If she had told him, back then, that he would be buying Moët to toast his ascendancy to a boardroom, any boardroom, he would have called her a fantasist. Yet here he was, looking every inch the smart casual capitalist in his Paul Smith shirt and Camper shoes. He still had a plausible shtick on why his running Haven Housing would be the tenant-friendly outcome, but it seemed to her that the tenant-friendly outcome was inseparable these days from the Neil-friendly outcome. He had started at Haven wearing jeans and button-down shirts. Gradually, the jeans had gone and a tie had crept in (“tenants like a tie”, he’d said). A brief spell of chinos and sleeveless pullovers had given way to the era of the suit. Suits went down better with “stakeholders”, whoever they were. Scratch the suave surface, though, and you’d find the idealist beneath, still fighting the good fight, still standing up for the underdog. He wasn’t a cynic, her Neil.
She pushed the door, tentatively, and it opened.
“I think we’re just meant to go in,” she said.
It was still unclear whether the event was a soirée or a rave. All day she had kept her ear cocked and her eyes open, but there hadn’t been much to go on. The household had seemed to slumber until well after two, which, for a young family on a summer’s weekend, struck Sara as a significant feat. Then, when most people were beginning to wind down, they suddenly sprang into action. From her vantage point at the kitchen window, she could see Gavin hacking branches off the lime trees at the bottom of the garden with what must have been a blunt saw, because his torso was running with sweat. The temperature had to be in the mid-twenties, and, as it had seemed the whole of that summer, the humidity was high. Their fence was too tall and their shrubs too unkempt to afford anything but the odd glimpse of the kids, but she could hear their excited shrieks and yelps. Music blasted through the open windows – something kitschy and seventies, Supertramp maybe – but, occasionally, Lou would kill the volume and Sara would hear her call out, her tone plaintive, yet with a stridency that somehow managed to penetrate the rasp of the saw.
“Ga-a-av?”
When he had stopped and turned towards her, face glowing, chest heaving, she would ask him some trivial question or other, more to prove her entitlement to do so, it seemed to Sara, than because she really needed to know the answer.
By six o’clock, he was still perched in a cleft of the third and final tree, sawing at a stubborn shred of bark tethering the last substantial branch to its trunk. If it were Neil up the tree, and the two of them were having a “get-together” that night, however impromptu, she knew she’d have been going spare.
She had dithered about a babysitter, and in the end done nothing, because she didn’t really know what the deal was. She’d decided she’d just keep an eye out and when enough guests had arrived, they’d wander round. There was the problem of what to wear, but seeing the way their hosts had gone about things, she reckoned it had to be pretty relaxed. By eight, she was showered, and semi-got-up in her For All Mankind jeans, a silk camisole and strappy sandals, which she’d changed for Birkenstocks, as soon as she saw the look on Neil’s face. She could, she knew, have stared at his Coldplay T-shirt until it burst into flames and he still wouldn’t have got the hint, so in the end she’d just told him as nicely as she could to change it.
The hall was deserted. Tea lights on every step of the uncarpeted stairs threw juddering shadows up the wall.
“Place could go up like a tinderbox,” muttered Neil. The throb of seriously amplified music came from deep within the house. Closer at hand, the hum of party chatter made Sara’s stomach clench with anxiety. She poked her head around the door of the living room; a bearded man in a rumpled linen suit was sitting on a Scandinavian-style leather sofa rolling a joint on an album cover as if it were 1979. What she could see of the room was an odd combination of mess and emptiness. The walls were hung haphazardly with artworks. One alcove was crammed from floor to ceiling with books. In the other, a hydra-headed chrome floorlamp loomed behind a beaten-up Eames chair. Fairy lights were strung through the antlers of a stuffed stag’s head above the fireplace. There was a smell of curry and pot and a faint mustiness, which suggested that the age-old damp problem that had long beset the house had not necessarily been cured. In another corner of the room, she now picked out, amid the gloom, a man in a pork-pie hat and a woman in Rockabilly get-up. They were clutching cans of Red Stripe. She smiled at them tentatively and ducked back out again. She shrugged at Neil.
“Kitchen?”
They blinked as they entered the strip-lit room. It was as busy and vibrant as the living room had been underpopulated and dull. The decibel level alone was intimidating, and for a moment, confronted by what seemed to be an impenetrable wall of bonhomie, Sara’s instinct was to run. These people were not locals – they looked as though they had been flown in from an avant-garde New York gallery. Here were septuagenarians in skinny jeans and twenty-somethings in tweed. Here were Baader Meinhof intellectuals, kohl-eyed It girls, preening dandies and scrofulous punks. Sara felt instinctively for her husband’s hand and steered a course through the mêlée, until she reached safe harbour beside the kitchen table. Neil went to put the Moët down, but Sara gave him a warning look.
There had been no attempt to prettify the kitchen, or create atmosphere. It was just a watering hole and looked, as far as Sara could remember, exactly as it had when the house had gone up for auction. Perhaps Lou and Gavin had spent all their money converting the basement, or perhaps, seventies retro being back in fashion, they considered its brown floral tiles and yellow melamine cupboards a stylistic coup.
“Ooh, champagne! Crack it open then.”
“Carol, hi!” Sara was a little surprised, herself, at the grudging tone of her own greeting. Carol was wearing one of her Boden wrap dresses, accessorised with earrings, tights and nail varnish in the precise jade green of every third zigzag. Her short ginger hair had been freshly coiffed. She looked like a home-economics teacher who had wandered into a seedy jazz club and – unworthy impulse – Sara did not want to be seen with her. Not that Carol wasn’t a great girl, she was. She was stalwart and practical, clever and kind. She was as good for a heart-to-heart as she was for a cup of couscous. There had been confessions over the years and there had been tears. Carol ran a mean book group and threw a decent dinner party and if the guest lists for both tended to overlap, and the conversations repeat themselves, her hospitality was never less than generous. She was, however, no Bohemian.
Even now, as Sara reluctantly filled Carol’s glass with champagne, Carol was assessing the fixtures and fittings.
“Do you think this kitchen’s retro, or just old?”
“I don’t really know,” said Sara. She was trying to eavesdrop on a nearby conversation about rap music and misogyny, but with Carol prattling in one ear and Neil and Simon talking football in the other, it was impossible.
“I thought it’d be state of the art,” Carol went on. “Fancy having the builders in all this time and the kitchen still looking like this.”
“They’ve been making a studio, Carol.”
“Oh yes, I forgot he’s an artist.” Carol widened her eyes satirically and then returned her gaze to the sea of much-pierced humanity surrounding her.
“Do you know any of these people?” she asked. Sara shook her head. The thing was, though, that she wanted to know them, and if Carol stuck to her like glue, that wasn’t going to happen. The crowd was starting to thin a bit now, as guests topped up their drinks and wandered out to the garden. Carol leaned in to make some fresh observation.
“Hold that thought,” Sara said, laying an apologetic hand on her friend’s arm, “I’m busting for the loo.”
Walking down the steps to the garden, she could at last make sense of the intensive tree pruning that had gone on earlier. A gazebo had been erected at the far end, which had been filled with cushions and kilims. Paper lanterns winked with promise from within. You had to take your hat off to Lou and Gavin; they knew how to create a sense of o
ccasion. She supposed it was some sort of chill-out zone and wondered what might take place there as the evening wore on. There would be more pot, certainly, but would there be other drugs? She wondered what she would do if someone offered her cocaine – turn it down, she supposed. There were the kids, for one thing and besides, she’d only do it wrong and look an idiot.
There was still no sign of the hosts, but clusters of people were milling about on the grass, drinking, smoking, weaving their heads, serpent-like, to trip-hop. Most of them seemed to know each other. This must be how it felt to be a ghost, Sara thought, as she floated from one huddle of people to the next, hovering on the periphery, smiling hopefully, yet never quite plucking up the courage to introduce herself. A few guests made eye contact, one or two smiled back and shuffled aside to accommodate her, but their conversations were too bright and smooth and fluent to allow her an entrée – it was like trying to wade into a fast-flowing stream. It was a relief, then, to bump into an acquaintance from a few streets away, who, it turned out, had done an art foundation course with Lou, but who now wanted to talk school catchment areas. After twenty minutes nodding and smiling, shifting her weight from foot to foot, and twirling the stem of her glass, Sara had had enough. She made her excuses and was threading her way back through the throng towards the house, when she met the host coming down the steps.
“Top up?” he said, tilting a bottle of wine towards her glass.
“Thanks,” she said. “You’re Gavin, aren’t you?”
“Guilty as charged.”
He filled her glass and started to move off again.
“We’re neighbours, by the way,” she added, quickly.
“Ahhh,” he said, turning back and re-engaging with genuine interest, “you must be Sara.”
3
Gavin apologised for taking so long to be neighbourly and explained that he had been like a dog, circling round and round in his basket, except in his case, his basket was his studio and it had had to be “not so much hewn from the living rock, as dug out of the London clay.’’ He nodded in the direction of the basement, which was still cordoned off with blue tarpaulins. At close quarters, Sara was relieved to discover he was only moderately handsome. One eyelid drooped fractionally, making him look faintly disreputable, and an otherwise fine profile was marred by a slight overbite. He spoke with a Lancastrian burr, which made everything he said sound vaguely sardonic, and prompted a certain archness in Sara’s response. She didn’t believe, she told him now, that the basement-conversion was a studio at all, but one of those underground gymnasia, beloved of Chelsea oligarchs. He said he’d happily prove her wrong, but not tonight, because he didn’t want just anyone – jerking his head towards his increasingly unruly party guests – traipsing through. At this whisper of a compliment, Sara felt a flutter of excitement in her belly.
“So what is it you do, Sara?” he asked after a pause.
“I’m a copywriter,” she said.
“Great! Advertising. Must be fun.”
“Oh it’s not Saatchi’s or anything,” she said quickly, “it’s really boring. Just in-house stuff for companies mainly. And consumer-y bits…”
He nodded, and turned his head, scanning the garden for someone more interesting to talk to, she assumed.
“… But I write,” she added quickly, “just for myself, you know.”
“Cool,” he said, turning back to her. “What sort of thing?”
“Short stories, the odd poem. I’ve started a novel, but it’s run out of steam.”
“You should talk to Lou.”
“Oh?” said Sara warily.
“Yeah,” he replied, nodding, “she’ll give you a few pointers – depending on the kind of thing it is, of course.”
“Lou’s a writer?”
“A writer-director.”
“What, films?”
“Yeah. She’s working on a short at the moment. Terrific concept.”
“She never said…”
“Oh, she wouldn’t. She’s very humble, my wife. One of those quiet types that just beavers away in the background and then comes up with this gob-smackingly amazing thing. Know what I mean?”
“Mmm,” said Sara miserably. She had only just got comfortable with the idea of Lou the style maven, earth mother and muse; now, it seemed, she had to contend with Lou the creative genius.
“Well…” Gavin looked around for more glasses to fill. It suddenly seemed imperative that she detain him.
“What do you make of Spanish cinema?” she blurted. He looked taken aback.
“I’m no connoisseur,” he said, “Almodóvar can be fun, but he’s so inconsistent.”
“I know what you mean,” Sara agreed, hoping she wouldn’t have to elaborate. “And doesn’t it get on your nerves how sloppy they are with the subtitles?” she rolled her eyes despairingly. “Some of the French films I’ve seen….”
“You speak French?” He looked impressed.
“I get by,” she replied, then shrugged.
“Ce qui expliquerait le mystère subtil de votre allure,” said Gavin, with a very passable accent and a twinkle in his eye.
“Er… yeah, okay, I did it for A level.” She pulled a rueful face. “I’m a bit rusty.”
There was a pause, then they both burst out laughing.
“Great!” he said, shaking his head. “I love it.”
“Good joke?” Neil appeared at Sara’s elbow.
“Oh hello,” she said, trying not to feel annoyed with him. “Gavin, this is my husband, Neil.”
They shook hands.
“It’s ten thirty,” Neil said to her, meaningfully.
“’Scuse me,” Gavin said, touching Neil’s shoulder, “if it’s that time, I should probably be helping my missus with the food. Great talking to you, Sara.”
He walked away, still shaking his head and smiling.
“Don’t you think it’s time we left?” Neil said.
“Why?”
“Well, the boys are on their own, for one thing.”
“Go and check on them, if you’re worried.”
“Are you having that good a time?” He seemed surprised.
“Yes, because I’m not stuck in the kitchen with Carol and Simon.”
“They’ve gone now,” he told her. “They said no one talked to them.”
She felt a twinge of guilt.
“I’ll go and check on the boys,” she said.“You, you know… put yourself about a bit. These are our new neighbours.”
He glanced doubtfully at the clusters of people – the beautiful, waif-like women, the men with statement sideburns and recherché spectacles.
“All right,” he said with an unconvincing air of bravado. He raised his glass to her and she felt a pang of love for him. It reminded her of the day she had left Patrick in Reception for the first time – the brave smile he had given her, that she knew would become a major lip-wobble as soon as she walked away. Neil might be CEO-in-waiting of Haven Housing Association, but they both knew that wasn’t going to cut any ice here.
The boys were fine. Patrick was snoring lightly, sweat glistening on his top lip. Sleep had stripped back the years, restoring the cherubic quality to features, which, by day, he worked hard to make pugnacious. She turned down his duvet and smoothed his hair to one side with her palm.
Caleb was in bed reading Harry Potter, his eyelids drooping.
“Good party?” he said.
“Not bad.”
“It’s very loud.”
It was. They were having a Hispanic interlude. Sara could feel the salsa rhythm pulsing through the brickwork. They had a bit of a nerve really, subjecting people to this when they had only just moved in; a lot of families nearby had young kids. She suddenly wondered whether that was why she and Neil had been invited – so they wouldn’t complain about the noise.
“I’ll ask them to keep it down,” she said. She went to kiss him, but he pulled the duvet up over his face to prevent her. She smiled sadly and stood up.
“’Night,” she called back, in a stage whisper.
Their front door was shut now. She leaned on the doorbell, but she knew she didn’t stand a chance of being heard above the racket. Then she noticed that the gate to the side passage stood open. She hurried through it and into the garden, just in time for the music to come to an abrupt stop. For a moment she thought she had timed her return to coincide with the end of the party, but something in the atmosphere told her that was wrong. The guests had formed a circle around the edge of the grass. As she squeezed her way through to the front, she saw Lou and Gavin standing close together in the middle, Lou’s face inclined submissively against Gavin’s shoulder. At first she thought they must have had a row, but then she noticed a guitarist sitting on a stool in front of the gazebo. There was a hush of anticipation. Rat tat tat; three times the musician slapped his soundboard and the loudness of the cracks belied the absence of an amplifier. Then he summoned a high-pitched, tuneful wail from his upper chest and started to thrum and sing the opening bars of a tango. Sara felt a shudder of embarrassment as Lou and Gavin flung their arms out at shoulder level, intertwined their wrists and began to dance. As the virtuosity of the guitarist and the commitment of the dancers became apparent, however, she found herself spellbound. Lou and Gavin circled the improvised dance floor, their ankles weaving intricately in and out of one another’s path, Lou’s slinky red dress flowing around Gav’s thighs, as they embraced and parted, attracted and repelled one another. The crowd clapped along, not in a spirit of solidarity but of daring; an egging on of something dangerous and illicit. Despite lacking the polish and timing of professional dancers, Gavin and Lou had something even more compelling – a quality that utterly faced down any ambivalence or awkwardness in the watching crowd – they really meant it. As they glanced off each other, brought their cheeks together and their thighs together, closed their eyes and jutted their chins, the sexual chemistry between them was flagrant. It was like watching a cataclysm; a slow-motion car crash with pulverised metal and shattered bone and rending flesh, and knowing that one shouldn’t be watching, but being unable to tear one’s gaze away. Sara could feel it undermining her, as she stood there, cutting away the ground beneath her feet.
The People at Number 9 Page 2