Simply Divine

SIMPLY DIVINE

by Wendy Holden

The organ swelled as Jane approached the altar, lightheaded with happiness and not eating. It had been worth it — the tiny waist of the wedding dress now fitted her with ease, and she was blissfully aware of her slender fqrm moving gracefully beneath the thick satin. The air was heavy with the scent of white roses as, smiling shyly beneath her cathedral-length veil, Jane drew up alongside Nick. Looking at-her with a gratifying mixture of awe and wonder, Nick's face lit up in a tender smile ...

The organ swelled and made Jane, fast asleep and revelling in her favourite dream, wake up suddenly. A dead, heavy weight was dragging itself across her chest. Realising it was Nick, Jane groaned more with discomfort than relief as her boyfriend groped clumsily to get his bearings before starting to saw away at her like a lumberjack. She barely had time to let out more than a couple of dutiful moans before, having galloped past the finishing post even faster than normal, Nick dismounted and rolled, grunting, back to his side of the bed.

As usual, Jane was left to lie in the wet patch.

She sighed as she stared out into the darkness, feeling vaguely violated. Quite literally, a rude awakening. She'd never get back to sleep now. Still, perhaps she ought to be

grateful. She and Nick rarely had sex at all these days, and when they did, Nick preferred entering from behind, lying on his side, usually semi-conscious. It was, apparently, too much effort for him to get on top any more. A clear case, Jane thought ruefully, of Missionary Impossible.

It had not always been thus. They had met as students at Cambridge, a city which had afforded ample opportunities for thrillingly spontaneous lovemaking. The shelf stacks of the university library had quite literally been pressed into service, as had the backs of bike sheds, the Backs at midnight; punts, pubs, teashop loos and even the Master of Magdalene's garden. Most memorably of all, Nick had once pulled out all the stops in the organ loft of King's College Chapel. The Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols had never seemed quite the same after that.

Trying to anchor her head more comfortably in the pillow, sleep still as remote as the stars, Jane recalled the moment she and Nick had met in the campus cafe. His brusque Northernness had struck her as rather thrilling, as did his rugged handsome face and the fact that he seemed Terribly Politically Committed. Besides, as an English student specialising in Hardy, Jane quite fancied the idea of a horny-handed son of toil.

The horny part, unhappily, had recently made its excuses and left. As she lay dozing in the dark, Jane tried to pin down the exact moment when she realised Nick didn't fancy her any more. If she was honest, it was about six months ago. Around the time she had moved into his flat in Clapham.

The bedside table exploded into frantic sound as Nick's irritating Mickey Mouse alarm clock announced six thirty. Oblivious of Jane deeply asleep beside him, Nick swore

loudly, swung his legs out of bed and yanked back the curtains. A weak sun struggled through the dingy window-panes and illuminated the pile of dirty washing over which he leant to switch on the radio.

Jane groaned inwardly as the quarrelsome tones of John Humphrys flooded into the room. Not
more
current affairs. It only seemed five minutes since Jeremy Paxman had been switched off the night before. But, just as Nick could not sleep without having seen both the nine and eleven o'clock news and
Newsnight,
he seemingly could not rise without having the
Today
programme reverberating through the flat from dawn onwards.

Jane's conspicuous failure to be as obsessed with current affairs as he was drove Nick to distraction. 'Your idea of political awareness,' he once accused her, 'is the length of Cherie Blair's skirt.' Jane had bridled at the unfairness of it. Had she not, over the years, helped Nick canvass his way on to every committee from the college JCR to a seat on the local council, all landmarks along the course of political achievement Nick had set for himself? She knew more about politics than most. But she
was
interested in the length of Cherie Blair's skirt. Very much so. And what was wrong with that?

Nick's small blue eyes were screwed up with concentration as he listened to John Humphrys mauling a minister.

'How can they get so cross about things so early?' moaned Jane, sticking her fingers in her ears.

'Shush,' said Nick, flapping his hands like an irritable dowager and glaring at her as the minister's voice came on again. 'He's interviewing James Morrison, the transport minister. My boss, in case you've forgotten.'

Jane rolled her eyes. Forgotten? If only. In the two months since Nick had started working as a special adviser

in his office, she had learnt more about the transport minister than he probably knew about himself. None of it remotely interesting.

'I put it to you, Minister,' shouted Humphrys, 'that if caravans were only allowed to travel between the hours of two and five in the morning, the world would be a happier place.'

'Quite right,' muttered Jane, who had been stuck behind more swaying beige mobile homes hogging the middle lane than she cared to remember.

'Look,' growled Nick, 'it may be a joke to you, but the caravan debates a political bloody hot bloody potato of the first bloody order. Caravan owners have rights too, you know. James Morrison's been under a lot — a hell of a lot - of pressure to champion them recently.'

'Should start calling himself Van Morrison, then,' said Jane flippantly, diving back under the duvet as the interview ended.

'Hilarious,' said Nick, crushingly, stomping out of the room as best he could in his bare feet. His sense of humour, Jane reflected, had been another casualty of their cohabitation.

Minutes later, she heard the shower crank reluctantly into action and hoped he wouldn't take all the hot water. It was a vain hope; he usually did. Her standard of living had never been lower. Moving in with Nick may not have been a good idea.

'Are you sure it's a good idea?' Tally had cautiously asked at the time.

'Of course!' Offended, Jane had rebuffed her best friend's obvious conviction that it wasn't with all the brio she could muster. 'Nick needs me,' she had explained. Tally looked unconvinced.

Are you sure he doesn't just need you to pay half the mortgage?' she asked gently.

Jane winced. Nick was not exactly famous for his generosity. Tighter than a gnat's arse, if she was to be frank. Last Christmas she had bought him a Ralph Lauren bathrobe and a Versace shirt. Nick had reciprocated with a twig pencil and a teddy bear which had been a free gift from the petrol station.

'Honestly, Jane,' Tally went on, exasperated, her big grey eyes wide with sincerity, you've got so much going for you. You're so pretty, and funny, and clever. I just don't understand why you're throwing yourself away on him. He's so
rude'

Tally was right. Nick
was
rude, especially after a few drinks, and especially to Tally. The fact that she was grand and had grown up in a stately home brought Nick out in a positive rash of social inferiority.

But it was all very well for Tally to be censorious, she thought defensively as she burrowed yet further beneath the duvet. It was just fine for Tally to declare she was holding out for Mr Right. Or Lord Right probably, in her case. She didn't understand that relationships simply weren't that straightforward. They didn't just
happen.
You had to work with what you had, particularly if you were twenty-four and didn't want to be a spinster at thirty.

'You'll be saying you want to marry him next,' Tally had almost wailed. Jane judged it injudicious to confess that this was the whole point of her moving in. Not that it had worked. On the contrary, judging by present form, Nick's plighting his troth looked more unlikely than ever. Plighting his sloth, however, had been the work of seconds.

Once Jane was on site, Nick had seen no further point in squandering both time and money on trendy restaurants

when there was a perfectly good TV at home to eat Pot Noodles in front of. Similarly, all trips to cinemas, bars, concerts and parties had come to an abrupt end now that they no longer needed to leave the flat to meet each other.

Jane's evenings consequently divided themselves between working out how to fit her clothes into the minute amount of wardrobe space Nick had allocated her and scenting and oiling herself in the grubby little bath that no amount of Mr Muscle made the faintest impression on. She, at least, was determined to keep up her standards.

Nick, on the other hand, now picked his nose with impunity, refused to shave at weekends and after she'd been living with him a month, no longer bothered to hold the farts in. From French kisses to Bronx cheers, Jane thought miserably, as Nick's sex drive wound down to a sputter. Her own, by contrast, had revved up alarmingly. Practically sex-starved except for the occasional middle-of-the-night grope, Jane had lately begun to fantasise about everyone and anyone who so much as smiled at her.

Especially that gorgeous man who had just moved in upstairs.

With a guilty thrill, Jane thought about last night's encounter. The man upstairs had been sticking his key in the lock of the outside door of the building just as she had been opening it from the inside. Talk about Freudian. She frowned, trying to wrench her thoughts away from the hulking figure with the tumble of fair hair that had greeted her when the door opened. She could still recall the enormous size of his ... grin.

Jane sighed and yawned, knowing the water would certainly be cold by now. She peered over the top of the duvet into the chilly, dusty air. The scant warmth from

Nick's storage heaters - turned permanently down to low — went straight out of the ill-fitting windows. Even in summer you could practically see your breath.

Not that Nick was around much to notice the Arctic atmosphere of his flat. Now he had finally realised his dream of working at Westminster, he came home later and later. Night after night, he stayed in his office, doing Jane knew not what. Taking phone calls from furious caravan owners, apparently. She sighed. Perhaps she should invest in one herself. It would be a way of attracting his attention.

Nick may have been bitten by the Westminster bug, Jane reflected, but it could have been any one of the insects in his flat. The place was crawling, and it was the discovery of a new itchy lump on her leg that finally drove Jane from under the duvet into the chilly embrace of the morning. They simply had to move out of here. Finding a new flat, Jane felt sure, would cement their relationship, as well as heat it, roof it and supply it with windowboxes. So far she had not had much luck.

'We found a lovely first-floor flat in Kentish Town,' she told Tally, 'but Nick was worried about the carpet glue. He was afraid it might bring out his asthma.' She did not voice her suspicions that he was afraid it might bring out his wallet. Nor, to her credit, did Tally.

Shuddering, Jane stood before the wardrobe mirror and stared at her naked body. Her legs, at least, were reasonable, even if her waist was too thick, her breasts too small and that stubborn spare tyre spread like a swag across the front of her tumrny. The plump tops of her arms also gave her cause for concern. Still, Nick had never said he wished she was thinner. Then again, he'd never said he wished she was anything.

She wrapped Nick's Ralph Lauren bathrobe round her

and went into the freezing kitchen. Something about Nicks appearance caught her eye. She stared at him covertly over the top of the paper he was reading. He had obviously been spending at least some of his time in the bathroom squeezing a stubborn spot above one of his eyebrows, and his efforts had left an angry circular red weal that made him look as if he had been shot through the forehead. Jane could imagine how this had wounded his vanity.

'I'd put some toothpaste on that,' she said helpfully. 'Dry it up a bit. It's what all the supermodels do.'

Nick tutted and continued his perusal of the
Telegraph
leader column. 'Trust you to know that,' he said scornfully. Jane shrugged and started to examine the
Sun.
Most of the inside page was taken up with a picture of some ragged-looking, wild-haired environmental protesters at a planned bypass site. They were surrounding, and apparently arguing with, a tall, rather debonair figure whom Jane recognised as the transport minister, James Morrison.

There was something oddly familar about the protester pictured closest to Morrison. With his high cheekbones and funny little snub nose, he looked astonishingly like Tally's brother, Piers. He even had her small, thin lips and the same large, sloping eyes which, in that patrician fashion peculiar to inbred aristocratic types, looked as if they were about to slide away down the side of his face. The resemblance was extraordinary. It just showed, Jane thought, dwelling on one of her favourite theories, that there really were only so many facial types in the world. There must be, if some wild crusty could look so like someone who, at this moment, would be sitting in the chapel at Eton with his hair plastered down and looking as if Matron wouldn't melt in his mouth.

'Bloody crusties,' Nick exclaimed, his attention drawn by the amount of time she had spent staring at the page. 'Drug-crazed hippies. All sponging off the state. Too busy making trouble for everybody else to do any work.' It was not, Jane saw, the time to start arguing the case for conservation. Clearly, the official view from the transport minister's office was that his press coverage that morning was not all it might be. Jane swiftly turned over the page.