The Square (15 page)

She opens her mouth. He puts his hand up to arrest anything she might say. Almost unconsciously, she takes a quick look at his nails.

“Look, I know what you are thinking. I’m not asking for anything you would not be able to explain to your family. And Tracey, I’ll pay you for your time.”

What? Is this man out of his head? He’s going to pay me to talk to him?

“Alan, you can trust me with this. I’m not one to blab about my clients, or whatever you want to call yourself. But I’m not a therapist, you know. I sell nail varnish to people, and advise them on what sort of lip colour to buy and how to use it. I’m not sure I’m going to be much good at this.”

He smiles.

“Oh, but I think you are Tracey. You really are. You may not know it, but you have a very understanding nature. I know you will understand me. I’d like to just have some advice. And you know,” he says, sighing, repeating his promise, “I’ll pay you to do it. So you won’t get paid for the telly stuff, but you will for the… other things. Simply so it can come out of a different accounting pot. How about that?”

She forces herself to laugh, simply to show him she is on top of this new situation. She wouldn’t mind it either.

“Oh, this sounds crazy. Alright then, how much?”

“I will give you what I charge my top clients. Which is £200 an hour.”

Tracey nearly chokes.

“Alan. That is quite a lot of money. My God. That would be amazing. Really?”

Oh my God. What a mad world we live in. Why, she could make a quick £600 simply out of having lunch with the man. Which is more or less what she takes home in a fortnight. For lunch. With Alan. He is quite oily, now she thinks about it. Never mind. She’ll manage it for the money. And the chance to appear on TV.

“Comes out of a different budget.”

“Yes, alright. I’ll do it. I’d love to.”

She shakes her head, laughing.

“Alan… will it be talking only?”

“Talking only. And maybe some eating.”

“No nudity? I’m only joking Alan, but I have to ask.”

I’m not joking, and damn right I’m asking.

He throws his head back with laughter.

“It’s not about THAT, silly.”

Tracey goes very red.

“Sorry.”

“It’s very simple, when you hear what I need to know and what I think we should talk about.”

What is he on about? Maybe he is a religious fanatic, thinks Tracey. Christ, I hope not.

“Alright. As long as you are sure I can help, I will. Will I ever have to feed the Munchkin?”

“Never.”

“Alright, it’s a deal.”

She looks at Alan, smiling.

Alan looks at his watch again, beside the immaculate cuffs.

“Must dash. Helen will call you to set up the first research meeting. Don’t get up. You stay here and have a cup of coffee. I’ll get this.”

After Alan leaves, waving through the window, Tracey sits on her own, in a daze. She eventually gets up, brushing crumbs down off her pink woollen suit.

Chapter Fifteen Belle

It’s like being at primary school again, thinks Belle as she kneels beside the trestle table in Philip’s studio, stapling chicken wire onto a piece of hardboard. And where the fuck is Jas, Little Jas? She can hear him talking to Philip, laughing. Getting on with the boss, while she does all the hard work. It’s the morning, so Philip is still in his white robe. She rests stiffly back on her haunches, looks at her work from the level of the trestle.

It looks nothing like Berlin, or a marathon course, or anything. It reminds her of a small model she once made of the surface of the Moon, after watching it done on
Blue Peter.

“Jas!” she calls. “Can you come over here please? Can you advise me where I need to go now?”

“Where are you?” calls Jas.

“In the studio. Obviously.”

“No, where are you in Berlin?”

“Wedding.”

Silly name for a suburb.

“Right over.”

He walks over to her, squats down.

“Is this okay? Looks like the Moon, frankly.”

He laughs. “It’s good. Very good. It’ll all take shape in a few days. Wait and see.”

He elbows her.

“Philip wants to get his photographer in on Thursday, so this can go out to prospective clients. Honestly. This is going to be big.”

He really hopes so. Philip hasn’t said much to him about Belle, but having her working for him has sped up the process a lot. Jas thinks he will probably end up earning quite a lot more than he usually does. After all, he’s the senior assistant now that Belle has come in at the bottom.

“Yoo-hoo!”

They both turn around. It’s Gilda in the doorway. She’s wearing a draped satin white Seventies trouser suit with stars on the shoulder pads and big Jackie O sunglasses. Her nipples jut through the satin top. She is clearly not wearing a bra.

“Elevenses?”

“Don’t mind if I do. Bels?”

“Sure.” She gets up, wipes her hands down her jeans, stretches her legs.

“Follow me follow,” trills Gilda. “Down to the Hollow.”

Belle walks slowly after Jas into the kitchen. She’s been working with Jas for three days, and this is the first time she’s been invited down here. Maybe they wanted to see whether I came back, she thinks.

She walks into the kitchen, takes in the fairy lights, the artfully scuffed lino on the floor, the mannequins standing in the corners wearing Spanish matador outfits. The kitchen table is designed around a roulette wheel and a long cloth from a casino, which has been treated with some sort of spray and is slightly shiny, rather than soft and fluffy. Rouge, Noir. Pair, Impair. I will have to tell the Populars about every single atom of everything in this room, thinks Belle. She notices an upright piano alongside the wall.

Gilda is airily organising coffee in an old steel percolator. Jas is smoking. He is allowed to smoke at Philip’s.

“An original from the Fifties. Estudio Alessi,” says Gilda, waving the percolator.

“Oh,” says Belle, sensing she has to say a bit more. “Lovely.”

Where are the famous porn pictures, is what she actually wants to ask.

“Look around, darling,” says Gilda, as if she was a mind reader.

Belle does as she is told, and suddenly, there they are. Black and white photographs, about six or seven of them, showing Gilda in sets of very complicated, rather dated looking underwear. She is only topless in two of them. These show her holding up rather pendulous, teardrop-shaped breasts with very large, dark areoles around the nipples. Blimey, thinks Belle, she’s got big tits.

“Do you like them?” says Gilda chattily, pouring coffee, as if she was talking about food, or the weather.

“Er, yes,” blurts out Belle. “They’re… good.”

“They’re done by George Rasper. Do you know George?” says Gilda. “You know, the famous
Sunday Times
photographer. He wanted to capture the spirit of Twenties strip tease,” Gilda says. “After Jonty Coward, the famous photographer. Did all the flappers, all the Bright Young Things. Do you know about Jonty?”

All these people. She has no idea to whom Gilda is referring. Belle looks at Jas, who merely smiles at her, stubs his cigarette on a heritage Quaglino’s ashtray and raises his eyebrows.

“No, er, no, I haven’t,” she murmurs. “But I’m sure these capture the spirit… I mean, in black and white and everything.”

She looks back at the pictures. Gilda is throwing her head back in one, and bringing up a feather boa between her legs. Belle wishes she could get her phone out and take a photo. Maybe when Gilda’s on the loo, she thinks, she will.

Gilda marches up to the pictures and surveys them, as if for the first time.

“The only thing about it is that my tits are a bit TOO big, I think. Too big for the period, frankly. Pity. We should have had the session before I had my op.”

Is there nothing that this woman won’t talk about, thinks Belle. Her candour makes Belle feel embarrassed on her behalf.

She can’t think of what to say, so she simply smiles and sips her coffee, which has been handed to her in a china cup shaped like a bucket. Belle suddenly has the image of Gilda and Philip wandering around the house, ordering every single element of it from some outlandish catalogue, in order to fulfil their need to be seen as arty throughout every single moment of the day and at every single opportunity to consume within that day. She wonders if there is anything normal here, like a vaccuum cleaner, or a loo brush. Probably not.

She has already ventured into the ground floor toilet decorated with the moulds of Gilda’s genitalia scattered across the walls. Found it impossible to piss in it, sadly. She had had to hold it in until she got home, running across the Square, grateful to be back in a place with holiday snaps on the wall and normal things such as a straightforward fridge containing Onken yoghurt, and a toilet decorated with a picture of a blue cat.

She takes another sip from the cup, looks down, and suddenly screams, dropping the cup. It bounces away on the lino, flinging the residue of the coffee as it goes.

“Oh my God, Jas!”

“What, what?”

“There is a snail in my coffee cup!”

Gilda hoots with laughter.

“Oh, darlinka! Everyone falls for it!” She picks up a teatowel, mops up the spilt coffee and picks up the cup. Well, at least there’s a bloody ordinary teatowel in this freak show of a house, thinks Belle.

Gilda holds the now empty cup over to Belle. Peering in, she can see there is a large and wholly realistic china snail cemented to the bottom of the cup.

“The more you drink, the more of the snail is revealed. It’s sitting in the bottom of a bucket, you see. I think it’s killing. Don’t you think it’s killing?”

“Yes,” mumbles Belle. “Sorry.”

“Not at all,” says Gilda, eyes sparkling.

Cow. She planned that to happen. Give the new girl the joke cup, thinks Belle. Well, just you wait, Russian porn queen.

Jas walks over to her.

“Sorry, Belle. Shall we?” He points upstairs. “I think we have to get on with the Reichstag.” He turns to his hostess, who is leaning against the roulette table in her silk suit, smiling.

“Thanks Gilda. The German Parliament calls.”

As they walk upstairs, Philip is standing somewhat testily in the hall. He is dressed for the day in a blue boiler suit and spotted bow tie.

“Ah, Jas and, er… ”

“Belle,” says Belle.

“Yes, sorry. You two. I have to go out now. Magnus. Please make sure you continue with Berlin. I have the photographer coming tomorrow, now. So a state of readiness is all. As Alexander Fleming probably never said.”

“What is he on about?” says Belle after Philip leaves the house with a flourish.

“This place is a loony bin.”

“Just nod your head and smile,” says Jas. “That’s what I do. And get on with it. Last night, after you left, I finished the Brandenburg Gate. Take a look.”

Chapter Sixteen Roberta

Roberta rings the door bell, stands on the step, shivers in her coat although she is not particularly cold. Come on, come on. After a significant pause, the door opens, slowly. By nobody, it seems like.

She looks down to see the small personage of George standing, arms folded, waiting.

“Oh, sorry, there you are!”

“My mother is out.” He beckons her in theatrically. “This is all the better.”

“Oh, why is that?”

“Because then we don’t need to practise. Or at least, not all the time. We can talk about my film for the Talent Show. I think that’s what my mother wants us to do anyway.”

Indeed, Jane had shouted up to George as she had left.

“I’m going to get some flowers. Dad will be back in five minutes. After your lesson, get Roberta to work out something with you for the Show, darling!”

“Sorry, I can’t make you a cup of tea either. I’m ‘not allowed’ to,” he says, giving quote marks around the despised command.

They walk into the music room.

“Here is Water.” He proffers a rather smeared glass, half full.

“Oh, thanks, lovely,” says Roberta, taking it and sipping a tiny amount. The glass is wet to the touch, which makes her feel slightly queasy.

“But George, we still need to do a little bit of music anyway, unfortunately. We must think about your Grade Two which is coming up.” Roberta remembered that meeting with Jane in the road, which had been very strange. Jane had seemed very hurried, and unusually flighty. She didn’t want Jane to start thinking that George wasn’t progressing with his piano. He had got to get his Grade Two, that was clear.

“Thought you might say that,” murmurs George.

He sits down with a thump on the music stool.

“Hanon?”

She puts the wet glass carefully down on some papers, so as not to mark the Blüthner.

He sighs, reaches up for the beige book, cracks it open and begins. Arrangement No. 1. The page is heavy with dense notes, each packed into military order along the staves.

“Do each one five times, George, please.”

He does as she asks. Each time he repeats a phrase, it is as if a comb is running through the notes, teasing out the tangles, smoothing out the shape of the small exercise.

“Better.”

I could listen to Hanon all day, she thinks. All day long. Listening to Hanon. It entertains your brain without fully engaging it, a bit like watching patterns of bricks, or running your eye up the long wires on a suspension bridge. It allows you to do something while thinking of something else, which Roberta has always appreciated. Although it probably belies a lack of focus, she thinks.

I bet successful people never release their brain fully in this way. They are always focusing on their ambition far in the horizon. She had once seen a Golden Eagle up close. It looked straight past her, focusing on the distance. That is how successful people are, she thinks. That is how her clients are. They are so busy looking to the future that they never focus on the present in front of them, the busy notes of Hanon climbing up and climbing down the scale. She might not be successful, thinks Roberta, but at least she knows what it is like to be consumed with music.

George turns and looks at her inquisitively.

“Go on,” she nods her head at him. He continues. He is the most appealing child, she thinks with a rush.