The Square (13 page)

“Right, so tomorrow. I’ll call for you. Nine? Philip likes an early start.”

“Right.”

“I’ll have all the materials. We’ll go to the studio and we’ll start working. I think tomorrow we are going to start on Berlin.”

“Right.” She’s quite excited.

“When do you go back to school?”

“I have two weeks. It’s half term.”

Blimey, thinks Jas. She has to pay for school and they hardly turn up. Two weeks! Well, that’s a blessing, actually. They might get Tokyo done as well.

“Er, Jas, what’s the fee? I am getting paid for this, right?”

He hadn’t thought about this too closely. Philip would need to be consulted about how much this new assistant was going to be paid. He’d have to feel comfortable with this new person in his world. Philip was a man who didn’t like surprises. He wanted to be surrounded by people who weren’t going to criticise him. He liked to be able to glide about in his robe and not have people laugh at him, or roll their eyeballs at him. He was the unopposed king of his world.

“Philip will sort that out. But it won’t be nothing. Honestly, Belle, you’ll enjoy it. Just one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t laugh at him. Take him seriously.”

“Right.”

He stands, grinds the stub onto the ground, clasps his hands together almost as if he is praying.

“Thanks, Belle. I knew you’d like the idea. Knew you’d be up for a challenge. So. Tomorrow, nine, right?”

“Right.” She has already turned away, waves a hand behind her.

It’s going to be hard to get into her knickers, thinks Jas. But he’s sure he can manage it. At this particular second, he feels as if anything and everything is possible. He gives a little skip as he walks towards Philip Burrell’s house where the chicken wire and wood are already marking out the course of the Berlin Marathon.

Belle shivers from the morning chill as she comes into the softly warm house, and almost collides with Anya. She is carrying a large bag of rubbish.

“Oh, sorry, Belle.”

Belle decides she will smile at the au pair as she edges out with the sagging black sack. She’s in a good mood. She’ll get quite a lot of money from this venture. Money earned, rather than given to her. Is it different? Apart from the time spent getting it, probably not, thinks Belle. It’s all numbers. But at least this means she’ll be able to buy what she wants, when she wants it, and not have to bother being nice to her mother, or clear up her plate after breakfast, or tidy her room, all things which her parents seem to think go hand in hand with a monthly allowance.

Plus, it will be quite a laugh, working with Little Jas. That’s what everyone used to call him at school. Alright, he’s not so little now, but she’ll still make sure he does most of the work. It’s not going to be too arduous, she thinks. Bit of sticking and painting, it will be like being back in primary school again.

And then there’s all that stuff in the house, she’ll enjoy nosing around there. Belle is very pleased. What looked like a rather dull period of time, stretching ahead of her, was going to turn out to be rather entertaining. And she would get paid for doing it. Belle tosses her large coat onto the bannister as she walks upstairs. It promptly slides off onto the floor. Well, Anya can deal with that.

Chapter Thirteen Jane

Yes, but if it’s going to go ahead, the Talent Show needs planning. Really good planning. Proper production. It must be smooth. Professional. Impressive. If a thing’s worth doing. And so on. Which is why Jane put herself forward, volunteered for the position of Talent Show Producer. Yes, she wanted to be seen as a volunteer. However, now that she was in charge, had been given the task of organising it by Larry, whose idea it had been, it would be so awful if it was a damp squib.

She thinks of the event. She thinks of the audience. What happened if nobody turned up? If everyone just couldn’t be bothered? That would be dreadful. That would be like nobody turning up to your birthday party.

Plus, there is the talent part of it. She thinks of George. George has a fairly fixed set of parameters for his enthusiasm and talents, thinks Jane with a frown. What could he do? Dressing up? She can’t quite see him reciting a poem, plus it would be so dreadful if he forgot his lines, she doesn’t think she could cope with the stress of that. Yet she wants to show her son off. I pay enough for his bloody education, she thinks. He’s got to do something impressive. She only has one child. He has to fulfil all her dreams. Maybe he could play the piano, if I can dragoon Roberta in to teach him something which sounds complicated but is actually very simple. She remembers hearing Jools Holland say this about playing boogie-woogie. Somehow she can’t quite see George mastering boogie-woogie in the matter of a month.

She has bought a large block of lined paper. On the frontispiece, she has written
Talent Show.
She looks at the pad. She’s quite excited about the project. It’s like being back at school when she was Head Girl. Since when, her expectations of power were somewhat thwarted.

It took her several years after arriving there, at her job in Freshfields, to realise that the City was not like an all-girls school. At the beginning, she was full of confidence, short skirts and swear words. After a while, she got bored with matching people drink for drink at the bar. It began to dawn on her that the City was not really a place to throw your weight around, if you were female. People, i.e. the men, simply didn’t include her in the action. Women were acknowledged, but only on a token basis.

She hated to admit it, but she felt far more in control at home. In terms of a domestically-based event, something in the Square, people expect a woman like Jane to be in charge. They’ll be looking to me to organise it, she knows that is why Larry had emailed her to ask if she could do. “Where’s Jane?” people would say, if she wasn’t in evidence. At least, she hopes they would say it.

She drums her fingers. Maybe she needs to talk over the options with Jay. The more she thinks about this, the more this seems like a good idea.

She once met a woman in her seventies who had had a rather racy younger life. This old woman had once said to her, apropos of having an affair, that she couldn’t imagine how it would be done in the modern world.

“You are just so likely to get found out, that’s the problem,” she had said to Jane. “What with everything going on a screen on your phone.”

The seventy year old woman had explained to Jane that her affair, being conducted in the days of the Poste Restante, took place via individual letters.

“Much safer,” said the woman.

What a time waster, thought Jane. Imagine all that incriminating evidence. And what torment it must have been, all that waiting for the letter telling where and when to meet. God! Weeks could go by. Weeks in which day rooms could have been booked, and enjoyed. She had been polite to the woman, but some of these sentiments had clearly leaked out onto her face. The woman had smiled at her sympathetically, thinking of the hoard she now treasures. The shoeboxes in her attic, the yellowing papers, the ribbons, the faded napkins from forgotten cafes and lingered-over coffees, the short scrawled lines of erotica.
My darling. The softness of your thighs.
She allows herself to look at them, occasionally.

Jane doodles slightly on her pad.

Surely there cannot be an easier time or place than the present, in which to conduct an affair? Modern technology simply lends itself to it, so much so in fact that it could almost have been invented for it.

At any time of night, or day, there are so many ways to link up with Jay. She stares out of the window, looking without seeing the naked branches from the plane trees, outlined against the white sky.

Right from the beginning of the day, Jane is engaged in a virtual conversation with her neighbour and lover. She thinks about it as soon as she wakes up. I can message him while taking my morning shower, she muses. I shall tell him I am naked. He might respond with a silly something which will make me smile as I am on my way downstairs for breakfast. Sometimes, he will even text me while I am having a cup of tea with Patrick. I might text him back.

There is only one awkward moment. She doesn’t much like him to text her while she is dressing George and getting his bag ready, that makes her feel uneasy and a little guilty.

But texting her while she is smiling at her husband, that is fine. More than fine. It makes her feel sexy and alive. Wasn’t this how a modern woman was meant to be?

Of course the audacity of it is part of the excitement. And is it any worse, Jane thinks, almost as if the seventy year old woman is sitting right in front of her, is it any worse than writing secret letters in lavender ink and sending them to a Poste Restante, and keeping the replies, tied in a ribbon, in a shoebox forever? Of course not. It’s just a bit more technical. And there are no incriminating replies to be kept in the technological age. She never keeps anything, of course.

She deletes absolutely every single sentence from Jay that arrives on her phone. Every one. She never emails. She never writes. He used to drop cards round, before she demanded he stop. She has nothing in her Prada bag, nothing in her knicker drawer, nothing in her wallet which might provide excitement and a household drama. She used to write things down in code, but when she came to re-read them, she had forgotten the code. She found she was just looking at a whole lot of silly scribbles, which made her feel sad as she had no idea how to understand them.

Birthdays, Christmasses, trips abroad; they all must go unmarked. Jane never sends cards, they never exchange presents. The quotidian stuff of love; the photographs, cherished letters, gifts, boxes full of memorabilia from set piece events, these are forbidden. Affairs must happen right in the middle of the slip stream, and must leave no permanent trace. Those are the rules. They must be washed away by life. They are not about posterity. That is their pull, and their pain.
Hey. What’s going on?
she texts.

To her satisfaction, he replies immediately. She hates waiting for him to respond.

Jane. What the devil are you up to? Sorting out the Talent Show. Very bored. Head Girl To Action. Would you like a helping hand?

She looks at the text, helpless. She puts away the pad. Since the fucking in the corridor, she has been counting the days until her next fix. After about nine days of chaste married life, she is desperate for a day room.

But she has no day room booked today. She feels like a cross child whose offer of play has just been snatched away.
Thought you were busy today. Darling. We have no room booked. Never mind. Let’s have coffee then. And a chat.

Jane doesn’t want coffee, or a chat. She wants to be back in the corridor, being screwed up against the wall. Alternatively, she wants to be carried across the bland Travelodge bedroom, legs wrapped around his body, intoxicated. She wants him sucking her body. She wants to be delivered into him. Or he into her. Instead, she must look forward to a cup of coffee.

She feels like pouting.
Oh. Ok then.

There is a pavilion in the middle of the square, where a Filipino woman sometimes serves instant coffee in plastic cups. Nobody understands when it is open, since the opening of the pavilion is at the behest of the council, which runs it on some hidden programme.

It’s the perfect place to meet, because it is right under everyone’s noses. If anyone asks, they are simply organising the Talent Show, thinks Jane.

She dashes to the mirror, puts a pair of earrings on, dabs perfume around, assesses her makeup, arranges a scarf. Just something she threw on. Today she is clothed under her coat. She steps out of the house and walks briskly into the Square, hoping that the fresh breeze will make her look windswept, casually sexy. She quite often looks at herself from a distance like this.

“Hello darling.”

“Hi.”

“So, how’s the impresario?”

She sits down. The Filipino woman is not around. The shutter on the cafe is very firmly shut.

“Oh, Jay. I’m nervous about this. Everyone was so keen at the meeting, but now I don’t know if this is really going to be a good idea. But I have managed to get myself in charge of the whole thing.”

Jay raises his eyebrows, smiles at her teasingly.

“I wonder how that happened.”

“Piss off. Well, now I’m tempted to just book a band, and bring in catering instead.”

“Don’t be crazy! That would cost a fortune. Anyway I thought the whole point was to have a fundraiser for what was it… railings? You can’t go spending thousands on catering. Unless of course Patrick is up for bankrolling it.”

Jane had forgotten about the fundraising bit. How tiresome.

“Oh, yes, of course.”

“We can get stuff from here, at a pinch.”

Jane looks dismally at the pavilion. There are cracked plastic chairs and ashtrays with half an inch of rainwater and some leaves swimming in them. It’s far from Jane’s idea, which concerns hog roasts and delicious canapés and a tent borrowed from the Sultan of Oman in case of inclement weather.

“I was thinking more of a hog roast.”

“Ha! Hog roast? For a fundraiser? Do you know any millionaire pig breeders then?”

“I hate living with Austerity Measures.”

“Come on! Now you are sounding like Harriet.”

Jane’s stomach clenches. She hates him talking about his wife.

“Oh, thanks.”

“Well, you are. This is nothing. Imagine really having a hard time. Living through the War or some such, imagine how that must have been.”

“I do. All the time. George is doing the Blitz as a school project. Every night he comes home demanding to eat only rationed food. Powdered egg and so on. It’s driving me mental. I’m only allowed to give him a banana on Thursdays.”

“Oh, that sounds perfect for the show. So what will he do? ‘It’s a Long Way To Tipperary’?”

“Good God, I hope not. I might get him to perform something with Roberta. You know, the piano teacher. Something classical.”

“Well, that might be your choice. Would it be his?”