Over the cheese course, Patrick is talking to Harriet about the problems of choosing what to put on the board. “It’s as Charles de Gaulle once said, you know.”
“No, tell me.”
“‘How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different types of cheese!’”
“Priceless.”
“It’s probably all that anyone will ever remember he said.”
They fall silent, imagining the horror of being remembered for a quip about cheese when in life you were famous for the act of rallying an entire nation, on your own, to resist Nazi rule.
Harriet heaps a biscuit with Brie, puts it into her mouth. This causes a few crumbs to land on the cashmere swaddled shelf of her bosom.
“More wine?” says Patrick, gallantly, as she tidies it up.
Jane eyes Jay. Indicates with her brows that she is going upstairs. She glances at the others around the table. The City couple seem to be getting quietly but progressively hammered on Patrick’s best red Rioja. Tracey and Larry are chatting to them about budgerigars. That’s a subject produced specially for a night like this, thinks Jane sourly. She looks at Jay again. Invisibly to anyone else, he nods approval to her and she leaves the room.
“Harriet, let me get you your fags,” he says. “Are they in your bag?”
“Oh, darling, don’t worry.”
“No problem. I’m going up to the bathroom anyway. How about an inter-course gasper.”
“Patrick, are you sure that’s okay? Sorry. You know I am the last smoker on the planet.”
“Of course Harriet. We love your addiction. Makes us all feel better about our own various foibles.”
Jay stands, edges around the chair, carefully pushes it in, moves around the table.
Upstairs, Jane is already waiting for him in the sitting room, standing by the mantlepiece under the mirror, with her back to the door, glimmering in her silver pleats. He crosses the room swiftly, turns her by her shoulders, kisses her urgently, fumbles at her breasts, pressing his palms against them. The Seventies music continues quietly. Jay starts swaying to the disco beat.
“Could it be that… it’s just an illusion… ” he murmurs.
“God, Jay, be quiet,” she laughs at him.
“Could it be that… in all this confusion… ”
“Shut UP.”
“Haai laaa haaaaiiii! Bur bur!” he says, clicking his fingers.
“Did I never tell you about my disco past?”
“Kiss me,” she says, slightly drunkenly. She exudes the aroma of lamb. So amused is Jay by his disco moment that he decides to overlook this, and give her what she wants.
He’d quite like it too, come to think of it.
The pair are reflected in the large mirror hanging over the mantelpiece. They are now properly kissing.
“Oh, God,” says Jane, pausing for breath, thinking about Tracey as a television personality and dismissing it in favour of thinking about herself, “I could have you right now, on the floor.”
He looks at her for a moment, pondering the option.
“Really?”
The conversation chat from the supper party downstairs sounds very lively. Nobody appears to be climbing the stairs.
Could he? Can he? He thinks he could.
“Alright then. You asked for it, gorgeous.”
“What?” She beams up at him, delighted. She knows she will love to carry this triumph within herself downstairs, the secret knowledge of such a transgression.
He beckons her to him, turns her by her shoulders to face the sofa, pushes her head down and hoists her skirt above her head. To his amazement, she is wearing pull-up stockings without underwear. This unexpected arrangement gives him a vast erection.
“Blimey, Jane.”
She says something, but he has no idea what, since her face has disappeared into a cushion.
He drops his trousers, grasps her buttocks and slides his cock into her. A muffled cry comes in response from the cushion.
Jay finds the whole scene so outrageously exciting that he comes after about twenty seconds. He finishes, and slaps her on the arse a number of times.
Everyone is still chatting merrily downstairs.
“Come on, stand up darling.”
“Alright, alright,” she says, trembling slightly, turning round, standing, adjusting her skirt.
“Christ,” he says, pushing her hair away from her flushed face.
“My God. An inter-course fuck. Inter-course intercourse. Have you ever done that before?”
“Hell, no! Could it be that it’s just an illusion?” he says, clicking his fingers, moving backwards out of the room, laughing.
“One important thing. Have you got Harriet’s fags?”
“Oh, fuck, no.”
He returns to the sitting room.
Jane smoothes her dress, goes downstairs, walks triumphantly into the kitchen to collect the pavlova.
A few seconds later, Jay bounces downstairs, joins the table.
“Here you are, darling.”
He tosses over a packet of Silk Cut.
Upstairs, reflected in the mirror, a pair of pyjamaed legs wiggles. It is George, behind the sofa.
“Ouch! Pins and needles.”
Chapter Eighteen Tracey
Roberta is at Tracey’s door. It’s time for Belle’s lesson. She feels like clicking her heels triumphantly on the doorstep, like Dorothy. Since she had the conversation with Tracey, things have gone very well with this household. Her position is secure, Belle is back on the books, and Tracey is even considering lessons for Grace.
The door is opened by Anya, who merely raises her beautifully arched eyebrows in acknowledgement of her arrival.
“Good evening Anya,” says Roberta.
Anya smiles in response.
“Good night.”
“No, Anya. Good night is when you say good bye. Good evening is when you say hello, in the night.”
Anya nods, briefly, storing the information.
“She’s ready for you. But I think there might be a problem.”
Oh no.
Roberta walks past her, into the house. Belle comes walking heavily downstairs.
“Hello Roberta.”
“Hello Belle. How are you today? I hear there’s a problem of sorts?”
“Nothing major. Only that we have to be quiet, apparently.”
Roberta cocks her head quizzically and follows Belle into the dining room, essentially a darkened junk room with a piano in it. She turns the light on and gestures at the piano stool. Roberta notices that Belle is wearing a long robe with a tasselled hood attached to it. She looks like something out of The Hobbit, thinks Roberta. Belle sits on the stool.
“So, Belle. What’s the story?”
“Oh God. Well. You know my mum is involved with that TV guy?”
“Er, no?”
Belle sighs. “You know, the man who does Makin’s Makeovers on telly. Alan Makin, whatever.”
“Yes. Well, no, but go on. And?”
“Well, he’s come round. Tonight. He’s upstairs!”
Belle points dramatically to the ceiling.
“So we have to be quiet. Mum’s earning a lot of money doing this TV show with him.”
“How interesting.” Hence the sudden arrival of money. Roberta feels slightly disappointed that it is probably the presence of Alan Makin, not her phone call regarding Belle’s future, which seems to have brought about a change in Tracey. Well, maybe they both came at the same moment.
She looks for Belle’s book. But there is another, much more difficult book, open and ready on the piano desk. Beethoven Bagatelles. She turns round with a smile.
“Have you been trying these, Belle? These are terrific. I’m impressed!”
Belle pulls a face.
“Of course I haven’t. They belong to Anya. You know, our au pair.”
“She plays does she?”
Belle shrugs.
“I never hear her. I think she practises when we ar
e out. Obviously she’s much better than I am.”
Roberta puts the Beethoven away, reaches for the Chopin.
“Shall we? I think we might use the metronome today. And in acknowledgement to the counselling session, we should put the practise pedal on, I think.”
Belle nods her head, tosses the giant hood back behind her shoulders, puts her foot on the pedal and begins the prelude.
“Belle, could you possibly roll your sleeves back? Or take off your… robe? I think it’s getting in the way, a bit.”
The girl complies, standing up and wriggling out of the giant striped coat, under which she is wearing a long sleeved sweatshirt and tight running trousers.
“Belle, do you ever let your skin see the light?” asks Roberta, smiling.
Belle shrugs, turns to the Chopin, starts the piece again. The metronome ticks methodically.
Upstairs, Tracey and Alan are sitting on the sofa.
“That’s Belle,” says Tracey. “She always has half an hour piano on Thursday nights. Hope that’s okay?” She looks anxiously at Alan. It’s the first time they’ve met at her house.
He smiles at her, pats her hand.
“Oh, gosh, it’s fine. Love the piano. And your talented children. Wow! She can play, can’t she. Rather quiet isn’t it? Anyway, not a problem.”
They are meeting at Tracey’s house because Alan says that he needs to see how she lives. You are being depicted as one of the Squeezed Middle, you see, he had written in an email to her earlier in the week. So I need to come and see if your house is going to give the right sort of… tone. Alright?
She had agreed to it. He had arrived, wiping his feet on the door mat, his coat slung casually across his arm.
“Hmm. Perfectly middle class,” he had said, walking through the hall, noting the carefully arranged paintings, the flowers, the newly purchased pinboard with rows of keys, a pamphlet showing times of Pilates classes at the private gym, a map from the Paris Metro and other impressive detritus, casually parked behind parking vouchers.
“I thought we would sit down upstairs, because Belle is having her lesson,” she had said.
“Might have to tone this down a bit, you know,” he says, referring to the pinboard. “If people think you are au fait with public transport in Paris, they won’t feel very sorry for you… ”
Alan Makin, TV star and household name bounds into the living room. Tracey stares at him, blinking, trying to reconcile the fact that this person from the television is actually standing in her home.
“Shall we?”
“So, what sort of week have you had, Alan?” asks Tracey.
“Oh, fine. Middling.” This was not quite the case. Several of his key team had announced they were bored with doing financial makeovers and had handed in their notice.
“Been a bit of a personnel shift, actually. Various people have, shall we say, left the ship. Sort of thing that happens now and then.”
“Has all your team gone?”
“Not quite. But a significant minority,” sighs Alan. “They’ve all gone off to L.E,” he says with undisguised loathing.
This television acronym is new to Tracey. She looks at him blankly.
“Light Entertainment. They’ll be back for the autumn run. But at the moment, most of them have gone off to make a Talent Show, leaving a skeleton staff for the rest of this run,” he says sadly. “Talent shows!”
“We’re having one here in the Square.”
“There you are! Sprouting up everywhere.”
“Well, ours isn’t being televised, at least.”
Tracey pauses tactfully.
“How is the Munchkin?”
“Munchkin, oh he’s with me now. We have a cartoon animation team in the room who needed the space he used to have. Apparently he gave some of the team the creeps. For some reason. So he’s come to live with me. His box is in my bedroom.”
Blimey. He really does love that animal.
“So are we still on for my bit on your show?” she says tentatively.
“Certainly are, my dear. Scripts have all been agreed. Next week, we’ll do the filming, I think.”
She nods.
There is a pause. They both listen to the scale of F Major seeping up from downstairs. Belle plays it as if she is typing.
“Now, Tracey, what we have to do is minimise your personal crisis, while making the status quo still seem incredibly disastrous to you and your family.”
“How are we going to do that, then?”
“Simple. We will show how difficult things are, what things you can’t afford, then we have a big graphic sequence in which I show how your money, your remaining money from your… win… can be turned around, the Makin Way. I think it’s going to work. And we’ll focus it here, on your home. So viewers can really understand who you are.”
“Really? I always think my house is a bit chaotic.”
“No, well, maybe. But coming over here, to the actual location. The Square, I mean. When you turn into it. That’s what is so important.”
The truth is that when he had arrived, Alan Makin had driven his car into the Square, switched it off and for a moment or two, had just sat in it at the wheel, mesmerised. All those identical houses. All those neat front doors. It all just seemed so… right, so ideal. He felt as if he had gone back to his childhood.
“You know, it reminds me of Mary Poppins. Or that moment in Oliver! Where they all start singing with barrows and flowers and leaping over doorsteps.”
“Oh, God. Establishment, you mean.” Well, that was what she had bought into.
“Perhaps. Perhaps it’s something more. Maybe it’s the way we should all live. Next to each other. In and out of each other’s domains. Friendly. Neighbourly.”
He thinks of his neighbours in his central London flat. Realises that the only living thing he really knows there, now, is the Munchkin.
“Mmm,” says Tracey. “My neighbours don’t say that when barbeque smoke is blowing over our wall into their garden.”
“So, Tracey, what I need is all your paperwork. Bank statements, accounts for the last few years. And we need a simple explanation about exactly how you earn your income, and how much is earned. And what selling cosmetics comprises of. At which point I have to call in your favour to me. Can I do that, Tracey?”
He turns to her and smiles, in a manner Tracey recognises from countless chat shows on the sofa. She looks at him, considering him.
“Right away. I’m all ears.”
He looks at her.
“I would like your advice. And even though I said it wasn’t about lipgloss, it is.”
Tracey looks at him.
“Lipgloss?”
“It’s more about foundation, actually. I want you to give me some help with makeup, simply. The minute you explained what your work was, I thought, ooh, there IS a way in which you could help me.”
She looks at him, amazed and slightly disappointed.
“I’m a redhead, right?”
She swallows, and nods. What a comedown. She thought he had the hots for her.
“Well, I would say strawberry blond, but go on.”
“And my skin is very fair. My eyebrows, non existent. What I want is just a few tips, products, help with stuff which is going to bring… a bit of colour into my cheeks. And my hands, I’d like them to be… looked at. You with me?”
She nods again.
“I can’t obviously go into Boots and test the samples. Or a nail bar,” he continues. “But I want to try things out, so the internet is hopeless. I’m not asking for false eyelashes, dear. I don’t want the full… ”
Tracey so nearly says Monty. She almost has the word coming out of her mouth, and then shuts it in time. She senses this is not the time for ribaldry. Maybe there will be a time, but not now.
“… works,” continues Alan. “But I would just be keen to know how to subtly apply it. I thought it would be easier to ask you. Than the girls in the makeup department.”
She
is still open mouthed, not knowing what to say. She fears he is bullshitting her.
He looks at her archly.
“Told you there would be no nudity.”
She blushes again. What an idiot.
“Alan, I am sorry about that. I would be… I would be… honoured.” It’s not quite the right word, but it will do.
She hears a door bang downstairs.
“Muuuum, Roberta is leaving,” yells Belle.
“Alright, thank you darling. Thank you, Roberta,” bawls Tracey in response. “See you next week.”
She hears the front door slam and turns back to Alan Makin whom she now regards with, if anything, a little more respect.
“Was this why you thought I could be on your TV show, then?” she says, laughing a little, slightly disappointed.
“That? No. Of course not. You are there for a different reason. Tracey, firstly everyone will be fascinated, because of the Lottery. Secondly, you are the ideal example of someone who spends before they earn. It’s a national disease and you are simply a very sweet exponent of it. So, no, don’t worry. You’ll earn your place on my show alright.”
He pauses, looks at the ceiling, then looks at her, laughing now.
“But I will pay you to show me how to pluck my eyebrows properly. And equip me with the latest in products.”
“Of course. No problem, I’d be delighted. This is my field, after all. I’m an expert in eyebrow plucking. And glueing in false eyelashes, you name it. But… why all the chat before about how understanding I am?”
He shrugs. “I think you are rather understanding, actually. But I needed to see if you were trustworthy without letting you understand why I needed your help.”
God, she is so stupid. She thought he was trying to get into her knickers.
“Sorry, I feel idiotic. Of course, no problem, no problem.” She smiles brightly at him, feeling blinkered and mentally dull.
“I’ve lived here for too long,” she says, gesturing out of the perfectly proportioned window to the manicured lawn outside.
“I wouldn’t be so sure,” says Alan Makin. He stands and walks over to the windows, looks out at the scene before him, of entirely well designed, pleasurable entitlement.
“But we are going to need to make this house look a bit more rundown, frankly. As if you are suffering.”
The Square Page 14