The Square (33 page)

Someone must recognise her. Tracey is conscious of laughing too loudly, of presenting her face to people too blatantly, of not behaving normally. She worries that she hasn’t done her makeup well enough, that she’s not wearing very fashionable clothes. She thinks about having a public persona. She wants, above all, more people to come up and praise her, and treat her as their friend and ask for her signature with the smiley face. Maybe the thrill of fame will replace the thrill of having sex in Alan’s giant flat, and alleviate the regularity of life in the Square. Maybe, thinks Tracey quickly, she will be the most famous person in the Square. That would be something.

“That was nice,” she ventures to Alan as they leave the Zoo past the giant Snowdon Aviary with its ibises and herons, and the small enclosures for the owls, who are all fast asleep, ignorant of the dead white mice, still bleeding, which the keepers have tenderly left below their perches.

“What, the Zoo? I know, lovely. Such a London treasure.”

“No, I meant the autograph. My autograph. The lady who came up and recognised me.”

“Oh, I know. Did you like that? Well, I have to say, having had it both ways, that in my honest opinion, life is so much nicer when you are a bit famous. Not too famous, of course,” says Alan hastily, to his protegee. “But being recognised is lovely. If you get too famous, then it becomes tiresome, as you have seen with me, haven’t you? People do give me a hard time sometimes. It’s tough. But getting a little bit of fame is just right. Lovely.”

He is treating me a bit like the Munchkin, thinks Tracey as she climbs back into Alan’s car. I am a project. Or at least, I have been. I’ve shown him the tricks of my trade, and he has shown me his. We have shared one amazing evening. That’s the summary of it.

Tracey looks out of the window. She knows, despite herself, that this is a good ending. Much easier this way. And actually, she welcomes his cool stance. What if he got all emotional on her, demanded eternal loyalty and her to move in with him into the Lubetkin building? No, it’s much better this way. Probably.

They drive back to the Square in silence. Its perfect symmetry enfolds them as Alan elegantly curves the car in front of Tracey’s house.

“Well, thanks for coming to the Zoo with me. Thanks for doing that. I think it was the right thing. And it was a good thing. It was also so good to see you after the programme. As I said, it’s all good.”

Tracey nods.

“Look, I have to go now. Onto my next… ”

“Project?” says Tracey, with a faint smile.

“Yes, well, project, programme, you know. Look, you are great. Were great. Thanks for everything. We will hook up again. Maybe after Christmas? And Tracey?”

“Yes?” she says dutifully, climbing out of the car, standing on the pavement beside her house.

“Look after those finances! And get a better autograph!”

From an upstairs window in the Square, someone is practising the piano. Out in the middle of the park, Gilda and Philip Burrell are performing Tai-Chi. Philip is in a pure white tracksuit. Gilda is wearing a Hello Kitty onesie and fairy wings. Tracey looks at them and envies their freedom and absolute determination to behave exactly as they feel, without the slightest indication that they know they are being observed and commented on by the neighbourhood. She even envies Gilda’s experiences as a topless model.

Chapter Thirty-Four Jane

It is pouring with rain as Roberta stands on the doorstep of Jane’s house. Water sluices off the grey slate rooves of the houses in the Square. It pours from the drenched leaves of the London plane trees. It gushes down the drainpipes. Not one resident has ignored the need to keep their drainpipes in order. Not one drainpipe is leaking. The water is perfectly directed into the guttering, an immaculate piece of rain orchestration. Even the coving on the road works in symphony with the drainpipes, draining the drenched street straight into the kerbside where the water is caught and cascades into the drains.

By the time George manages to open the door, Roberta is soaked.

“Aha,” says George with his usual sangfroid.

“Good afternoon, George,” says Roberta. “My plants are going to love this, aren’t they?”

Patrick appears in the hall. “Gosh, you are wet,” he observes unnecessarily. “Stair rods, isn’t it?”

“What are stair rods?” says George.

There is a pause as Patrick wrestles with the question.

“Er, I think they are bannisters. Or balustrades. Or are they those things which keep the carpet tight on the step?” says Patrick as Roberta takes her coat off and hangs it up on the Alessi hat stand. “Don’t know, old chap,” he says, finally. “But when you say that they are falling from the sky, it’s clearly raining. Hard.”

“Shall we?” says Roberta to George, opening the door to the music room.

“I have a wonderful piece that I thought we might look at. Particularly today.”

“I led a llama around London Zoo yesterday,” says George excitedly.

“Did you?”

“I was Keeper For A Day.”

“Really?”

“I was. And do you know who I saw there?”

“Who? Apart from animals, that is. David Attenborough?”

“No!” says George, laughing. “I saw Tracey and, you know, the presenter of the Talent Show. Andy Makin. They were there before the general public turned up.”

“Alan. Alan Makin. Oh, really? What were they doing?”

“Well, when I saw them, I was with Perry. You know, the llama. But afterwards we had to do some tidying up in the Reptile House, and I heard the Director talking about Andy, sorry, Alan Makin and his reptile.”

Alan Makin is a bit reptilian, thinks Roberta.

“It seems as if he has had a very big lizard, an iguana I think, in a teeny tiny case, and he gave it to London Zoo. The Director was very cross with Alan Makin after he left because he discovered all sorts of problems with the reptile, and said that Alan Makin hadn’t been looking after him properly.”

“That’s a shame. Did you enjoy being Keeper For A Day?”

“Yes I did.”

He settles down on the piano stool and looks up at his teacher expectantly.

She brings out a new book and opens it.

“The ‘Raindrop Sonata’. By Chopin.”

George points to the window, and smiles.

“Oh, that’s clever of you, Roberta my dear.”

She smiles at him.

On the other side of the Square, a front door slams. It’s Anya, leaving in the rain, bound for the airport now called Chopin, in Warsaw.

“Now, George. Chopin made this tune up when he was very unhappy and all he could hear was the rain drumming on the roof of his house.”

“Where was he staying?”

“He was staying with his partner who, who was also called George actually.”

“Oh. Was he a gay?”

“No, George was a lady. She was his girlfriend.”

“That’s funny. Why would she have a boy’s name?”

Roberta sighs. “Shall we just work out where the raindrops are drumming?”

Footsteps running down the stairs. Roberta ignores them as they go past the room and down into the kitchen, although she hears Jane’s voice calling urgently.

“Patrick, Patrick, quick!”

She hears Patrick and Jane run past the door and back upstairs.

“All you do with your left hand is just beat out this tune, dum dum dum, like this, like the rain,” says Roberta.

Upstairs, Jane is running from room to room. It seems that there is a lot of rain which has come through the roof, and is now falling in Jane and Patrick’s bedroom.

“Look, look, it’s coming right through the light fitting, Patrick have you turned the electricity off?” shrieks Jane.

“Well, it’s clearly off,” says Patrick testily. “I mean, the light is not on, is it?”

He places a series of buckets under the ceiling rose.

“Perhaps it’s not rain.”

“I am going upstairs,” says Jane. “I’m dreading what I might find in George’s room.”

She runs out of George’s room and into the spare room.

“The leak must be in the other part of the roof, it must be in the valley of the butterfly,” shouts Jane down to Patrick.

“What are you talking about darling?”

“The butterfly! It’s a butterfly roof!”

Patrick raises his eyebrows. Just like Jane to remember details like that. He vaguely recalls the nature of the roof, described to him in delicate detail by the surveyor when they bought the house. To give the outward appearance of a horizontal, classical line, the roof itself is an inverted peak hidden behind a flat parapet, like a pair of butterfly wings resting on the house. To the person on the street, who can only see the parapet, it looks as if there is no roof at all.

This aesthetic used to confuse George, who would insist on drawing his home, when he was young, with a typical peaked roof.

“Where has our roof gone?” he would ask. “Has it blown away?”

It is not the butterfly design. It is something far worse. It is the entire water tank. Perhaps encouraged by the downpour outside, the tank has burst open and its contents are cascading down the wall and into the house downstairs.

Jane starts screaming at Patrick.

“Buckets, buckets! And a plumber! The carpet is sodden. The bed is soaking. Oh my God.”

Dum dum dum dum, continues the piano from downstairs. It is a tune that Jane knows.

“Oh, very funny. She’s got the boy to play the sodding ‘Raindrop Prelude’ or Sonata or whatever during a Biblical downpour which will cost us thousands.”

“What?” says Patrick, struggling upstairs with a ladder and another bucket.

“Roberta. And George. Playing the ‘Raindrop Sonata’.”

“I think that’s quite witty,” says Patrick.

Jane raises an eyebrow and sits down on a step outside her bedroom.

“Oh for fuck’s sake. It is bloody cheeky, can’t you see? A woman who we PAY to educate our son, teasing us. I am firing her. But first, I am calling the plumber. Along with, probably, half of North London.”

But as she brings out her phone, and looks at it, she sees a text from Jay. Her lover. Her neighbour. Her fantasy.
Darling, we are going today. Brian and I. Can I possibly kiss you before I take my thighs into hell and back?

Oh, God. What a day to choose. Her stomach squirms. She taps a message back.
Fuck off. Our house is about to collapse. We have water everywhere.

Patrick leaves the room with a brimming bucket.

Jane looks down at her phone, willing it to vibrate. After a minute, it does.
Oh darling. Please don’t be cross. Come round.

She immediately replies.
I must call the plumber. Can you wait?

He waits. Brian waits. They wait, with their bikes and their Lycra cycling gear packed, and their special shoes and their Michelin maps.

Roberta finishes the lesson early, because she is worried about getting home.

The rain eases off, turns itself into a familiar drizzle.

The tank, however, has not stopped. The entire upstairs floor is now impossible. Huge dark streaks line the walls. The ceiling drips ominously. The carpet is a marsh. Water has even penetrated the hall downstairs.

Jane puts a cashmere jumper on and collects her family together. She is distracted, but not so much that she can’t have a quick glance in the mirror, to check she looks elegantly dischevelled. Good, she thinks. She wants Jay to think she has been suffering, but not so much that she has lost control of her style.

“Darling? George,” she cries. “Tonight, we have been invited round to Jay and Harriet’s.”

“Well, that’s all very well but what about the plumber?” mutters Patrick.

“Someone is coming in two hours,” says Jane dramatically.

“Goodbye, then,” calls Roberta up from downstairs.

“What, what? Oh, bye Roberta. Sorry, I am a bit distracted,” yells Jane.

“No worries. No lesson next week, then?”

“What?” Damn these teachers, thinks Jane, as she runs downstairs, sweating lightly. Always needing organising and somehow… servicing in some way or other.

“Not coming next week?” she says to Roberta. Well why the hell not? I suspect she’s off to some bloody symposium on Chopin. Or a concert. Or a recital.

“Yes, isn’t George away?”

“What?”

“George. I think he’s at some form of Camp. Cub Camp?” Roberta offers gently.

Oh, Christ. The needs of her son. Bloody never ending. And now the piano teacher has remembered it and I have forgotten it. Showing me up again, bitch.

“Oh, yes, of course. Yes. Roberta, you have a better grasp of my diary than I do!” says Jane. “A fortnight’s time then. Marvellous. Thanks a lot. Lovely to hear the Raindrop piece. Very appropriate. Let’s hope we don’t need to segue into Britten.”

That’ll show her.

“What, ‘Noye’s Fludde’?”

“Well done. Roberta, there are no flies on you. See you in two weeks. Goodbye.”

Roberta walks off through the Square. She is glad to be away from Jane. She looks forward to having some time to herself. She thinks of all the things she can do in her allotment.

Jane notes the water tank has, at last, stopped. She shuts the door, leans against it. She can hear the ceiling upstairs drip fatly onto the carpet upstairs.

Suddenly, the face of her child appears at her elbow, a permanent reminder of her moral failings. She feels her life is a shambles.

This is not how adulthood was supposed to be, surely, with a child she does not understand, a husband who has transformed into someone she hardly knows, and a lover who reinforces the status quo.

Plus, a house which is falling apart, yet is so valuable she dare not sell it for fear of future profits squandered.

“Mother.”

“What, what George? Can’t you see I am rushing about?”

“No,” says George, logically. “I can see that you are leaning against the door. Now, can I ask you something?”

“What?” says Jane warily. “Is this a good time for questions?”

“I am going to Cub Camp next week, you know.”

“Yes, I have just remembered. Roberta reminded me.”

“And, well. The thing is this. Mother, I need to practise putting up my tent.”

Jane looks at her son.

“Do you have any idea of the things I have to organise at the moment? Do you? Do you?” she shouts at him.