Rise and Fall of a Domestic Diva (4 page)

Robert sat staring about the Ellington Technology College staff room waiting for Kate to call him about St Anthony’sand whether Findlay had got a place.

The seat next to him was blue and covered in cigarette burns from the days when staff were allowed to smoke. A Swiss cheese plant belonging to Les Davies, deputy headthat had been there as long as Leswas on top of a filing cabinet behind him that nobody had opened for years, and that blocked out what little natural light had the heart to try and make its way into the room.

The bell had rung and the dust had resettled. An art teacher with a cold was snivelling in a corner and muttering at a memo Sellotaped to the wall while inadvertently slopping the sleeves of her jumper into her coffee. The memo was from the Metropolitan Police warning staff at the school of a new gang whose initiation ceremony comprised driving a car in the dark without putting the car’s headlights on. If another driver on the road flashed the car, the wannabe gang member had to pursue it and shoot the driver. Bettina, the new geography teacher from South Africa, was looking at a property investment magazine’s special Romania
supplement, which was the only place in Europe on her salary where she could afford to buy.

After staring for another second, transfixed by a ripped corner of carpet tile the same helpless blue as the chairs, Robert hauled himself to his feet. Bettina looked up from the computer-generated image of a Romanian shepherd’s hut after modernisation, and stareddistractedat Robert.

‘I’m meant to be teaching now,’ he said.

Bettina didn’t say anything to this; she just nodded and went back to the modernised shepherd’s hut.

The art teacher carried on muttering and Robert left the room, the smell of burnt coffee, frustration and despair replaced immediately by the smell of the next generationwhoever they were.

When he got to his classroom, the door was open and the kids were inside, unaccountably silent, until Robert realised that the squat man in the corridor outside, staring through the window opposite the door, was Les the deputy head. Despite bearing an uncanny resemblance to Goebbels, he was the only incorruptible thing in the school and, because of this, the children were terrified of him. Les was from the Rhondda Valley and used to get heavily involved in school musicalswhen they used to have school musicals…when they used to have a music department.

Most people found Les aggressive; some of them even found him tyrannical, but Robert and Les shared a mutual, hard-earned respect for each other, and Robert always found him protective.

‘Sorry about that,’ he said to Les’s back, jerking his thumb at the classroom full of children and suddenly aware that he was out of breath even though he hadn’t been running. ‘I got caught up, and…sorry,’ he said again.

Les sighed, but didn’t turn round.

He carried on standing, motionless, as if he had finally
come to the conclusion that while he didn’t have a life, he did have an existence and an existence, if nothing else, did at least provide respite from having to decide whether he was alive or in fact dead.

‘What are you doing with them?’ he said at last, still without turning round.

‘Seamus Heaney,’ Robert said, automatically.

‘I never did like Seamus HeaneyI think I tried to. Anyway, I unlocked the classroom and got them in for you.’

‘Thanksthanks for that.’

‘I was passing and Keisha was banging Shanique’s head repetitively against the wall.’

‘Yeah, Keisha does that.’

‘Ellie Palmer’s in this class,’ Les said, suddenly changing the subject.

‘Ellie’s—’

‘A brilliant and messy girl,’ Les finished quietly for him. It was Les and Robert, jointly, who were behind getting Ellie to apply for the St Paul’s sixth-form scholarship. He turned round suddenly, staring at Robert. ‘Are her and Jerome Simmons still going out?’

Robert shook his head slowly. ‘Don’t think so.’ He didn’t have the perverse interest in the students’ love lives that a lot of the staff had.

The two men watched each other, Robert fighting hard against his instinct to tell Les that, for the first time in his professional life, he was terrified of walking through that classroom door because of Jerome Simmons. That up until this moment he’d always felt that the job needed him as much as he needed the job, but now he was starting to believe he was in the wrong place and that somebody else should be doing this. He wasn’t sure he wanted Les knowing this because this would make him, Robert, just like every other teacher in Ellington and the kids already knew…
were already onto him with the instinct of a pack, systematically rooting out weakness because children can’t abide weakness.

‘What’s he doing?’ he said instead to distract Les, pointing at Simba, the caretaker, who was out on the flat roof just below.

‘What’s that?’ Les turned slowly away from him to stare at Simba. ‘Ohpigeons. He’s been trying to perfect some sort of acid glue he can paint on the roof to discourage them from landing.’ Les let out another sigh. ‘The acid in the glue burns their feet off if they do landapparently.’

Robert didn’t comment on this.

The murmur from the classroom behind them was getting louder and interspersed with distinct screams, shrieks and rhythmically choreographed abusive exchanges. Robert recognised Jerome’s voice and knew his face had changed and knew that when Les turned round he wouldn’t be able to disguise the fear his face was full of.

So he turned quickly to the window again, staring out over Simba’s bent back and the edge of the roof to the only piece of green in sight; an inexplicable mound about the same shape as a small Iron-Age fort that was known among staff and students alike simply as ‘The Clump’. Beyond The Clump was the Esso garage the council had sold the school’s last playing field to and, beyond that, the Elephant and Castle.

Local press abounded with mythical promises of regeneration, but at the moment the panorama on offer was a four-lane super-roundabout with exits leading to some of London’s most destitute spinal cordsand a Soviet-era shopping centre, which was quite a feat of urban planning in a country that had never had its own Soviet era.

A couple of boyspossibly studentspushed a moped across the empty playground.

‘In the beginning,’ Les said suddenly, ‘somebody somewhere
had a vision, that’s all.’ He sounded elegiacas though he’d decided right then and there that he’d lived one life too many. He clapped Robert warmly, forcefully, on the shoulder. ‘You’ll be all right.’

Robert nodded.

Then, with Les’s footsteps still ringing down the corridor, he walked into the classroom and the crescendoing, unavoidable, ‘Yo, sir! Yo, sir!’ There in front of him was the mob.

His eyes hit Ellie because she was sitting at the front of the class to the right-hand side of his desk and was the first thing in his line of vision. He hadn’t meant to look at her in particular, and certainly never intended to look at Jerome after that. But he didand saw that Jerome had seen him looking at Ellie.

He’d been caught off guard, but then it had been so long since anybody had looked at him in the way Ellie had when he walked into the room. When was the last time he’d caused anybody so much pleasure, simply by walking through a door?

Her eyes opened so wide he felt he could have just carried on walking straight into them.

He came to a halt behind the desk, pressing his fists down hard into the surface. This was wrong. The wrong way to think and the wrong direction to start walking inno matter how wide her eyes opened.

At No. 22 Prendergast Road, Margery was on all fours crying with rage over Ivan’s bowl, which was full of corned beef. She’d seen it, smelt it and tasted itand it was definitely corned beef.

When Ivan came creeping back into the kitchen, his shoulder blades rolling smoothly as he sniffed at the floor around his bowl, Margery screamed at him, still sobbing, ‘Bugger off, just bugger off.’ She elbowed the white cat away, anger replacing fear, but Ivan came back, nonplussed by the elbow in his flankand gave the corned beef a few aggressive licks.

Margery staggered to her feet and kicked him across the kitchen.

After bouncing off the fridge, he landed with a whine, paused, licked at a back paw then padded quietly into the hallway where he sat and waited, letting his posture insinuate that
his
dignity, at least, was intact.

Panting, Margery slammed the kitchen door shut, decanted the corned beef from Ivan’s bowl into a plastic mixing bowl and, taking a pair of tweezers from her handbag, which she always kept within close range, started to painstakingly pick Ivan’s hairs out of the corned beef.

Jessica Palmer was inside No. 8 Beulah Hill doing a viewing with a young, top-of-the-range couple when her mobile rang. She didn’t usually take calls during viewingsnot unless it was Ellie or the nurserybut she took this one because it was Kate Hunter, and Kate was meant to be picking Arthur up from nursery and taking him to Swim School. In fact, Kate Hunter was her childcare lifeline.

The top-of-the-range young couple drifted upstairs.

Beulah Hill, like the rest of the streets in the postcode, had gone from destitute to up-and-coming to boom as generations of Irish and Jamaicans started selling up and moving out, and young couples started selling flats in Battersea, Putney and Clapham and moving in; taking out extra-large mortgages in order to pay for the reinstallation of sash windows the Irish and Jamaicans had replaced with uPVC double glazing. Once the sash windows were reinstalled, they moved onto the floors, replacing carpet with solid wood flooring. Sea green and lilac bathroom suites were ripped out, along with any dividing wallsto create living spaces that allowed lifestyles to circulate more freely. Some of the
houseslike the McRaes’got to feature on TV makeover programmes.

No. 8 had yet to be made over.

‘Kate?’ Jessica whispered into the phone.

‘Hi, Jessica?’

‘Hi…’

‘Why are you whispering?’

‘I’m doing a viewing on Beulah Hill.’

‘What’s that?’

‘I said, I’m doing a viewing on Beulah Hill.’ There was a pause. ‘Kate?’

‘Beulah Hill? You’re there at the moment? Has anyone put an offer in yet?’

‘No.’ Jessica scanned the green shag-pile carpet and green leather three-piece. The light coming through the double layers of net at the windows made the room seem as though it was under water, and had the effect of making Jesus, with his arms outstretched, executed in oils and framed on the wall above the mantlelook as if he was floating.

‘Why were you asking?’ she joked. Then, before Kate had time to respond to this, said, ‘Is it still okay for you to take the boys swimming tonight and pick them up?’ She tried not to sound desperate, knowing from experience how off-putting desperation was but, since Peter’s death, she seemed to be perpetually desperate, and perpetually having to conceal it was draining.

When Kate didn’t respond to this, she prompted her, ‘The boys? Swimming?’ and waited.

‘Swimming?’ Kate’s voice sounded vague and preoccupied.

‘You were going to take the boys to Swim School after nursery and then I was going to pick Arthur up from yours around six?’

Silence, as Kate rapidly processed these facts as if she was hearing them for the first time, which she wasn’t. ‘Fineyes, that’s fine. Robert’s going to pick the boys up from swimming.’ She made a mental note to remind Robert.

Jessica, trying not to cry with relief, missed what Kate said next. ‘What’s that?’

‘I said maybe I am interested.’

‘In what?’

‘Taking a look at Beulah Hill.’

‘You’re thinking of moving?’

‘Possibly.’ Kate’s only appointment that morning had been a teenage schizophrenic, so she’d spent most of her time after printing off a map of the St Anthony’s catchment area, as well as two copies of the appeal form, on Rightmove. By the time she discovered that the only property with at least three bedrooms under seven hundred thousand and within the catchment area was No. 8 Beulah Hill, a dull thumping sensation had started somewhere just behind her left temple, and she knew that at some point that day she would have a migraine.

‘But you’ve got a lovely house.’

In the silence that followed, Kate realised that Jessica was waiting for some sort of explanation. ‘We were thinking of buying something abroad,’ she liedanother lie. ‘Maybe downscaling in London, cashing in on some capital and getting somewhere in Franceto take the kids in the holidays.’

‘Well, how much were you thinking of spending?’ Jessica said, thinking that at least the Hunters would be around in the term-time still. Kate was the only person she knew who ever offered to help with Arthur.

‘Around four fifty?’

‘This is on for four eighty.’

‘I know, I’ve been looking at it on Rightmove. How long’s it been on the market for?’

‘Over six weeks.’

‘So you haven’t been able to shift it.’

‘Well, I’ve got a young couple here at the moment…you never know: people are unpredictable.’

There was undisguised panic in Kate’s voice as she said, ‘What about this afternoon? Could I take a look this afternoon?’

‘This afternoon?’ Jessica laughed. ‘I can’tI’m booked through to five thirty. I think everybody in the office is.’

‘What about now?’

‘Now?’

‘I can be there in under ten minutes.’

‘I don’t know…’

‘Come on, Jessica.’

‘I’ll give you ten minutes then I’ll have to goI’ve got another viewing.’

‘I’ll be there.’

Jessica was about to call off when Kate said, ‘WaitI meant to ask. Did you get your letter?’

‘What letter?’

‘The St Anthony’s letter?’

‘No ideaI left before the post. Did Findlay get in?’

‘He did.’

‘Well, I hope to God Arthur gets a place then. They’re almost like brothershe’ll be distraught if he and Findlay get separated.’

Kate tried to think of something to saya statement like this warranted somethingbut she couldn’t. Arthur Palmer swore; Arthur Palmer looked malnourished; Arthur Palmer’s hair was too short, his clothes inflammatory. Arthur Palmer was all wrong and Kate had done everything she could to separate him and Findlay, but nothing worked. Ros Granger and Harriet Burgess had both commented on thissmuglybut no matter how hard Kate tried to push
Findlay in the direction of Toby and Casper, Findlay refused to have anything to do with either of them.

When Kate failed to respond, Jessica said, ‘So it’s definitely okay for you to pick Arthur up after nursery?’getting back to her primary concern.

A moment’s hesitation, as Kate fought to remember the complicated logistics involving her own children and Jessica’s, then, ‘Yesfine. Okay, I’m leaving now.’ Kate called off.

Jessica hadn’t heard the young couple come back downstairs, and now they were standing in front of her, and she could tell from the way the man said, ‘So how long has it been on the market for?’ that he’d already asked her once, maybe even more than once.

‘Not long,’ Jessica said.

‘How long?’ he insisted.

‘Just over a week,’ she lied, ‘which is why we haven’t got round to printing details yetand, to be honest, properties like this are going so fast, nine times out of ten we don’t even get round to printing details. A lot of the properties don’t even make it onto the Internet.’

The man was staring at the oil painting of Jesus on the wall opposite, unconvinced.

Jessica was about to give them the whole spiel on getting the loft converted into a fourth bedroom with en-suite, and how unusual it was to find a seventy-foot garden in this area, when Mr Jackson, the elderly Jamaican vendor, shuffled into his home carrying a blue plastic bag with two cans of Kestrel inside.

‘Y’all right?’ he smiled awkwardly at them all. ‘SorryI stayed out; thought you’d be done by now.’

‘Don’t worry, we’re just leaving, Mr Jackson,’ Jessica said as brightly as she could.

Mr Jackson carried on staring at them all, confused by the whole process. ‘That’s my wife,’ he said after a while,
following the young man’s gaze and pointing to the picture of Jesus.

The young man nodded and smiled and tried not to look scared.

‘She was the one what had the religion.’ Mr Jackson paused. ‘She died,’ he added, looking hopefully at them all, as if one of them might have heard otherwise.

The young man mumbled, ‘Sorry to hear it,’ and started to propel his partner towards the hall.

Jessica followed them out.

Mr Jackson stayed where he was. ‘Y’all goin?’ he said to the empty room.

On the pavement outside No. 8, she shook hands with the young couple as a fleet of motorised scooters raced up the road behind them.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ she called out enthusiastically, watching the couple get into their car and start to argue.

No. 8 Beulah Hill was a bargainif she had the money, she would have bought it herself. All it needed was thirty to fifty thousand pounds of work done on it and it would be worth over six hundred and fifty, but nobody seemed to have the imagination to see beyond Mr Jackson and the Jackson décor. People these days wanted to walk into readymade lives. Her phone started ringing again.

It was Kate.

‘Still there?’

‘Still here.’

‘GreatI’m just round the corner. Oh, and Jessica, I meant to sayyou’re the only person I’ve told about the whole downscaling/second property in France thing, so…’

‘Don’t worry, I won’t say anything.’

‘To anyone.’

‘To anyone.’

‘Great.’ A pause. Then again, ‘Great.’

By the time she came off the phone, the silver BMW containing the young couple had slid away. She turned and knocked on the door of No. 8 againto see if it was okay to do the viewing with Kate now.

After a while, she rang a second time, and Mr Jackson appeared in the door, the blue carrier bag still in his hand, staring blankly at her. He looked as though he’d been crying.

‘Mr Jackson? It’s Jessica, Mr JacksonJessica from Lennox Thompson Estate Agents?’

He nodded patiently at herwithout any apparent recollection.

She turned and pointed to the Lennox Thompson For Sale sign attached to his gatepost.

‘It’s Jessica, Mr Jackson,’ she said again, glancing at him standing in his doorway staring at the Lennox Thompson For Sale sign as though he’d never seen it in his life before. ‘I’ve got someone who wants to see the property.’

‘The property,’ he repeated, grinning to himself.

‘Yes, the propertyyour housenow. If that’s okay with you?’

‘They want to see it now?’

‘They want to see it nowis that okay?’

Mr Jackson sighed, shaking his head and disappeared back inside without shutting the front door.

‘Mr Jackson?’ Jessica called out.

Then the Hunters’ Audi estate pulled up and Kate got out panting, as though she’d been running, not driving.

‘Jessicathanks so much.’

‘Are you serious about this?’

‘I just want to take a look,’ Kate said, her eyes once more skimming the peach-coloured window frames and impenetrable layers of net hanging at the windows.

‘It needs work doing to itabout thirty grand’s worth.
Nothing structuralmostly cosmetic. Sorry, we’re going to have to be quick, I’m meant to be somewhere else.’

Jessica gave Kate the tour.

Mr Jackson remained motionless on the sofa watching a Gospel channel.

‘I’ll be in touch,’ Jessica called out to him as they left the house.

There was no reply from Mr Jackson.

‘Well, I’m definitely interested,’ Kate said on the pavement outside No. 8.

‘Have a think about it.’

‘I’m definitely interested,’ she said again.

‘Well, talk to Robert -.’

‘I’m going to.’ She nodded to herself then swung back to Jessica. ‘What are you doing tonight?’

‘Tonight? Nothing.’

‘Why don’t you come to the PRC meeting?’

‘I didn’t know there was a PRC meeting.’

‘Didn’t Harriet phone you?’

Harriet hadn’t phoned for some time. In fact, Jessica hadn’t been to the last three PRC meetings. ‘No.’

An awkward silence. Jessica was one of those people it was almost impossible to lie to. ‘Harriet’s probably just lost your number or something. You know what she’s like.’

Jessica didn’t respond immediately. ‘Look, I’ll let you knowI’ll see how Ellie’s day’s been, and if she minds me leaving Arthur with her.’ She paused, looking suddenly pleased. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Course I’m sure. It’s an important one tonightabout the street party.’

‘What street party?’

‘The street party we’re having in June.’

‘Oh. Okaywell, I’ll call you.’

Even though she was late, Jessica stayed on the pavement
waving stupidly at the disappearing Audi before getting into her own car.

Watching her in the rear-view mirror, Kate felt a stab of regret.

What had incited her to invite Jessica to the PRC?

Harriet had an almost pathological hatred of Jessica Palmer, whose misshapen life filled Harriet with horror. She treated her as though tragedy was contagious, because even dullwitted Harriet realised that the grief that comes with tragedy has the ability to shape lives in a way happiness never does.

Sighing, Kate turned the corner onto Lordship Lane.

Jessica sat for a while, listening to a dog barking somewhere close by, then turned the keys in the ignition.

Twenty minutes later, she walked into the newly openplanned offices of Lennox Thompson.

Most of the staff were out on viewings or valuationsapart from Elaine and the manager, Jake, who was almost ten years Jessica’s junior, on the Oxford Alumni, and seriously addicted to coke, which gave his skin a grey pallor that was only heightened by being perpetually offset against the white shirts he insisted on wearing.

Jake thought Jessica and him had things in commonprimarily their educationwhich led him to keep up a repartee with her that was at once fraternal and elegiac.

Jessica knew it wasn’t Oxford they had in commonit was tragedy.

In Jake’s case, the fatal error of perpetually trying to impress parents who had never learnt how to love their childrenhe once told her his father used to make him weed the borders naked, as a punishment.

In Jessica’s, never having made any provisionemotional or materialfor Peter’s untimely death.

‘Guess what?’ Jake said, looking up as Jessica walked into the office.

‘What?’

‘They’re opening a branch of Foxtons here.’

‘Foxtons?’

He nodded, pulled at his nose and said, ‘With a promotional six-month zero per cent commission. It’s going to kill us,’ he added, starting to chew on his nails before shunting his chair backwards and disappearing, jerkily, towards the loos at the back of the office.

Elaine looked across at her.