The Square (30 page)

“Really? How very depressing that information is. Sort of like realising modern British life is indeed modelled on a Carry On film. Did you?” says Jane.

“What? Snog the au pair? No. Harriet insisted on having male au pairs for Brian. Said he needed a role model. Why I could not perform that role is a mystery to me. Anyway, on the subject of Brian.”

Jay takes a deep breath. He has been a coward about telling her, and has been dreading doing this for weeks.

“Oh, yes?” says Jane, warily.

“I need to tell you that we’re going off for a few days. Week or so.”

“Who is We?”

“I just said. Me and Brian.”

There is another pause.

“Off? What do you mean, off?”

“Away. Abroad.”

“Oh.”

This is something Jay has been planning for a while. He has been putting off telling her, because he does not want to explain his motives. He wants to go away with his son. He wants to go on a cycling holiday with Brian, and now that the boy had finished his exams, there is no real reason why not to. Harriet was content to stay at home, and the summer stretched ahead.

“Darling, I don’t see you on a bicycle for eight hours a day, with a backpack too,” he had told his wife, who has more expensive tastes.

He had found a little company on the net who organised trips around France. You stayed in perfect little hotels on the A roads, dinner and bed and breakfast was all laid on, and you simply cycled from one hotel to the next. He couldn’t wait to do it. He had got all the Michelin maps, showed them to Brian.

They had spent a few happy evenings, planning the route with all the maps opened up and laid out on the kitchen table. Oh, of course, he could have done it online, with a mileometer, but on the kitchen table with the jaunty red-backed maps, and a ruler so you got the distances, that was so much more fun.

“They throw the bikes in, even lay on a rescue service if you get a puncture,” Jay enthuses to Jane.

Her stomach turns over.

“So you’re leaving me here. Fuck’s sake.”

“Well, darling, it’s only for three weeks. Twenty days, actually. Eighteen if you don’t count the ferry days.”

“Sounds like three weeks to me.”

“Well, I needed to take old B away somewhere. He’s been a trooper with the exams. And very good with his mother.”

This was the wrong thing to say.

“Funnily enough, I don’t care how bloody good Brian is with his mother. I dislike his mother. I hate her.”

“Jane, please.”

She is crying now, a single tear runs down her face. She throws herself down on the bed dramatically.

“And now everything is awful. Everyone will be laughing at me because of that fucking au pair, and the Talent Show was a write off, and now you are buggering off to France on a bike.”

“Cheer up.”

“Why? What for? What the fuck do I have to cheer up about?”

“The au pair is going back to Poland.” Oh, but his timing was good. Perfect actually. Fucking perfect.

She sits up, brushes the hair away from her damp eyes.

“What?”

“Tracey told me. I forgot to mention it.”

“Forgot?”

“Well, sorry. I was too busy fucking you my darling, and caressing your beautiful body.”

He pushes her back on the bed, removes her robe, embraces her. Her warm body relaxes against his. Gratifyingly, she feels he is getting an erection. He is proud of his stamina. He pretends to scratch his shoulder and sneaks a glance at his watch.

They probably have time to do it again.

“When?”

“When what? Oh, when is she leaving? I think next week some time. In a fortnight everyone will have forgotten about her, apart from you. Now just lie back while I give you something special. Again.”

“Again,” murmurs Jane, stretching her arms above her back, diving into the ecstasy.

Chapter Thirty-One Roberta

He is breathing deeply and digging, his small hand grasping the trowel’s wooden handle, pushing the instrument deep into the dark soil. He squats, perfectly balanced. His two feet, strapped into his new leather sandals, are flat on the ground. His knees are bent, his buttocks only about two inches off the ground. He leans forward and pulls something delicate up and out of the soil.

Then he stands up, by the simple method of merely straightening his legs. The delicate, rose-pink thing twists from his chubby fingers, spinning, reaching blindly upwards.

“Look, Roberta. A worm!”

“Yes. Very good.” She walks over the soil to him.

“They are crucial to aerate the earth. And of course, they feed the birds. Drop him back. Then come and help me stake these beans.”

“Him. How do you know it’s a male worm?”

She laughs. “I don’t, George. Actually I think worms are hermaphrodite.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means they are both male and female at the same time.”

He pauses, thinking about this.

“That would be good. If adult humans were both male and female at the same time.”

“Really? I think it might be a bit confusing, myself.”

“I think it would make for many less arguments.”

Roberta considers this last statement.

She is not really very sure just how much George knew, or saw, or understood about the Talent Show ‘hiccup’ in its closing moments. She didn’t know if he saw his father kissing Anya. She didn’t even know if he really understood what he had witnessed between his mother and that neighbour which he had translated into his little Lego play.

She suspected he grasped more than he was willing to confess, but felt the task of questioning him would be not only impossible but also undesirable.

Anyway, she wanted him to see her, Roberta, as a sort of respite against the cloying tensions of his house and the Square. Talking to her is as if he is talking to someone outside his world. Just digging in the allotment would provide some form of relief, she felt.

In this, as in most things concerning her pupils, Roberta is correct. George is fascinated by this new project, gardening.

“All these things. All this string, and this cutting and digging. When will we see the plants?”

“In about four months,” says Roberta.

“What, after my birthday?”

“Yes, if your birthday is in less than four months’ time.”

There is a pause.

“Takes quite a long time, doesn’t it?”

“It’s a bit like the piano, George. You have to do all the preparation before you can play a really intricate piece. You have to do all those exercises you don’t like very much.”

“So digging things up is like Hanon?”

“Sort of.”

They continue to work, chatting once every so often, then stopping and concentrating on the job in hand.

Eventually George sits back on his haunches again.

“Roberta?”

“Yes?”

“Do you think I could go home now?”

She stands up, discounts the slight twinge of irritation at being interrupted in the flow of her gardening. Then she brushes down her trousers.

“Of course. Come on. Let’s have a glass of water and then I’ll take you home.”

George sits perkily on the back seat of the car.

“Next week I am going to my Cub Camp. We’re all camping,” he continues, “at the Scout HQ.”

“Oh, really?” says Roberta politely.

“It’s brilliant. There is a zip wire. And we will be cooking outside. I’m going to be sharing my tent with Finn.”

George looks happily outside the car, envisaging the delights of Cub Camp to come.

Roberta drives on, thinking how very pleasant it must be to have a life as organised and structured as George’s.

Presently, she is aware George is still talking. She tunes back into the conversation.

“And then I gave Finn back his Storm Trooper outfit, because Daddy says he’ll buy me a Darth Vader one anyway.”

“Oh, good,” says his piano teacher, absently.

“It has that really nasty breathing when you tap a special button on the front.”

“Does it? That’s nice.”

“I think Daddy wanted me to have it because I won. I did win, didn’t I? At the Talent Show.”

“You certainly did.”

“It’s a pity you can’t play
Star Wars
for Grade Two.”

“I think you can play other pieces by that composer, actually. But no, not
Star Wars.
”

“I wish I lived on the Death Star.”

“No you don’t.”

“Yes I do. Living in the Square is so boring. I want to move. Finn says that his mother says people on the Square are lucky. Finn says that everyone on the Square is rich. He says if I live there, it means I am rich. But we’re not rich, are we Roberta?”

“Well, I suppose you are well-off.”

“What does that mean, well-off?”

“Well, it means your parents don’t have to worry about money, too much.”

“Ha ha! My dear, they are worried all the time. Mummy is always saying how worried she is.”

She pulls up outside the boy’s house. It presents her with its usual bland facade of perfect proportion and muted tone, in step with all its neighbours. Some flattened earth in front of the front window, caused by the vicar’s moving men in their attempt to get the Blüthner out, is all that indicates an event took place in the not too distant past.

Roberta rings the bell. The door opens. It’s Patrick.

“Ah, Roberta,” he says cheerfully.

“Thank you so much for having George. George!” turning to the child. “How was the allotment? How did the weeding go, old sport? Ready to do some for us now?”

“Very good,” announces George. “I found a bisexual worm.”

Patrick looks quizzically at Roberta.

“Don’t worry,” says Roberta. “He was very helpful.”

“George, have you thanked Roberta?” says Patrick.

George is almost half way up the stairs.

“Thank you my dear,” he calls imperiously. “I am now going to build my General Grievous ship.”

“Roberta, thank you so much for getting George up to scratch for yesterday,” says Patrick evenly. “He was great, wasn’t he?”

“Yes, he was,” says Roberta, equally neutrally. “I’ll be back on Thursday for his lesson. We’ll get back to his normal pieces.”

Everyone will get back to normality, thinks Patrick as he closes the door behind her. He’s rather sad about this, if he must be honest.

Screwing Anya on the kitchen table. What a thrill that was. Although, up against the sheer hassle of being discovered by Jane, he’s not sure if it is worth repeating. Anything for a quiet life, he thinks. Is that dreadfully middle-aged, or just caring? He considers this as he steps down into the kitchen in his socks for a can of non-Diet Coke.

Chapter Thirty-Two The Screening

It is there. The programme details. Printed in the
Radio Times.
8pm, BBC1.
Money worries? Makin makes them history. Follow financial guru Alan Makin as he bowls his financial grey matter into the world of the squeezed middle, and solves former Lottery winner and makeup artist Tracey’s overdraft in one deft stroke.

Tracey reads the citation twice as she walks upstairs.

“Belle, have you seen this?” she says to her daughter, waving the magazine urgently at her.

Belle pulls back the towelling sleeves of her robe, grasps the
Radio Times
with what Tracey considers a signal lack of excitement.

“Oh. Yeah.” She gives it back to her mother.

“Is that all? Belle, I am on television tonight.”

“Yes, Mum. I know. No-one cares.”

“That is a horrible thing to say.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean it rudely.”

“Well, how is that not a rude thing to say?”

“No, I just meant that television is a big deal for you and Dad. Obviously. It’s not really that huge for… anyone of my generation. Not many people watch television any more.”

“Well I am sorry, but who of your ‘generation’,” says Tracey, giving Belle’s word quotation marks in the air, “has appeared on BBC1 of late?”

“That’s it. No-one. But no-one is too bothered about TV. They all want to have their own channels on YouTube,” says Belle.

She sees the effect this has on her mother’s face.

“Look, Mum, I’m sorry, that was the wrong thing to say. It’s great you are on TV. I’ll obviously be watching. Is anyone coming over to watch it with you and Dad?”

“Well, of course they are,” says Tracey, exasperated. “We are having a screening party.”

Belle is aware that some form of gesture needs to be made, in atonement.

“Can I help?”

Her mother provides her with the answer Belle had hoped for.

“No, I think Harriet is doing everything.”

Yeah, I’m doing everything, thinks Harriet crossly in her kitchen as she butters a large baking dish and slings a spoonful of mince over the greased porcelain. Lasagna. Lasagna for twenty, which, in her book, is mass catering. Not knocking up a simple supper.

Still, she had said she would do this for Tracey. She slides another spoonful over the base.

“As I introduced you to Alan Makin in the first place, it’s the least I can do,” she had said. Yes, it would have been nice if Alan had landed on her, Harriet had thought. But that thought was followed swiftly by the knowledge that she’d have only worried about what to wear all the time, and about looking fat on television, so it was probably just as well. She had played the violin in front of Alan, hadn’t she? So she had showed off her skills too, in a way. Pity the Talent Show hadn’t been on television, but never mind. That was probably just as well, too. Given all that went on.

She sniggers at the thought of it.

“Hello darling, what are you laughing about?” says Jay, coming into the kitchen after his shower.

“I was laughing at the thought of what would have happened if our Talent Show had been on television,” says Harriet.

“God help us,” says Jay with feeling.

He thinks about Jane.

“Well, I would have come out quite well, wouldn’t I?” asks his wife.

“What? Oh, yes, of course you would. You would have been marvellous. Now, I must go and get dressed.”

He turns, walks away from her in his towel.

“Jay?”

“What?”

“What are those long scratches down your back? You look as if you’ve fallen into a bramble bush, or had a fight with a cat.”