Wicked Women Read Free

can’t stand women who make jokes,” said Weena. “Men don’t like them either. The way to a man’s heart is through total solemnity.”
    “If you want to get there in the first place,” said Hattie. “It seems an odd ambition to me.”
    “Well I fucking, do,” said Weena. “I have simply got to get out of my home situation.”
    “So you gave up,” she complained.
    “Guilt undermined my intent,” Defoe said. “And then my world crumbled about me.”
    “Of course it did,” she said, briskly. “Guilt is a destructive emotion. I never feel guilty about anything, especially sex!”
    Elaine came into the room with a tray on which there were two mugs of instant coffee and some sugar in a little white-lidded bowl.
    “I don’t take sugar,” said Weena, looking under the lid. “It’s poison.”
    “Well, dear,” said Elaine, “don’t take any, then.” And she went out of the room, raising her eyebrows at Defoe. Weena caught the look. Very little escaped her.
    “She doesn’t like me,” said Weena. “But then I’m not a woman’s woman. My mother doesn’t like me either. But you’re not interested in me.”
    “I am interested in you,” he said. She was sitting silhouetted between the desk and the window. The fabric of her white blouse was fine. She wore no bra and the outline of her full breasts was visible: when she moved to adjust the tape recorder the nipple of her left breast flattened against the wood.
    “Well,” said Weena briskly to Defoe Desmond, at Drewlove House, “I didn’t come all this way to talk about fucks past. I came to talk about Red Mercury and its implications for the future of the world. My editor says, though the nuclear threat is far from the top of the world survival agenda, it still has implications for concerned people everywhere.”
    “It does,” said Defoe.
    “I don’t actually drink coffee,” said Weena. “Most people nowadays don’t.”
    “My wife is old-fashioned,” apologised Defoe.
    “I can tell that,” said Weena. “Now, where were we? Oh yes, my editor said it didn’t matter I was science-illiterate, you were such a brilliant populariser even a Gaian could understand you.”
    “Did he really say that?” Defoe was pleased.
    “He did,” said Weena.
    “Your editor seems to loom large in your life,” said Defoe. “What’s a Gaian?”
    “There!” she said, pleased. “At last something I know, and you don’t. Gaia is mother earth as gestalt, a self-healing entity.”
    “Self-healing? How consoling a notion,” Defoe observed.
    “You get so gloomy, you scientists,” she said. “There’s a whole world of hope and happiness out there you know nothing about. Do you think your wife would allow me a glass of water?”
    Defoe went to the door and called Elaine, and asked her to bring Weena a glass of water. Elaine did.
    When Elaine was gone, Weena said, “She doesn’t like me much, does she?”
    “Why do you say that?” asked Defoe.
    “She didn’t even bring the glass on a tray. It’s all thumb-printy. Shall we get on with the interview?”
    “I’m at your command,” said Defoe. Now Weena’s skirt was rucked up to show her long bare legs to advantage. She bent to adjust the tape recorder and again flattened her left nipple against the wood of the desk. It looked an expensive desk.
    “It’s a nice desk,” she said.
    “Eighteenth century, burr oak. It’s been in my wife’s family for a long time. It will have to go to auction.”
    “That’s a pity,” Weena said. “There’s usually some way round these things.”
    “Not this time,” said Defoe. “Or so my wife tells me.”
    “Some people are just doomy,” said Weena. “Life falls into their expectations.”
    “You may be right,” said Defoe.
    “I love nice things,” she said.
    “You deserve to have them,” said Defoe. “Someone like you.”
    Elaine showed Harry and Rosemary Wilcox around the house. “A little less than a manor house,” said Elaine, “a little