“Are you calling me a pig?” she said, a mischievous glint in her eye.
Gavin shrugged.
“Just saying you’ve got a healthy appetite.”
“Hmmm,” she said, poking her belly disingenuously, “a bit too healthy.”
“It’s nice,” he said, looking straight at her, “nothing wrong with a bit of what you fancy.”
She forced herself to return his gaze and allow the silence to be meaningful.
“Lou’s got a lovely figure,” she said with the merest hint of reproach.
Gavin looked at her levelly as if he could see right into her dirty conniving soul.
“Never said she didn’t,” he said.
14
Arriving to babysit at the designated hour on Friday night, Sara’s mother managed, as always, to take the wind out of her sails.
“Well, I suppose it’s nice that you’re still making an effort after fourteen years of marriage,” she said, giving Sara’s outfit the once-over.
“Fifteen,” said Sara, “what’s the matter, don’t you like it?” She fiddled self-consciously with the peplum of her cocktail dress. It wasn’t as though, in her Country Casuals two-piece, her mother was an arbiter of style. And yet already Sara could feel her confidence ebbing away.
“Is everything…” Sara’s mother eyed her daughter’s fishnet tights, doubtfully, “… all right between you and Neil?”
“What do you mean?”
“You seem a bit dressed up for the pictures.”
“It’s not just the pictures. It’s a friend’s film premiere,” Sara replied, “in Soho.”
“Oooh,” said her mother, momentarily enlivened. “Well, if they take your photo, don’t forget to keep your shoulders back. You can look very hunched.”
“I say premiere; it’s more of a preview. It’s a short film my friend made. Very low-key.”
Her mother looked her up and down again.
“There’s an after party,” Sara said.
“Oh dear, does that mean you’re going to be late? Only I’ve got Barnardo’s in the morning.”
Sara, who was standing with her back to her mother, dunking a teabag in a mug of hot water, closed her eyes and counted to five in her head.
“I don’t really know what time we’ll be back, but we’ve got to put in an appearance. It’s a thank-you to the people who helped with the film.”
No sooner were the words out of her mouth than she regretted them.
“How did you help with a film?” asked her mother, accepting her mug of tea.
“Oh we… er… just chipped in a bit. It was a sort of investment.”
“Money?” her mother said.
“Not serious money, just a contribution. Besides, if it gets taken up by one of the big distributors, which it probably will, we might even make a bit back.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you’d have money to throw around, with you off work.”
Sara smiled tightly, determined not to be drawn in.
“We’re managing,” she said.
They were. They were managing. Neil was CEO now, and the salary increase more than made up for the absence of Sara’s meagre stipend. And if they’d had to raid the high interest account to loan Lou the last few thou to get her film in the can, well, what were friends for? Besides, it hadn’t been her idea, strictly speaking. Lou had sat cross-legged on the hearthrug, plucking manically at its tufted pile with one hand, her eyes alight with passion and more focused than might have been expected at one thirty a.m. after several glasses of wine and a large spliff.
“But I refuse to be despondent,” she had said, “because I know we’ll find the money from somewhere. It’s just not an option to leave it unfinished.” She had looked glassily from Neil to Sara and back again. “It’s just not.”
Sara had waggled her eyebrows at Neil, trying to telegraph the question “Should we…?” when he had blurted out:
“Of course you must finish it. We can see you right for the shortfall, can’t we, Sara?”
And Sara had felt at once moved by Lou’s gushing reaction and slightly miffed that it was directed mainly at Neil, who had only voiced what she herself had been thinking.
“Oh, God, I never meant for you to do that,” Lou said, shuffling over on her knees and clutching Neil’s hand like a medieval serf, “but, thank you!” If he’d had a ring on his finger, Sara thought, she’d have kissed it. She had turned, belatedly and given Sara a hug and Sara had tried to savour the moment of being a dear, dear friend and a generous patron of the arts and not to make calculations in her head, but it was no good.
“How much is the shortfall?” she had found herself saying.
But that was water under the bridge now. They were in, and Sara had put her misgivings to one side, reassuring herself that the money they had been saving for the boys’ university fees would soon be returned to their account. Meanwhile, she had started to compose a short feature of her own, which she ran from time to time in her head. It was a soft-focus montage in which she was ushered to the front of film festival queues, hung out with European intellectuals behind velvet ropes, cast her eyes tactfully downwards when name-checked in teary acceptance speeches for prestigious film awards. With any luck, tonight would be just the beginning.
First, though, she had further disapprobation to contend with.
“Is that right, what Caleb’s just told me?” said her mother, returning from the sitting room and picking up a dish towel.
“You don’t need to do that, Mum,” said Sara, “we just leave them to drain. What’s Caleb told you?”
“That you’ve taken them out of school.”
“Ye-e-e-s.”
“And that you’re teaching them yourself.”
“Not on my own. With Lou.”
“And Lou’s a teacher, is she?”
“No, she’s the friend whose film we’re seeing tonight. Her boys are best friends with Caleb and Patrick and she’s as fed up with the school as we are. She’s got great ideas – really imaginative. So as soon as she’s finished this project, we’re going to start in earnest…”
“You haven’t started? But the schools must have been back six weeks.”
“Five. I’m just waiting for Lou to finish her film.”
“I thought tonight was the premiere.”
“It’s the rough cut, Mum,” said Sara with exaggerated patience. “It’s practically the finished article, except for a few tweaks, which she’ll do before it gets released.”
Sara’s mother set her jaw.
“So what exactly are my grandsons doing all day?” she asked. “Watching the idiot box in their pyjamas, I suppose?”
“No actually, TV’s banned. They’ve been reading books, and going to museums and making up plays with their friends next door.”
“Plays” was perhaps a generous term for the noisy war games that had laid waste to the house, but they had certainly exercised their imaginations.
“Do you not think it might be as well to pop them back to school for a bit, until you’re properly organised?”
“We are organised, Mum, and the school’s a shambles. I don’t think you realise how impoverished education’s become. If you’d seen how unstimulated they were, how frustrated.”
Her mother paused and marshalled her resources, before going in for the kill.
“What does Carol think about this?”
Sara took a deep breath.
“Carol took Holly out last term,” she said calmly, and her mother’s relief was palpable. Here was rational endorsement of their decision. Here was sanity.
“Ah…”
“They’ve gone private.”
Her mother raised her eyebrows suggestively.
“No, Mum. It’s not who we are. And anyway, we can’t afford it.”
“I could hel—”
“No, Mum.”
“What about your career?”
And so to the argument of last resort.
“What about it
?”
“You were so relieved when Patrick started school. I’m not being funny, love, but do you think you’re cut out to be a stay-at-home mum?”
“I’m not going to be a stay-at-home mum. I’m going to combine home-educating my children, which I expect to be a rewarding and creative experience, with editing my novel that my friend Lou happens to think stands a very good chance of getting published.”
Her mother made the face. It was the face Sara had come to dread, growing up. The face that said, “You are being ridiculous, irresponsible and selfish, but I am keeping my counsel because that is what mothers do.” She had made it when Sara had announced her intention to go travelling after university with two male friends, neither of whom was her boyfriend; she had made it when Sara had refused to be a bridesmaid for her cousin Liane because marriage was a patriarchal conspiracy (a line her step-father had worked into his speech, to great hilarity, three years later when she had married Neil). She had made it when, whilst suffering from undiagnosed post-natal depression, Sara had fled to a friend’s, leaving Neil to fend for himself with a colicky Caleb for a long weekend. There was no arguing with the face; no possible rejoinder that could mitigate its weary, self-abnegating prescience, so Sara pointed out that she had a train to catch and asked whether they could continue the discussion at a later date.
Spotting Neil waiting outside Burger King on the concourse at Charing Cross station, Sara wished she had insisted he come home and get changed, rather than go straight from his board meeting to the film.
“What?” he said, defensively as she approached.
“I just wonder how comfortable you’ll be in your suit,” Sara replied.
“I’ll be fine,” said Neil, “besides, it’s an occasion, isn’t it? You’re dressed up.”
“There’s dressed up and there’s dressed up,” she said.
He gave her a bemused look.
“We’re going to Gav’s club afterwards,” she reminded him, hooking an arm through his and leading him towards the exit, “it’ll be full of people in…” she trailed off, realising that she hadn’t the faintest idea how people would be dressed. She just knew that they wouldn’t be dressed like that. But Neil was still grappling with part one of her statement.
“Gav’s got a club?” he said. “Who is he, Jeeves?”
“Jeeves didn’t have a club. Jeeves was the butler.”
“Even so, a club!”
“God, Neil, it’s not all quilted jackets and cigars, you know. It’s an arts thing. A media thing.”
“I do know people have clubs, I’ve just never known anyone personally who had one.”
“Well, now you do.”
Nevertheless, by the time she had tottered the half-mile to Soho, she was feeling less than confident in the appropriateness of her own outfit. Lou had warned her that it was to be a low-key event, yet, remembering their housewarming, Sara had taken this with a pinch of salt. So she was a little disappointed to find herself outside an unremarkable looking office on a dingy backstreet wearing an outfit that would, at a stretch, have passed muster at Cannes. A discreet sign confirmed that this was the headquarters of Niche Productions, but not so much as a sandwich board confirmed there was a film previewing there this evening and when Neil tried the door it was locked. They buzzed the intercom, without success and were beginning to think they must have made a mistake, when a taxi drew up and disgorged another couple, he wearing ankle-skimming trousers and brogues; she, a cape.
“This has to be the place,” murmured Sara to Neil, as the pair swept past, pressed the buzzer and were immediately admitted. Luckily, Neil had the foresight to jam his foot in the door before it swung shut again, and keeping a discreet distance, they made their way up the stairs.
The interior of the office was plusher than Sara expected: the corridor thickly carpeted and up-lit, the walls lined with framed posters, many of them advertising art house films that she had heard of, but never got round to seeing. A young woman was checking off guests’ names on a clipboard before ushering them through to the projection suite with an obsequious smile. Sara tugged Neil’s sleeve and quickened her pace.
“Hi,” she said breathlessly to the woman, “Sara Wells and Neil Chancellor. We’re here for Cuckoo.”
The woman’s eyes roved up and down the list and Sara felt her hands growing clammy. “I’m so sorry,” she said at last, “I don’t seem to have you here.”
Sara didn’t trust herself to speak.
“May I?” Neil stepped up, all charm, and the flunky tilted her clipboard reluctantly towards him.
He shook his head and laughed.
“Typical Lou,” he said, affectionately, “bloody awful handwriting.” He pointed. “That’s us, Sara and Neil. See, there?” The woman frowned, doubtfully, but ushered them through.
“Was it us?” whispered Lou. Neil shrugged, but there was no time to debate the point as the delay had cost them precious minutes, the house lights had dimmed and a reverent hush had already descended. Picking their way across an obstacle course of crossed legs, and booby-trap handbags to the two remaining seats, Sara felt her tights catch on a rogue winkle-picker and rip soundlessly from knee to thigh but she dared not stop to inspect the damage as they were already provoking a barrage of irritated sighs and tuts. As the curtains covering the small screen swished back, and the production company logo shimmered into life, she did a quick scan of the audience. Apart from one couple who looked vaguely familiar, the room was full of strangers – and even in silhouette, they were a daunting crowd. Between dreadlocks and trilbies, bandannas and beehives, it was a struggle for Sara to catch a glimpse of the screen and when she inclined her head on Neil’s shoulder to get a better view, he squeezed her thigh warmly, in response.
“Love you,” he whispered, his eyes fixed eagerly on the screen.
“Shhh,” murmured Sara.
Sara had difficulty afterwards recalling what her expectations had been, so it was hard to figure out in which ways Lou’s film had confounded them. The lack of plot was no surprise, but beyond that, she was at a loss to know whether the bewilderment she felt was the effect that Lou had intended, or was due to her own lack of critical acumen. It seemed to be a film that worked on many levels. The eponymous ‘Cuckoo’ was played by a waif-like actress, whose accent hovered somewhere between Leeds and Leipzig. If the dreamlike episodes depicting Cuckoo’s self-harm, binge-eating and exhibitionist masturbation were anything to go by, her character was aptly named. While in some sequences she was a person, delivering lines of more or less credible dialogue, in others she was a deranged, but benevolent sprite, who communicated her angst through interpretive dance. This was not the only ambiguity. Another aspect of the – narrative seemed the wrong word–mise-en-scène – was the idea of usurpation. Not only was Cuckoo cuckoo, she was a cuckoo in the nest. If Sara had understood it correctly (and it was a big if), Cuckoo was the product of an incestuous relationship between her father and one of his two other daughters. Cuckoo’s unexplained return to the nest was a cause of jealousy and angst within the family and seemed particularly distressing for Cuckoo’s mother/sister, who, for no reason that Sara could identify, was played by a man in a dress. After a great deal of weeping, some sister-on-sister incest and a surreal episode involving maggots crawling out of a sink, Cuckoo was dispatched from the first floor balcony by all three members of her dysfunctional family. As the camera zoomed in, from a dizzying bird’s eye view to a forensic close-up of the blood trickling from the dead woman’s mouth, the credits rolled.
There was a moment of hush and then the auditorium erupted in applause. Sara clapped until her palms stung. She stole a sideways glance at Neil, expecting to see bafflement written all over his face, but he too was clapping, smiling, nodding.
The house lights came up and Sara looked around her. All human life was there from skinny model types, frumping it up in paisley to hoary old intellectuals in donkey jackets. Sara was relieved to see that her own style of retro chic wa
s not completely out of place, perhaps the ladder in her tights even added a certain something. Neil’s suit didn’t feel too dreadful a faux pas, now he had taken his tie off, although it was a world away from the nattily cut windowpane checks and old-school tweeds worn by some of the other men.
“What did you reckon?” Neil whispered.
“Yeah, pretty good,” she replied. “You?”
“I thought it was fantastic,” he said and again she had to scrutinise his face for signs of irony. She couldn’t believe this was the same man who had cried during Saving Private Ryan.
“Do you think it’ll do well?” said Sara.
“I don’t know if I even care any more,” Neil replied, “I just feel really proud to be associated with it.”
Sara pursed her lips. It was like something from Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Someone had spirited away her down-to-earth, middlebrow husband, and replaced him with this cerebral, art house cineaste. But there was no opportunity to probe further because a woman was arranging two mics and a carafe of water on a table in front of the screen and Lou was making her way out front, delayed by much air-kissing, and hand clutching.
“So,” said the woman, settling herself into one of two leather swivel chairs. “It’s my pleasure to welcome you all to this preview screening of Cuckoo. I’m sure my guest for this Q&A will need no introduction, as most of you here have been involved in some way with the film or are at the very least, supporters, admirers or friends.” Neil gave Sara’s hand a squeeze.
“Please give a very warm welcome to Lou Cunningham.”
Whistles; whoops; extended applause. Lou, dressed like a bluestocking in a loose linen smock and Japanese sandals, leaned into the mic and murmured a husky, “Thanks guys.”
“Lou,” the woman smiled, “congratulations on a stunning film. Can I kick this session off by asking you just where Cuckoo came from? What, if you like, was the seed, the spur; the afflatus behind this character?”
The People at Number 9 Page 12