The Temporary Read Free Page A

wassteamed up by the time Francine managed to get in to do her make-up.
    Nevertheless, she knew that she had been lucky to find Janice, and her first instinct that she would learn things from her which might result in personal advancement had quickly been borne out in the utter unfamiliarity of her habits. Often she had come back from work to find Janice curled on the sofa in a circle of lamp-or candlelight while night filled the rooms around her, irradiating an intimate warmth which, although it came in fact from the portable heater which panted continually at her side, seemed somehow to be the result of personal projection. Janice habitually remained indoors, where she would install herself before the television for the day, its volume subdued, on a bed of cushions, turning the pages of magazines and stirring only to glide to the kitchen in bare feet to make cups of instant coffee. Francine had emerged from her first startling plunges into this quite tangible aura of softness and languor with a hoard of rare and mysterious self-criticisms . Janice was thin and ethereal in appearance and whimsical in deed, and for the first time Francine found her own physique clumsy, her habits too regulated. Janice would wince at the bold voice Francine brought back with her from the office and shrink from the clamour of her return, watching with mildly astonished interest as she prepared her evening meal. It was unpleasant to feel so noisy, but Francine’s dedication to matters of self-improvement could always overwhelm her pride and she accepted the proffered apprenticeship to Janice’s atmosphere with subdued gratitude. Her affection for Janice once she had learned to resemble her more closely was certainly fond, but Francine’s impulses for domination were beginning to rally from their exile. She wondered when their friendship would be established on its proper footing, with its missing element – the open acknowledgement of Francine’s ordination to the exceptional – restored.
    Francine had been surprised to discover that Janice didn’t have a boyfriend, and the mood of instruction which still dogged their partnership had so far conferred its chastity also on Francine. Janice was more critical of men than other girls Francine knew. They were always ringing for her, though, and she would whisper into the phone, her lips at the receiver as if she were drinking from it, but she rarely went out. On those occasions when she did, two pale fingers of lipstick on her mouth, she would come back an hour or two later on her own. She never asked Francine to go with her, even though once Francine had invited her out with some people from work. It had annoyed her to see how all the men had behaved around Janice, and so many of them had asked about her the next day at work that she had felt quite insulted, especially when she considered that they had all been trying to get her own attention up until then. One or two had actually asked if Janice had a boyfriend and Francine had lied and told them that she did. Afterwards she had felt a bit guilty about it, but Janice had told her once that she was in love with a man who was getting married to someone else, so it wasn’t absolutely untrue. Janice hadn’t really mentioned the man again, except recently to tell Francine that it was the day of the wedding, whereupon she had drunk vodka straight from a bottle for several hours and then disappeared to her room. She had laughed about the men from Francine’s office when they had got home and then done various quite funny imitations of them involving the type of snorting noises made by pigs. Francine had been forced to laugh, and after that she hadn’t really been interested in them at all.
    She crossed the bridge over the railway tracks and for a moment looked along its gorge towards the dark, distant crowd of buildings with its bright mass of nocturnal eyes. There was something in the vista which unsettled her and she hurried past it to her