Janice Gentle Gets Sexy (8 page)

Again the tiny flame niggled at her placid inner calm. This was disturbing, disturbing and very unusual, since her relations with Sylvia Perth were always of a cordial nature, not to say a
little
apprehensive, and always respectful. Sylvia was, after all, the person who
knew.
And if Janice
knew
anything, it was that she was nothing without Sylvia Perth.

One-word titles, she muses, and runs through a string of them in her head. As the lift ascends, they seem to drop from her like dead flies falling down the lift shaft, useless and out of sight, none of them owning a barb with which to hook itself securely in her brain.
'Phoenix Rising,'
she repeats to herself as she lets herself in,
'Phoenix Rising.'
It will have to be that. But will Sylvia Perth let her?

She closes the door, feeling weary and annoyed, and takes the foodstuffs to the kitchen. Does she
really,
she asks herself, need to go through this performance every time there is a new book to begin? The tube journey, the people all jostling, the contact with that horrible world outside her door? Why doesn't she just
invent
her people? Other writers probably do, so why not her? She butters some bread and cuts a wedge or two of cheese and waits for the kettle to boil. She licks her buttery fingers.
Why
put herself through this ghastliness? She makes tea and while it brews she pours off the top of the milk into her cup. She enjoys that first drink which is creamy and rich and rolls smoothly over her tongue like a coat of silk. After the first mouthful she feels cheered. That is just the way it is. She undertook to abide by the rule and - she carries her cup and plate back into the living-room - that is what she must do. It is her integrity which is at stake. Integrity . . .

Well, she
could
call it that, she supposes. But she really doesn't want to. And why should she have to? Why, come to that, should she have to write any more books at all? And if she
does,
couldn't she at least have the right to choose what she calls them without needing permission? Not that Sylvia Perth would see it as that. She would see it merely as giving advice, sound advice. Well, a small, rebel flame comes leaping up again, has her advice been so sound? Janice Gentle dwells on this momentarily, decides it is a question best not put, but feels bothered by it, all the same.

And then she stops, sets down the cup, sets down the plate, puts a piece of cheese in her mouth and smiles as she chews.

Perhaps if she were a bit less amenable with Sylvia, if she were to ring her now and be a bit offish, then she might get her way about the tide. She has never done such a thing before but . . . hmm
...
it might be worth a try. The irritation rises again. Anyway, why not? It's her book, after all. Even if Sylvia does do all the donkey-work and pay all the bills. Surely she has some rights in the choice? After all, she's the one who has got to get her
head down unti
l it aches. Sylvia Perth will be very nice and
visit her, and telephone from ti
me to time, and say that she is available whenever Janice might need her. But the plain fact of the matter - Janice takes an
enormous
and really quite savage bite from her bread - is Here We Go Again. Another book, another chunk of time out of her life. And always she has believed that each one would be the last. Would this new one be any different? It certainly should be. Time is rolling on for Janice. She has a Quest to pursue, a Pilgrimage to make, and the only thing that stands in her way is the need to have a substantial supply of money in her coffers. Every book she has written so far has been supposed to fill these to the brim. They have not. Always a good reason, of course, and Sylvia does her best, but her reassurances that perhaps after the next Janice need never write again are wearing a little thin. Indeed, at the very beginning that is what Sylvia Perth told her. She remembers it disti
nctly
. And it has still not come about.

Sylvia said, Janice remembers it clearly, that she need never write anything again after her second book, if she would only
finish
it.

Writing being a hard, labouring agony, and her being as virginal as a nun, she began to call the products of her craft her children by way of a little, maidenly joke. Sylvia took it up and henceforth Janice
Gentle
's books were always known as her babies. And there seemed to be more and more of them as the years went by - quite a teeming womb, in fact. Looking back, she is still not
quite
sure what happened to all those promises of Sylvia's, but their failure to hold was no one's fault but the public and the publishers. Both Janice and Sylvia had nothing to be ashamed of. It was, really, out of her friend and agent's hands.

Nevertheless it became, 'We need a third.' What else could she do but comply? 'We need a third.' And, smiling, Sylvia, dipping her hands into her Gucci bucket bag, brought forth temptations.

'Look,' she said, 'I remembered how you like them.' From its depths she took a gold box adorned with ribbons bearing a crest and the legend 'Chocolat Dufours'.

'Oh,' said Janice, enraptured, 'how kind of you.'

'And what is more,' Sylvia Perth smiled conspiratorially, 'they are all for you. Now, grit your teeth and write on, my dear. A third book is essential.'

Janice munched and Sylvia departed. Ever since then it seemed a foregone conclusion that Janice still had a long way to go before the Seeking could begin.

'Money,' said Janice a year or two later. 'Have I made enough yet?'

'Not yet, I'm afraid, dear. Is there anything, apart from the Thing' - Sylvia bared her teeth - 'that you need?' And, as was customary, Janice merely shook her head.

Janice Gentle appeared to have no tastes or desires beyond the most basic kind, and Sylvia Perth was intrigued to know what this odd, reclusive pudding of a woman could ever possibly want to buy. It had taken all Sylvia's persuasion to get Janice to sell her mother's house and to begin negotiations on a flat somewhere further into town. And even then Janice had insisted it should be in Battersea. They had taken a taxi to look at properties around Harrods and Kensington Town Hall, and the fool of a driver had gone along on the wrong side of the river. Janice, looking out, suddenly said, 'This is the place,' and that had been that. No amount of persuasion made any difference. So if Battersea was the kind of place she wanted to live in, and if she was as happy with that dreadful hutch-like place as she seemed to be, it was hardly surprising, mused Sylvia Perth, that Janice asked for nothing beyond her keep. But, oh dear, it was such a
waste . . .

'Dermot Poll,' said Janice Gentle dreamily.

Sylvia raised her eyebrows. Lord, she was off again.

'I'm pretty sure that somewhere along the line that night I missed something he said. I
thought
he was going to come to me, but . . . well
...
I must have got it all muddled. He probably arranged a meeting somewhere else. He probably waited there all night, just as I waited all night for him . . .'

Her voice rose, her eyes filled with tears, the pain was quite real to her, and Sylvia was embarrassed. She wiped the wetness beneath Janice's eyes with her Venetian lace handkerchief.

'There, there,' she said, 'we'll find him for you. Don't you worry.'

'Did you use those private detectives?'

Sylvia Perth replaced her hanky in her Anastasie pochette, snapped it shut, and said smoothly, 'Of course. I told you that they had no luck. And
that,
I am afraid, is why we need another book. As I told you, dear, they cost so much, so very much nowadays . . .'

'Skibbereen was a clue. He came from Skibbereen . . .'

'Yes, dear, and Charlie Chaplin came from London. But he didn't end up there. Do you see?'

'He mentioned Australia, America, China . . .'

Sylvia nodded. 'I know, dear. So we need lots and lots more in the kitty before we can do anything about it. So buck up and let's get started. Shall we?'

Janice ceased the tears. What good would they do? What was needed was action, creativity, to provide. After all, did those queens of Spain and France flinch from raising the finance to fight
their
crusades? They did not. And neither, therefore, must she.

'You don't think he will have forgotten me?'

Sylvia looked at Janice. Above her considerable bulk the only relief from beige and buff was the pink rosette of her nose and the misty red rims of her eyes through the steamed-up glass of her spectacles.
‘I
don't see how he could, my dear,' said Sylvia Perth with feeling. 'I really don't see how he could.'

It was at this point that Sylvia Perth felt the first tightening in her chest. She sat very still for a moment, and soon it passed. She stood up. 'Good luck, my dear,' she said, straightening her
little

Dior skirt. And she went out into the air to breathe slow and deep and remind herself to stay calm. Janice
Gentle
wrote on.

Sylvia Perth kindly took over the management of all Janice's affairs, for which Janice was deeply grateful. She no longer had to deal with accountants, publishers, taxmen, bill-paying, the general public, bank managers (particularly bank managers), the media - not anybody. Sylvia was even able to sign things for Janice, which saved a great deal of what Sylvia called
fuss.

Fuss was something, in any case, that Sylvia Perth wished to avoid for her own good, too. Fuss made her breathing difficult, fuss made her chest tighten, fuss brought the occasional pounding in her ears as if the ocean itself were closing in. Fuss, as the years drew on, seemed ever lurking and a most debilitating nuisance.

'Just leave everything up to Sylvia,' she said the last time they met. She placed an Alfredo-gloved hand upon Janice's pale head and patted it. 'You must not worry any more. Just keep on writing. It's the only way. And don't forget, it really would be helpful if this time you could give it a one-word tide. That's what they like nowadays.' She lit one of her Turkish cigarettes so that Janice was wreathed in the blue-grey smoke like an unblinking houri. 'Who knows if this next one won't do the trick. And then' - she gave Janice a wicked little smile - 'it will be Dermot here I come . . .'

She breathed the smoke out generously and it eased the remnants of the tense, odd feeling in her chest. 'How I envy you your isolation, Janice,' she said. 'Sometimes I wish I could lock my door and throw away the key. I
love
this calm solitude, this undemanding colour scheme, this lack of busyness and ornament. How I should like to live somewhere like this and make myself a home — but then, I can't. One of us has got to be out there on the road, hasn't she?'

Janice nodded, immediately feeling guilty.