by Morag Joss
Sara was not sure how to reply to this and was glad, since Sue did not pause very long for her answer, that she did not have to. ‘Oh, but of course you have. You’re so together. Anyway, being centred. Mind and body. I’m sure there’s a connection. I mean, doctors know nothing, do they? Nothing.’
Sara murmured noncommittally, enjoying Sue’s happy energy without really having to listen. They walked on together and as Sue expounded on the ‘latest findings’ which proved that the ancient Egyptians had used pineapple tops as a hallucinogenic drug, or perhaps a contraceptive – Sue couldn’t remember – Sara was wondering if she had somehow strayed into the teddy-bear and iron-candlestick epicentre of the universe. Almost every shop, except those purveying futons, posh underwear and Panama hats, seemed devoted to them. They ogled in the estate agents’ windows along George Street and made their way into the Circus where, between the solicitors’ offices and dental surgeries, the lights from several basement kitchens were already warming the area walls and casting a gleam on the glossy leaves of camellias and bay trees in tubs. This was clearly where the action was at this time of day, for the tall drawing rooms above were dark and their draped windows stared out emptily. Sara breathed in and smelled prosperity, speculating that a few of the Men Who Cook would be busy behind the kitchen windows, pacing the terra-cotta floors, opening the wine to let it breathe, presiding over their copper pans on their bottle-green ranges. Not so much ‘the smell of steaks in passageways’, more the smell of grilled goats’ cheeses with a jus of rowanberries sprinkled with toasted pine kernels on rocket leaves with a raspberry and chive vinaigrette, she thought, but it hadn’t got the same ring.
DEREK HAD got away at a quarter to four by stalling an orthodontically challenged probationary teacher who wanted a chat, knowing that it would mean a miserable weekend for the poor sod who obviously wanted to share the shocking realisation that he was not sure he was really cut out for teaching.
‘Dave, come and see me Monday morning, we’ll get you sorted. Okay? See Cecily, she’s got the diary.’
For good measure he had poked his head into the admin office on his way down the corridor and bawled a cheery and public, ‘Bye, folks! Bye, Cecily, have a good weekend!’
He shot home. He did not take time to change. He stuffed a few things into a huge Marks and Spencer carrier bag: a shirt, jumper, cords, underpants, socks, spongebag. He rolled his favourite knife into his favourite apron and put those in too. He would have liked to take a decent lemon zester and his favourite sauté pan as well – Cecily’s kitchen was naff – but it was smarter not to take too much; it cut down the chances of leaving something behind at Cecily’s that Pauline might later miss. Not that she spent enough time in the kitchen to be entirely au fait with its contents, but she was an observant woman. He scanned the post and stuffed the one envelope addressed to him in his briefcase and took that too. Now he had to get over to Bath, do some shopping and with luck he could still be at Cecily’s before six.
Shopping accomplished, Derek sat fuming, stuck in traffic on the London Road. Worse, he was stuck just outside a filthy pub from whose door an alarming-looking clientele trickled like a toxic spillage out onto the pavement corner. They seemed to have dressed themselves out of dog baskets, with a bit of sleeve and cardigan here and two or three bits of trouser there, rather than complete garments, although their black boots, clinging up to mid-shin, looked whole enough. Most of them looked as if they might have been rolling in mud and were eyeing Derek as if they believed that he had pushed them in it. Despising himself, he locked the car doors. The PM programme chirruped on about league tables, incompetent headteachers and falling standards. Still exasperated but feeling more secure, he fished out the letter he had brought and opened it without noticing the postmark.
Suddenly the world changed colour. It was reelingly good news. The letter informed him that he had been shortlisted for the post of Director of Education and Cultural Services for the City of Bath and North-West Wansdyke. Derek’s heart started to bang in his throat as he recalled the details of his application. He had applied for the job knowing two things: one, that he was a rank outsider and two, that he could write a damn good application when he tried. Although it had been five weeks since he had written it, it was easy to bring to mind what he had put because they were the things he had once believed in and had been bluffing about for years. He had referred to the need to balance consolidation with change, traditional methods with new thinking, and standards with opportunities; he had sprinkled about like hundreds and thousands notions such as diversity, enrichment, accountability, consultation, visionary leadership and fiscal prudence. The result had been a very digestible confection entitled ‘Citizen 2001: Prioritising Educational and Cultural Needs for Bath and North-West Wansdyke into the New Millennium’. He could have been applying to be Secretary of State. He had played up his ‘role’ in the region as a professional educator with ‘solid, hands-on experience’, signalling his readiness to ‘move into the strategic management sphere’. As a ‘key figure’ in ‘culture and the arts’, he had cited a number of small arts charities on whose boards he had rather grudgingly served. He had exaggerated both the scope and scale of two consultancies in the Midlands he had done eight years previously and had described his influence as an ‘advisor’ to a now disbanded theatre-in-education company in terms that were close to fraudulent. He had mentioned a book he was writing about arts education in England and Wales since the 1988 Act, omitting to observe that he had not actually started it, but had done most of the research and lost his notes when his hard disc crashed.
It was not so much an application as a visa, his passport out of his collapsing job in south Bristol and into lovely, elegant Bath (he dismissed the pub crowd as atypical) and the career he deserved. He belonged in Bath. He certainly did not belong in Bristol, and he couldn’t stand much more of it. He had to get out. He had to get the job. He looked at the letter again. It gave no date for the interview, but said he would be contacted in the coming week. Meanwhile, the appointments subcommittee looked forward to the opportunity of hearing an outline of his vision for the authority’s education and cultural provision for the next five years. That would be a doddle. Would he please note that the committee would be taking a special interest in his plans for museums services, since the post for which he had applied, following recent restructuring, would combine the duties of Director of Education for the first time with overall responsibility for the museums function. Oh, God.
Cecily had got back only minutes before him. She had had Dave in tears for an hour and so had had no time to tidy up or change, and was not in quite the desired frame of mind for Derek’s lavish groping in the hall. Nor was she flattered to learn the real reason for his excitement, nor charmed at the prospect of driving straight back into Bath to have a quick look at the costume museum before it closed.
‘I’ve got to be completely prepared for this interview, Cec,’ Derek said. ‘Come with me. It won’t take long. I’ve got to sound as if I know what I’m talking about and I’ll have to get round all the museums, and I haven’t got long. The interview could be the week after next. We could do the others tomorrow. Look, Cec, if I get this job, everything’ll change. For us. It’s what you want. Please.’
Derek so seldom said please.
CHAPTER 2
SARA AND SUE left the savours of the Circus and walked down to the Assembly Rooms, which sat in stately amber splendour surrounded by the flat façades of Ben-nett Street. For a public building it was oddly discreet, with its main entrance at one side and nothing so obvious as posters of forthcoming events or intelligible signs as to its function. Suppose you were a stranger, or somehow just impermeable to the curious Bathonian intelligence that John Wood the Younger’s Assembly Rooms (completed 1771) were now open to visitors and available for functions? If you were just skulking round in ignorance, looking for a way in, you might imagine the building to be the head-quarters of some wealthy religious fringe, or perhap
s a hugely upmarket private cinema. It was slightly irritating, Sara felt, as if you were just supposed to know that inside there was a fabulous costume museum as well as a suite of magnificent eighteenth-century salons.
They went in together through the surprisingly unassuming pillared entrance and into a crowded vestibule. Sara began to feel silly. Perhaps she should have taken up James’s offer of a rest at his flat before the concert. The rehearsal had gone well, although it had not fooled either of them; she had managed to create some semblance of involvement with the music, but no more. They both knew she was cheating, but in the absence of the real thing there seemed to be nothing else she could do. The spark was no longer there. Technically, of course, she was superb, as good as ever, and that would satisfy most of the people listening tonight who would be local, well disposed and feeling charitable. It was an expensive invitation-only dinner and concert, a fund-raiser for the Bath Festival, so Sara expected that she would recognise about two-thirds of the people there. She would see the artistic director of course, impassioned and charming, as well as the festival’s chief executive, perpetually worried about funding, and most of the Festival Trust Board, a motley but well-intentioned crew. Prosperous Bath businesspeople with prosperous clients, strategically invited potential sponsors and festival patrons, as well as many other well-heeled and cultured Bathonians would be there. And the more active Friends of the Bath Festival, like Sue’s aunt, Olivia Passmore, and several others Sara could think of, would probably not miss the chance to hear what they might (wrongly) think was to be Sara Selkirk’s comeback concert. The thought that it was hardly a concert kept returning to her.
People were milling about in the vestibule as Sue got her name checked off and was handed several sheets of recycled paper and the inevitable badge. She moved out of the mêlée and leaned against the wall further up the hall to read down the events programme. The words ‘workshop’, ‘sharing’ and ‘empowerment’ were cropping up rather a lot, even for Sue, and while Sara was reading over her shoulder and trying not to feel supercilious, she saw the big man from Waitrose come into the foyer. As he was almost the only man and certainly the largest person in sight, he immediately seemed to fill the place up. He was with a woman, and together they had a tense, straight-from-the-office look. She was on the short side, carrying only a little surplus weight for her forty-eightish years and clearly not in the habit of asking herself if she might be wearing too much makeup. She was wearing plenty, and broadly speaking to good effect; her round grey eyes had been edged expertly in black, which made her look rather sultry in a slightly dim sort of way. They were only just visible under her coarse fringe, which had apparently been nibbled by something small and very hungry. The original colour of the shoulder-length hair could only be guessed at, because her rough bob had been so mercilessly streaked with bottled colours that it had a strange, defeated patina and curved flat over her head and under her chin like a low cottage roof of thatched aluminium. Through her hair she was peering with interest at the tables of leaflets.
‘Can’t make head nor tail of this,’ Sue whispered. ‘I’m going to ask.’ She wandered further up the hall to a desk marked ‘Enquiries’ and was soon engaged in consultation. From her position against the wall just inside the vestibule Sara observed that a row was starting. The woman in the pay kiosk was agreeing with the big man that, indeed, there were several people here. Yes, she was saying, those people could go round the Museum of Costume in the basement because they were attending a private event at the Assembly Rooms on the ground floor, but the museum was actually closed to the general public from six p.m. It was now five past six, and no, they could not get into the museum until tomorrow morning unless they were participating in the private event, which they were not, were they? This was not going down well. Sara was wondering why these two people should be here at all instead of starting off their evening with a leisurely bottle of champagne somewhere. And since they were obviously together, obviously not married, and had the makings of a delightful and intimate dinner somewhere in the background, would not the most sensible place be in bed, as a postlude to urgent, passionate love-making? Given what Sara presumed were their other options, this consuming interest in historic textiles seemed not altogether healthy. But they really were taking it very seriously, or rather the man was, pointing out that as the premises were actually open, it was surely a little churlish to refuse them entry. His very loud and slow manner of speaking was in itself an insult, implying that he was a patient and forbearing man and she was a pitifully unintelligent woman. That he certainly was not, or that she might have been, was not really the point, and it was having not the slightest effect on the lady in the kiosk.
‘Let it go, Derek,’ his companion was saying quietly behind him.
‘I have no intention of letting it go,’ he said furiously, wheeling round at her. Perhaps they were married after all. But she wore no rings except for two God-awful nuts of turquoise and silver on her right hand.
‘My name is Derek Payne,’ he announced loudly, turning back to the kiosk and pausing as if he expected this information to produce some change of heart. Miraculously it did, or seemed to, for just then the double doors further down the passage behind the kiosk opened and a tall figure in evening dress emerged. Sara was momentarily taken aback, for in the gloom of the corridor the figure looked uncannily like Matteo. The black tie partly created the impression, but also the long legs, the swing of the walk and the thick dark hair, just for a second, unsettled her. The bright light of the vestibule did not quite dispel the impression for, also like Matteo, this man had such an air of professional confidence that immediately Derek Payne looked a little silly.
‘And mine,’ the tall figure said, ‘is Matthew Sawyer. And I am the Director of Museums and Civic Leisure Resources.’
A second surprise: this must be Olivia Passmore’s new boss. The big man, Derek, was allowing himself to be drawn to one side and Sara, overhearing the persuasive baritone of appeasement, guessed that he was being skilfully brought round. It would be fun to relate this little drama to Olivia. She would catch her at the Pump Room later, although if she saw her here they could perhaps walk down together. Olivia was almost a friend, more accurately one of those close acquaintances that are so easy to collect in a place like Bath. Sara knew that after nearly three years as Acting Director of Museums, during which the council had tortuously restructured all its departments, Olivia had dropped gratefully back into her post as deputy director when Matthew Sawyer had been appointed about three months ago.
Derek’s little woman friend was shuffling awkwardly some distance away in the vestibule, picking up leaflets from the Healing Arts registration desk in an attempt to conceal her embarrassment. Sara suddenly felt embarrassed too, feeling that she had been much too obvious in her observation of events. It was not as if this couple held any real interest for her, it was just that having seen Derek in the supermarket it had been amusing to watch the episode unfold, and it was funny, that man looking for a moment so like Matteo, and being called Matthew. She moved away and rejoined Sue, who had finished deliberating and had signed herself up for the first evening session on effective mind and body communication.
‘Sounds brilliant. It’s all about mind and body circuitry, how to talk to your body, get it to heal itself. Attitude, really. Being aware,’ Sue said grandly. ‘You interested?’
‘Er, another time,’ Sara said. ‘Look, you go and find out about your natural healing circuitry. I’ll just have a bit of a wander here, have a look at the stalls. You don’t mind, do you?’
In less than half an hour it would be time for the official welcome, which Sara was certain would amount to a glass of warm organic wine, some turgid phrases from the platform and polite applause. Then she could get off to the Pump Room while Sue delivered herself up wholeheartedly to her – what had she been saying? – ‘simple light tapping on the skull to isolate the problem area and stimulate the brain’. She smiled. ‘It’s nice to see
you really happy,’ she said, touching Sue’s arm. ‘You must make it last, this time. Get that Paul to behave himself.’
‘I’m going to do my very best,’ Sue said seriously, and then sighed. ‘I wish I could be like you. I’m so up and down all the time. I’d love to be more like you. You don’t ever change, do you? You’re always the same.’
Sara, giving Sue a smile which concealed how much this remark depressed her, made for the Ballroom. It was a relief to get away from all that young enthusiasm, and from the embarrassment of the episode in the vestibule. She worried that she might be turning into one of those barking, lugubrious spinsters who stare at people in public. She was going to have to watch it. If she wasn’t careful she would soon be muttering in the street and taking her clothes off in Waitrose. She wandered on, browsing desultorily at the stalls promising holistic massage enabling healing, psychic readings enabling spiritual growth, and something called overtone singing, enabling the finding of one’s voice, which were settled in alongside palmistry, aromatherapy and authentic Guatamalan handicrafts. There was nothing, as far as she could see, that approximated to essential deep relaxation enabling international concert cellists to resume their careers, so she had to settle for some tea tree bath gel. She walked slowly across to the Tea Room. Sue was already there and in conversation with Derek Payne’s woman with the problem hair.
‘Hiya!’ Sue yelped at her from several yards away. ‘You’ll never believe it! This is my landlady!’ Sue beamed. ‘My Monday to Friday landlady, I should say. Cecily! Sara! Meet Cecily, Sara. Cecily, Sara!’ Cecily smiled without showing her teeth. ‘Cecily’s joining the thing tonight, just on impulse, aren’t you?’
Cecily was trying to look relaxed. ‘I just thought I might stay. Someone’s picking me up later. There’s something on organic hair treatments. And the weight-loss bits, I’d like a look at those. I’m only here by accident.’