by Judy Astley
‘No – not this morning, thanks.’ Conrad was turning her down, and rather coldly, in her opinion. ‘I’ve got other plans. They do include the dog, as it happens, but also Jasper. I’m going to take him out and tell him some words of wisdom about that great mythical thing called “Art”.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Conrad, why are you being so mardy? Just . . . do whatever you want. I’d love to know what I’ve done to make you turn like this but I’ll leave you to tell me in your own time.’ Sara had run out of patience. In the distance, somewhere in the house, she heard her mobile phone ringing.
Cassandra drove up the hill towards the flat and parked under the horse chestnut tree outside the block. It wasn’t that long since she’d last been at the place, but the tree had gone from pale leaf to full-scale flowering in the time.
She took her time getting Charlie out of the car, putting off the moment of facing Paul. She knew it was the right thing to do, Panda had been right, much as – after the fracas in the pub – she’d been reluctant to admit it. The baby was sleeping in his seat, squashed down into a position that looked horribly uncomfortable.
‘Hey, let me give you a hand.’ Paul was beside her, taking Charlie from her and smiling down at his son. He must have been watching for her car, hanging about at the window as if he was really anxious. Cass tried to feel irritated by this – who needs that much dependence? But all she could feel was quite deeply touched.
‘I’ve soo missed you!’ Paul murmured to the sleeping child. ‘You’ve grown!’
‘It hasn’t been that long, Paul!’ Cass said. ‘He’s probably only a few ounces bigger.’
‘That’s a big proportion when you’re this young,’ he pointed out. ‘I’d notice if you put a few pounds on – which you haven’t – definitely not. I just mean . . . you look great. As you always do. Oh God, I’m getting this all wrong, aren’t I? Come into the flat. It’s um . . . well I want you to see it.’
She followed him up the stairs. Clean stairs, she noticed. And a junk-free hallway at the top. No grit or grime on the stair carpet, either. The vacuum cleaner must have been faint with shock at actually being dragged out for use.
‘Where is all the ski kit?’ she laughed. ‘You flogged it all on eBay?’
‘I took it down to my folks’ place and stashed it in one of the barns. I went to Sussex for the weekend and took a vanload.’ He looked very proud of himself.
The flat looked completely different. It was staggeringly clean – no pizza boxes, no shoes all over the floor, no books tumbled from the shelves or magazines in tattered heaps. It was scrubbed clean and every surface shone. A huge bowl of near-black tulips stood on the smear-free glass table, on which there were no used glasses, grubby forks, toast crumbs or heaps of coursework. Best of all, the walls were freshly painted. Palest duck-egg blue now covered what had been a depressing shade of dirty cream. The manky old brown flowery sofa had a deep blue blanket across it and there were half a dozen new velvet cushions in shades of purple, from palest lavender to deepest aubergine, probably courtesy of Paul’s mum in Sussex, a woman very handy with a sewing machine.
‘Wow, the place looks twice the size! I love the colour on the walls. You’ve had that woman in, haven’t you? The one on telly who clears out all your possessions? I hope you didn’t throw any of mine away.’ She went through to the bedroom. The wardrobe door was back on its hinges. The broken drawers were all fixed. The bed had a new pearly grey silky throw over it, and she could see that the sheets were clean and new. Charlie’s cot, complete with the Conrad mobile hanging over it, was ready for him. Paul was putting him gently into it, looking so happy to see his baby that Cass could feel her heart completely melting.
‘I didn’t get rid of anything of yours. Of course I didn’t. What you left, that is; you took just about the lot! I found your pink cashmere sweater though, and I . . .’ He stopped and flicked at the mobile.
‘You what?’ she asked. ‘You kept it in bed with you and slept with it?’ She giggled but he just looked sheepish.
‘Oh, Paul, please tell me you didn’t!’ she laughed.
‘I can’t. It’s what I did,’ he admitted. ‘I missed you, Cass. I want you back here. I hate it without you.’
‘Ah now . . . wait. Too fast!’ She backed out towards the sitting room. The proximity of the bed might be giving him ideas. It was giving her ideas. He was looking devastatingly tempting, she’d admit, but what had changed here really?
After the incident in the pub, Pandora had phoned and lectured her about how stupid and stubborn she was being, cutting Paul out of her life and Charlie’s. Cass had hung up on her, still furious, but had thought about it during the night and conceded that maybe she was being unkind, but only in terms of parental access. Of course Paul should see his son. And that’s why she was here. Not for anything else.
‘Look, Paul, I haven’t come back here to move in . . . nothing’s changed. Not . . . yet.’ She looked around. ‘The flat is lovely though, you’ve done such a lot!’
He shrugged. ‘Oh, I had help. A couple of the first fifteen came round and did the painting with me. One of them was quite handy with a screwdriver. Hey, do you want anything? A drink? Tea? Come and see the kitchen.’
They could have been in a different flat. ‘I didn’t know the hob could get this shiny,’ she laughed. ‘I thought all those marks were permanent. Are you going to be able to keep it like this?’
‘I can only try, I suppose,’ he told her. ‘It’s quite nice to be in here now that it’s actually clean. When you’ve done it once, you know what to aim at.’
‘Yeah, well you weren’t often in before, were you?’ she said. ‘How much of that has changed? You were practically resident in the Union bar.’ She opened a cupboard, found his biscuit supply and helped herself to a HobNob. The shelf had been cleaned. Before, there’d been crumbs everywhere, a cockroach hazard. No wonder she’d needed to escape. Who wanted to raise a baby with a bug-invasion threat? ‘Actually, I feel a bit guilty about this,’ she told him, looking at the pristine worktop, the gleaming sink. ‘You might be trying to seduce me back here with your impressive range of cleaning products, but I wasn’t that great on the housework front either, was I?’
‘You were rubbish!’ he laughed, taking milk out of the fridge for their tea. There were still cans of beer in there, she noticed. It was quite a relief really; if it had been full of bottled water and organic leaves she’d have really thought there was something to worry about.
‘But it’s not all about the flat, is it?’ he said. ‘What about Charlie? I need to see him much more. If you don’t want to come back to live with me, we’re going to have to make some kind of proper arrangements. I want as much access to him as you’ve got. And even if one of us meets somebody else . . .’
‘Wait . . . hang on a bit.’ Cass put her hand up to stop him. ‘What’s with the “somebody else”? A minute ago you were saying you were sleeping with my jumper. Are you now saying you’re sleeping with one of the Sports Science students? I knew it! I always thought . . .’
‘No! Of course I’m not! And I never was! Look, what can I do to convince you? I was completely out of order being out way too much, but . . . I never cheated on you. I wouldn’t; couldn’t. I do love you, Cass, and you know that, deep down.’
Cassandra believed him – this she couldn’t deny; but what she also needed to believe was that he would give her some consideration when he was in the Union bar or at the rugby club, and not assume that swanning in at 2 a.m. singing and kicking around clumsily was remotely acceptable. It also wasn’t acceptable that Charlie should have to inhale the collective air out-breaths of six big boozed-up mates of Paul’s while they played stupid noisy computer games.
‘Charlie’s easier now he’s on proper food,’ she said. ‘I didn’t like going out much before because of that public breast-feeding thing. It’s not so bad in Starbucks in the middle of all the thirty-something mummies and stuff because they all do it too, but
in the student canteen it’s just something for stupid boys to gawp at. Do you know how humiliating it is, every single time, to hear one of them going “She’s getting her tits out for the lads” like some immature wanker? So . . . well, now that’s over, I suppose I won’t want to stay in as much as I did. I get tired though – it’s not easy taking care of a baby and doing all the college stuff too. I quite like staying with my parents – they look after Charlie and I get proper food!’
Paul put his arms round her and hugged her close. She breathed in the warm, familiar scents of him: powdery Dove shower gel and fabric conditioner on his T-shirt. She tried to tell herself that there was more to love than the smell of Being Clean, but for now it was close to being enough. He was kissing her, just gently as if still testing if this was all right. It was. Very much so. Charlie, perhaps sensing that his parents’ attention was no longer focused on him, woke up and started to yell. Cass laughed and broke away from Paul.
‘Come on, let’s go and deal with him,’ she said, taking Paul’s hand. ‘Good thing he woke up, really.’
‘I suppose it is,’ Paul agreed reluctantly. ‘Otherwise we might just have made him a little sister.’
‘It’s just up here, on the left in the middle of those chic little shops.’ Ben pointed up the road. ‘And ooh, a lucky parking spot.’ He swished the car quickly across the road as someone pulled out from a pay and display space.
‘Do shops in Notting Hill come any other way but chic?’ Sara commented. ‘It’s a very flash area.’
The lease must have cost a fortune, she thought. Why on earth didn’t they want someone more prestigious among their first exhibitors? She knew she wasn’t going to be the only one – perhaps she was the token ‘ordinary’. Perhaps some sort of grant depended on there being someone who could almost, these days, count as an amateur.
They left the car and walked up the road, passing shops full of quirky clothing with price tags she didn’t need to look at, and plenty of places selling cutesy design items. In between were still little stores selling groceries and classy meat, but it was hard not to think their days were numbered; how much longer could they survive the inflated rents of the area?
‘Obviously, you’ll have to imagine it finished,’ Ben warned her as he opened the gallery door. ‘The builders are still in sorting out the electrics.’
It was a good-sized space, the entire depth of a former shop, though only single frontage. It had had a basic coat of white paint but was going to need another. The ceiling was unexpectedly high and Sara realized the floor above had simply been removed, which offered plenty of wall space for some pretty massive paintings. She only hoped they’d thought about how to get them in. Conrad had had that kind of trouble more than once. His own studio doors were double ones, extending upwards as high as the wall allowed, but in the early days there had been times when managers of the places his paintings had been delivered to hadn’t thought about canvas size.
‘Mindy!’ Ben kissed a plump blonde woman dressed in old paint-splashed jeans and a crumpled denim shirt. ‘Mindy, this is Sara, the one with the gorgeous paintings. Sara, my sister Mindy.’
‘Sara – lovely to meet you! And I love your work! Ben showed me the photos. So vibrant, so exciting! It’s just what we need here, I think. I know Caro agrees.’
‘Caro?’ Sara asked. ‘Is she . . . ?’
‘Oh, just another investor,’ Ben interrupted, ‘Only a side sponsor, sort of thing. Not hands-on.’ Mindy gave him an odd look but didn’t comment.
‘So, how’s it going, Mindy? Did you make a decision about surfaces?’ Ben asked.
Mindy searched through a pocket and pulled out a creased piece of paper. ‘Ah! Now I’ve saved that nasty little task for you, Ben! You’re not going to like this, but . . .’
Ben groaned. ‘No, don’t tell me . . . not . . .’
‘Yes – you’ve got it! The dreaded Ikea trip. Every project has one. Here, I’ve written it down. It’s all in stock at the moment, because I checked online, but if you could possibly go today to make sure? Is that tricky?’
Conrad and Jasper had walked Floss along the river bank from Petersham to Teddington Lock and back again by way of the meadows. Conrad had told Jasper about Dadaism, Cubists and op art, and Jasper had told him about the girl with the blood hair he’d met in the pub. The day was hot and both were now tired.
‘It’s a long way for an old dog,’ Conrad commented as they approached the Ham House ferry.
‘Are you very old then?’ Jasper said. ‘You’re one of those people it’s hard to tell about. Like Mick Jagger is pension age but still jumping about. But my mate Piran’s dad, he’s way less than that and he can like hardly move without getting all out of breath. I think it’s about hair.’
‘Actually, I meant that the dog was old,’ Conrad told him. ‘But yes, I am that old. But not as old in dog years as Floss. What do you mean about hair?’
‘Well, you and Mick Jagger have got loads, like young blokes still,’ Jasper said. ‘Piran’s old man, he’s like fluffy bald. He looks like a baby bird. ’Cept old, obviously, and his feathers are falling out not growin’ in.’
‘Strength in hair – the old Samson thing. I don’t think there’s much in it myself, but it’s possibly the deeply psychological reason why I keep mine so long. You can’t be too careful.’ It was quite a thought, he pondered now; perhaps in order to bring about his own demise he had to do nothing more hands-on than shave his head. Maybe that would cause an instant grinding to a halt that no one could suspect was deliberate. There’d be some barber at the salon up the road who would never know he was an accessory to suicide. Or would it even count as murder?
They were approaching the gun club’s headquarters now. Conrad had met one of the committee not long ago and had been invited to look round. So often from the other side of the river he heard volleys of shots as the members had their competitions or practice sessions. He imagined crazed gunmen, corralled for the neighbourhood’s safety behind vast walls, playing with AK47s and sundry serious armaments. He’d wondered if they dressed up for their sessions here, if the place was full of devoted enthusiasts in camo gear, smeared with mud. Or if they had an area where they could play Bank Robber, a pretend shopfrontage like children had, even a getaway driver to add to the game. An idea flickered into life.
‘Jas, let’s just go in here for a minute,’ Conrad suggested, turning off the path. ‘Got someone I’d like to see, that’s if he’s in.’
Dave was in. He unlocked the entry door and let Conrad and Jasper into the clubhouse, then locked it firmly again after them. ‘Security,’ he pointed out, rather unnecessarily. ‘We’d be closed down for the slightest breach. How are you, Conrad? This your lad?’
‘My nephew, Jasper,’ Conrad told him.
Dave put out his left hand for Jasper to shake, which he did, though looking confused. ‘Not much left of the other one!’ Dave joked, holding up a hand that was missing bits of most fingers. ‘Accident with a chainsaw, in case you were wondering, though there’s a couple of blokes here missing the odd toe from a careless bit of loading. Dangerous hobby, guns. What can we do for you, Conrad?’
Jasper shivered and put his hands in his pockets, as if to keep his own fingers safe.
‘Just fancied a quick look-see, if that’s all right,’ Conrad said. ‘Only if you’ve got time though. We were just passing. Dog walk.’
‘Sure – it’s quiet today. No competitions on, just the odd bod around practising in their own time. Come on through.’
Apart from the indoor ranges, there were several outdoor target areas, protected by high walls. Fencing round the edges was new and secure. ‘We do what we can about the soundproofing,’ Dave explained, ‘but shooting’s a noisy business and the river being there doesn’t help. Sound carries on water. We’re very big on safety, though. You have to be.’
‘So . . . no one’s died here?’ Conrad said. ‘No one’s accidentally shot a mate and said, “Oops!”? No one’s shot
themselves; in the terminal sense, I mean, not just a toe?’
‘Don’t even joke about it! Certainly not! Do you think this place would still be open if that happened? Can you imagine the outcry? Responsible handling of weapons is the first priority!’
‘Responsible and weapons?’ Jasper looked puzzled. ‘Don’t want to be rude, but isn’t that a, wossname, an ox-thing?’
‘Oxymoron. Probably. Good on you, Jas, we’ll make a pacifist of you yet. Excellent. And thanks Dave, it’s been most enlightening. I’ve always wondered what this place was like. We’d better make a move – I’ve left the dog tied up by the door and I don’t want her getting overheated.’
‘Why did you ask him all that stuff about accidents?’ Jasper asked as soon as they were out on the main path again. ‘You sounded like you were planning a murder!’
‘Not a murder as such,’ Conrad told him as they walked down to the riverside to catch the ferry. ‘No, not a murder.’
‘You didn’t have to come, you know. It’s way beyond the call of duty, but I’m very glad you did,’ Ben said to Sara later as they parked the car outside the Wembley Ikea.
‘Well, it wasn’t that far from Notting Hill and I haven’t got anything else I desperately need to do today,’ she told him. ‘And besides, no one should have to face Ikea in the middle of the day unprotected. You could end up trying to cram half a kitchen and a sofa called Blord into the back of your car. And your car . . . well it doesn’t have room for more than a bag of essential tea lights and a pack of meat-balls, does it?’