“I’ve just seen Astrology Annie!” she gushed when she emerged. “When I said what I as doing here she wished me luck. And then she put a blessing on me for the lottery.”
“Oh, boy,” said Wendy.
“And she gave me a go with her lippy.” Belinda’s lips were bilberry blue.
“I hope she hasn’t got herpes,” said Wendy.
“As if!” said Belinda. Then they fell quiet as Astrology Annie swept out of the toilets, her cape brushing the walls of the corridor. Instinctively they shrunk back.
“Good luck again, Belinda,” she said in her dire Transylvanian accent. “And you must be Timon.”
Timon gave a little bow.
“I shall be watching,” said Astrology Annie, and glided off down the passageway.
Belinda had a soppy grin on her face. “Captain Simon will be madly jealous,” she hissed. “He’s crazy about her.”
“This,” Serena said, “is strong stuff.”
“I don’t understand the woman. Letting him put filthy words in her mouth like this.”
They pored over the pages.
“I thought she looked like a very naïve woman,” Serena whispered.
“Look at this!” Anne pointed to the phrase ‘moist cleft’.
They both drew in a breath.
Anne said, “Do you think she’s read this?”
Serena shrugged.
The book fell open at Chapter Seventeen. ‘Love at the Royal Circus’. “I’m in this!” shrilled Anne. “Listen! ‘Her legs were like monuments—they were her twin monuments—her podiums on which she displayed herself—they were her pride—she existed only for her podiums—she strutted them—she strode about—she wore boots which made her amble and roll along—she was her monument to herself.’ What kind of compliment is that?”
“I’m not sure that it is.”
“Chapter Six. ‘My Brother is Replaced’. Chapter Ten. ‘An Orphan Comes to Stay’. This is outrageous! She, I mean he, has turned our lives into some kind of… sex comedy.”
“A farce,” said Serena.
“I’m keeping hold of this.” Anne looked around. “Shall we burn it?”
“No!” Serena made a grab for the book.
Anne was on her feet. “It’s scurrilous. I’m going to destroy it.”
“It looks like his single copy.”
Anne was standing at the gas stove, clicking the ignition. “Good!”
“I can’t let you do this, Anne,” said Serena, advancing on her. “Give me the book.”
“He’ll publish it and I’ll be a laughing stock. The woman with huge fat legs.”
“He won’t publish it. It’s low-grade pornography, written in dreadful stream of consciousness. No one will touch this.”
“Stream of lies!” She couldn’t get the ring to light.
“Give me it and I’ll keep it safe.”
“Will you?”
“You can’t burn a book, Anne.”
Serena reached out one of her large, perfect hands and took the volume off her friend. She would keep it till later, and examine it carefully in private.
One of the many things Joshua collected was erotic works of fiction. They had to be hand-written, the pages sweated over. The value for him was lessened the wider the readership had been. He liked no one to come between himself and the author’s presence. She would phone him and perhaps insinuate herself back into his life. When she went back to him, it would have to be with a present, since she seemed to be out of favour just now. The book went into the knife drawer.
“The film’s finished,” said Anne, sitting herself disgruntled on her stool again.
They watched an advert for a hospital series, then a murder series, and one about firemen. Then the credits for Strange Matter began.
They sat Belinda and Timon right on the gangway so that, when the time came, they could have easy access to the stage area. There was a whole barrage of cameras, cables, technicians and floor managers for them to get through before they would reach the brightly-lit podium and science fiction backdrop and, as they were instructed in the art of whooping, Belinda began to fret.
“I’ll get all out of breath going down there,” she hissed. “I’ll arrive at the bottom looking like a sweating pig.” She was already frayed around the edges. She’d been wise, Wendy thought, not to wear a top that would show perspiration.
Timon was clutching her hand and patting it. “You’ll be fine, hon.” His eyes were avid, staring at the set, which featured large photographic blow-ups of UFOs and unnameable creatures.
The warm-up man was goading the audience, making the first few rows laugh with his Kenneth Williams impressions. Then they all had to do Mexican waves, back and forth, to get into the party spirit. Still chatting, Wendy and the others absent-mindedly stood when the wave hit them, then they flomped back down again.
“We’re going to look like fools, aren’t we?” said Belinda.
“No hon, we’re not.”
“Now we need some more whooping,” the warm-up man said. “Whenever I hold up this card during broadcast, I want you all to whoop. Whenever someone new comes on, or there’s a joke. I shall signal the jokes, and when you have to laugh. Apart from that—be spontaneous. Now, altogether—Whoop!”
They whooped.
Beside Wendy there was an excitable woman who kept coming in too fast with her whoops. She couldn’t quite believe that she was in a TV studio, actually seeing Strange Matter. She gabbled to Wendy that she had the last two seasons of the show taped on video and knew them virtually off by heart. She wore a black T shirt with a silver unicorn on the front, its horn appliqued diamante. The woman saw Wendy staring. “I’m a member of the Church of the Silver Unicorn? Have you heard of us?”
“Never,” said Wendy.
“Perhaps I can tell you about it afterwards?” said the woman hurriedly, because the floor manager had started to count them down from twenty, to going live into the credits. They had to be ready to give on almighty whoop. Wendy found herself taking a deep breath in preparation. The unicorn woman said quickly, as an afterthought, “We aren’t a cult, you
