Wonder Women (2 page)

‘It would be,' said Zach. ‘Just like a jungle, but in town. Jungle town.'

Jungle town, thought Jo. Jungletown. Yes. She wanted to hug Zach and kiss him for his brilliance, but he had got bored of the conversation and had run off to hit a tree with a stick.

That evening, after the kids were in bed, she sat at the kitchen counter with a glass of wine as Lee concocted his famous chilli, the only dish he knew how to cook. ‘I've been thinking about my shop idea all day,' she said. Lee frowned and nodded as he scooped up a big spoonful of cocoa to add to the bubbling saucepan. It was one of the secret ingredients that he said made all the difference to the bottled sauce mixture. Jo took a sip of her wine. He clearly wasn't going to say anything, so she told him about her conversation with Zach, and Zach's ‘Jungletown' comment. Lee
laughed at that, but still didn't pick up her conversational ball. She took an even bigger sip of wine. She was starting to feel quite narked at him.

‘So you think it's a stupid idea?' she said persistently. ‘I mean, I know I don't know the first thing about owning or running a shop or the fashion business, but I do still think that there's something there.'

‘Are you serious about it?' Lee asked. ‘I mean, would you actually think about starting it? Really?' He looked up at her, and to Jo his expression seemed full of scepticism and doubt.

‘Jesus!' Jo exploded. ‘Could you be any more unsupportive? I might have been at home with the kids for a few years, but I'm not a moron. I've got PR and marketing experience; I know how to research, to network … Why couldn't I do it? Bloody hell, Lee, of all the people in the world I thought would back me up …' She felt tears prick behind her eyes, and she grabbed her glass and stalked out of the kitchen.

She flung open the French windows and flopped down on the bench on the patio. There was a cold breeze. The spring days might be warmer but the nights were still cool, and she wished she'd grabbed a jumper before she'd stropped off out. Still, nothing would convince her to go back inside. She'd have to stupefy herself with wine and ignore the cold. But as she sat there, she became uncomfortably aware that the bench was slightly damp as well. And her wine glass was empty. And the chilli was nearly ready and she was very hungry. Maybe she'd go in, ignore Lee in a frosty manner, fetch a jumper and a fresh glass of wine and a cushion before bringing her chilli out to the patio. She knew she was being irrational, and she couldn't quite pinpoint why she was so
angry. She and Lee seldom argued, and she wasn't sure why this idea mattered enough to her to have picked a fight about it.

She walked back into the living room, and found Lee sitting at the dining table. He had his markers out and the table was covered in large sheets of cartridge paper. He was obviously using the time while the chilli cooked to do some work. Typical. She stomped into the kitchen to refill her wine glass and sneak a taste of the chilli. Her cardigan was draped over the back of the chair Lee was sitting in. She couldn't get at it without talking to him and asking him to move. Sod it. She'd go upstairs and get another jumper. She crossed behind him, and was about to head for the stairs when he said, ‘Right. Now you can see.'

‘See what?' she said grudgingly. He shuffled the pages on the table and laid them out in a rough order. The first one looked like an architect's drawing for an empty space … a gallery maybe, or some kind of shop. The next had rails and display racks sketched in, and a brightly coloured jungle design around the lower half of the walls. The third and fourth were full of vibrant colour, with rocking horses (or rocking giraffes, Jo noted) on the floor, along with big soft toy snakes, toucans and other exotic animals. The rails were crammed with brightly coloured children's clothes. The last drawing showed the exterior of the shop, with a big glass window. Lee's ink had barely dried on this one. He had just added the name of the shop in funky curly script: ‘Jungletown'.

Jo first saw Lee at a party at university. She was a few weeks into her first year at Goldsmith's, and her roommate in halls, Helen, had brought her to this party in a dingy student house a little way from the campus. Other than Helen, she didn't know anybody to speak to, but the room was full of familiar faces: other students from the arts courses that she'd seen in the corridors and social areas, some she recognised from lectures. She got herself a beer from the kitchen and looked around for Helen, but Helen's principal interest in attending the party was a guy called Frank who was rumoured to have a limitless supply of recreational pharmaceuticals. She had disappeared into a bathroom with him within minutes of their arrival. Jo knew she was unlikely to see her again, or if she did, Helen would be in no fit state for conversation. She didn't mind; the party was mainly filled with second-and third-years and she was keen to meet some of the older students and get to know more about the campus and the course. Somehow, however, she ended up wedged in a corner trying to make halting conversation with two geeky girls from the music course. Jo had seen them perform during
Freshers' Week and knew one was a harpist and the other a pianist. They both looked terrified, as if they had spent so much time in the practice room that a party was an alien landscape. One of them, the pianist, was clutching a fourpack and was gulping down the beers one by one with grim determination, as if they were medicine.

‘I'm Harriet, and this is Amelia. We're not usually big party animals,' she said, rather unnecessarily, and then giggled. ‘We're here because Amelia's got the hots for Renaissance Man and we've been stalking him across town.'

‘Ah, of course,' said Jo knowingly, as if she knew who they meant. Renaissance Man? Who could that be? A lecturer in the arts department who specialised in da Vinci? A superhero she'd never heard of, who buzzed about in a cape dispensing a Golden Age of Enlightenment?

‘Do you know him?' said Amelia, the light of fanaticism in her eye.

‘Well, I don't
know
him exactly,' said Jo, desperately playing for time, ‘but his work, well … it precedes him, doesn't it?

‘What exactly do you mean?' said Amelia, standing too close and staring searchingly into Jo's face through her thick glasses. ‘You've slept with him, haven't you?'

‘Oh no, I … er … I …' Jo found herself wishing that she hadn't ended up with the musical fruitcakes, or that at the very least she'd led with, ‘I loved your rendition of the “Trout” Quintet.'

At that moment, music started to blare, and Amelia swung her speccy gaze desperately towards the door. ‘That's him!' she said excitedly. She pushed past them and ran
towards the living room. Harriet and Jo followed rather more slowly, and by the time they got there the dance floor was so packed they couldn't even get into the room. They edged around the door frame and stood pressed up against the wall. It took a while for Jo to spot Amelia, who was dancing wildly just in front of the table where the music was coming from. For a highly competent musician, she didn't seem to have much rhythm or coordination.

Jo leaned over to yell in Harriet's ear. ‘So, this Renaissance Man …?' she asked.

‘DJ'ing.' Harriet yelled back. ‘Everyone is desperate to get him to do the music for their parties.'

The crowd parted for a second, and Jo caught a glimpse of a tall, gangly, mixed-race guy with a great cloud of hair, pressing his headphones to the side of his head as he deftly flipped a disc off one deck and replaced it with another, using just one hand. Renaissance Man? He looked more Lenny Kravitz than Shakespeare, but who was she to judge? He definitely knew how to keep a party going though. He played banging tune after banging tune, mixing dance tracks with eighties cheese and then raising the tempo with some great rock classics. Jo wasn't much of a dancer, but she found herself on the floor jumping around with Harriet and Amelia, until they were all sweaty and red-faced. After about an hour, Renaissance Man took a break and someone took over whose taste ran to thrash metal played at full volume. The dance floor emptied like a stampede, and Jo and the others headed for the kitchen to grab a drink.

She was standing by the open door, holding her hair off her neck and drinking a beer while Amelia chattered on
about Renaissance Man and his brilliance, when she saw him come into the kitchen and fight his way through the crowd, straight towards them. Amelia saw Jo staring and turned to see what she was looking at. She went red, then white, whipped off her glasses and tried in vain to fix her hair. Jo was sure Renaissance Man was just heading for the door to get some air, but he stopped and said to her, ‘Do you sing?'

‘What?' Jo said stupidly.

‘Do you sing?' he said impatiently. ‘I know you're not a music student, but do you sing?' She opened her mouth to answer him but then she felt a claw-like grip on her arm.

‘I can't
believe
you know him and you didn't say,' hissed Amelia venomously, her breath hot on Jo's ear.

‘I don't!' she said involuntarily.

‘Oh,' said Renaissance Man. ‘Pity.' He began to turn away.

‘No!' said Jo sharply. ‘I mean, I do sing. But I don't know you. Him.' She turned to Amelia to offer clarification, but Amelia had turned away, her jaw set and her arms folded. Well, there was nothing Jo could do to rescue that particular situation. She turned back to Renaissance Man and smiled. ‘I sing, insofar as I was in a choir and can read music and sing in tune. I'm not trained or anything.'

‘Perfect,' he said.

‘Why?'

‘I'm doing a performance art project. You look right. If you could sing, it would be perfect. Can we meet at the Union for lunch on Monday to talk about it? Say … one?'

‘Um, okay,' said Jo uncertainly. He gave her a big grin and walked off.

She turned to Amelia. ‘See? I don't know him. I've never spoken to him in my life before. And I don't fancy him. It's a work thing, okay?'

‘Oh, you don't fancy him?' said Amelia, her eyes filled with tears. ‘What are you? Blind? Or gay?'

‘Neither! He's just not my type. Honest.'

But Amelia was not to be appeased. Any possibility of a friendship between her and Jo died right there, in a grubby kitchen in New Cross. Luckily Amelia soon got over her entirely unrequited passion for Renaissance Man, when she met and fell in love with a conducting student called Henry, who enthusiastically reciprocated her feelings. She performed outstandingly in her studies and went on to win loads of prestigious music competitions and have a highly successful international career. Jo never spoke to her again after that night, but whenever she caught a glimpse on television of Amelia's long white hands stroking the strings of her harp, she was reminded of the awfulness of their one encounter.

On the Monday, she got to the Union early as she had no class just before lunch. She sat at a table organising her lecture notes and wondering whether Renaissance Man would show up at all. She felt ridiculous sitting there, and she was increasingly certain that he wasn't coming, when he flopped down in the chair opposite her and handed her a sticky bun in a paper bag. It was in that moment that she realised she didn't know his name.

He seemed to sense her discomfort, and held out his hand formally. ‘Lee Hockley,' he said.

‘Jo. Jo Morris. So what's this performance-art project?'

‘Well, I saw you dancing at the party on Saturday, and I thought you looked American.'

‘American? I'm from Stevenage.'

‘Yeah, well, you look like one of those corn-fed American girls who roam the prairies.'

‘Roam the prairies! What? And corn-fed? Do you mean I'm fat? Or yellow?'

Jo's sole experience of anything corn-fed was the suspiciously saffron-coloured and overpriced chickens in the supermarket.

‘It's a figure of speech,' Lee said impatiently. ‘Anyway, you're a drama student, right? You can do an American accent.'

‘Sure can!' said Jo, in her best peppy, ponytail-swinging
Grease
imitation. Lee looked dubious.

‘We can work on that. The point is, I've worked out that you can sing pretty much any Emily Dickinson poem to “The Yellow Rose of Texas”.' Helpfully he hummed a few bars. Jo continued to stare at him, flabbergasted into silence. In a raspy tenor voice with a Southern twang, he sang:

He nodded as if everything now made perfect sense.

After a moment, Jo found her voice. ‘So – Emily Dickinson, famous, reclusive, morbid poet, and you're going to set her poems to some little country and western ditty? Doesn't that trivialise her work completely?'

‘Except that it isn't a little country and western ditty! It's a song with a rich history, the story of a mulatto woman who helped win the battle of San Jacinto, the decisive battle in the Texas Revolution!'

‘Okay …' said Jo hesitantly. But Lee was on a roll.

‘It says something profound about American history, about our expectations of women and people of colour, about our European reading of what looks like a trivialisation of culture.' He was clearly happy to go on about it pretty much ad infinitum so Jo jumped in to try to understand what exactly he expected from her.

‘So I sing Emily Dickinson poems to “The Yellow Rose of Texas” …?'

‘While I draw interpretations of political cartoons from the time,' he said, as if that was self-evident.

‘And we do this – where?'

‘In the quadrangle. I've got permission from the college. I've found two music students – one who plays steel-string guitar and one who can play a snare drum. It'll be awesome!' He continued to enthuse about the project and describe how they would incorporate the singing with his real-time drawing. Jo stared at him. He was okay-looking, she supposed, a little skinny and tall, and his huge cloud of hair made her want to laugh. As she'd assured Amelia, not her type, but his crazy, creative grasshopper brain was so exciting, she knew she wanted to get to know him a lot better.