Pleasant Vices (33 page)

Sue's new husband David, now successfully down to just one stick, had no trouble with the register office steps, and posed happily for photos in the formal garden along with most of the Close residents, Sue's pair of large sons, and a riotous selection of Welsh supporters who had arrived noisily by hired coach. The photographer set up his tripod, directed grudgingly by Paul Mathieson, who felt that, as owner of the precious Nikon and subscriber to
Amateur Photographer,
he should have been invited to do it.

‘You've got to be in these as well, Jen. Got to have all the witnesses!' Sue called as Jenny stuffed her damp hanky back into her bag.

‘In a bit, shove up close together!' the photographer ordered, and Jenny found herself squashed against David, smiling apologetically at him.

‘That's a huge favour you did me,' he whispered to her as the photographer bustled about arranging people. Jenny felt her heart step up its beat rate and she just knew she was in for a dread lifetime of neighbourly embarrassment.

‘No, I don't mean that!' he went on, laughing. ‘No, I mean if it wasn't for you I wouldn't have met Sue! Best thing that ever happened to me, believe it.' His face, when he looked at Sue, was so unashamedly thrilled that Jenny could feel tears threatening to choke her again.

No-one had looked at her like that for quite some time. Alan had come pretty close the other night after he'd told her about Serena and the likelihood of losing his job, gratified, relieved probably that Jenny hadn't immediately told him to sling his rotten hook. But that sort of look, the David to Sue look, you didn't get that after years of murky marriage; it required some sort of naïve and joyful expectation somewhere.

‘Smile everybody!' the photographer roared above the chat, and Jenny hoped that on the photos she wouldn't be the one who looked as dewy as a person with brand new contact lenses.

‘Talking to Hugo the other day.' Laura, gliding like a tall-ship in many layers of expensively mangled butter-coloured silk, approached Jenny later at the reception which had spilled over into Sue's garden. ‘He says to send love to your Polly and he'll be sending a rough-cut video of her advert any day now. She was awfully good, he says. Everyone adored her.'

‘How sweet of him!' Jenny replied taking a glass of champagne from the wobbly tray carried round by Sue's younger son on leave from his famous public school, (and trailed at an admiring distance by Daisy, who liked his rarity value). ‘Hugo might be interested, actually. We've decided to send Polly to a school that specializes in the performing arts. She's thrilled with the idea, can hardly wait for audition day.'

Polly could be seen across the garden, showing off her splits and cartwheels in her best dress to Sebastian and Marcus, who were enjoying frequent glimpses of her purple knickers.

Laura's face was arranged in a little questioning pout, her lips puckered amusedly, and then she smiled broadly as if she'd just unfathomed a riddle. ‘Oh! I see, for a moment I thought you meant a stage school!' she trilled.

‘Stage school? Who on earth is going to a stage school?' Carol Mathieson, forgetting to watch her powder blue suede high heels on the lawn, tripped into their conversation, spilling a fizzing trickle of champagne down the front of her navy blue sailor jacket. She waited expectantly to be told whatever news was going.

‘All those lovely long-necked girls from the Royal Ballet school in Richmond Park,' Laura went on dreamily. ‘They stand at the bus stop with their hair in neat little buns and their feet out in third position.
So
pretty. Polly
is
a lucky girl.'

Carol looked at them both expectantly and Jenny felt ganged-up on. ‘She's not going to White Lodge,' she announced firmly. ‘She
is
actually going to a stage school. And before you say anything, it isn't all hair in ringlets and constant auditioning to be the next Milky Bar Kid.' I'm sounding defensive, she thought, voicing some of the prejudices she'd had herself only days ago. She caught sight of George Pemberton leering his approval at her from behind a tray of canapés. Fiona noticed and tweaked him viciously back to attention, ordering him to help do the rounds with the food. Jenny decided it was time to go and find someone else to talk to. She was also wondering where Mrs Fingell had gone. Sue had definitely invited her to the party, and she'd been there at the ceremony, exuberant in a cherry red hat. ‘Sorry, must just dash back home,' she said to Laura and Carol, whose expressions were stuck in astonishment, as if she'd just told them that Polly had had her name down since birth for the nearest Young Offenders' Institute. Jenny retreated. ‘Got to go and collect Sue and David's present. Didn't want to take it along to the register office with me. See you later.'

She picked her way carefully through the crush round the doorway, hearing as she went the unmistakable voice of Carol confiding to Laura ‘. . . teaching the pupils to speak frightfully badly, so they can get parts in
EastEnders
. . .' Just wait till Polly's the juvenile lead in some upmarket BBC2 period drama, she thought, or playing Juliet at 13. One day they'll be showing off that they've known her since she was this high.

Jenny walked carefully down the road in her favourite going out but-only-if-there's-somewhere-to-sit-down shoes. Could it be true, she wondered, as she tottered painfully up to the front door, that one's feet actually grew a bit as one got older? Surely a size 5 at age 23 was going to be still a size 5 at 42? She left the front door open, kicked off the shoes in the hall and, noticing the answerphone flashing at her, flicked the ‘on' button. The tape was getting mangled and most of the message was lost, but Jenny heard just enough to catch the gist (‘wondered about whether you felt up to taking on an entire boys' school ha! ha!'). ‘Not today thanks!' she said to the machine, and switched it off abruptly. Hurrying now, she went into the kitchen to collect the present. Absorbed both in her blissfully released toes and in searching the dresser for the gift-wrap ribbon, she wasn't at first aware that anyone else had come into the house behind her.

‘Thought I'd join you, having a little breather from the hordes,' a familiar voice said from the kitchen doorway. Jenny, startled, swore with anger as she trapped her hand in the drawer.

‘George! Why are you creeping up on me like that?' she demanded crossly. ‘You've got a nerve, following me here!' She actually felt quite alarmed. George was already drunk, swaying slightly, and his breath was gusting heavily. ‘Thought while we've got a few minutes alone . . .' he said, looking her up and down slowly. Jenny backed nervously towards the conservatory, hoping to sidestep him as he followed her in and then make a dash for the front door. ‘Wouldn't take long . . .' George said, with a rather desperate pleading note in his voice. He reached for the zip on his trousers, still keeping his rheumy old spaniel eyes on Jenny's face, hoping for some sort of expression of surrender.

‘Not a chance, George,' she said firmly, then watched incredulous as he brought out from the baggy folds of his ancient special-occasion trousers a fully erect penis, all raring to go as if,
Blue Peter
style, it was one he'd prepared earlier.

‘Cooee, only me!' came the hugely welcome (to Jenny) voice of Mrs Fingell from the front door.

‘Bugger! The old witch!' George said, dashing, dick in hand, to the seclusion of the conservatory.

‘You in here?' called Mrs Fingell as she came bustling along the hallway, opening and closing doors as she went. ‘I saw the front door open,' she said as she reached the kitchen. ‘Just popped home to see to the dog.' Then seeing Jenny propped feebly up against the Aga and looking pale, added, ‘You all right? Seen a ghost?'

‘No I'm not really,' Jenny confessed shakily. ‘I was just in here getting some ribbon for the present and guess who followed me in?'

Mrs Fingell's face broke into a knowing smirk, but before she could voice her guess, a long, deep groan emanated from the conservatory. Whether it was a groan of agony or ecstasy was hard to tell, but Jenny, quailing at what sounded like the results of over-excitement, prayed she wouldn't have to go in there with a mop.

‘Disgusting old man, following me here like that,' she said furiously. ‘Stay there and I'll get him out and make him go away.' She strode angrily into the conservatory about to confront George, grateful to have Mrs Fingell there to give her courage, but George wasn't as she expected, shamefacedly adjusting his clothing, but was instead lying half on and half off the sofa, a twisted grin on his face and his eyes gazing sightlessly at Alan's potted herb collection. His penis, now at half-mast, lay pink and obscene against his best-trousered groin.

‘Good God,' Mrs Fingell exclaimed sharply from just behind Jenny, ‘he's stone dead!'

I mustn't panic, Jenny thought, followed by the fervent prayer that surely this couldn't be happening to her.

‘Well, the first thing we'd better do is make him look decent, poor old bugger,' Mrs Fingell said, taking over with authority.

Jenny could feel her whole body start to tremble. ‘I'm not touching him, not touching
that
,' she said, wondering if this was what it felt like before you actually fainted. ‘Are you sure he's dead?' she whispered, though she didn't really need to; there was absolutely no doubt.

‘'Course he is. Heart attack I should think, a bit drunk and a lot over-stimulated. All he can expect at his age.' Mrs Fingell sniffed disapprovingly, even though George must have been quite a bit younger than her. She took off her coat and rolled up the sleeves of her best cardigan like an old-fashioned hospital matron about to tackle a challenging enema, and approached George. Jenny closed her eyes and shuddered, avoiding the sight of Mrs Fingell attempting to tuck George's penis neatly back into his trousers. ‘Damn, he's got it stuck. No wonder he snuffed it, that zip must have nipped like a ferret,' she said. Jenny half-opened her eyes and met the sight of her neighbour rather brutally waggling the piece of pink flesh and battling with the stuck zip. ‘Look at that! Completely trapped. Not much we can do about that, we'll have to leave it. Or cut it off,' she suggested hopefully, looking at Jenny with a grin of gleeful malevolence.

Jenny started to come to her senses. ‘We can't do that, and we can't really leave him here. Poor old soul, who'd want to be found looking like that? And God, imagine what everyone will think has been going on!' The warmth flooded back to her face and she sat down heavily on one of the cane chairs. ‘And Fiona! She wouldn't be able to think anything but the worst! I refuse to have anyone believe that I've been having an affair with George!' Jenny got up and paced up and down the small room. ‘Perhaps we could move him. In the long run it'll be kinder for everyone. It's probably illegal though. Will you help me?' she pleaded urgently with Mrs Fingell.

‘'Course I will,' Mrs Fingell replied, accepting a hand up from the floor and adjusting her incongruously cheerful scarlet hat. ‘I know,' she said, tapping her temple to help the thought out, ‘if we can get him across the road and leave him behind his lilac tree, everyone will think he dropped dead having a pee in his own garden. What do you think of that?' Mrs Fingell looked pleased with herself, but Jenny could see flaws.

‘But why would he have to pee in his garden. Wouldn't he have a door key?'

Mrs Fingell cackled. ‘You know Fiona Pemberton as well as I do dear, George isn't allowed a key, ‘cept in emergencies.'

‘We'll have to hurry,' Jenny said. ‘Alan will be round looking for me, it doesn't take long to giftwrap a set of table linen.' Then she started to realize the impossibility of the project, her voice rising with panic. ‘How on earth can we do this? Someone's bound to see us!'

‘No they're not. They're all getting pissed at the wedding party and that's safely up at the end of the road. I'll get one of the trolleys from my garden. Hang on here a sec and get that rug up while you're waiting. Be just right to wrap him in.' Mrs Fingell, having issued her orders and taken command, walked back through the hallway, at a far brisker and stronger pace than usual. Jenny felt desperate to follow her, and trailed after her into the hall to find some comfortable shoes. Cowardly, and horrified at being left alone with the fish-eyed corpse, she wanted to go and snuggle up against the Aga for comfort, but instead had to move the cane chairs and table into the far corner of the conservatory to get at the big cream rug. She sidled past George, avoiding his fixed gaze, and then, unable to stand it, she went back to a drawer in the kitchen and covered his face with a freshly ironed tea towel depicting various Cornish harbours.

Luckily, Mrs Fingell's garden nearly always contained at least one abandoned supermarket trolley. Carol Mathieson was always tut-tutting about them. The one she manoeuvred up Jenny's garden path had a full set of working wheels and was only slightly bent around the handle. It would do very well. Back inside the house, she and Jenny pulled George down from the sofa and arranged him across the end of the rug before rolling him up firmly. Jenny bit her lip to stop herself feeling sick, and tied string tightly round the ends of the rug to stop him from sliding out. The parcel looked like a flaccid and badly stuffed uncooked pastry Christmas cracker, the sort of thing that only Delia Smith can make successfully.

‘Lucky he isn't very tall. Or wasn't, I should say,' Mrs Fingell puffed as they loaded George onto the trolley. ‘Fits nicely.' She stopped for a breather, leaning on the wall and sighing lustily. ‘I always liked that rug.'

‘It's yours,' Jenny told her immediately, grateful that she wouldn't have to live with it and be reminded of this awful day for ever more. How she'd explain its absence to Alan didn't even begin to rate as a problem. Getting George's cooling corpse unseen across the road did, however, and as the two women guided their heavy, clanking load along the pavement, Jenny wished and wished that supermarkets had understood the need for silent rubber tyres on their trolleys.