Sue said: ‘There’ll have to be a contract.’
Philip walked along the rank of Shrubs – Colourful Foliage And Flowers, Ideal For New Gardens And Gap-Filling. He saw some lilies that were a plastic orange colour and some fuchsias with their flowers that were like earrings.
To which Charlotte replied more grimly: ‘In for a penny.’
None of this is right, thought Philip. This is completely the wrong sort of place. What I want is something wild. Weeds. Maybe I can ask to buy some weeds. Maybe somewhere they have a heap of weeds they have removed from in among these hothouse specimens: maybe I can get a heap of those and take them home and scatter them. Because this, he said to himself, pausing for a moment doubtfully to eye a clump of whispery bamboo, is not at all right.
‘In future years,’ said Charlotte, ‘when it all comes out, it’ll be like, a real thing, it’ll be part of it.’
‘Part of that loosening, that unravelling of identity that was such a vital artistic movement of those times,’ said Sue, quoting an imaginary future history.
On their stretch of grass in the middle of that city, Sue looked up, and Charlotte looked down. The two women, eye to eye, grinned. Happiness and resolve sparked back and forth between them. It could really . . . could it really? It was so dangerous. It was so wicked. But, sod it, she couldn’t, how could she continue as she was? She saw the gallery as a weighty, huge, marmoreal edifice, a Doric temple guarded by an enormous statue of . . . herself.
‘So let’s go back,’ said Charlotte, shifting to her knees in the process of getting up, ‘and I’ll write the first email from . . . E. B.!’
‘Plus the small matter of the other two rooms of the gallery,’ said Sue, lifting herself into a crouch.
‘Fuck. I’d forgotten,’ said Charlotte: ‘I’d . . . completely . . . forgotten . . . the other two rooms of the gallery.’
Philip, striding back towards the entrance, had his attention caught by an octagonal raised area of little plants. No flowers! Little greyish leaves. Oh, and some shiny bright green ample ones. And . . . oh, they were herbs of course. He bent to read the labels: Thyme Gold; Chives; Rosemary; Mint. He rubbed a leaf between thumb and forefinger, smelled. At least they would be useful, at least there was a point to them.
Sue and Charlotte moved off over the grass towards the gate, Sue’s hands in the pockets of her jeans, Charlotte’s arms stretched out on either side. They veered away from one another, then came back close. Head down, one of them pushed the black-painted steel gate open. Harmoniously the two of them passed through.
Having decided against the herbs, Philip found that the entrance to the garden centre was not also the exit and turned back. You had to go down a zigzag of ramps and into a prefab building. Where in fact there was a café. He hesitated between his hunger and his desire to escape.
Charlotte abruptly asserted: ‘You must really love him.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Well don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do.’
Philip chose bacon and lettuce with obviously too much mayonnaise, and an apple, and a genuine filter coffee.
‘But why, what’s made you say that all of a sudden?’ Sue was blushing.
‘The commute. The fact that you work here but don’t live here.’ They were walking down a steep slope, their feet jabbing into the pavement. They were not thinking about what they had so recently agreed; not thinking about everything that lay before them. ‘I was thinking,’ Charlotte continued, ‘that now you are here, this weekend . . . I was thinking how relaxed that is, how creative, how’ – she lifted her shoulders and forearms in a shrug, looked sideways at Sue with an open, daffy face – ‘how fun. But every day instead you get on the train for, what, an hour? and go back to a place where there can’t really be much going on.’
Philip was sitting on a solid pine chair at a shiny, round pine table. He lifted his slim sandwich and bit it, leaving a serrated half-moon cut-out in the gooey white bread.
‘It’s not that bad,’ said Sue. ‘It doesn’t . . . I don’t think of it like that.’ Her hands were in the pockets of her little grey jacket and she was looking ahead, eyes focused on the pavement five yards in front of her. She was striding forward with a knotted brow. ‘I dunno, what can I say? It’s how I am, how we are. I mean . . .’ – they turned and were suddenly along the edge of a dual carriageway where cars howled past. She raised her voice: ‘To me, you make a commitment to someone, I mean, something clicks inside you – and that’s that. It’s not about weighing up pros and cons. And after that, after that click, you see the world from inside the person you have become. Do you see what I mean? So it doesn’t look to me the way it looks to you – you know, something that might have this or that inconvenience. It just is.’
‘And there’s the doctor’s salary.’
‘Oh yeh, yeh,’ said Sue, mock-aggressively. ‘That makes all the difference. That’s really the most important thing for me.’
They were turning into a quieter street. They were climbing now, into the fringes of the businessey and light-industrial bit of town. To their right, a somewhat shabby black-glass cube with builders’ fencing clamped around it. Grass pushed up between the mauve bricks of its concourse floor.
‘I don’t think you should psychologise everything,’ Sue was saying, ‘any more than you should, you know, make it all pragmatic, practical. But it does suit the person I am. You know I’ve always wanted to be a bit outside the art world, keep a perspective on it? Phil helps me do that. You know the story’ – she pressed on – ‘of me?’
‘No.’
‘OK, why not?’ – Sue asked the converted warehouse buildings around them. ‘So, me mam’ – her voice took on a different accent – ‘wan’ed a kid, but didn wan’ a man. So she went on a trip – to Spain on account of the fact that there are . . . loads of hot guys there. And had . . . The Time Of Her Life. And came back pregnant. And that was me. So growing up in Stoke it was just the two of us. Against the world. Which you can make of,’ Sue concluded, suddenly feeling she had said enough, ‘what you will.’
On his way out, Philip’s gaze snagged on a stand of bright little packets of seeds. He stopped and turned and stooped to scan the paper envelopes that dangled in rows from blunt chrome hooks. There were all the artificial blooms he had disliked outside. But wait, there was a picture of a meadow with what, clover? poppies? windswept bedraggled ordinary flowers. And here was a packet of interesting wild grasses. And here another meadow. And there, why not, some sunflowers, so blatant they would be fun. This was the thing to do, to buy these seeds, and plant them, and OK the flowerbeds would be empty for a while, for weeks probably, but then the little seedlings would begin to sprout and he would nurse them.
Average Contents 1100 seeds, he read on the back of the two inch by four inch packet he held between his finger and thumb. Amazing. Yes he would plant them and nurse them and there would be a whole little meadow of wildish living things in the raised bed at the end of the concrete patio behind the brick box of the little rented house. With four packets spliced between his fingers he walked jauntily to the checkout and paid and walked jauntily out to the car and got in and reversed and turned and pushed out into the traffic, the thousands of seeds reposing on the passenger seat beside him. On he drove, and then paused at some lights; and on, and paused at some more lights, and then he was making the tight turn around the mini-roundabout and on past Grace Hanworth’s house which had a long grey car like George Emory’s parked in front of it.
Like George Emory’s. Philip glanced in the mirror and indicated and pulled to the right and stopped. He twisted round, making his neck ache as he forced his head around to be able to see. He could see a stretch of low, gleaming grey fuselage and a top corner of the windscreen. He sat back straight. He reached up and angled the rear-view mirror so that he could see the scene again in miniature. He was calm. He felt his energy sapping, some depressive movement in his brain, for instance maybe a little reductio
n in norepinephrine. No jolt of adrenalin. Because all that was happening was that what he had worried about before was coming true. Because something had gone wrong, because they had called and complained and turned to George as a proper doctor. Because.
There was tension around his throat and his lacrimal glands were undergoing stimulation.
But maybe.
Maybe it wasn’t George’s car. Could he reverse to better see? No he could not. Could he get out and saunter casually across and look for – what? A slew of drug company leaflets across the back seat maybe. Or packets of fireworks! No he would recognise it anyway, he saw the car again as he had seen it in the practice car park, a rare car, old, a black number plate with silvery lettering, what was the make? – yes, a Bristol, with burgundy leather, and a walnut instrument panel and, that was right, a sea of papers in the passenger side footwell, and little silvery handles for winding the windows, and a pale accumulation of dust across the mottled dark plastic of the top of the dashboard.
He saw all this; and then he saw himself self-consciously walking across the road, blushingly looking to left and right, his steps stretched out on Pink-Panther tiptoe; and then he heard a rasping voice shout ‘Dr Newell!’ and saw himself freeze, and shrivel, and scurry away into a corner where he would turn around and around, curl up foetally, and half-bury himself in a mound of slimy leaves.
So it was not a good idea to try to saunter unnoticed across the road. Because to show concern would be to betray he thought something was wrong. It would be basically a confession of guilt. So what he should do instead is drive around the block, and back, and slow when he was passing the car that might be George’s, slow, and glance, and see what he could see.
So he straightened his mirror and turned the key and touched the accelerator and checked the mirror and pulled out and went a little way forward and indicated left and slowed and turned. And drove and turned again. And then he was describing the ‘V’ again around the awkward mini-roundabout; and here he was approaching George’s car again, i.e. the car that might possibly be George’s. Black number plates with silvery lettering. He slowed some more. Burgundy leather. But there was someone behind him and he could hardly stop: what if the someone behind him hooted and George Emory looked out of Grace Hanworth’s window?
If it was George Emory.
If it was his car.
In any case, he told himself as he drove on now smoothly, drably, there is nothing to be done. Only thing to be done is to sit mum. Pretend that nothing is happening until it does. Unless for instance he could go online and find out exactly how many Bristols of that model existed in grey with burgundy trim and calculate the odds of one of them (i.e. not Dr Emory’s) being there on this given street at this given moment. Or maybe you could track the number plate, he looked in his mind and there it was, GPK 24F, you could go online and doubtless have to pay someone to track the number plate.
But Christ, Philip, what would be the fucking point of that?!
Still driving, he slammed his hand down, jabbing his thumb-joint onto the wheel, ouch – and the car is swerving to the right, pull it back, keep straight, stay calm, just go along calmly, gently, gently, right here, straight on, over the bridge, right along Helium, through Parnassus, along Elysium to home. There is nothing he can do. There is no point trying to do anything. Anything he did would make absolutely no difference. The only thing to do is to stay passive. Because in any case maybe it is nothing at all. Maybe Dr George Emory left his car there to go to the shops which are not more than a couple of hundred yards away. Maybe he had broken down! Maybe he’s having an affair with someone in the house next door!! Maybe he was visiting friends. Christ Philip will you just . . . calm . . . down.
Sue, meanwhile, was on the scratchy sofa, sitting cross-legged, holding herself upright against its sag. Charlotte was in one of the soft armchairs, crouching, her laptop unfolded on her knees.
‘Look I’ve basically got a concept for the other two rooms,’ said Sue, ‘so why don’t I tell it you and you can say what you think.’
‘OK.’
‘The first room, you walk in, and it’s just a sitting room. An average sitting room. Like this one, in fact – bearing in mind what you said last night. Or also like the one in Phil’s and my house: a completely average room. And the way we get it . . .’ – she pushed on over something Charlotte had been about to say – ‘is to get people to bring in their own furniture, do you see, that way we tick our community box, we put ads in the local papers, put flyers out, inviting people to send in photos of likely bits of furniture. And then we do some home visits and pick the best.’
‘It could be upsetting for those who don’t get picked,’ said Charlotte: ‘I mean, if Charlotte’s sofa were rejected she’d get very cross.’
‘Yeh, yeh.’
‘No but seriously.’
Sue looked up, looked across. Charlotte was indeed serious.
‘It does need careful handling. We talk about appropriateness. We send them invitations to the private view, and . . . no, actually. Brilliant!’ Sue had uncrossed her legs and was leaning forward, her forearms resting on her knees, her hands gripped into a double fist. She was bouncing her clasped hands as though weighing something. She was staring at them as though they held the answer.
‘We use the photos in the next room, we . . . I’ll tell you about it in a minute.’
Charlotte nodded and looked pleased and gave her attention back to her laptop with a wrinkled brow.
‘Going back to the first room,’ Sue said: ‘People will walk into it. And won’t know what to do. It will be familiar. And it will be strange. They won’t know if they’re allowed to sit down. They won’t know whether to feel at home. Most of all, I think, it’ll feel like a stage set. It’ll make them self-conscious.’
Philip was standing at the kitchen end of the ground floor of 12 Eden Grove. He was looking through the window at the patio with its barren beds. He breathed in deeply. He breathed out until his lungs were shrivelled, squeezed. Then he looked at the window with its grubby streaks and blotches. He moved both shoulders forwards so that the trapezius muscles tensed. And then he let them relax.
Then he took a glass from the draining board and reached out and lifted the lever of the tap so that a sinewy column of silvery water all at once appeared. He broke the column with the glass and splashed himself and decided not to mind. Lifting his wet hand in its damp sleeve to his mouth, he drank, feeling the chill slide down his oesophagus and pool in his stomach.
Do not think about Grace Hanworth or George Emory.
The lino was sticky underfoot. The pans and plate and cutlery from yesterday were slimy in the sink. Philip’s breakfast plate was crummy on the table. The air was tinged with marmite. A heap of unironed clothes slumped on the shiny sofa. Philip stood, surrounded.
Do not think of . . .
And then he thought: the thing to do is clear up, spend the available time before Sue gets back doing that. Which will please her. So that she will walk in and smile. No, probably she would walk in and smile in any case, so what he meant was: she will walk in and smile and after that she will look around and be pleased. And then he can tell her about . . .
Do not think of.
She can smoothe his troubled brow and, what the heck, they can go out, have some drinks, have a good time, laugh.
Though she dammit hasn’t texted yet. Though the fact that she hasn’t texted yet probably means she is in fact coming back this evening. Though with Sue you can never be sure. And with Sue you must never ever ask.
To ask is to nag.
He clinked his glass down on the aluminium edge of the sink. He looked again out through the grimy window. He felt the obstruction of the seed packets in his left trouser pocket and so stepped sideways and reached for the handle of the kitchen door, lifting it up to unlock and down to unlatch and easing the door halfway open so that he could edge through into the warmish outdoor air. He stood and looked, past the gobstopper bay-tree, a
t the waist-high brick-edged bed that was covered in gravel. He pulled the seed packets crackling out of his pocket and laid them on the round metal table that was beside him with its two matching chairs. He stepped forward and ran his fingers over the layer of rough gravel, no, bigger than that, really little stones, pebbles. He bunched his fingers into a point and pushed them down between the stones, or tried to: he pulled some of the stones backwards and tried to jab his fingers further in before the stones slipped back into the declivity he was trying to make. The tips of his fingers smarted and their nails were bashed.
He went back into the kitchen and trundled open the cutlery door and selected a spoon. At the back of the sink was a mug from which kitchen utensils splayed: he rootled among them for a spatula. Having returned outside he tried the spatula first. It at once bent 90°. The spoon was more effective. But after, what, three or four minutes of concentrated effort, only a little patch of earth was cleared and there was only a little mound of stones beside it.
The layer of pebbles was two inches thick and the surface area was one yard by four.
Where would he put them all? In a heap? In a rubbish sack? But he couldn’t chuck them because probably they were part of the estate there was probably a clause in the contract stating explicitly that no grain of gravel should be removed from this premium rented property on pain of a penalty having to be paid.
Which would be too ridiculous.
He would have to go back to the garden centre and get a tub or a long window box thing to store the pebbles in and also above all a trowel and/or small spade.
Which would mean that he would have to go back past Grace Hanworth’s house which would mean that he would have to think of.
Having checked his watch he stepped back inside and shut the door and rinsed his hands under the tap and shook and dried them.
Perhaps he could take a different route, he thought as he made his way through the house to the front door. But that would be no good because the act of avoiding being prompted to think of it would prompt him to think of it all the more.
The World Was All Before Them Page 20