Pillow Talk (5 page)

Arlo's Year Eight thought pretty much the same thing that afternoon. But they weren't complaining. He hadn't said a thing to them all lesson, just looked at them queerly, while Beethoven filled the room. The 5th piano concerto. “The Emperor”. And however much Arlo loved the music, just then he couldn't hear a note. And however much he loved his job, though he stood in front of his desk with his eyes trained on the twenty-two boys before him, he didn't much notice them at all. He was somewhere else entirely and, for a few moments, he didn't want to be there at all – horribly ensconced in five years ago. So he flung himself back further still. And was charmed to arrive back at half his lifetime ago, when he was seventeen and in the Lower Sixth at school and had written the song he still considers his best.

* * *

“Among the Flowers”. In terms of subject matter, the seventeen-year-old Arlo had risked derision by his school-mates but the melody he had created was so sublime that it immediately excused the unmitigated romance of the lyric. He wasn't really aware of the starting point. Usually, the songs he wrote for his band were inspired by his fiery teenage response to political injustice worldwide and his middle-class upbringing. But “Among the Flowers” was utterly at odds with “Soweto Sweat” and “Not Quiet on the Western Front” and “Life under Cardboard” – all of which had swiftly become veritable anthems at Milton College. Perhaps studying
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
for A level English had been a subliminal source. He'd fallen a little bit in love with Tess, had seen her through Angel's eyes, when she walks through the juicy grass and floating pollen of the garden at Talbothays, drawn by Angel's harp but conscious of neither time nor space, her skirts gathering cuckoo-spittle as she meanders through the dazzling polychrome of flowering weeds. But ultimately, Arlo's Flower Girl was wholly mythical. She embodied the woman he was aspiring to hold as his own one day. He thought that if he could create his ideal, set his wish list to the six strings of his guitar, perhaps he could lure her to him, perhaps he'd give her life.

His then girlfriend was lovely enough but she didn't inspire him to write. He'd lost his virginity to the girlfriend before that one and she'd made him horny as hell but love hadn't come into it. Love was out there, of that he was sure, but even at seventeen Arlo trusted the logic of time and, for the time being, he embraced (rather physically) the fact that schoolgirls were to be very nice stepping stones towards the real thing. Arlo assumed, quite sensibly, that his teenage years should be about amorous fumblings and sticky sex. He had a feeling that university would probably provide more adventurous fornication and a serious relationship or two. And he imagined that his walk through the flowers to the love of his lifetime would probably be taken in his late twenties.

What he was not expecting, at the age of seventeen and on the day his band had been invited to play a lunch-time set at the nearby private girls' school, was to come across his flower girl in bud. He had no idea that a fifteen-year-old girl would so completely embody the fantasy he eulogized in “Among the Flowers”. But having sung about Soweto to a sea of bouncing schoolgirls, having had them clap their hands above their heads to “Nuclear No” and chant the chorus of “Set Them Free”, he launched into the melodious and ethereal “Among the Flowers”. And there, from the sway and the smiles of one hundred and fifty pubescent schoolgirls, on that first Wednesday in March seventeen years ago, Arlo Savidge had caught sight of Petra Flint and realized in an instant that he'd written the song solely for her.

* * *

Arlo quite liked evening prep. More than seeming an after-hours affliction cutting into his evening, it was a quiet and useful hour and a half when none of the boys pestered him, concentrating their energies instead on finishing their homework so they could make the most of their free time before bed. Usually, Arlo used prep to do his marking or planning, or he'd write to his mother, perhaps check his bank statements; sometimes he just read a book, other times he simply sat and thought of nothing, occasionally he sat and thought about quite a lot. Tonight was one of those times.

‘What is it, Troy? No, you don't – you can borrow my pen instead.’

Hearing “Among the Flowers” on the radio at lunch-time had sounded odder to Arlo than when Rox had first released it five years previously. It seemed so totally out of context that he should be listening to it, on Radio 2, in the middle of North Yorkshire, as he returned to his teaching job having just had a haircut. He didn't blame Nigel for not believing him. It wouldn't cross Nigel's mind that he was telling the truth. Why should it? Who has songs published and played on national radio, yet teaches music at a boys' private boarding school in North Yorkshire? For Nigel it had just been typical banter; they were at it all the time after all, the staff. A little like grown-up schoolboys themselves; mercilessly teasing each other, taking the piss, saying daft things, catching each other out.

‘Lars – give Nathan back his calculator, please. Come on, guys.’

Was it self-indulgent, Arlo wondered, to have one's own song on one's mind? Was it an insult to Bob Dylan – for Arlo, the greatest songwriter of all time – that all afternoon he had so easily forsaken “Mr Tambourine Man” to mentally play his own ditty, penned at seventeen years of age, over and over again instead? Similarly, that he'd utterly blanked Beethoven? The version of “Among the Flowers” on a loop in his head was most certainly his own, not the version covered by Rox. He didn't mind their interpretation – and it brought welcome royalties each year. He didn't much care for Rox's subjugation of the acoustic emphasis he'd intended in favour of soft sentimental rock, but he could see why their record label would have encouraged it. Much more
Top of the Pops
– as indeed it had been five years ago. And his version, the way he conceived it, wrote it, had only ever sung it, was in all probability a bit introspectively adolescent. Not commercial enough. Not slick enough. It occurred to Arlo that he hadn't actually sung it in years. He'd written other stuff since. Not that he sang that much either. And though he knew “Among the Flowers” off by heart he doubted he'd ever sing it out loud again. It was tainted now, charred.

But it was different when he wrote it, over a decade before Rox took it. He liked who he'd been back then. The keenness, the naivety, the energy and optimism for the future: for Life, for the mystery of Love.

Petra Flint.

Blimey.

Now there's someone he hadn't thought about for a while.

Arlo glanced around the class as if he'd just spoken out loud, but the boys had their heads down.

‘Finn, stop chewing your shirtsleeve.’

When Rox had first released the song and had nodded their shaggy locks and generally postured in a deep and meaningful way on
Top of the Pops
, Arlo had briefly wondered about Petra, whether she was watching, whether she'd heard the song, remembered it, remembered him. But there had been so much else on his mind five years ago, he hadn't had the capacity to dwell on it.

He thought about her now, though. In evening prep. Petra Flint. His unwitting muse and the prettiest girl he'd seen back then; the personification of the song's subject matter who came into his focus out of nowhere the day that the Noble Savages had performed at her school. Whatever happened to Petra Flint?

‘Nathan, flick one more ink pellet at Troy and you'll forfeit your next exeat.’

Petra Flint is probably an artist or a housewife, Arlo decided, bringing himself back to the present sharply. And here he was, aged thirty-four, sitting in an oak-panelled study room in a school that was over three hundred years old, presiding over twenty teenage boys who were battling with their homework and tiredness and boredom and their need to be just boys. He looked at them. They looked like a bunch of scraggly terriers who could well do with a noisy belt around the playing fields. He tried to see himself through their eyes. One of the slightly more cool teachers, he reckoned with some satisfaction: his small gold hoop earring, his excitingly varied taste in music, his occasional swearing, the fact that he had a tattoo on his upper arm which the boys had glimpsed but never seen in full, the fact that he called the boys ‘guys’, that he told them, when they asked him, that yes he had done certain drugs at certain times in his life. They'd never asked him about sex, though. They reserved that topic as a dare – preferring to cloak their queries with faked innocence and pose them to female members of staff instead. The cheeky buggers. Or perhaps they didn't ask him because he didn't give out that vibe. You can ask Mr Sir Savidge about music and drugs and tattoos because he knows about all that stuff. But don't ask him about sex because he doesn't have sex any more.

And if ever they should ask him, what would he say then? That he was celibate from personal choice? And that had been the case for five years? Was that the line he'd spin to Miranda Oates if she kept up her attention? Arlo thought about Miranda Oates with her shapely rear, her nice tits, her penchant for dark lipstick and bare legs, her obvious interest in him. And he wondered if it wasn't just a bit sad, perhaps a little worrying, that he was thinking of inventive ways to fob her off when once he would quite happily have shagged her, gamely dated her even.

‘That's the end of that,’ he said, suddenly out loud, and the boys took it to mean the end of prep and scarpered from the room a full five minutes early.

Chapter Five

Despite the mercy dash to Whetstone in the small hours, Rob's meeting with the Japanese had gone well. Petra was very tired after the previous night's sortie and though most of all she craved an early night, she'd phoned Rob and offered to cook at either her place or his. He suggested she join him in town. Getting ready, she asked herself a couple of times why she was doing something she didn't want to do, why didn't she just slob around at home and eat finger food in front of
Location Location Location
. But she answered herself sharply – her relationship with Rob was just ten months old and there was no time for complacency. Furthermore, Rob seldom invited her to socialize with his work people, though he frequently did. So she should be honoured, she told herself. And she shouldn't let bloody sleep, or lack of it, dictate her life. She stood in her bedroom in a bath towel and wondered what she could wear that was appropriate for a night on the town with Rob and his cohorts, but would be comfortable. Her grazed knee was still too raw to go plasterless and her blistered heels necessitated backless shoes. But not my Birkenstocks, Petra thought, not on Rob's big night – he'd be appalled. She decided to wear her slippers because they didn't look too much like slippers; indeed, people wore a similar style as shoes. A pair of slip-on flat mules in a type of glorified plastic netting decorated with sequins and beads. She'd have to wear socks or tights because she couldn't very well have her heels on display, with plasters or without. She hated anything drawing attention to herself. Just then, for a moment, she hated herself more for sleepwalking.

‘If I didn't bloody sleepwalk, I could be tottering about in strappy heels. Not that I own a pair,’ she muttered to herself, slouching in front of the mirror. ‘Pop socks and slippers. For Christ's sake.’ In the event, her cropped black trousers covered the offending top of the pop socks, and a plain black camisole teamed with a cardigan lightly decorated with beads gave her look a cohesion that pleasantly surprised her. Concealer helped with the bags under her eyes and mascara widened them beyond their weary proportions. On the tube, she congratulated her inventiveness: no one gave her a second look or even registered her choice of footwear.

‘And here is Petra,’ Rob announced as she approached his table at a busy Soho bar, ‘and – dear God – she's wearing her slippers.’

Though she stood while everyone remained seated, she felt small and mortified. Two of Rob's male colleagues glanced down at Petra's feet in fascination, a couple of his female colleagues analysed them with pity, whilst circling their own beautiful footwear.

‘Blisters!’ Petra shrugged, making a lively joke of it.

‘They're cute,’ one of the girls said lamely.

‘Watch out that none of these louts tread on your tootsies,’ slurred the other.

‘How are you, babe?’ Rob asked, pulling Petra towards him for a boozy kiss, his hand lingering over her buttocks.

‘Fine, fine,’ Petra said, aware that one of the other men was entranced by Rob's hand on her bottom. There were no spare chairs.

‘You get the next round, darling,’ Rob said, ‘and you can perch on my knee.’

‘
You
get the drinks in, Rob, you wanker,’ said the woman who had defined Petra's slippers as cute. ‘Here, your bum is quite small, cop a pew with me.’ And she shuffled to the edge of her chair, making room for Petra.

‘Thanks,’ said Petra. ‘I'm Petra.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘I'm Laura. I work with Rob. We all do – we're toasting ourselves because the Japs love us.’

‘Cheers,’ said Petra, though she had no glass to raise.

‘Get the girl a drink!’ Laura told Rob who flung his hands up in defeat and made his way to the bar.

‘Oh dear,’ Petra said, trying to look fondly after him, ‘he looks slightly the worse for wear.’

‘All the blokes do, they are all worse for wear,’ the other girl leant across and said, ‘whereas we girls are just pleasantly pissed.’

Petra wondered whether to toast this fact, but not having a drink enabled her to just nod and grin while the other women drained their champagne flutes. She didn't much care for champagne, or wine bars. She preferred vodka and tonic in friendly pubs. This place was heaving yet echoey and she wasn't sure whether she liked the milieu, a noisy rabble of suited men and highly well-heeled women bragging and flirting; money mingling with cigarette smoke and arrogant laughter. She felt intimidated and that irritated her. However, when Rob returned with a bottle of champagne but also a vodka and tonic for Petra, she reprimanded herself not to be so provincial and judgemental.

She sipped her vodka and grinned awkwardly while Rob and his colleagues talked about stuff she didn't understand and people she didn't know. She found herself making mental notes: pay bills, speak to her bank, ring her father – her mother too. It had been ages since she'd spoken to either, let alone seen them. She'd try and arrange to visit one on Saturday, the other on Sunday. She'd take Rob along. Over the last ten months, her mother had met him only a couple of times and her father just the once. She glanced over at Rob, a slight sheen to his face from euphoria and the effort of the day, his voice loud and fast from alcohol and high spirits. He looked nice in a suit, she thought, and wasn't it good to see him in his element, holding court amongst colleagues, reeling off extravagant anecdotes and technical data from the working day just gone. Just then, Petra felt a wave of resentment towards Eric and Kitty and Gina who were not particularly subtle about their doubts over Rob. Particularly Eric. And Kitty. Gina slightly less so.

And yet look how Rob's lot include me, Petra thought to herself – Laura and the other girl asking all about our relationship, that bloke with the wet patch on his shirt asking me about diamond merchants, that other one buying me another vodka and tonic. If Rob hadn't been stressed out and moody that day he visited the studio, perhaps my lot would be more accommodating. And I probably haven't helped – taking into the studio my daft insecurities and niggles. They're very quick to criticize, my Studio Three. I bet they wouldn't say my slippers are cute.

Petra tried desperately to stifle a yawn.

‘Are we keeping you up?’ one of the men teased her.

‘You do look a little tired,’ Laura commented.

‘She was up half the night,’ Rob said.

‘Phnar phnar,’ one of his colleagues nudged him.

‘Not likely,’ Rob laughed. ‘My girlfriend gets up to all sorts of shenanigans at night – but it's nothing to do with me.’

‘I sometimes sleepwalk,’ Petra mumbled in, hoping to curtail details.

‘Yesterday – Christ, the early hours of this morning,’ Rob was saying, ‘I get a call from the police asking me do I know a Petra Flint, does she have wellingtons and a Snoopy T-shirt and is there any way she could have walked towards Whetstone whilst asleep.’

‘You're joking,’ Laura said, the focus of her pity directed at Rob which disappointed Petra.

‘Appalling,’ Petra said quickly. ‘Hence the slippers – from my blisters.’

‘Mind you, at least she was clothed,’ Rob said, raising his glass at Petra and winking.

Oh God, don't, Rob, please.

But Rob was bolstered by Bollinger and he had a captive audience and he quite liked the power of being a raconteur.

‘When I took her to meet my folks down in Hampshire, she walked into their bedroom, switched on their light, opened their cupboard doors, had a rummage around and then walked out again.’

‘Rob—’

But Rob paused for dramatic effect only. ‘Starkers!’ he told the table. ‘I don't know who it was worse for – Petra, or my parents.’

Petra hid her head in her hands.

‘Do you really not realize a
thing
?’ the other girl asked, slightly accusatorily. Petra shook her head without raising her face.

‘Why don't you go to bed wearing something – just in case?’ Laura asked her.

‘I do,’ Petra said, ‘especially when I'm staying away from home. I put on layers and layers before I go to bed. I don't know why I take them off – I don't know why I take off.’

‘Can't you take a sleeping pill or something? It could be dangerous.’

‘So could taking sleeping pills,’ Petra said. ‘I've seen specialists, had tests. No one knows why I do it or how to stop me.’

‘I can't believe she walked into your parents naked,’ Laura said to Rob, and Petra would rather she'd said it to her.

‘I don't mean to,’ Petra said, trying to look imploringly at Rob who didn't seem to feel her gaze. ‘I don't like it.’

‘Petra will kill me for this one – apparently, before I met her, she actually got into bed with complete strangers.’

‘Oh my God – did you have sex with them?’

‘Of course not,’ Petra said crossly. ‘I was staying at a place in the country for my friend's thirtieth birthday. I didn't know the house and I think I was getting flu anyway. But yes, I walked in my sleep into another bedroom and got into bed with a couple.’

‘What did they do?’

‘Tried to get me out,’ Petra said. ‘I only stayed for a few minutes anyway and then I went out of my own accord.’

‘Out?’

‘Into the grounds of the house,’ Petra explained, ‘but someone was having a spliff outside and they led me back.’

‘They must've thought it was damn good skunk,’ one of the men laughed.

Petra shrugged. ‘I know it sounds funny and crazy – but it's not. Believe me.’

‘It's a liability,’ Rob said. ‘That's why I'd like to say that I'm particularly proud of the deal we did today, chaps – because I was up half the night in Whetstone bloody police station.’

Everyone raised their glasses to Rob, and Petra suddenly wondered whether it would have been entirely her fault if he hadn't closed the deal with the Japanese. Poor Rob, she thought, I am a liability. So she raised her glass highest of all. And though she was desperate to go home and snuggle up with him for an early night, she stuck it out at the bar because she felt he deserved it.

Later, much later, they took a cab back to Rob's flat in Islington. Petra was beyond exhausted but woozy with vodka too. When she sobered up, she would think how it was not particularly logical to be mad at Rob for humiliating her yet also to want to impress him, seduce him, enamour him of her – so that perhaps he wouldn't do it again. When she sobered up, no doubt she would wonder why on earth she hadn't just said, Rob, you sod, please shut up – it's private and you're embarrassing me. But she was a little drunk and her heels throbbed and she'd knocked her knee on the side of Rob's chair and it was the same chair she'd once wet in her sleep. And suddenly she loved him for having not humiliated her by revealing that episode to his colleagues. And foremost in her conscience was that she'd pissed Rob off the night before and so now she ought to make it up to him because she didn't like upsetting people and she didn't like arguments and she didn't like conflict and she wanted to remind Rob that there was more to her than Snoopy T-shirts and calls from the police. And it would be so very nice if this relationship could last beyond a year.

Before he had time to pour himself a whisky, Petra was behind him, encircling her arms around him. She kissed him between his shoulder blades, huffing hot breath through his shirt while she travelled her hands down his stomach and unzipped his trousers.

‘What's all this?’ he murmured though he took her hand and thrust it down his boxers. He turned and kissed her hungrily. He tasted slightly rancid, of too much beer and champagne on top of a liquid lunch, but Petra told herself to block it out. She kissed him back thoughtfully, taking care to skip her tongue around his mouth, her teeth grazing his lips. She looked into his eyes which were a little bloodshot but no doubt hers were too. She didn't really like his face so much when he was drunk – it was what Eric would term ‘leery’ and Eric had seen Rob pissed once before. But leery was fine for now because sex was on the agenda. He squeezed her breasts and bucked his groin against hers. She swept her hand downwards and thrilled at the feel of his erection holding the fine wool of his suit trousers aloft. He fumbled with his belt and pushed his trousers and underpants down. His hands at her shoulders urged Petra to squat down though she stifled the wince of pain as her knee objected.

‘Suck my cock,’ he panted and Petra obliged, though she didn't need his hands guiding her head and she wished he wouldn't because it made her gag. ‘God, I'm horny,’ he murmured, pulling her up to standing, which again sent waves of pain through her knee as it was straightened. ‘Got to fuck you now,’ he said, groping and pulling her trousers as he backed her towards the sofa. His desire for her was what turned Petra on most about Rob. He could be arrogant, he could be moody. They hadn't that much in common, really. He wasn't what she'd term tender, which was a quality she rated, and he was attentive really because he could afford to be – flowers and gifts and nice dinners in upmarket restaurants. But he was very good at sex, and it was obvious that he thought Petra was very good at sex. He liked sex a lot and he liked lots of it and it flattered Petra that she appeared to turn him on so much and it was a thrill for her to take credit for his libido and his satisfaction.