The People at Number 9

by Felicity Everett

  Sara didn’t know what to do with this information. She blushed with pleasure and pushed a crumb around the table with her forefinger.

  “Well,” said Gav huffily, “if no one’s going to tell me how fucking marvellous I am, I suppose I’d better serve the dinner.”

  They laughed. He had a knack for putting people at their ease, Sara had noticed. She’d imagined an artist to be the tortured, introverted type but Gav was neither. You couldn’t call him charming, quite, because there was no magic about it, no artifice. He was just easy in his skin and made you easier in yours. He pottered about the kitchen, humming under his breath, pausing occasionally to toss some remark over his shoulder, and then served up a fragrant lamb tagine as casually as if it were beans on toast. When at last he sat down, he didn’t hold forth about himself or his opinions, but quizzed Neil about his work, with every appearance of genuine curiosity.

  “I just think it’s great how you guys give back,” Gav said, shaking his head with admiration.

  “Oh, I’m no Mother Teresa…” Neil protested, through a mouthful of food. “It’s important work, don’t get me wrong, and I believe in it one hundred per cent, but they pay me pretty well. And if you heard the grief I get from some of the anarchists on the tenants’ associations, you’d think I was bloody Rachman…”

  “Rachman?” Lou skewered a piece of lamb on her fork and looked up, inquiringly.

  “He was a notorious private landlord in the fifties,” Neil explained, “became a byword for slum housing and corruption. I did my PhD on how he influenced the law on multiple occupancy. It was fascinating actually.”

  “Neil, you can’t say your own PhD was fascinating,” Sara murmured.

  “I meant doing it was fascinating.”

  “So you’re Doctor Neil,” Gav said. “Very impressive. I can’t imagine having the staying power for something like that.”

  “It was a bit of a slog,” Neil conceded. “Then again, I don’t suppose you leaped fully-formed from your mother’s womb wielding a paintbrush…?”

  “Too true mate, and if my mother had had anything to do with it, I’d have leapt out with a brickie’s hod instead.”

  He put on a broad Lancashire accent, “‘Learn a trade, our Gavin, if you want to put food on’t table.’”

  “But you do put food on the table, as an artist,” said Sara. “Surely your parents must be proud of that?”

  “What do you reckon, Lou?” He turned to his wife with a rueful smile. “Are they proud?”

  “We wouldn’t know, would we?” said Lou coldly.

  “Lou gets very indignant on my behalf. The truth is they don’t really get it. If I was a doctor or a lawyer, I’m sure they’d be pleased, but my mum’s idea of art’s a herd of horses galloping through surf, so…”

  “She knows you’ve done well,” Lou muttered, “wouldn’t kill her to say so.”

  “Doesn’t bother me,” Gav said, shrugging. “I always played second fiddle to our Paula, anyway.”

  “Is that your sister?” asked Sara. “What does she do?”

  “She’s just a primary-school teacher,” Lou interjected, “but to hear Gav’s mum, you’d think she walked on water.” She mimicked her mother-in-law with unsparing sarcasm: “‘Our Paula’s doing an assembly on multiculturalism, Gavin. Our Paula’s taking the kids to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park.’ No mention of the fact that Gav’s got a piece in the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. Never occurs to her that she might actually stop playing online bingo for two minutes and go and have a look herself.”

  “Lulu,” Gavin put a hand on her arm, “it’s no big deal.”

  Lou’s eyes were glittering.

  “That does seem a bit unfair,” said Sara, doubtfully.

  “Not really.” Gavin shrugged. “I mean, artists aren’t very useful, are we? People don’t actually need art.”

  “God Gavin,” Lou fumed, “I hate it when you put yourself down. You’re an important contemporary artist, represented by a top gallery.”

  “I know,” Gavin laughed, “and I never stop wondering when they’re going to rumble me.”

  “What do you mean?” Neil asked.

  “Well honestly, what is it I do? Just muck about really, like those kids our Paula teaches. I just haul my guts up in three dimensions; I play around with bits of old rubbish until they start to look like the things I fear or loathe or love and then I put them out there and amazingly, people seem to get it.”

  “Some people,” said Lou.

  “Well,” said Neil, draining his wineglass and placing it decisively back down on the table. “Sara’s too shy to ask, so I will. When are we going to get a look at your studio?”

  “Neil!” Sara turned to him indignantly.

  “Haven’t you seen it yet?” Gavin seemed surprised. “Oh no, you haven’t, have you? That was Stephan and Yuki. Come on then!”

  He slapped his thighs and stood up. So much for their banter last evening, Sara thought – the Chelsea oligarchs long forgotten. Nevertheless, she couldn’t quell a fluttering in her stomach as she rose, unsteadily, to follow him. She only wished she were feeling her bright, articulate best, instead of fuzzy with drink. As she wove her way towards the spiral staircase which led to the studio, she tried to recall some of the aperçus she had read when she’d googled his latest show, but the only phrase that sprang to mind was “spastic formalism”, and she couldn’t see that tripping off her tongue. Lou dried her hands on a tea towel and moved to join them, but Gav turned to her with a look of pained regret.

  “Do you think maybe one of us should stay up here in case Zuley wakes up?”

  “Oh…okay,” Lou gave him a tight little smile and turned away. Sara struggled to shake off the feeling that she had somehow usurped her friend, but that was silly – Lou must be up and down these stairs all the time, she would hardly wait on an invitation from her own husband.

  Her qualms were quickly overtaken by astonishment and fascination when they emerged, not into the picturesque, messy studio of her imagination but into a stark, brightly lit space more reminiscent of a morgue. She could see at a glance that a lot of money had been spent here. There were the specialist tungsten light fittings, the open drains running down each side of the concrete floor, the coiled, wall-mounted hose and gleaming stainless-steel sinks. There were rolls of mesh, and rows of white-stained buckets, and in the centre of the room a large zinc workbench, on which lay the only evidence of what you might call, if you were feeling generous, creative endeavour. Sara edged forward to get a closer look. She could see what appeared to be a rudimentary human form made out of wire mesh, which protruded here and there through a slapdash layer of fibrous plaster. It reminded her, both in its diminutive size – about two-thirds that of an actual human, and its tortured attitude – of the writhing, petrified bodies she had seen in the ruins of Pompeii.

  “Gosh!” she said.

  “I suppose this is a work in progress?” said Neil hopefully.

  Gavin smirked.

  “And if I told you it’s the finished article?”

  “I’d say I don’t know much about art, but I know when someone’s taking the piss,” said Neil affably. Sara darted him an anxious glance, but Gavin was laughing.

  “You’d be right,” he said. “Come and have a look at this.”

  He led them through a swing door, into a space three times the size of the first room. Neil emitted a low whistle.

  “What I can’t get over,” he said afterwards, as they sat up in bed, discussing their new friends with the enthusiasm of two anthropologists who have stumbled on a lost tribe, “is the scale of it. I mean, I knew it had to be big – all the earthworks; the noise – but I didn’t realise it would be that big. The plumbing alone must have cost…” He closed one eye, but bricks and mortar was his specialist subject and it didn’t take him long, “… four or five K and they must need a mother of a transformer for those lights. I’m glad I’m not paying the bills.”

  “I know,” said Sara, “
but what gets me is the contrast. That really practical work-space and then you see the end-product and it’s so moving, so human.”

  “Right,” said Neil doubtfully.

  “Didn’t you like it?”

  “No, I did. It’s just… I didn’t get why… he’s obviously a consummate craftsman … and yet on some of them the finishing looked quite rough and ready.”

  “Oh I think that’s deliberate,” said Sara, “because others were really meticulous, really anal. And I think the ones covered with the mirror mosaic-y things were meant to be sort of fractured and damaged in a way. Don’t you think?”

  Neil shrugged.

  “Beats me,” he said, “but you’ve got to take your hat off to him. The nerve. The confidence. To take on a mortgage like they must have, knowing you’ve got four dependants…”

  “Lou works,” Sara objected.

  “Yeah, in film,” he said. “And then to blow a ton of money kitting out the studio like it’s a private hospital, and all for…” he shrugged “… something so particular, so rarefied. I mean, how does he know people are going to get it?”

  “Oh people get it,” said Sara, “I’ve looked him up online. He’s in the top fifty most collectable living artists.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Neil said, “I admired it. I’m just not sure I understood it.”

  “Oh I did…” Sara said. She took a deep breath “… I definitely think he’s obsessed with mortality. And then I think there’s quite a lot about the sacred and the profane. I mean the writhing, emaciated ones – I think must be referencing Auschwitz or something, and then you’ve got the ones with the wings – they’re angels, obviously – but maybe fallen angels because there’s a sordidness about them, a sense of shame. My favourite – the one that really spoke to me – was that one with all the tiny toys stuck to it and whitewashed over, did you see that? It looked kind of diseased until you got up close and saw what they really were. That, to me, was about childhood, about how we’re all formed and scarred by our early experiences. I think he’s actually very courageous.”

  “Ok-a-ay,” said Neil.

  5

  It was the start of the autumn term and Sara had promised to show Gavin the ropes. The school run was his thing, apparently. Over the course of the summer, they had forged a firm rapport, yet finding him on her doorstep bright and early this crisp September morning, she found herself unaccountably tongue-tied.

  “Hi,” she said. “It’s not raining, is it?” Gavin frowned, held out his hand and scanned the cloudless sky.

  “I think we’re okay.”

  Sara ushered Patrick and Caleb out of the door, fussing unnecessarily over their lunchboxes and book bags to cover her awkwardness, then fell into step with Zuley’s buggy.

  The day might have been warm, but the street was done with summer. The privet hedges were laced with dust and the trees held onto their leaves with an air of reluctance. The long grass in front of the council flats had snagged various items of litter. Here and there a car roof box, as yet un-dismantled, recalled the heady days of August in Carcassonne or Cornwall, but for the commuters hurrying by, earphones in, heads down, the holidays were ancient history.

  Only Gavin, in his canvas shorts and flip-flops still seemed to inhabit the earlier season. Sara stole occasional glances at him as he strode along. She liked the way he gave the buggy an extra hard shove every few steps to make Zuley laugh, the way he gave his sons the latitude to surge fearlessly ahead, but pulled them up short with a word when they got out of hand. He might not spend that much time around his children, she thought, but he was a good parent when he did; a better one, probably, than Lou. To the casual observer he could be any old self-employed Dad – a web designer or a journalist. She hugged to herself the knowledge of his exceptionalness.

  “So you didn’t get away in the end?” he said. “That’s a pity.”

  “No,” Sara sighed, “Neil wanted me and the kids to go without him, but I wasn’t up for a busman’s holiday. We just stayed here and I took them swimming and did the museums and stuff. Lost our deposit on the cottage, but…” she said, shrugging, “... not the end of the world.”

  She had been less phlegmatic when Neil had told her, with days to go, that he couldn’t make it to Dorset after all. A mix-up over the holiday rota at work – not his fault, but if he wanted to send the right message, improve his chances of getting the big job, he’d have to lead from the front.

  “Sounds like you had a lovely time,” she said, wistfully.

  “Yeah. Great to catch up with old mates,” Gav agreed.

  They turned the corner, passing the bus shelter where shiny Year Sevens waited for the 108 in over-sized uniforms, like lambs to the slaughter.

  “Where was it you went again?”

  She knew perfectly well. Tom and Rhiannon’s place in the Lake District. She’d had the full account – the walk up Helvellyn, the skinny-dipping, the toasted marshmallows. She had managed to disguise her envy; had smiled, nodded, agreed with Lou that they should definitely all get up there some time, the six of them and that Tom and Rhiannon sounded lovely.

  “The Lakes,” Gav said with a shrug. “Weather was terrible.”

  She could have kissed him.

  “Neil still odds-on for promotion?” he asked, as they waited at the pedestrian crossing for the man to turn green.

  “Looks like it,” she admitted, embarrassed. What, after all, could promotion mean to a man like Gavin? A man for whom success was measured in the raising of hairs on the back of a neck, the falling of scales from the eyes?

  They shepherded the children across the road and quickly past the newsagent’s, ignoring their clamour for sweets.

  “Smart guy, your husband,” Gav said.

  Sara gave him a curious sideways glance.

  “No, really, I admire him,” Gavin insisted, “he’s got integrity. Doggedness. Do I mean dogged?”

  Sara shrugged.

  “He commits to things – his work, his family, the community. I admire that…”

  “So, are you a quitter?” Sara blurted.

  “Because we left Spain, you mean?” Gavin frowned, after a pause.

  Sara looked away, her cheeks hot. She always did this; overstepped the mark, said the wrong thing. A harassed-looking woman came out of her thirties semi, still tucking her shirt into her smart skirt. She waited, with barely disguised irritation, for their procession to pass so that she could reach her car and Sara gave her a meek smile of thanks.

  “I didn’t mean that,” Sara said now, turning back to Gav. “Of course you’re not a quitter. Your commitment’s obvious. To Lou; to your work – my God, nobody could doubt your commitment to your work.”

  “So you think I’m obsessed?”

  “No! Good grief, but even if you were, it goes with the territory, doesn’t it? Artists are supposed to be driven. I mean, can you imagine,” she added, with a manic little laugh, “Picasso getting up in the morning and going, ‘Right, Françoise, shall I reinvent modern art today, or do you need a hand with the kids?’”

  “I suppose…” he said, doubtfully, swivelling the buggy up the ramp and through the school gate.

  “No, you’re fine. It’s us mere mortals who have to worry about work-life balance.”

  “But you’re a writer,” Gavin shouted, above the din of the playground, and Sara winced, hoping no one heard.

  “A copy-writer,” she corrected him, “day job comes first. Don’t know when I last got to do any of my own stuff. For all you think Neil’s such a family man, with this promotion in the offing, he’s around less and less. And when he is around, his head’s not around, if you know what I mean.”

  “Oh, I get accused of that a lot.”

  “Do you?” said Sara curiously. “I’d have thought with you both being creatives—hey, boys, don’t forget your bookbags…” but it was too late, her sons had disappeared into the mêlée.

  “Not by Lou,” Gavin replied. “She’s got a sixth sense a
bout that stuff. She gives me plenty of headspace. And I do her. No, it’s other people.”

  “Oh,” said Sara, a little deflated. She couldn’t imagine who else would have dibs on Gavin’s headspace. Then again, there was still a lot about Gavin that mystified her. She could have gone on talking to him all day, but this was where they parted, he to deliver Zuley to her childminder, she to catch the 9.47 to Cannon Street.

  “Well,” she said, briskly, “for what it’s worth, Neil really likes you too.”

  Gavin gave her a grateful glance, and she saw that for all his biennales and his groupies and his five-star reviews, he was just as needy of reassurance and friendship as anyone else. The temptation to put out a hand and touch his skin was almost overwhelming.

  “I see you’ve got her kids again,” Carol said, one teatime. She’d come over to see if Neil and Sara were interested in tickets for the new play at the Royal Court.

  “I have, yes,” said Sara tartly, and then, in response to Carol’s meaningfully arched eyebrow, “it works really well. I have hers when she’s working. She hangs on to mine if I’m late back.”

  “Which you almost never are…”

  “I’m actually under the cosh quite a bit since I upped my hours,” said Sara, irritated by Carol’s sly dig. “She’s saved my bacon a few times.”

  Carol twisted her mouth into an approximation of a smile and for a second Sara felt like Judas. Hadn’t Carol also saved her bacon over the years? The time Caleb was rushed to A&E with suspected meningitis? The day the guinea pig disappeared?

  “Anyway, if you do want to come,” her friend was saying now, as she handed the leaflet to Sara, “can you let me know ASAP?”

  Sara took this as a veiled reference to the last time they had gone to the theatre, when Sara’s prevarication had meant the only available tickets had been for the surtitled performance for the hard of hearing. Sara smiled, closed the front door after Carol, and put the leaflet straight in the recycling.