When Sara thought about sex with Gavin, however, it was as a different order of endeavour altogether. Here, the mud and stars came into play, and when she conjured the act itself, it was as a collage of fleeting and thrillingly transgressive images to do with pain and pleasure and shame; Gavin leaving bite marks on her nipple, plunging his fingers into her anus, coming, disgracefully, in her face. That was the storyboard, but the soundtrack was sublime – an operatic aria, a Leonard Cohen song, the divine liturgy of the Greek Orthodox church.
“Gav’s been in school this week, helping out with the art,” Sara said, when Neil returned from the bathroom – he had excellent post-coital hygiene, she’d say that for him.
“Oh?” said Neil.
“He’s a bit disappointed in it.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about that. It’s only art. I’m more concerned that Caleb’s in Year Six and he’s never heard of long division.”
“Well, he wasn’t only talking about the art. He was talking about the ethos of the school.”
“What’s up with it?”
“There’s no passion, he said; the teachers are on autopilot. It’s a glorified babysitting service.”
“I shouldn’t think Gav really knows what he’s talking about.”
“I should think he’s got more of a clue than you. When was the last time you set foot in a classroom?”
Neil glared at her.
“Okay, sorry, that’s unfair, but I have to say, I think he might be right. I went through Patrick’s book bag the other day and all I could find were pages and pages of colouring-in.”
“I hope he stayed inside the lines.”
Sara gave him a sarcastic smile.
“I just don’t understand how a school can go downhill so fast,” she said. “I mean eighteen months ago, it was ‘good with some outstanding features’.”
“Well, if you’re worried, do something about it,” Neil said.
“I will,” said Sara. “I am.”
It was pouring down on the morning of the trip but Sara had opted to take a telescopic umbrella, rather than conceal her carefully chosen outfit under an unflattering raincoat. As she struggled along New Cross Road at the rear of an unruly line of Year Sixes, she was already regretting her decision. The umbrella kept blowing inside out, obstructing her view of Gavin, who in any case was right at the front, chatting away to Kate Harrison the Year Six teacher.
“You don’t mind, do you, Sara?” Kate had said. “Only I could do with a safe pair of hands to round up the stragglers.” With that, Sara had been banished to the back of the crocodile along with Caleb, who, being ten years old and separated from his best friend, minded very much. He had been paired instead with Engin, an ebullient Turkish boy who combined the curiosity of a toddler with the build of an all-in wrestler. Thrilled to be out in the world, Engin was at a loss to understand Caleb’s surly indifference and kept trying to engage him, first with chatter, then by clowning around and finally with outright naughtiness.
It was standing room only on the train and every inch of available handrail was taken. Sara had no choice but to clamp her wet brolly between her knees and hold onto her two charges by their hoods, all too aware that if Engin went down, so would the whole carriage. The train smelled of damp upholstery and morning breath. Its windows were blank with condensation, and there was nowhere to look but at other passengers’ backs, or shoulders or jutting elbows. If she craned her neck, she could just about see Gavin, in his classic raincoat, slung between the luggage racks like an elegant bat. She wondered whether he was growing a beard, or just hadn’t shaved. Either way, it suited him.
As she ushered Caleb and Engin through the mechanical barriers at Charing Cross station, the rest of the party was already lining up for a headcount. She waved frantically and Kate Harrison widened her eyes and tapped her watch. Sara chivvied the boys across the concourse in time to join the back of the line as it snaked off towards the Strand. The gallery appeared now, on the far side of Trafalgar Square, like a citadel glimpsed across a hostile plane. Routemasters loomed, commuters jay-walked, horns sounded, pigeons scattered. If they could just get across before the lights changed, but no, the green man was flashing and they were marooned on a traffic island, watching the rest of their party meander into the distance like a colony of ants.
At last, flustered and red-faced, Sara ushered her charges up the gallery steps and into the Learning Zone, where the other children were already sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of Picasso’s Still Life with Lemons. A young woman wearing a lanyard over her denim shirt waister waited with exaggerated patience for Caleb and Engin to be seated and Sara slunk shamefaced into the background.
She scanned the perimeter of the room for Gavin, but he was nowhere to be seen and she had all but given up on him, when a voice whispered in her ear.
“What kept you?”
“God!” she squealed. “You scared me.”
He squeezed her elbow, and snickered, the mild disruption earning them both a reproachful glance from Kate Harrison, which Sara met with a triumphant smirk.
“I can’t believe you made me do this!” Sara plonked herself down beside Gavin on the top deck of the river bus. She felt giddy with the spontaneity of it all; the fearlessness.
“You should thank me,” Gav said, “I saved us from Art History Woman. She was killing those kids, killing them, I tell you. And look at ’em now – happy as Larry.”
He nodded towards their four charges, who were leaning over the railings, pointing out landmarks to one another, their animated faces wet with spray from the boat’s churning wake.
“We’re going to be in trouble when Kate Harrison realises it wasn’t just a toilet break.”
“I just feel bad for the ones we had to leave behind,” replied Gav, as if they were refugees from a war zone.
“Oh come on, she wasn’t that bad.”
“Did you know, childwen,” Gav’s impersonation was spot-on, “that as well as being a pwint-maker and cewamicist, Picasso was also a playwite?”
If Neil had been there, Sara knew, he’d have objected on several counts: political incorrectness, sexism, inverted snobbery. But he wasn’t, so she threw her head back and laughed, and she was still laughing when the wind blew a strand of hair across her mouth and Gav leaned across to remove it.
***
Sara remembered the champagne in the nick of time. As she took it out of the freezer compartment and transferred it to the bottom shelf of the fridge, it creaked ominously and a large bubble, the kind that had no business being in a bottle of champagne, rose slowly along its length. She straightened up and caught sight of her reflection in the dusk-darkened window. She was pleased with what she saw. The new top was flattering, if a little risqué. As she moved across to pull the kitchen blinds, she noticed Gavin trying to light a bonfire on the other side of the fence. He was grubbing around in the dark, but what little kindling he could find seemed to be dampening, rather than fuelling the flames. She smiled to herself and, hurrying through to the living room, snatched the box of firelighters from the log basket and called up the stairs,
“Neil, Gav needs a hand with something. I’ll see you there, okay?”
“Having fun?” she said, emerging into their garden via the side gate.
Gavin looked up sharply. His hair was standing on end and he had a smudge of soot on his cheek. It was obvious that, until now, fun had not been on the agenda. Seeing her, he smiled and took the firelighters, almost as though he had been expecting her to bring them. Sara watched, hugging her elbows for warmth as he re-laid and lit the fire. Then they stood side-by-side and watched it spread its pool of brightness over the grass, throwing sparks up into the navy foliage.
“Er – would it be bad manners to ask what the hell’s going on?”
“Lou wants to christen our paella pan. This is how they do it in Spain – outside, on an open fire.”
“Nice,” said Sara, but at the prospect of alfresco dining in No
vember she was unable to quell an involuntary shiver.
“Here,” Gav undid the sweater from around his waist and held it open, as if she were the child and he the parent. She dived into it, relishing the ripe, mushroom-y scent of him. As her head emerged, she felt his hand touch the nape of her neck. She turned towards him, like a flower towards the sun.
“Hello stranger!” The sound of Lou’s voice made her spring guiltily away again.
“Hi!” she said. “I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” Lou replied, and they hugged awkwardly.
“Good trip?” Sara asked, stepping back and rubbing Lou’s upper arms briskly.
“A-mazing!” said Lou. “I’ll tell you about it over dinner.”
“Which looks fabulous, by the way. I don’t think I’ve ever eaten authentic paella before.”
A lengthy debate ensued between Gavin and Lou as to whether such a thing existed, and if so, which region of Spain might rightfully lay claim to it. By the time the matter was settled, Neil had arrived with the champagne. Glasses were fetched, the cork noisily popped and a toast proposed to Lou and all who sailed in her. The paella rice was still opaque when the rain started – a fine wind-blown mist at first, which soon turned into un-ignorable drizzle. It took Neil and Gav’s combined strength to bear the pan of charred chicken and saffron-infused rice back up the steps to the kitchen, where its sheer size, taking up all four rings of the stovetop, induced fits of incredulous laughter.
“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Lou wailed. “There’s enough for an army. It’s never going to cook.”
It did, however, and whether it was the sheer quantity of drink they had put away by then, the authenticity of the recipe, or the tang of wood smoke in the rice, Sara had never eaten better.
The filming had been intense, Lou told them, full-on. Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong. The sound man had gone on a bender and the lead actress had wanted to improvise; the hotel had had bedbugs, the catering had been diabolical and they shouldn’t even ask about the budget. “But…” she took a sip of wine and looked round the table, her coy smile turning triumphant, despite her best efforts “… I think it might just be the best thing I’ve done.”
Sara clapped her hands childishly; Neil patted Lou on the shoulder; Gavin lifted his wife’s hand, turned it over and bestowed a lingering kiss on the inside of her wrist.
“This is it,” he said, softly, “this is your time.”
Sara smiled wanly.
“It’s great to be back in London, though,” Lou said, “Europe felt kind of tired to be honest. It was so the right thing for us to do – moving back here – creatively. In every way, really. You know when something just clicks? Anyway, tell me, what have you all been up to?”
“Not much,” Gavin shrugged and looked around the table for confirmation, “just the usual round of domestic tedium.”
“Oh,” Sara protested, “I hardly think so. You certainly did your best to relieve it, Gav.”
“Did I?” Gavin looked perplexed.
“The gallery trip?” She turned to Lou. “He was a very naughty boy.”
“Was he now?” Lou gave her husband an indulgent smile.
“I couldn’t believe it,” Sara laughed. “One minute we’re listening to this bright young thing telling us all about Picasso, the next Gav’s got us doing a runner!”
“It was that or strangle the bloody woman,” said Gav. “She’s probably turned those kids off art for life.”
“How d’you mean?” Neil asked.
Gav adopted the woman’s plummy vowels but, to Sara’s relief, did not reprise the speech impediment. “‘How many shapes can you see in the picture? Do you think Picasso was happy or sad when he painted it?’ I mean, what the fuck?” He pronounced it “fook”.
“She meant well,” said Sara.
“I know but, come on. A lot of those kids had never been to a gallery before. You’ve got one chance to engage them; get their juices flowing, let them see that art’s not just pictures of posh people in gilt frames, it’s something they might wanna participate in, live their lives by. And instead, they get some airhead Sloane handing out clipboards.”
“Bit harsh,” said Neil mildly.
“Not really,” said Gav. “This is Picasso we’re talking about. Greatest artist of the twentieth century. Bloke whose highest artistic ambition is to draw like a child. This guy gets kids. Kids get him.” He turned to Lou. “Remember how Dash reacted when we took him to see Guernica?”
Lou nodded wistfully.
“So you voted with your feet?” Neil said, with a doubtful smile.
“Yup. Took them to Greenwich on the river bus,” Gav said smugly. “Fan-bloody-tastic. Got to see Tower Bridge open up to let a liner through – made me feel like a kid myself. I’ve never seen that in all the years I’ve lived in London. Tell me that doesn’t beat counting the number of lemons in a still life?”
“Yeah, that’s pretty cool,” Neil conceded. “Bascule bridge. That’s physics.”
“Never mind physics,” Gavin said, “it’s poetry. The beauty of it. The wit. This kid, Darren…”
“Daniel,” corrected Sara.
“… Daniel – lairy little sod – wound up our Dash something chronic. But he sees this bridge go up and he’s just gob-smacked. Chuffed to bits he was. Look on that kid’s face I’ll take to my grave.”
“His dad wasn’t convinced,” Sara reminded him with a rueful grin.
“Oh, spare me the guilt trip,” Gav said, “I know his type. Grew up around blokes like that. Doesn’t give a shit about his kid, until there’s a chance to take a pop at somebody else. Then it’s all ’elf and safety.”
“The school does have a duty of care, though,” Neil pointed out.
“Goody two-shoes!” Lou tapped him playfully across the knuckles and he grinned sheepishly, taking it rather better, Sara thought, than he would have done from her.
“Imagine if you could unlock the potential, in every child,” Lou said wistfully. “If only education was about epiphanies instead of about testing and league tables.”
“Oh, I dare say there’s the odd Eureka moment, even at Cranmer Road,” said Neil.
“I wouldn’t bet on it, mate,” said Gavin. “I was in the other week to do some art with the kids, around this Picasso trip. Went in with all these big ideas – collage, found objects, you name it. Turns out, ‘Miss’ wants me to focus on cubism because it ties in with their maths.”
He clutched his head in despair.
“Yeah,” said Sara, regretfully, “they’re playing it by the book at the moment, until the inspectors have done their spot check.”
“The inspectors?” asked Lou.
“Oh, er, yes,” said Sara, “there was an OFSTED last term.” She made her voice heavy with irony. “We didn’t come up to scratch, apparently. Found wanting in the area of Gifted and Talented, among other things. Hence the sudden departure of all the little Hollys and Harriets.”
“Well I have to say,” said Gavin, “I’ve got some sympathy with them now I’ve seen what goes on. Some of those kids can barely write their names. I can’t believe we worried that Dash and Arlo might not make the grade. They’re in a different league. I don’t mean to sound big-headed, but it’s true.”
“Oh dear,” said Lou, biting her lip, “that must have been what Sonia Dudek was on about.”
“Who?” said Gavin.
“The Deputy Head. She took me on one side a while back. Said Cranmer Road didn’t seem to be meeting Dash’s needs. She wondered if it was really the right school for him.”
There was a pause, while they all contemplated the bleak educational future they had inflicted on their children.
“There’s meant to be a good Steiner school in Clapham,” said Lou, hopefully.
“Don’t like the sound of Steiner,” Gavin said, “I knew a guy once went to one of those schools. Very, very fucked up. Can’t make relationships at all.”
Lou shrug
ged and drained the remainder of the wine into their glasses. They sipped simultaneously, and a silence descended. Sara picked a congealed fragment of rice from the edge of her plate and chewed on it. Gavin reached into his pocket for his rolling tobacco. Neil took a surreptitious glance at his mobile.
“Am I the only one…” Lou said, at last, folding her arms and looking around the table, “… thinking the answer is staring us in the face?”
12
The next day, Sara noticed the crack. She stopped to pick up a balled sock off the landing and there it was. A jagged hairline fissure, running from the skirting board up the wall to the cornice, where it disappeared briefly from view, only to re-emerge on the ceiling, a fine but still discernible fault line. She frowned and touched it with one finger. So many things needing attention. In the old days, pre Gavin and Lou, she’d have nagged Neil until he agreed to get the decorators in. Shabbiness had depressed her. Now though, things were more complicated. Gavin and Lou’s house was in much worse nick than theirs, and yet she preferred it. Lou had an eye for the aesthetics of decay. She would half sand a door, and then leave it, patched and mottled, like a piece of living archaeology. She would leave flowers in a vase until they drooped brown-veined petals onto the mantelpiece, not because she was too lazy to throw them away, but because she found the subtle hues of death strangely beautiful. She cultivated verdigris and patina, loved age-spotted linen and abraded chenille. And now that Sara had got her eye in, she too was coming to despise perky garage tulips and plumped up cushions. There was so much more texture and variation in old stuff, so much more soul. So, no, she wouldn’t run straight for the Farrow & Ball paint chart, she would restrain her bourgeois tendencies; let the true character of the house reveal itself; make way, if necessary, for a bit of shabby-chic.
The People at Number 9 Page 10