'Ah,' he replied, and clutched at her arm for support. 'I will come to you tomorrow when the mists of morning have yielded up the moon.'

'Thirty-two Arterberry Road,' she said. 'Opposite the pillar-box.' He repeated it dreamily. 'Valentine red heart. . .'

To be absolutely sure, she wrote it down for him on the back of a sheet of paper torn carelessly from her notebook, which thus destroyed two hours' work on whether or not the grasping Lady Fee of Langland's
Piers
was really a representation of Edward Ill's mistress, Alice Perrers. Now she abandoned what had once been so totally absorbing for this new wonder in her life.

She who had never been kissed and who had never sought it began to hope that he would kiss her, began to hope it very much indeed. And before her bus came along, too. But he did not, and in a way she was content with this, for whatever all that side of things was, it had no place here (as indeed it had no place for the ladies of
l’
amour courtois)
and might or might not come later if Destiny allowed.

His last words to her were 'Farewell, O brightener of the starless sky', and her last sight of him was from the top of a 77A double-decker. A young man leaning up against a lighted shop window that held red sticky paper hearts in abundance. She waved and watched him, starry-eyed, until the bus turned a corner. What she did
not
see was how he very slowly and rather elegantly slid down the length of the window and crumpled peacefully into a sleeping position just as the tail-lights of the vehicle disappeared. Nor did she know that the piece of paper which flapped through the gutter and kept up with the ponderous pace of the bus for a time, held cogent arguments both for and against its being Alice Perrers, on one side of it, and her own, now illegible address, on the other.

How could she know any of that?

Any more than she could be aware that the memory of this great moment in her life remained the merest dim flicker to the young man asleep on the pavement - for what is the registering of memory to the experience of a policeman's toe-cap prodding him in the rear? Besides, he was a romantic, not a fool. And when a man has fathered his first son, he would do well, as Dermot Poll intended, to recognize his priorities. All the same, such fleeting images and words that did remain before he tucked them away were pleasing. He felt, by the memory of her response, by the trace of an image of her smile and the light in her eyes as he had kissed her hand and touched her fulsome body, that he had
made that girl’
s day.
He felt proud of himself. To have done that and to have fathered a son as well. Ah! Is this not happiness?

Janice waited ail day with her hair in curlers. She hummed and she sang and she was strangely cheery with her mother.

'Spring, spring, spring,' she sang, for although it was dreary February she felt very much that spring was in the air. Every activity that had once been so mundane was now filled with significance. She dressed herself after teatime in her brightest colours - fiery oranges with rich brown whirls that streaked through them like chocolate. She removed her curlers, set up her station on a chair by her bedroom window (at the front of the house since Mrs Gentle preferred the silence at the back) and sucked her knuckles in anticipation. She tried to read, first
The Paston
Letters
and then - as she thought more fittingly - Christine de Pisan's
Oeuv
res poetiques,
but these soon fell by the way. It was no longer her books she sought, it was Dermot Poll, for there, she was sure, lay her future.

Midnight and beyond. Every step in the street, every movement of a tree or distant sound of a bicycle or car, every motion of a shadow made her start and believe it was he. Lurch, bump went her heart, which had not calmed down once since her encounter at the bus stop yesterday eve. But gradually, gradually, throughout the long vigil, she began to fear the unthinkable, pushing the unthinkable away each time it surfaced, time and again bringing the memory of his words to bear over the rising anguish that he was never, really, going to come. Not until the morning darkness lifted and real life moved beneath her window again, did she yield herself up to the misery of knowing that the rising anguish had won. Dermot Poll was never going to arrive. She had got it all wrong, been confused, should be somewhere else, waiting for him in another place altogether. Australia, America, China had taken him. They had met too late. He had lost her address, he had broken his leg, he had
...
he had . . . Rattle, rattle went such thoughts. Even now he was roaming the streets searching. She ran out into the dawn - out along Worple Road, up towards the Ridgway, flying tears and hair streaming down Christchurch Hill.

Everywhere she could feel his presence, nowhere could she find him. She waved her arms from the gates of Holland Gardens, looking into the yellow distance of the creeping dawn. She walked home, vowing on the way that she would find him one day, wherever he was. At Raynes Park Station she found a sixpence and put it in the chocolate machine. That helped, that soothed, and with it she fed the shape that he loved. She sucked on it, savouring it, for the short walk home. Then she put away her orange and brown finery, dressed herself in an old beige sweater dress, and lay with her aching heart on the top of her virgin's bed.

'I shall never wear colours again,' she said to herself. 'Not until I see Dermot Poll.' And she fell asleep to dream of palfreys and pilgrim lovers and herself and Dermot Poll on a ribbon road in moonlight, horse to horse, hand in hand.

'Dermot who?' asked her mother in the morning. Janice told her.

Mrs
Gentle
raised her eyes to heaven above her battered nose. 'Irish!' she said. 'As well as being a man. Can't trust either.' She looked at her daughter. 'I warned you, I warned you, didn't I?'

Janice turned over and slept again. When she woke she drank tea and ate toast with melted cheese and butter on top. 'So this is love,' she said to herself, through the crisp and oily mouthfuls, and she thought that for the first time she really
understood
courtly lovers of old, who were willing to die for their joy.

After Mrs
Gentle
's death it might have been correct to put on the certificate, 'Primary cause: meticulous daughterly attention. Secondary cause: heart failure.'

Certainly by the time the Grim Reaper called, Janice's mother was probably more than ready to go. For years she had watched her daughter become gross and pale, as unhealthy-looking as a slug in hibernation. The peaceful closeting of their life together had given way to an uneasy proximity of necessity, and was dull. Very dull indeed. Television, what to eat, radio, library books and bed being the order of things, although in summer Mrs Gentle did a little pottering in the postage-stamp garden. But it was not enough to sustain life. Mrs Gentle, though unsure of what was to follow, appeared to breathe her last with a sigh of profound relief. What she was going to could certainly not be any worse than what she was coming from, and listening out for the rustle of a biscuit packet from the kitchen or the chink of spoon on bowl from Janice's late-night bedroom was something she would be more than happy to shed. Her last words to her daughter were 'Brighten up a bit, Janice - there's a dear. And for goodness' sake find yourself something to take your mind off things.'

By 'things' Mrs Gentle meant food. But Janice took the suggestion at its word. She had better get something to occupy her now that Mother was gone. But what?

It took her three months of solid writing and by the time she had finished she felt she had been wrung dry. There were she and Dermot Poll, reunited - recriminations, vindications, vengeances all accounted for and dealt with, the clear, pure light of being ahead of them. Companionate, harmonious, his journeyings done, coming to rest with her in a love that would last until Death divided them.

Ah, she thought, when it was finished, if only it were really and truly like that, how happy I should be. She never lost hope that one day either he would return to find her, or she, travelling life's highways, would find him.

She put the manuscript to the back of a drawer, where it might have remained had not the maiden aunt's annuity dried up, a factor not at first noticed by Janice's bank, which went on paying bills and cash for some time before the mistake was recognized. The bank manager was particularly annoyed about this, since he was about to retire and wished to get all the ends tied up properly. Janice Gentle was the only black mark on his copybook. After he met her he was not surprised. Decidedly overweight, he thought, and possibly retarded. She sat there, heavy as a sack of potatoes, putty-faced and expressionless. He persevered. He did not seem to be making much headway. He had explained that she was in debt. He had explained that she needed to earn some money. He had not explained the bank's culpability, because it was not appropriate. Nevertheless, he wished to get the difficulty dealt with to save any
...
er
...
further investigation by his successor. Miss Gentle did not seem to recognize the urgency of the problem, and he had made little progress in the matter of a job.

'Well,' he said with an exasperated raising of his hands, 'what
do
you do?'

Janice was feeling very confused. Men in suits with demanding voices were not her usual experience. She was watching his gold signet ring, which he twirled as he spoke, and she had become mesmerized by the motion, forgetting to listen. She looked at him dumbly. Did he mean what had she been doing in the last five minutes? Or the last five years? Or what? Perhaps he meant her daily routine? Perhaps this was social chit-chat, ice-breaking? She decided it was conversational and went for her daily routine.

He stopped her when she got to the bit about washing her hair on Thursdays. 'I do not mean activities of a personal nature,' he said testily. 'I mean how have you occupied yourself since your mother' - he was too irritated to euphemize - 'died?'

'Oh,' said Janice, glad to have something positive to say. 'I have written a book.'

'What sort of book?' He was sceptical. Could one so fat and dull really have achieved such a thing?

'Um,' said Janice, 'a story.'

'I see. Good, good. Well, well. Now, then.' He picked up his pen, unscrewed the cap and prepared to write. 'And how much have you been paid?'

'For what?'

'The book?' His pen was fairly itching to begin.

'Nothing,' said Janice. 'It's in a drawer at home.'

The pen nib splayed. 'Well, it's no good there, is it?'

The upshot of this meeting was that Janice should go away and consider her position - both with regard to the immediate and pressing concerns of her debt to the bank, and with regard to the future concerns of making a living. Janice should then return the following week with some clear ideas. Frankly, he thought, after she had gone, the likelihood of her doing any of those things was remote. The issue preyed on his mind. Only three more months to go and bright and bouncing Barnfather would be sitting in his chair, and he didn't want bright and bouncing Barnfather dining out on this. It was extremely irritating and took far too high a profile, as he kept telling himself, but if he wanted to hold his head erect in the golf club he needed to find a solution.

A day or two later, enthroned in the
en suite,
and having become bored with rereading the Harpic bottle, which celebrated the fact that his wife's preferred toilet cleaner contained sodium hypochloride and should not be allowed to enter the eyes (and who, he wanted to know, would want to put it anywhere near their eyes but a mental defective?), he brought Janice Gentle back to mind. He reached for one of the magazines his wife kept to while away the evacuatory hours, and flicked through it. A competition caught his attention and, with the juxtaposition of Janice
Gentle
and the page, a possible, if remote, solution raised itself. The competition was for a 'first novel by a yet unpublished woman writer'. Well, Janice Gentle was certainly that. Why not? It was a chance. He tore out the page, took it to his office, got his secretary to ring her — he being weary of any further encounters -and request delivery of the manuscript. Janice, not much inclined to relinquish it, was reminded that she had a responsibility to do so, and did. The secretary scooped it from her unwilling hands and passed it on to the bank manager, the bank manager passed it on to his wife, and she, in turn, passed it on to her daily. Both women thought it was wonderful. The bank manager's wife liked the lack of smut, the daily liked the romance of it, and the bank manager, who did not read it, sent it off to the magazine. It did not win. It did not even qualify.