by Freya North
She doesn't really, but she nods anyway.
‘You could come too,’ he says, ‘to Ronnie Scott's – to the gig later. You could come everywhere with us.’ She looks a little wary. She also looks a little reluctant.
‘I can't, really,’ she says.
‘Mr Savidge, are we going by tube?’ Felix is presenting him with a map of the underground.
‘Shall I call you later anyway?’ he asks Petra.
‘OK,’ she says, suddenly wondering what any of this is about. Has there been any meaning in the last few minutes? Over and above the return of her sketchbook?
‘We'd better go.’
‘OK,’ she says.
Petra watches Arlo and his little posse cross the street. He turns and gives a wave that changes into a shrug; she raises the sketchbook for a moment and then heads back into her building. She's not far up the staircase when there's a flurry of knocks at the door she's just closed and Arlo is calling her name. She retraces her steps. Opens the door. In a blink, he's inside. His hands are in her hair and his lips are all over her face. And it's now that she wants to cry and hit him and hold him tight and tell him to go away.
‘The only way I could get time off school was to bring my students with me,’ he tells her. ‘The only way we could do London was if, musically, I could prove it would be worth the boys' while and worth the school's funds.’ He kisses her again. ‘But my guiding ulterior motive was purely that I had to see you, Petra. Sod the meters of red tape and myriad permission slips and miles of motorway – I had to see you. Because I need to tell you that we're going to be OK, you know. You and me. We're going to be more than OK.’
Petra's lip twitches and it isn't a kiss that's causing it, it's a But. ‘But Arlo,’ she says, ‘you may be here – but it was me who left. And I left because you lied. And because of the Miranda situation.’
Arlo has been expecting this, of course he has, but still he's nervous now the moment has finally come to plead his point. ‘But Petra, I am here because I won't let you go. Because really, truly, there was no situation with Miranda.’
‘But you slept with her!’
‘I don't sleep.’
‘You know what I mean. And you did lie.’
‘Will you listen, will you believe me, when I say I'm just a stupid fuck who deludedly thought I could avoid hurting you by retaining certain details? An idiot who didn't want to complicate something so new and so full of promise?’ Arlo looks at Petra. ‘It's the truth, Miss Flint. It may seem flimsy. But actually, it's all I can give you.’
‘But the timing – me, us, Miranda?’
‘No overlap whatsoever.’
‘You sure?’
‘I promise.’
Though the upper part of Petra's face is creased into a frown, slowly the lower part breaks into a small smile. ‘Why do I feel I still want to whack you across the chops?’
Arlo shrugs, allows a little laugh out loud. ‘Please go ahead, if you need to. Though I'd rather you kissed me.’
Petra steps forward and again he's not quite sure which it will be until the gentle press of her lips against his leaves him in no doubt.
‘We're going to be OK, you know,’ he repeats, this time in a whisper. ‘You and me, we're going to be more than OK.’
Someone is coming down the stairs. It is Eric.
‘Oh hullo,’ he says and his voice is camp and slightly withering and his surprise is meant to be so obviously feigned. ‘Cappuccino, anyone? Or are you just leaving?’
‘Eric,’ Petra says with a swift, cautioning look, ‘this is Arlo, say hullo.’
‘Hullo.’
‘I have to go,’ Arlo says. ‘Hi, Eric.’ He turns to Petra. ‘I have to go.’ He takes his fingertips to her cheek, strokes down to her jaw until she rests her face gently in his hand. ‘I really have to go. Which is the best way to the tube?’
‘I'll show you,’ Eric says, holding open the door. ‘Cappuccino is it, Petra?’ he calls over his shoulder.
She's not speaking. Eric and Arlo turn. She's just standing there, nodding. She looks absolutely poleaxed.
Chapter Forty-five
‘Has she said a word?’ Eric asked, coming back with coffees all round; Petra was so lost in thought at her bench that he felt he could talk about her as if she wasn't there at all.
He went and stood in a huddle nearby with Gina and Kitty, the three of them assessing Petra like doctors conferring on a most unusual case.
‘No,’ Gina said, ‘she's just been sitting there, with a rather inane grin on her face.’
‘It's not an inane grin,’ Kitty objected, ‘it's more a beatific smile.’
Eric peered in closer and gently prodded Petra. ‘I'd say the girl's in shock.’
Petra looked at them as if they were all hopelessly myopic. ‘He's come all this way. To see me.’ They nodded as if she was just out of a coma and thus anything she said was OK by them. ‘And he's brought his class with him.’ She giggled. They continued to nod. ‘And he doesn't really have a spare moment.’ They shook their heads. ‘So he's either been driven slightly mad by love or else he's driven all this way because he is madly in love. With me.’ Kitty nodded vigorously. Gina looked more reserved. Eric rolled his eyes. ‘Do you think I should go to Ronnie Scott's – rush there right now?’
‘Too late,’ said Eric, ‘and a bit too keen.’
‘Shall I go to the Forum with them, tonight then?’
‘You go, girlfriend,’ Kitty said, suddenly American.
‘Oughtn't you to wait for him to call?’ Gina asked.
‘Shut the fuck up, Mom,’ Kitty growled in a surprisingly authentic Hicksville accent.
Gina looked as though she was going to send Kitty to the Naughty Step.
Petra hid her face in her hands. ‘God. I am meant to be working, the sod.’
‘Ditto,’ said Gina, going off to hammer.
‘Me too,’ said Eric, returning to his bench. His mother had taught him that if he had nothing nice to say, he was to say nothing. He felt the same was true for giving advice.
Kitty loitered by Petra. ‘Will you show me?’
Petra let Kitty pore over the sketches, handed her a clutch of photographs of the ruined abbeys she'd visited. ‘There's something so romantic about these great Gothic edifices,’ Petra said. ‘In their current, ruinous state they are beautiful, so dramatic – but there's a sort of poetic melancholy about them which perhaps comes from their history too. And yet they continue to stand in the landscape, regal and proud. The vistas they create actually seem to enhance the natural scenery. There's also this amazing physical dichotomy – they look like delicate lacework, yet they are made of stone centuries old. But what time and historical events have not compromised is how the hearts of these places still beat so strongly.’
‘And so?’ Kitty prompted, eyeing the brown box on which Petra's hand rested.
‘And so – this.’ She opened the box and carefully lifted out her preparatory work. ‘Think platinum,’ she told Kitty, ‘with my tanzanite in the centre.’
Kitty took the piece from Petra. A bracelet – but unlike anything she'd ever seen. Just wire, plain old craft wire. Strands of different thicknesses worked into a graceful armature of delicate arches and columns, some perfect, others pointedly truncated. Caught within this intricate framework, a purple boiled sweet.
Petra took it from her. ‘That's what I'm trying to work out,’ she explained, prodding the sweet with her little finger. ‘How I can have my tanzanite as the heart of the work but not in a clasp, not in a static setting, not restricted to one view, one angle only. The heart of the work must be visible from all sides so that the colour and light of the stone pulsates.’
The piece transcended being merely a bracelet or cuff, it was the closest thing to wearable sculpture. Petra's genius was her ability to attain such startling grace in something so sizeable.
‘Initially I thought of a ring, or a brooch or a pendant – but my tanzanite wouldn't really suit a ring.
The setting would compromise the beauty of the cut. It must be seen in the round. And I decided against a pendant because what I want is for the wearer to be able to really see the piece whilst it's on. No point having almost 40 carats of eye-clean vBE tanzanite around your neck if you can't bloody see it. And brooches are too static. So that's why I thought something for the wrist. Near a pulse point. And I want it to move – I don't want a front and back. I want it to be kinetic. Somehow.’
Kitty took the work off Petra again, contemplated it. ‘Think: hinges,’ she said at length. She looked at Petra, flushed with her idea. ‘Hinge all around the stone – then the wearer can twist it and turn it and the jewel will always be in the round.’
Petra and Kitty twisted and turned the piece, the boiled sweet knocking this way and that. ‘Tanzanite isn't as hard as diamond or sapphire,’ Petra said. ‘I have to secure it but I want to do so with no visible means of support. And I need to protect the surfaces.’
‘You've got your work cut out for you,’ Kitty warned her, ‘but it'll be your magnum opus. The idea is incredible and I can already see the finished work. Go and talk to Charlton – remember his early work, when he first hit the scene? That was based on hinges and intricate engineering.’ She paused. ‘Christ, Petra – this really could be your thing. Once you've resolved the mechanics, you could do similar pieces with other gems. I love it.’ She stopped. ‘You could charge the earth. You'll have to – the materials in themselves will cost a fortune.’
‘I know,’ Petra groaned.
‘But it will be self-perpetuating. Make one or two and they'll be snapped up and then you'll be commissioned in advance. Fuck it – you could even sell them on the strength of designs just like this, in wire and boiled sweets.’ She peered into the box. There were two more boiled sweets, still in cellophane twists. One green. One red. ‘There you go – emerald and ruby. Where is your tanzanite?’
‘At home,’ Petra told her, taking the sweets off Kitty and holding them up to the light.
‘Under your mattress?’
Petra nodded.
‘Have you considered what it will be like for you when this piece is finished? When it's on someone's wrist and there's no more tanzanite in your bed? How will you feel?’ Kitty looked suddenly alarmed. ‘Christ, Petra – the princess couldn't sleep with a pea under her mattress – but how are you going to sleep without your tanzanite there?’
‘Oh, the girl will be fine, Kitty,’ said Eric, eavesdropping shamelessly, ‘because she'll be sleeping soundly in the arms of Prince bloody Charming.’ He paused for dramatic effect. ‘Or, rather, Mr bloody Chips.’
Petra reddened. With a jolt, she was back from gold abbeys and tanzanite and platinum cloisters and her potential fame and fortune.
‘Go to Ronnie Scott's,’ Kitty told her sagely, ‘or the Forum – wherever he asks you, you must go.’ She tossed her head and took a long, lupine sniff at the air. ‘This is your time, Petra, this is your time.’ She closed her eyes. ‘It's given.’
* * *
‘Was that your girlfriend, then, Mr Savidge?’
‘I hope so.’
‘You hope so? Lovers' tiff, was it, Mr S?’
‘Not really. More like a cataclysmic impasse.’
‘Is that why we're here in London, then?’
‘Well – OK – sort of. Are you complaining, guys?’
‘No, Mr S!’
‘God, no.’
‘Not at all.’
‘No way!’
Arlo was currently guiding his flock through Soho. Dragging them, really. The plethora of sex shops and adult-video stores decelerating the Lower Sixth's pace to a lusty shuffle.
‘Mr S – this is much better than school.’
‘And if you want to have some – you know – quality time with your lady, well, me and the guys will be fine, Mr Savidge.’
‘In your dreams, Callum Jones. In your mucky dreams.’ Arlo laughed. He marched them along Wardour Street and herded them into Frith Street. ‘Right, here we are. Ronnie Scott's.’
‘Can we smoke, Mr S?’
‘No, you bloody well cannot.’
*
Two hours later, after a lot of jazz, zero cigarettes and a quick shower and change of clothing back at the B&B, Arlo was seating his class at Pizza Express in Kentish Town.
‘Can I borrow someone's mobile phone?’ he asked from behind the menu. Felix offered his teacher his. ‘Thanks,’ said Mr Savidge. ‘Mine's an American Hot, with extra mushrooms. I won't be a mo'.’
He loitered on the corner of Prince of Wales Road. Petra's number was now on the screen of Felix's phone. All Arlo had to do was press Call. He clocked the time. If she did want to come along, he was only giving her an hour and a half, and counting. He pressed the button and cleared his throat of the persistent butterfly.
‘Hullo?’
‘It's Arlo.’
‘Oh my! You have a mobile phone?’
‘No – it's one of my pupil's.’
‘I see.’
‘Yes.’
No time for pauses. ‘Petra – would you like to come along tonight? It should be good. Quite raw. The bloke used to be in 3 Colours Red – the band, not the film. Do you remember “Sixty Mile Smile”? No? “This is My Time”, perhaps? Well – will you come anyway? Say you will.’
‘Yes, Arlo, I'll come.’ But then Petra would have said yes even if it had been Keith Harris and Orville. This is my time, she told herself. This is my time.
It was daft really. She arrived late and yet when they trooped in, they were practically the only people there – the main act not due on for a further hour and the support act having no obvious supporters. Petra had been late because she'd turned the contents of her wardrobe over in search of something suitably rock-and-roll to wear. She tried the grunge look but reckoned she looked like a mad old bag lady. She changed into jeans and a T-shirt but worried that she looked as though she'd made no effort. She dared to squeeze into her one mini-skirt but decried her legs as too pasty – tried black tights but they looked ridiculous for this time of year. She woke up Lucy, who said sleepily that a vintage ball-gown's always a winner. But Petra had nothing remotely close and nothing she could readily adapt. She phoned Kitty who considered the venue, the band and then said leather and hair loose. But though Petra could oblige with the hair, she owned no leather.
‘Perhaps I shouldn't go,’ she said.
‘Don't be so stupid,’ Kitty said. ‘It's a bloody gig – it'll be dark and noisy and you'll be covered in crap beer by the end of it anyway. And Arlo probably won't give a damn what you wear – he just wants you to be there.’
Petra opted for a shortish skirt in a retro print, a white T-shirt, black trainers and a denim jacket because it meant she had pockets for phone, money and keys and didn't have to be encumbered by a bag. She tied her hair back because the last thing she wanted was for sweat to transform her ringlets to resembling snakes on acid, however rock-and-roll that look might be.
It was still a funny sight to see Arlo chaperoning four hulking Sixth Formers and yet they seemed reluctant to leave his side, even when they went inside. They were also polite to the point of shyness with Petra and though she could hardly hear herself think, let alone speak, she persisted in yelling interesting questions at them above the din, about schools and hobbies and other things that made her sound like their mums' friends. It amused Arlo. Petra sensed it amused him and she was desperate to nudge him, to poke her tongue out, to swear at him, hug him. But she daren't. It felt less of a date and more that she was gatecrashing one of his classes. However, they did manage to exchange glances every now and then, which said, God almighty, this is a gig! We should be necking in some sticky sweaty corner! We should be getting pissed on vodka tonics in plastic beakers! We should be jumping around in the mosh like loonies!
The main act was superb, if thunderously loud, and his devoted followers leapt and pogoed and punched at the air. Petra had drunk two vodkas in plastic beakers, fast, and it mad
e her believe she had springs in her legs and could pogo with the best of them. So she gamely did. Arlo delighted in the sight, even more so because his boys were gobsmacked.
‘Come on!’ they could see her mouth move at them. ‘Come on!’ She bounced over to take Alex and Thomas by the hand and haul them into the throng with her. Then she did the same to Felix and Callum. And then, once they were leaping about, she made her way over to Arlo.
‘No way!’ he gesticulated. ‘No fucking way.’
‘Yes way!’ she shrieked. ‘Come on!’
But when she then danced away from him, grinning a sixty-mile, one-hundred-watt smile, he shrugged and bounded into the crowd with her.
It was exhausting, exhilarating. It was deafening and pretty dangerous – the floor wet with a slippery cocktail of beer and spirits, the amps cranked to maximum output, the lighting trippy, the crowd boisterous. Petra felt hoarse and sweaty and a bit drunk and very hot and her feet had been stamped upon and she'd been shoved and jolted and someone's cigarette had come perilously close to her cheek. But she was dancing with Arlo and she felt energized, high and happy.
‘I'm so glad I came.’
‘What?’ He couldn't hear her.
‘I'm so glad you came.’
‘Sorry?’ He could see that she was saying something or other.
She gave up and grinned, snuck a kiss to his lips, and Arlo fondled her bottom and they both knew that his students had very probably seen.
Gig over. Out into the night. Ears ringing, sweat chilling. Makeup a bit smudged. White T-shirt stained. Beer sticky on the legs. The soles of their shoes clogged and tacky with God knows what. The boys begging Arlo to let them queue for a kebab.