Venus Envy (42 page)

that voice was, well, not forgotten exactly, but it was

so different actually to hear it.

‘Tom, it’s Alex.’

‘Where are you?’ he said hurriedly. ‘Everyone wants

to know. Your parents are frantic. They think you’ve

been sold into white slavery.’

I could just see Mum, loving every minute of the drama. She was probably recording a segment for Crimewatcb right now.

Tm perfectly all right, I wish everyone would stop

fussing,’ I said, ‘I’m just settling into a new job.’

‘Where?’

‘That’s really none of your business. Bronwen said you’d called.’

‘Yes.’ Now he sounded hesitant, a bit wary, as though he didn’t want to have to say this. My God, I thought, feeling nauseous, he thinks he’s going to hurt me. ‘It’s about Gail - I’ve got some news and I think it might upset you.’

‘You think what?’ I raged at him. ‘The bloody nerve of you, you think everyone is just breaking their hearts over you, don’t you, you think everyone is just dying

to hang around the big cheese Mr Drummond.’ ‘But Alex—’

‘Well, let me tell you, Tom, nothing you could do could ever be upsetting to me, I’m doing fine, thanks

very much.’

‘Alex—’

‘I don’t want to hear it!’ I yelled. ‘I don’t need to hear it! You insufferable bloody smug bastard, you always were and you still are.’

‘I’m sorry if I’ve distressed you,’ Tom said softly.

‘Well, don’t be, I couldn’t give a luck,’ I said, then hung up, sat down and sobbed my heart out.

‘Alex, you, re late,’ Barry said pompously as I arrived back at the library. ‘You mustn’t be late when you’re a Christian soldier marching as to war.’

‘Oh well, Dr Gallagher,’ I said respectfully - I knew I was going to have to kiss this guy’s ass until my lips turned blue, and what happened to ‘Miss Wilde’? ‘An army marches on its stomach.’

I hadn’t eaten a thing, of course. I never wanted to eat again.

‘Well, man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God. Now, let’s get cracking, shall we? We’ve got a very long evening ahead of us, I’m afraid, it’ll be your first bit of overtime.’ He licked his lips disgusti.ngly. ‘I hope you

don’t mind putting in evening work, unchaperoned.’ ‘Er - ‘course not.’

‘Because with two young single people like you and me, people might talk.’

‘Er, I suppose they might, but—’

‘People might say we’d find it hard to restrain our natural urges.’

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‘I don’t understand, it doesn’t look all that busy,’ I gabbled desperately, ‘what will we have to do?’

This distracted him from his natural urges for a

second and back on to his pomposity. He leant forward and breathed a week’s worth of garlic in my face. ‘We’re undergoing a major update. We’re going to catalogue every book in order, and replace it on the shelves. This mess distracts from the good news of the

Gospel, I’m sure you’ll agree.’

‘Yeah, right,’ I said faintly.

‘We don’t use computers, there’s nothing wrong with a bit of elbow grease, so you sit there and fill out ” these forms on these.’ With that, Gallagher pulled out a thick pile of slips, a file, and a huge cardboard box of books. It had cobwebs on.

‘Oh. I hate spiders,’ I said forlornly, watching him huff and puff as he tried to drag the box to my desk.

‘Well, they’ll be dead by now,’ he said firmly, ‘so you crack on. No time to waste.’

Bloody hell, he meant it too. No wonder this job hadn’t been filled: Barry was nt only a prig and a toad, he was a slave driver who would have done just great whipping the labourers at the pyramids. I wrote and checked and filed until the dots swam before my eyes and I got writer’s cramp. Barry confined his activities to ‘supervising’, that is, he yelled at me when I got a placing wrong.

‘Can’t you read? Ecclesiastes, not Ecclesiasticus!’ he shrieked. ‘We should know our Holy Scripture by now, shouldn’t we?’

The shadows drew in and the dusty electric clock ticked loudly round and round, but the pile of books didn’t get any smaller. Barry gave me more the second I finished one section.

‘No slacking!’ he warned me repeatedly. ‘You know what it says in Proverbs: “Go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways.” ‘

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‘Maybe you could help with the stacking, when you’ve finished that Bible segment,’ I suggested, weak with tiredness and hunger. Oh shit, what had I signed up for? Barry replied with a lengthy recital of Martha and Mary and how Jesus said Mary had chosen the better part by skipping the housework and listening to His Word. It sounded like a giant chizz, to me, and anyway, nobody had given me a ‘part’ to choose.

‘I just need to go tothe loo,’ I said, feeling my throat knot up and my eyes get blurry with hopeless tears.

‘That’s the second time in two hours. I hope you don’t have a medical problem,’ Barry sniffed.

I wanted to lean against the filthy cistern and have another cry, but Barry was probably standing outside listening with a timer.

When I re-emerged he pointed at the box of books. ‘But it’s.seven p.m.,’ I said faintly.

‘This day was made by the Lord, we rejoice and are glad,’ said Barry, monumentally annoyingly.

I sighed and plunged my hand into the box of tatty books. Immediately, three huge house spiders crawled

up out of the shadows and scuttled across my hands. I screamed and jumped in the air.

‘Don’t yell!’ shouted Barry, and then the glint in his eye changed, and he pulled me into his fat pudgy body.

‘There, there, there,’ he said, ostensibly patting my back but actually feeling me up. For a fat bastard, he could certainly move those hands when he wanted to. They were clutching my ass, grabbing my tits, slithering all over me like a plump sring .of sausages.

I burst into tears, struggling to get free. ‘Get off me! Get off me!’ I squealed.

‘Oh, come on, you know you want it,’ Barry said, his breath coming faster, ‘otherwise you’d have left by now.’

‘You wouldn’t let me!’ I sobbed. ‘I need this job!’ ‘I know you do, the Job Centre told me you were

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me, you know.’

I screamed in misery as he lunged round the desk towards me. He had a small and unimpressive hard

‘Go away!’ I yelled.

‘Ugh,’ he grunted, and then he was on me again, his puke-making erection pressing into me and those fat hands grabbing, his fetid breath-hot on my neck, and I was panicking and trying to push him off—

And suddenly a huge male paw reached out, grabbed him by the collar and flung him across the room. I stared in blank astonishment as a bunched fist shot out and punched him in his fat face, leaving him

, reeling and bleeding against a bookcase.

‘Come on, Alex,’ Tom said. ‘I’ve come to take you home.’

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Tom pulled me out of there, which was just as well, because I wasn’t going anywhere. I was staring at him with my mouth hanging open like a stranded flounder or David Mellor. I was rooted to the spot so hard I would need watering, any minute now.

‘And you,’ Tom roared at the cowering Barry, who was standing there with his hands clamped over his gushing nose, ‘you fat little bastard, if you ever touch this young lady againn’

‘You broke by dose,’ wailed Barry thickly.

‘—I’ll start breaking all the other bones. You disgusting little hypocrite, I should go to the police. Come on, darling,’ he said to me, and slammed the door behind us so hard the glass shattered, leaving a web of cracks like the spiders’ in the box.

What did he just say? I asked myself frozenly. I must have misheard.

‘What - what are you doing here?’ I stammered.

Tm here to get you, of course,’ Tom said, smiling at

me softly. ‘I didn’t come to borrow a book.’

‘But how did you know I was here?’

‘I traced the call to Rosedale, ther/asked your sister if she knew a reason why you might be there.’

.’Oh,’ I said. I felt stupid. And the mention of Gail sent a whole flock of little geese padding over my grave.

‘Well, I’m perfectly happy, thank you,’ I said stiffly. ‘I didn’t ask anyone to come and get me.’

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‘Yeah, you look it,’ Tom said, grinning in an annoyingly attractive way. ‘Come on, hop in.’

He opened the door to his Rolls. The Silver Phantom looked .so out of place here, alongside the derelict schoolyard over the road and the nasty modern council

houses. It also looked warm and seductively comfy. It was bitterly freezing out here. ‘All right,’ I said grudgingly.

‘Why did you come up here?’- Tom asked, spinning

the wheel smoothly in the direction of my village. He’d done his research all right. I had a nasty vision of him discussi.ng me with Gail. ‘Mental,’ she’d probably said. ‘Nervous breakdown. Consumed with jealousy.’

‘I wanted to get away, get a new job, OK? Start

‘ again,’ I said defiantly.

‘You came up here for a reality check,’ Tom said kindly.

‘Yes.’ But despite myself, I burst into tears. ‘It’s just that my reality checks keep bouncing.’

‘It’s OK,’ Tom said, looking over at me.

‘It isn’t.’ I knew I’d lost it completely now, but I couldn’t be strong one more second. I was so tired and so despairing, and here was the only man I’d ever truly loved and I couldn’t have him. ‘Nothing’s ever going to be all right again.’

‘This isn’t about Gail, is it?’ Tom asked. A note of panic had crept into his voice.

‘Yes, it’s about Gail. Of course it is,’ I sobbed.

‘I’m sorry, Alex, I’m truly sorry, I never knew you would be so upset.’

‘Well, you know now,’ I said, burying my face in my hands.

The car spun upwards towards the cottage, taking

the steep hill smoothly in its stride. With no street lamps or neon to blot them out, the stars prickled over the huge sky like diamonds scattered on a j.eweller’s

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velvet cloth. Tom had a hard set to his shoulders, like a man beleaguered. He looked utterly tense.

I don’t know why; I had bowed to the inevitable, I wasn’t going to give him any grief.

Who could blame him for picking Cinderella instead of the elder Ugly Sister? Especially when that Ugly Sister had shown herself to. be such a prime bitch. Now I knew how Ellen must have felt, when I was encouraging Snowy to flirt with her man. Well, Karma was handing her its revenge now, with interest.

‘Who told you?’ Tom demanded bitterly. ‘I wanted to do it, to explain—’

‘It wouldn’t have been any better if you had. It ‘would have been worse,’ I said.

‘So who was it? Was it Gail?’

I thought of gritting my teeth and congratulating Gail, and trying to catch some desperate illness so I could wriggle out of going to the wedding. Maybe I could gnaw through my own leg.

‘No. I haven’t spoken to her,’ I said. ‘I just knew.’

‘How can you just know? Are you telepathic?’ Tom demanded.

‘Stop here,’ I said wearily.

He parked the car outside my front door. Next to my tiny little Metro it looked even more outrageously lavish. I bit my cheeks and tried to pull myself

together; Tom had come.all this way just for me. ‘I’ll get us some coffee and supper,’ I said.

‘Oh. It’s… sweet,’ Tom lied charmingly. ‘What fun to have a little hideaway like ttiis.’

‘Yeah, well, it didn’t hide me for very long,’ I said. To my horror, Tom crossed the room, pulled me down on to the sofa and took my two hands in his. Oh no, I’d just stopped crying and now he was going to make me start again. I get a grip, and then he gets tender and compassionate. That’s what triggers the torrents.

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‘Gail was upset,’ he said quietly. ‘I won’t tell you otherwise, Alex, I wish I could, but I can’t lie to you.’

‘Upset? At the thought of me being upset?’ I said acidly, tears starting to blur again. ‘How nice of her.’

‘Well, not at the thought of you being upset,’ said Tom, looking confused, ‘I mean, she probably was, but mostly it was the actual split, I think, although maybe not, Alex, I know you think I have a massive ego, I suppose it might have been you’

‘Tom.’ The fog of words stopped my tears for a second. Despite my concentrating hard on what he had just said, it still failed to yield up its significance. Like Alice Through the Looking Glass, where the sentences

have verbs and nouns and sound like English, but— ‘What are you talking about?’ ‘Gail.’

‘Yes, I got that bit, I mean, what about Gail, what split was she upset about? Me splitting from the flat?’

That seemed most unlikely. The further away I was, with my tendency to set galleries on fire and bust up

˘˘edding parties, the better; Gail would be cheering. ‘No. Our split. Mine and Gail’s.’

I sat very still. Hope had tricked me like this a couple of times before. Well, I was nobody’s fool any more.

‘What do you mean, yours and Gail’s - split what? Split your living room? Split your housekeeping rota?’

Tom looked at me as if I was barking mad. ‘Split, Alex, as in broke up. As in we are no longer dating each other. As in, Gail has moved back to your parents’.’

I stared back at him for twenty years. Well, OK, probably a couple of seconds, but that’s what it felt like.

Then the floodgates opened, and I burst into rivers of tears, great, wracking sobs that convulsed my whole

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body, I couldn’t stop them or dam them, my shoulders were shaking, my ribcage heaving.

Beside me Tom was starting and jumpy like a panicking racehorse. Men hate a crying woman, I realise that, but there was absolutely nothing I could do about it. I cried and cried.

‘Alex,’ Tom said frantically, producing a big red handkerchief with white polka dots on it, ‘please don’t cry, please, Alex, darling, I’m sorry I hurt your sister, but I couldn’t go on with it.’

I grabbed the handkerchief and wiped my streaming eyes and blew my nose. It sounded like an elephant trumpeting. Very attractive.