Pleasant Vices (23 page)

‘Drink everyone?' Paul said, waving the sherry bottle. ‘And then we'll start.'

Everyone sat, attentive as a schoolroom, waiting for Paul to put them in the picture. Ben lounged on the floor in a corner from which he had an uninterrupted view across to the tan sofa on which Carol was sitting. Hoping his mother (or worse, Sue) wouldn't notice, he stared blissfully at Carol, whose skirt was pulled tightly across her thighs so he could gaze up towards a glimpsed triangular pennant of white underwear. He hoped, quite desperately, that no-one would ask him to go and fetch something from the kitchen. He didn't think he'd be able to walk.

‘Now the problem is,' Paul was saying, pacing about the room importantly and waving his orange Neighbourhood Watch brochure, ‘that no-one is doing any reporting in.' There was a collective sighing and shuffling. Harvey reached across to the table and helped himself to a pair of sausage rolls, and Mrs Fingell could be heard noisily crunching nuts. No-one wanted to spend the evening being told off. ‘The Close has been full of strangers for the past few weeks, what with film crews and all.' Everyone looked at Harvey, most with sympathy. ‘And various cars have been parked here that we all know don't belong to any residents.'

‘What exactly are we supposed to do about that, though, Paul?' Jenny chipped in, eager for him to get to the point. ‘Surely it isn't anyone's business who we all choose to have visiting us?'

‘Well, the point is to be
alert
.' Paul whirled round and pointed his brochure at her menacingly. ‘Take down car numbers, check who goes into which house, and whether they come out again and maybe try another door. That kind of thing. They could be burglars, checking for regularly absent householders.'

‘Or they could be Jehovah's Witnesses,' Harvey added as he reached across to the table and casually topped up his drink.

‘Or bailiffs,' Sue said passing her glass across so he could refill that too.

Jenny felt twitchy, uncomfortable, as if every aspect of her personal life was under constant scrutiny. It was horribly like being a teenager again, with her mother checking and snooping on her every move, and marauding schoolmistresses stalking the town every lunchtime for out-of-bounds sixth formers illicitly meeting their boyfriends.

‘Actually,' she said, decisively, ‘I think I'm going to opt out, if you don't mind. I find the idea that every visitor to my house is going to have their description and car number logged, like some kind of police state, horribly intrusive, just not on. On balance I think I'd rather be burgled.'

‘Me too,' Mrs Fingell added, emphatically banging her walking stick on the carpet. Hostility gathered, as the group clung to the remains of its privacy.

‘But what does it matter if you've got nothing to hide?' Carol peered savagely into Jenny's face, as if any second she would try to gouge out a deadly secret. Jenny flattened herself against the back of the chair, alarmed.

‘Oh, now come on, everyone. No-one wants to spy, just to look after each other. It's caring, not snooping.' Paul tried his best to pacify them, waving his arms around in his version of an all-embracing manner.

‘It's horrendous,' Jenny persisted, slightly diverted by the fact that Ben was going dreadfully pink. Surely he agreed with her? This time it couldn't be that she embarrassed him. She got up and groped for her handbag down the side of the chair. Perhaps she should employ Paul and Carol as private detectives, get them to check up on Alan and what he was up to – that would keep their minds off non-existent crime in the Close.

‘Er, sit down for one more minute, please Jenny.' Paul took hold of her arm and pushed her gently back down into the chair. ‘It's not just car numbers and things. What I mean is that people aren't noticing when things
are
unusual. Like when you climbed over our gate to get the cat.'

Sue giggled and snorted. ‘Like Burglar Bill. Swag and all,' she laughed.

‘
Exactly
like Burglar Bill. That's
it
,' Carol stated, leaning forward and jabbing an accusing finger at Jenny. ‘
And nobody noticed
. Not a single one. No-one in the entire street . . .' The finger was shaking with fury now as it roamed the room, accusing them one and all. The BBC wives stared guiltily at the carpet. ‘No-one reported her climbing over the gate and back again, blatantly with a sack.' She leaned back on the chair again, her skirt rucked up even further from the excitement, much to Ben's delight.

‘Carol,' Jenny said gently, as if to someone close to the edge of madness, ‘Carol, that's because it
was
only me. If anyone did see me they probably wondered what I was up to, felt a bit curious, but they know me. I'm not worth a crime report. And I've apologized about the broken pig.'

‘But you could have been anyone! Someone from the estate!' Carol wailed.

‘But I wasn't! I was me! And the people on the estate do more nicking from each other than from anyone else! Why do you think half those doors up there are boarded up? Don't you ever read the papers? Oh this is ridiculous. I'm going home to watch telly.' Once again Jenny got up to leave; Sue greedily swigged the last of her sherry and got up to join her. Carol was looking daggers, and irresistibly Jenny jibed her some more, announcing to the room in general, ‘I'm going just across the road, Carol. Don't feel you need to watch or take notes.'

Outside in the Close, Sue and Jenny took gulps of free, fresh air. ‘Is it just me, or is Carol getting control-crazy?' Jenny asked. ‘And what was all that about “if you've got nothing to hide”. What was that supposed to mean?'

‘No idea,' Sue said, yawning. ‘What I'd like to know, though, and call me a nosy-cow neighbour if you like, but why is your Ben still in there?'

Alan drove home very fast from Leicestershire, relieved, somehow, that he hadn't been able to persuade Serena to accept a lift home and that she'd insisted on going back to London alone, by train. She told him she'd got a book she was dying to finish, apologizing for being anti-social and hoping that he didn't mind. No he didn't mind. He'd rather be alone with his thoughts and his music than have to make a hundred and fifty miles' worth of conversation. He'd be sure to end up relating cosy anecdotes about the family, turning himself inevitably into some humdrum avuncular figure who would come over as lovable but not libidinous. He hadn't tried too hard to entice her into his car, conscious as he was of having been far too cowardly to seduce her. He'd failed even to make a wholehearted attempt to, counting too much on her to realize what he was getting at and somehow join in as he clumsily skirted round her body and plied her with vodka. The very small consolation was that as nothing had happened in reality (everyone dreams don't they? he reasoned, fantasy life doesn't count) he didn't yet have to feel guilty, and could at least go home still just about able to look Jenny in the eye.

As he sped down the Ml, Led Zeppelin's
Stairway to Heaven
was playing on the car radio, whisking Alan immediately back to his first meeting with Jenny. Enthralled by her playing in the college Mozart concert, to which he'd reluctantly accompanied a dull cousin, he had been amazed when Jenny had agreed to have dinner with him. He'd felt as foolish as a backstage hanger-on, callously ditching the cousin and sidling round to the stage door, not even knowing what name to ask for. Back at his flat, and hardly even able to believe his luck that Jenny had agreed to go there with him, he'd put his precious new Led Zeppelin album on the record player and then cravenly apologized for his musical taste; but from the shelf next to his chaotic desk Jenny had picked up his old school recorder and played the haunting opening bars of
Stairway to Heaven.
They'd been in bed by the guitar solo. He'd been incredulous at his success, by how easy it had all been. Now, an attempt at seduction, even the thought of an attempted seduction, left Alan with dry-throated, heart-pounding terror. He tried to put it down to lack of practice, adrenalin and the adventure of the chase. It felt dangerous, life-threatening, and the compulsion to see it through was like a deathwish. It was probably horrendously bad for his blood pressure, and he hated the feeling that he had actually reached the age where he had to consider his health. When media doctors wrote of mid-life stresses, they meant
him.
It was too depressing. Did getting older mean spending the rest of his life with a careful lack of over-excitement? And somewhere deep inside was a suspicion, though nothing to do with the pain and potential disaster from being found out, that the ludicrous biological urge to do all that sexual fiddling about with a new person's body might just not be worth it. He was setting himself up, surely, on the day he managed to make his lust known to Serena, for pitiless rejection and toe-curling humiliation. And if he succeeded what would be his reward? Only sex, nothing different, and as the saying went, he could get all that at home. But, he reasoned, muttering to himself as he turned at last on to the M25, what about rejuvenation? He was feeling old, greying, thinning and losing what small measure of charm and attraction he had clung to, and which had for years buoyed up his schoolboyish lack of confidence. If Serena could make him feel better about all that, then that really would be something he couldn't get at home.

It was just as well Alan was late getting back, Jenny thought at 1.30, wishing the man David Robbins had sent had got himself thoroughly lost. Why, she wondered as the doorbell rang, do people manage to be so punctual, so capable of finding the right address on time when it's for something illicit. She could hardly begin to count the number of people who turned up late for dinner at the house, all flustered and apologizing that they'd taken a wrong turning after Putney Bridge, or ventured accidentally into the estate, as if she and Alan lived in the back end of nowhere and the A-Z was written in Sanskrit.

To the immaculately pin-striped businessman now standing expectantly on her doorstep Jenny said firmly, ‘I won't pretend you've got the wrong address, but I just don't do that sort of thing any more.' There was some apologetic murmuring from the disappointed client, and then from the road, the approaching click-clack of Carol Mathieson's unmistakable shoes.

She stopped and peered with frank curiosity at Jenny's visitor and, with no introduction forthcoming, said, ‘I forgot to say last night, I was so sorry about your poor pussy! What a shame!'

‘Oh good grief, what a thing to come out with,' Jenny muttered under her breath, smiling as steadily as she could manage at both Carol and the pinstriped client. Jenny realized she was still wearing her yellow rubber gloves from wiping down the kitchen cupboards, and suddenly thought the man might suspect, especially after Carol's bizarre comment, that she was lying, and that she'd got a customer for more bizarre practices already inside, perhaps tied naked to a chair prior to being beaten with the floor mop.

If she'd ever thought she might be tempted to continue earning cash from servicing men, the Neighbourhood Watch meeting the night before had killed all such ambitions stone dead. There had to be less risky ways of making a living, ones that didn't have the neighbours writing down doubtful car numbers and making you lie about having the decorators in. There must also be ways that didn't involve cheating on Alan, too. The possibility that he was up to something was so painful to her that she didn't want to risk having him feel that way as a result of
her
behaviour. He could hardly be expected to think that, just because she had done it for money, it didn't count as infidelity. If Alan left, there was mini-cab driving, or mail-order delivery, any old job till some full-time teaching could be found.

When David Robbins arrived half-an-hour later, Jenny started her speech while he was still half way up the path. ‘I'm sorry,' she told him, ‘I really can't go on doing this.' She laughed at his mock-crestfallen expression. ‘I'm retiring to a life of virtue. You'll just have to make an effort and go and join a dating agency or something.'

‘Oh, don't you worry, footloose and fancy free, that's me. Foot
less
, anyway. Actually I just called to say thanks but I've met someone,' he said with a happy grin, making Jenny feel she'd been over hasty and made herself look rather silly. She then wondered about offering him a cup of tea, but could foresee conversational complications. What on earth would they talk about? So, supported now by only a pair of sticks, David walked on his new plastic feet back towards the corner, round which he had been so careful to park. No chance of Paul Mathieson logging that particular number at least, Jenny thought, feeling, as she closed the door and prepared to be a scrupulously honest wife again, that she was saying goodbye to a friend. Full of good intentions, she spent the next hour running off copies of her CV on Daisy's computer and sending them out on spec to all the local schools. Somewhere out there, she reasoned, there must be the chance of a proper job.

When Jenny returned from collecting Polly (and Harriet, back with them for supper) from school, Alan was home and in charge of his beloved kitchen once again. The rich aroma of the Madeira sauce that he was gently reducing on top of the Aga wafted out welcomingly and filled the hallway. The smell of enjoyment-cooking, as opposed to the more tedious necessity-cooking so thrilled Jenny's taste-buds, she had to suppress a greedy groan as she and the girls tumbled into the house. ‘Ooh yummee,' she said, following the smell into the kitchen, ‘that smells just so scrumptious!'

Alan was settled comfortably in the rocking chair, pots and pans gleaming around him, full of vegetables and herbs, ready to go. He looked solid, happy, pleased to be back, the newspaper open at the football page and the cat purring on his lap. Jenny leant forward to kiss Alan and then jumped back in horror.