1982 Janine (3 page)

“Glad to hear it. You're in luck. I've been trying to get Wanda Neuman but she's out. All right, be here at eleven.”

“Charlie, you mentioned a millionaire.”

“That's right. The club has a couple of them, so dress like I said.”

“What do they call this club?”

But again he has hung up. 

Four hours later Janine is worried and trying not to show it but her voice is husky when she says, “My agent told me to dress this way.”

“Your agent reads Hollis like a book.”

But Janine is not (here come the clothes) happy with the white silk shirt shaped by the way it hangs from her etcetera I mean BREASTS, silk shirt not quite reaching the thick harness-leather belt which is not holding up the miniskirt but hangs in the loops round the waistband of the white suede miniskirt supported by her hips and unbuttoned as high as the top of the black fishnet stockings whose mesh is wide enough to insert three fingers I HATED clothes when I was young. My mother made me wear far too many of them, mostly jackets and coats. When I complained that I was too hot she said the weather could change any moment and
she
wasn't going to have me off school with a bad cold. I had three classes of suit. The best suit, the newest, was for Sunday and for visiting relations. The second-best suit was for going to school. The third was for “playing rough games”. Yes, she expected me to play games, but I had to come home and change into my oldest suit first, and that was often too small to run about in comfortably. Of course when you're a child most games happen on the way home from school or in the playground, so this clothing programme reduced my social opportunities. We lived in a mining town where a lot of boys wore dungarees to school and could play when they liked. I envied them. In summertime some of them didn't even go home after school but rambled in gangs through the surrounding country, fishing and tree climbing, getting into trouble with farmers and coming home at sunset to grab their own supper of bread and cheese. Their mothers (my mother thought) didn't look after them properly. When the evening meal was finished and my father had gone out to a union meeting (he was a timekeeper at the pithead, a strong union man) I would start
changing into my oldest suit and my mother would say, 

“Have you done your homework yet?”

“No. I'll do it when I get back.”

“Why not do it now, while you're still fresh?”

“The sun's shining, it's a nice evening.”

“So you're determined to hew coal when you grow up?”

“No. But it's a nice evening.”

“Hm!”

And she would fall silent. Her silences were very heavy. I could never pull myself from under them. I could never leave her alone in one, that would have been cruel. Drearily I would get out the school books and spread them on the kitchen table. She would sit by the fire with a piece of knitting or sewing and we would be busy on opposite sides of the room. The wireless would be playing very quietly (“and now the strains of
Kate Dalrymple
introduce Jimmy Shand and his band with thirty minutes of Scottish country dance music”). The room would grow lighter. Later she would brew a pot of tea and quietly lay on the table beside me a milked and sweetened cup of it with a chocolate biscuit in the saucer. Without lifting my eyes from the books I would grunt to show that I could not be so easily soothed, but inside I was perfectly happy. My happiest moments were passed with that woman. She kept me indoors but she never interfered with my mind. Between the pages of a book I had a newspaper clipping to carry my thoughts miles and miles away, an advert for
The Outlaw
– MEAN! MOODY! MAGNIFICENT! above a photograph of Jane Russell, her blouse pulled off both shoulders, leaning back against some straw glaring at me with this inviting defiance. My feelings were more than sexual. I felt grateful. I was amazed by myself. Nobody else, I realized, knew all the rich things I knew. The clean tidy room, the click of my mother's needles, Jane Russell's soft shoulders and sulky mouth, the evening sunlight over the town in the bend of the river where the colliers' sons were guddling trout, a mushroom cloud in the Pacific sky above Bikini atoll, Jimmy Shand's music and the taste of a chocolate biscuit were precisely held by
my
mind and by nobody else's. I was vast. I was sure that one day I would do anything in the world I wanted. I thought it likely that I would
marry Jane Russell. I was ten or twelve at the time and believed sex and marriage were nearly the same thing. Now I am almost fiforget that forget that forget that where did I leave Janine? 

In a fast car trying not to be afraid, her vulnerable breasts in a white silk shirt, accessible arse in a leather miniskirt, shapely thighs legs feet in black fishnet stockings and, ah! white open-topped shoes with stiletto heels. Standing up in them Janine is on tiptoe, she must raise and tighten her bum, press back her shoulders, lift her chin. Each shoe is tied on by three slender white thongs with small gold buckles which fasten straight across the toes, diagonally over the arch of the foot, and encircle the ankle so that (how happy I am) if the car slows or stops she can't slip them off, fling open the door and run. The car does slow, a little, leaving the freeway for a sideroad through a plantation of fir trees which cast a very cold shadow. “Nearly home!” says Max happily. The car stops before a tall gate in a security fence. Through the wires Janine can see a gatehouse and a patch of sunlight where a man in shorts, singlet and peaked cap is dozing in a deckchair. Max sounds his horn. The man stands, peers towards the car, salutes Max and enters the gatehouse.

“What kind of country-club is
this
?” asks Janine, staring at a board on the gate. It carries the name of a government district and FORENSIC RESEARCH ASSOCIATION. TRESPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. GUARD DOGS. DANGER.

“The rich kind,” say Max. “Our members are mostly lawyers and policemen, so for tax-avoidance purposes we pretend we are doing something useful.”

“Neat!” says Janine, smiling for the first time that day. 

The gate clicks and swings inward. The car passes the gatehouse and emerges from the trees on to an unfenced road curving over a golf-course. Tiny figures move on a distant green beside a white building with windows glittering in the afternoon sun. This is all so securely and expensively what Janine wants that she gives a little sigh of relief thinking, ‘I'm an actress so I can't help imagining things.
Max, the lout, is excited, the lout, because I'm sexy, but that's natural, it needn't have bothered me. Did I sweat?' She takes a powder-compact from her handbag, gives her face a straight professional look in the mirror and puts it away thinking: nothing wrong there. Max chuckles. 

“Admit,” he says, “back there you thought I was a rapist white slaver, right?”

“Well, you said this place was just outside town. And well, it just isn't.”

“I'm a bad judge of distance because my work demands that I travel a lot.”

But Janine is not interested in Max and his work. She says,

“How many members has your club?”

“Twelve.”

“Twelve? But … I mean …”

“Ridiculous isn't it? Our staff outnumber us nearly five to one. But we like it that way. We can afford it.”

The thought of such wealth makes Janine feel almost dizzy. The car stops on a bed of granite chips before some wide white steps. Max, quick on his feet, gets out and opens the door on her side wanting to take her arm, but Janine ignores him for now she is pleased with her shoes. Not many women could climb steps with dignity in nine-inch high heels. Janine does it, and when the glass doors at the top open automatically she steps firmly on to the blue carpet of the club foyer feeling she deserves a round of applause. Which is perhaps why the man walking toward her affects her like a round of applause. He is stout (not fat like Max) and soberly and expensively dressed, and he smiles at her, not in a boyish lecherous way (like Max) but with the mature admiration of someone who appreciates her exactly as she appreciates herself. He shakes her hand saying quietly,

“Miss Janine Crystal.”

She says, “Mr Hollis?”

Max laughs loudly and shouts, “Oh no, this is our president, Bill Stroud.”

Stroud says, “Our recreation officer is not quite ready for you. I would like to discuss your salary and answer questions before you meet Hollis. But first of all, drinks and lunch perhaps? Do you wish to visit a washroom?”

“Thanks, but I'm fine. And yes, I'd like lunch, if that's all
right. And … wow. I mean wow, this place is something special.” 

Another glass door has opened and they are crossing stop. Stop. I want rid of Max. Stroud says, “Max, you laugh too loud, you have enjoyed Miss Crystal's company enough for today. I am sure you can find someone to entertain you in the gymnasium.”

Max's face goes expressionless. With a slight nod to Janine he walks quickly away. In the gymnasium Big Momma stands with no no no no no shortcuts. Take the long way round. I may be awake for hours. 

Another glass door has opened and they (Stroud and Janine) are crossing the soft green carpet of a circular room which seems open to the sky, for the glass ceiling is only slightly tinted to soften the glare of the sun. There are low coffee-tables with magazines and armchairs, and to one side some small restaurant tables. A section of wall is a cocktail bar where a man on a high stool chats to a waitress. Elsewhere the room seems walled with palm trees and tall grasses which lean out over the carpet, and when Janine sits down with Stroud at a table set with cutlery for two she notices the door is hidden by greenery. She thinks, ‘This is like a dream. I feel I'm sitting in a jungle.' Why the hell does Janine need all this interior decoration? I don't need it. I'm expected to stay in first-class hotels when I travel but I always choose small family places like this. I don't save money that way, my firm pays the bills, but I feel more at home in small hotels. Years ago in London a client took me for a business lunch in the Athenaeum, or was it the Reform Club? Anyway, there were chandeliers, marble pillars, real leather armchairs, a dome (I think) and waiters in evening dress. I acted perfectly calmly but inside I was hard, watchful, critical. Janine is also acting calmly but inside she has been warmed and softened by this luxury, she really loves it and I despise her for that. No I don't, but I would like to. She has no right to enjoy things I can't. She says aloud,

“This is like a dream. I feel I'm sitting in a jungle.”

“A comfortable jungle,” says Stroud handing her a menu.

“Not all parts of the club are so comfortable.”

The menu is in French. She hands it back saying sweetly, “Please choose for both of us. I like anything that's nice.”

Stroud says, “Suppose we begin with–” 

I don't know French. Why quote what Stroud says? I'm losing interest. Drink. Think. 

What did my mother think as we sat on opposite sides of the kitchen, and she knitted and I mixed profit-and-loss arithmetic with a stormy wooing of Jane Russell? I've never wondered what happened in her head before. She was a tall, rather quiet woman. All the neighbours trusted her, even those who disliked each other. She had a sharp sense of humour but listened carefully to what they said and seldom passed it on. While I was working and brooding near her my feelings of harmony, of luxury, were sometimes so strong that I am now nearly certain she was deliberately putting dreams into my head, dreams of power and possessions and far-ranging life. She managed her own life perfectly, as far as I could see, but didn't enjoy it much. Why do I think that? She only spoke to me about my homework and what clothes to wear. Except one Friday afternoon when I came home from school and she was at the door saying cheerful goodbyes to her closest friends, five women I had called “Auntie” when I was younger. They were leaving one of the gossipy little tea-and-biscuit parties women kept giving each other in those days. She was more silent than usual as she cleared away the cups, then suddenly muttered in a low, fierce voice, “I hate bloody women.”

I was astonished. I said, “Why?”

“Have you ever heard them talk?”

I didn't answer. Since I was a baby I had heard them talk about their children, husbands, recipes, dress patterns and love-stories in the
Woman's Own
and
People's Friend
. What they said never interested me, but the noise of it was a comforting background music which I liked much more than male talk about sport and politics, which made a snapping, argumentative, menacing noise. But that was the only time I noticed my mother was not completely satisfied, before she oh forget it forget it forget it. 

I know now that what was wrong with her was too much
energy and intelligence. Cleaning a room and kitchen, serving a husband and son, entertaining the neighbours did not use her up. I doubt if working in a shop, or as a secretary, would have used her up either. Or travelling around supervising the installation of security systems, like I do. A lot of nonsense is talked nowadays about “job satisfaction”, as if many people could have it. The things which make most jobs bearable (not satisfying – just bearable) are extra, intoxicating ingredients like: pop music on a loudspeaker, a pay-cheque, hope of promotion, hope of a wild night of love. I take straight alcohol, which has started working again. My two heads are beginning to hum to each other, above and below. Good Penis! Good Doggie! Are you awake?